Job loss is at a 12-year high. As the next president prepares to take the keys of the White House and takeover all the problems associated with the office, the government reports more troubling jobs news. The U.S. lost 240,000 jobs lost last months, the government reported Friday. If that wasn’t bad enough, auto sales also toppled, and consumer spending screeched to a halt last moth as well. Automakers are hoping that Congress is in a generous mood. They’ve laid their fate squarely in the hands of federal lawmakers as they hope for a bailout this week. The nation’s largest automaker, General Motors, reports it’s on the verge of bankruptcy and may go under if it doesn’t get a cash infusion soon. If that happens, analysts say, the other automakers might not be far behind.

He says that the media and police are transfixed on finding White females.
Nine months have passed since a 16-year-old Black girl was reportedly kidnapped from her southern California high school, but there has been no massive public outcry from law-enforcement agencies or the media like that afforded missing White females, an NAACP official said Thursday. Find out more about her disappearance and what you can do at BET.com/News. Anyone with information about Chimoa should contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.

Exercise thwarts high blood pressure.

For people with high blood pressure, exercise can be the most important lifestyle change they can make, researchers say. Yet two-thirds of doctors don’t take the time to tell their patients with high blood pressure about the importance of exercise and physical activity, a new study finds. “Patients do follow physician recommendations to exercise when instructed to, and patients who follow exercise recommendations tend to have lower systolic blood pressures than those who do not,” lead researcher Dr. Josiah Halm, a hypertension specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told HealthDay. The findings are published in the summer issue of Ethnicity & Disease. For the study, Halm’s team collected data on 17,474 people who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Among these people, 4,686 reported having high blood pressure. The researchers found that only slightly more than one-third of the people with high blood pressure said their doctor had told them to increase physical activity as a way of bringing down their blood pressure. Yet, 71 percent of patients with high blood pressure saw a drop in their blood pressure when they increased their physical activity, which means that they listened when doctors told them to exercise more, according to the report. “Non-pharmacological methods, such as exercising, are important in improving blood pressure control on a population level as this study looked at the cross-section of the U.S. population,” Halm said.

Black Americans need more sun.

There is a growing body of scientific and medical research suggesting that concerns about skin cancer may have been exaggerated and that most Americans, especially African Americans, actually need greater exposure to sunshine and the valuable vitamin D it helps to produce, reports EURWeb. The most recent in a series of studies was released on Tuesday by the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The researchers used data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to conclude that not getting enough of the so-called “sunshine vitamin” appears to increase the risk of an early death by as much as 26 percent. Johns Hopkins cardiologist Dr. Erin Michos said low levels of vitamin D appear to “confer an increased risk of dying from any cause.” For African Americans, Jean Mayer of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston concluded in an earlier report: “Vitamin D insufficiency is more prevalent,” especially for Blacks living in the North. “Most young, healthy Blacks to not achieve optimal” levels of vitamin D from sunshine,” he says. That’s mostly because the natural pigment protection African Americans have against harmful ultra-violet rays reduces vitamin D absorption in North American environments, researchers say.  Studies show the sunshine vitamin offers a broad range of health benefits including boosting bone and muscle strength to offering protection against both cancer and diabetes. But Michos said more clinical studies were needed before that conclusion could be definitively made. Meanwhile, in 2007 a team from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., found that the lower the levels of vitamin D in a woman’s body the greater is the risk of her developing breast cancer.

Is Sen. Barack Obama too skinny to be president?
Vital Signs: Is Sen. Barack Obama too skinny to be president? Find out who thinks so at Vital Signs.

Racial gap is narrowing for injury-related deaths.

When it comes to injury-related deaths, the gap between Black and White American youths is narrowing, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study found that between 1999 and 2005 injury-related deaths among Blacks ages 15 to 24 decreased, while injury-related deaths among Whites increased. The findings are published in the June, 2008, edition of Injury Prevention. “Between the years of 1999 and 2005 the injury mortality rates among Black males have experienced a steady decline,” said Susan Baker, MPH, an author of the study and professor in the Bloomberg School ’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. “The reduction could be due to a number of preventive efforts, as well as demographic and economic changes,” said Guoqing Hu, Ph.D., lead author and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Health Policy and Management. The researchers found the most important factors in the reduction of injury death disparity was fewer car crashes and suicides by gun among Black males and an increase in suicide by suffocation (typically hanging) and unintentional poisoning, such as a drug overdose, among White males. Among young women, Black females experienced a decline in the rate of firearm suicide, while White females experienced an increase in unintentional poisoning and suicidal suffocation.

High blood pressure follows you to adulthood.

High blood pressure in childhood is associated with higher blood pressure or hypertension in adulthood, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their analysis of previously published blood-pressure tracking studies over the last four decades show a consistent relationship between children’s blood pressure levels with their blood pressure levels as adults. “The blood pressure tracking data indicate that children with elevated blood pressure levels often grew up to become adults with elevated blood pressure,” said Youfa Wang, MD, Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition. “It is important to monitor blood pressure in children – since early detection and intervention could prevent hypertension and related disease risks later in life. For example, studies show that even slightly elevated blood pressure as adults will increase future risks for cardiovascular disease considerably. “Wang and Xiaoli Chen, MD, Ph.D., former postdoctoral research fellow in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health, studied blood pressure levels at various ages and follow-up lengths from previously published studies that monitored children’s blood pressure levels for as long as 40 years across multiple countries and continents. Currently it is estimated that nearly 73 million adults in the United States have high blood pressure. African Americans have higher rates of hypertension, which is one of the major modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, can lead to heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney failure and a number of other health problems. A previous study conducted by Wang and colleagues found that approximately 60 percent of American adults had pre-hypertension or hypertension in 1999 to 2000, and several population groups were disproportionately affected. The prevalence of hypertension has increased nearly 10 percentage points compared to findings in a 1988-94 national survey. Wang credits this in part to the rising obesity epidemic.