Feds join women’s civil rights group to fight obesity. The National Institutes of Health and the National Council of Negro Women have teamed up to fight childhood obesity in African-American youths. Black children have the highest rate of childhood obesity, according to federal health figures. The We Can Program hopes to get young people, ages 11 to 13, information that can help them eat better and exercise more. We Can! is a national program designed for families and communities to help children maintain a healthy weight. The program focuses on improved food choices and increased physical activity. Get more on We Can!
Got a pacemaker? Headphones could be dangerous. For all those aging boomers, there are warnings that if you listen to music with magnetized earphones and have a pacemaker you’d better take precautions. Research presented at an American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans found the magnets in headphones, not the actual music players, could interact with implanted cardiac devices. Dr. William H. Maisel, senior author of the study and director of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston, said researchers tested eight different models of MP3 player headphones with iPods on 60 defibrillator and pacemaker patients, the AHA said Sunday in a release. “We placed the headphones on the patients’ chests, directly over where their devices are located, monitoring them for evidence of an interaction,” Maisel said. They found detectable interference in 15 percent of the pacemaker patients and 30 percent of the defibrillator patients.  The researchers said people listening to portable music devices should keep their earphones in a pocket or elsewhere away from their chests when they are not in use.

HPV virus is linked to 25,000 cancers over five years. The human wart virus  known as HPV caused 25,000 cases of cancer in the United States between 1998 and 2003, including not only cervical cancer but also anal and mouth cancers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.  The study suggests the need for screening of both men and women to be expanded for human papillomavirus, or HPV, said another team of researchers, who did a similar study. HPV includes about 100 different viruses, and they are the leading cause of cervical cancer. The viruses, transmitted sexually and by skin-to-skin contact, can also cause anal and penile cancers, as well as cancers of the mouth and throat. HPV also causes common warts. Both Merck and Co. and GlaxoSmithKline make vaccines against some of the strains of HPV most strongly linked with cervical cancer, but not all. The vaccines are recommended for girls and young women who have not yet become sexual activity.  ”Currently available HPV vaccines have the potential to reduce the rates of HPV-associated cancers, like oral and anal cancers, that are currently on the rise and for which there is no effective or widely applied screening programs,” the CDC’s Dr. Mona Saraiya, who led the study, said in a statement. “This gives us baseline data to measure the impact of HPV vaccine and cervical cancer screening programs in reducing the incidence of cervical cancer and other HPV-associated cancers… .”

Sleep is seen as the newest obesity fighter. Consistently getting a good night’s sleep may help protect children from becoming overweight adults, a study published Monday suggests. Researchers found that among more than 1,000 people followed from birth to age 32, those who got too little sleep as children were more likely than their well-rested counterparts to become obese adults, Reuters News reports. The link between sleep deprivation during childhood and obesity risk later in life held up even when the researchers figured in things like the impact of a child’s weight or TV habits, and adulthood exercise level. All of this supports the idea that early sleep habits have a direct effect on weight in the long term, according to Dr. Robert John Hancox, the study’s senior author. “Although we cannot prove that this is a cause-and-effect relationship,” he told Reuters Health, “this study provides strong evidence that it probably is.”

Eating more fish can help you control diabetes. Centering your dinner around a fish dish at least twice a week might help people with diabetes lower their risk of kidney disease, a study suggests. In the November issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, British researchers analyzed the records of more than 22,300 middle-aged and older English men and women who were part of a large European cancer study to determine the effect of fish on kidney disease. What they found is that of the 517 study subjects who had diabetes (most of whom had type 2), those who on average ate less than one serving of fish each week were four times as likely to have albumin in their urine than people with diabetes who ate fish twice a week. Adler speculates that the nutrient content of fish may affect kidney function and improve blood glucose control. But the researchers could not say what type of fish had the biggest impact, reports USA Today.To get more help with diabetes, go to BET.com/Body &Soul.

Diabetes rates nearly double. New cases of diabetes nearly doubled over the last decade in the United States, a trend made worse by high rates of obesity and inactivity in the South, a study of 33 states found. The U.S. rate of diabetes increased to 9.1 cases for every 1,000 people in 2005-2007, up from 4.8 in 1995-1997, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s study. It’s the first study to describe the cases by geographic region, the agency said. Diabetes is the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States and can lead to heart diseases, blindness, kidney failure and amputation, according to the National Institutes of Health, a federal agency. More than 23 million Americans have diabetes, and last year about 1.6 million new cases were diagnosed in people 20 or older, the CDC reports. African Americans are twice as likely to get diabetes as Whites, according to federal health figures. Studies have shown that obesity, idleness and too much sugary soda and fruit juice can increase risk of contracting the disease. For more on diabetes, go to BET.com/Body & Soul.

Voters: Major changes are needed in U.S. Health Care.  Seven in 10 registered voters say major changes are needed in the U.S. health care system, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and the Kaiser Family Foundation say. “Voters want a major change in health care,” said Robert J. Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health, in the second article of a series of reports published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). “But a new administration is going to have to face the very real divide that exists between McCain and Obama supporters on the shape of future reform,” Blendon added. Health care is a major economic worry for many families, the researchers say. “People are having major problems getting and paying for health care and, if this trend continues, addressing health care as part of the nation’s economic turmoil may be a priority for the nation’s next president,” said Drew Altman, Kaiser president and CEO. While voters are dissatisfied with the current health care system, they have very different views about how the next president should fix it, particularly those who say they plan to vote for Sen. John McCain versus those intending to vote for Sen. Barack Obama. When asked to choose the most important issue relating to their vote choice, health care ranked second among Obama voters and tied for fourth among McCain voters. Further, while a large majority of voters favor changes in health care, supporters of the two candidates differ greatly on how to do it or how much of a change is necessary, the researchers found. The findings, however, confirm what surveys have shown in the past: that there is wide support for a variety of approaches to health care reform, though there may not be agreement on the best way to move forward.

. People who eat too many sweet foods increase their obesity risk, a new study found. Eating too much fructose - a sugar found in foods ranging from cookies to candies and soda - can block the appetite-controlling hormone leptin from doing its job and increase the risk of obesity, a University of Florida study of rats suggests. Leptin resistance has long been linked to obesity, and a number of studies have shown that eating too many sugary foods laced with the corn-based sweetener may be an important factor in the United States’ obesity epidemic. This new study is the first to link fructose and leptin resistance, reports HealthDay.

The gap is growing between Black and White Chicago women dying from breast cancer.  Since 1980, when Black and White women in Chicago with breast cancer were equally likely to die, the death rates for White breast cancer patients have dramatically improved. But Black women have seen no such improvements, and in fact are dying at 116 percent higher rates than Whites in Chicago, according to new numbers released Wednesday by the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force. In fact, the gap has widened, the report says. Last year, the group analyzed data through 2003 and found a 68 percent higher death rate for Black women over those of Whites. Experts say genetics or biology alone cannot explain the difference. The racial gap in Chicago was twice that of the United States and sevenfold that of New York City, according to the researchers, who were from Sinai Urban Health Institute and who looked at vital records through 2005, obtained from the Illinois Department of Public Health. “It was as if no screening or treatment was going on for black women, which we knew was not true,” said Dr. David Ansell, chairman of the task force, made up of 74 health-care groups and more than 100 breast cancer physicians, researchers and advocates. Black women are less likely to get mammograms, the task force says. When they do, the mammograms are more likely to be of inferior quality. Those diagnosed with cancer also are less likely to have access to quality treatment. For more on Black women and breast cancer go to BET.com/Body & Soul.

High blood pressure is on the rise. Increasingly, more Americans are being diagnosed and treated for high blood pressure, recent studies by the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute have shown. High blood pressure, by itself, can cause major problems, and is a known risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Also, high blood pressure is diagnosed in obese patients. The institute’s numbers were collected from two National Health and Nutrition Examination surveys, done between 1988 and 1994, respectively 1999 and 2004. After analyzing the data and interpreting the results, the researchers found that women experience higher blood pressure after the age of 40, and men after the age of 60. In the decade prior to 2004, Americans experienced a 5.2 percent increase in high blood pressure cases. However, in the 30,781 cases studied, 72 percent knew they had the disease, 61 percent were in treatment and 35 percent were able to keep their blood pressure in check.

Robin Roberts had an “all-time low” after chemotherapy.  While undergoing chemo treatments for breast cancer, Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts says she reached an all-time low.  “I was in a really bad place,” she tells PEOPLE. “I didn’t want to fake it [on TV].”  Roberts, 47, decided to take off the last three weeks of the year - the longest break she had taken since her diagnosis last July. “I needed more rest. It was too much,” she says, especially given her grueling up-before-dawn work schedule. “I don’t recommend anyone going through chemo get up at 4 a.m.”  By December, the treatment had become an emotional drain. “I was mourning the loss of my health,” says Roberts. But she rebounded quickly after her year-end respite. “I think taking long walks really helped,” she says. “And I circled Jan. 10, the day of my last chemo treatment, on the calendar so I had a goal, an end in sight.”

Two of every three Black men are overweight. Two of every three men, four out of five women and one in five children in the Black community are overweight, according to the  50 Million Pound Challenge, which seeks to reduce obesity and encourage healthy lifestyles in the Black community.  Fitness expert and physician Ian Smith said he began the program last year to provide a “national platform” for healthier living among Blacks, reports The Washington Post.  Smith said that the campaign’s challenge for 50 million pounds of weight loss can be met if 25 percent of the 20 million Blacks in the United States who are considered overweight or obese each lost 10 pounds (Kaiser Health Disparities Report, 4/5/07). More than 690,000 people across the nation have joined the challenge since April 2007, and almost three million pounds have been lost. Smith said, “What we are trying to do is not only to get people to lose weight, but to get them to take a better look at the choices that are directly impacting their physical and spiritual health.” He added, “Poor lifestyle choices and cultural entrenchments have, unfortunately, made African Americans extremely vulnerable to a wide range of diseases that are in many cases life-threatening.” 

Blacks get colon cancer more often.

When compared with Whites, Blacks get colon cancer more often and die from it more often, according to new research. And, researchers from the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Portland are trying to find out why. Since 1985, colon cancer rates have dipped 20 percent to 25 percent for Whites, while rates have increased for African-American men and stayed the same for African-American women, the researchers write. Get more on the story at Body & Soul.Obesity increases your risk of miscarriage. Women who have had a miscarriage may be at increased risk of another miscarriage if they’re overweight, says a U.K. study that tracked 696 women who had miscarriages classified as “unexplained” by doctors. The researchers at London’s St. Mary’s Hospital found that being obese increased the risk of another miscarriage by 73 percent, BBC News reported. The study was presented at an international meeting of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, held in Montreal. “This is the first study to look directly at the link between BMI (body-mass index) and recurrent miscarriage. It shows that obese women who experience recurrent miscarriage are at greater risk of subsequent pregnancy loss,” said Winnie Lo, a clinical nurse specialist who presented the study at the meeting. “All women with recurrent miscarriage should be weighed at their first consultation. Those who are found to be obese should be counseled regarding the benefits of weight loss,” Lo was quoted by BBC News as saying.

A low-calorie diet can affect your lifespan. A low-calorie diet can affect two genes in a way that increases lifespan, suggest U.S. researchers, who studied the gene TOR in tiny roundworms called C. elegans. TOR regulates cell growth and plays a role in the development of cancer, HealthDay reports. A loss of TOR has been shown to slow aging in C. elegans, which shares similar genetics to humans. “Our work with C. elegans reveals that TOR depends on a second gene called pha4/FoxA to control the aging process,” said study co-author Susan Mango of the University of Utah, United Press International reported. Mango and colleagues also found that an abundance of food increases TOR activity, which decreases the action of pha4/FoxA and results in a shorter lifespan. The study appears in the journal Current Biology.

Heavy people get heart attacks 12 years sooner. The fatter you are, the more likely you are to have a heart attack earlier in life, a new study shows. “Basically, it is showing that as people got progressively more obese, the rate at which they had heart attacks early went up dramatically,” said Dr. Eric D. Peterson, a professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center’s Division of Cardiology and a member of the group reporting the findings. Cardiologists at several institutions studied data on more than 111,000 people who had heart attacks, looking specifically at body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity, HealthDay reports. Someone with a BMI of 30 or above is regarded as obese; a person 5 feet, 7 inches tall who weighs 192 pounds has a BMI of 30. The average age of a first heart attack for people with a BMI of 18.5 or under was 74.6 years. For people with a BMI of 40 or over, it was 58.7 years. The age at which a first heart attack occurred went up steadily with increasing BMI - 3.5 years earlier for a BMI of 25 to 30; 6.8 years earlier for a BMI 30 to 35; 9.4 years for a BMI of 35 to 40; and 12 years earlier for a BMI 40 or higher. “The news here is that heart muscle in obese diabetic individuals can be mobilized by eating less,” said Dr. Heinrich Taegtmeyer, professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston and co-author of an accompanying editorial comment.

Vital Signs: The lack of sports in school is showing up in strange ways. Vital Signs has more. 

Blacks in the South have higher HIV rates. Blacks in the South have higher HIV and AIDS rates. Why? Read more at BET.com/Body & Soul.

Be Sickle Smart program hits major cities.

The Be Sickle Smart program is on the road, and likely will be in a city near you. “American Idol” season two Winner Ruben Studdard hosted the Be Sickle Smart Education Day in Jacksonville, Fla., last Saturday to raise awareness of the risk of iron overload, a serious condition that affects people living with sickle-cell disease. Transfusional iron overload is a serious condition that can arise from having 10 or more blood transfusions over one’s lifetime (which is common among people who suffer from sickle-cell disease). If left untreated, iron overload can lead to serious health problems, including liver and heart damage, to name a few. The nationwide Be Sickle Smart campaign is a community-based health education effort leveraging advocacy groups, churches, local media and community leaders to raise awareness of sickle-cell disease and iron overload. The program will continue in Birmingham on Sept. 13 and Chicago on Sept. 18, with other stops planned later for Atlanta, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Philadelphia. More than 70,000 people in America have sickle-cell disease. One in 12 African Americans carries the trait for sickle-cell disease. For more information, go to Ask About Iron.com.

Is L.A. driving the trans fat bandwagon off a cliff?
Vital Signs: Cities and states are helping you cut the fat from your diets. Cities like Los Angeles are going as far as to stop fast food restaurants from opening in poor communities to lessen the number of unhealthy restaurants there. But do we really need that kind of help in the fat fight, or is the city going too far? Vital Signs has more.

National Urban League and Walgreens provides free health screenings. In an effort to promote early detection and raise awareness of preventable diseases in urban communities, the National Urban League and Walgreens have partnered to launch a nationwide, educational health screening bus tour. The tour will encourage consumers to act as their own health advocates by visiting the wellness bus when it visits New Orleans August 28-30. The National Urban League and Walgreens Wellness Tour will continue will raise awareness of various health issues and encourage individuals to seek the appropriate resources by providing free health screenings in 27 urban communities across the U.S. as part of a 12-month mobile health campaign. the 38-foot customized bus features five free screenings, including blood pressure, bone density, glucose levels, cholesterol levels and body mass index which total more than $100 in value. “Walgreen is delighted to partner with the National Urban League to provide resources that will empower Americans in urban communities to live healthier lives,” said Mark Wagner, executive vice president of store operations for Walgreen Co. “Many diseases can be detected through screenings long before any symptoms are noticed, which is why we are bringing this valuable service to residents of New Orleans.” People in urban communities, particularly minorities, experience disproportionately higher rates of preventable disease. “The National Urban League is pleased to offer these screenings and health information to people who otherwise may not have had access to these basic health resources,” said Marc H. Morial, NUL president and CEO. “We are excited to be taking this tour to major cities across the country , such as Chicago, New York and Miami.” The National Urban League’s State of Black America 2006 reports that Blacks are impacted by higher rates of obesity, substance abuse and diabetes.

Married folks are the healthiest. People who’ve exchanged wedding vows tend to be healthier than their single, divorced or widowed peers, but new research shows that health gap may be narrowing, reports HealthDay News. Interviews with today’s never-married men suggest they are healthier than never-married guys were three decades ago, researchers say. And that’s helping single males gain some ground, in terms of their health, compared to married people. “One of the most-often documented facts is that married people are healthier than non-married people, but the difference between married and unmarried people has changed over the past few decades,” said the study’s lead author, Hui Liu, an assistant professor and sociologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Liu said there are two theories as to why married people report better health. One is that being married gives you more access to social support and economic resources. The other is that being divorced or widowed hurts health. “In general, marriage tends to make people healthier, happier and richer, and that’s especially true for men,” Scott Wetzler, vice chairman of psychiatry and behavioral science, and head of the “Supporting Healthy Marriage” program at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City told HealthDay.

Some overweight people can be healthy.

Some obese individuals do not appear to have an increased risk of heart disease, while some normal-weight individuals experience a variety of heart risks, according to two reports in the August 11 Issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA/Archives journal. “The prevalence of obesity is increasing worldwide, and this epidemic is accompanied by a high incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease,” the authors write as background information in one of the articles. But research shows that in addition to overall obesity, the way body fat is distributed may decide whether a person is at risk of heart disease and diabetes. For instance, individuals with fat around the tummy — estimated by measuring waist size —appear to be at higher risk for insulin resistance (a pre-diabetic condition that occurs when the body fails to respond to the hormone insulin) and for having an unhealthy cardiovascular risk profile. In one study, individuals in the obese–insulin sensitive group did not differ from the normal-weight group in insulin sensitivity or artery wall thickness, the authors note. “In conclusion, we provide evidence that a metabolically benign obesity can be identified and that it may protect from insulin resistance and atherosclerosis,” Norbert Stefan, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Tübingen, Germany, wrote about their study of 314 individuals age 18 to 69 (average age 45). The second study found that among U.S. adults 20 years and older, 23.5 percent (about 12 million adults) of normal weight had abnormal metabolisms, while 51 percent (about 36 million adults) who were overweight and 31.7 percent who were considered obese had healthy metabolisms. The average weight of individuals with slow metabolisms tended to be older, less physically active and had large weights. Bottom line, waist size had more to do with whether a person had an increased risk for heart disease or diabetes than their actual weight, the studies show.

Exercise pill could help fight obesity. A pill could someday duplicate the results you get by exercising. While new research suggests that drugs could enhance or even mimic the effects of exercise, many researchers say that the notion that you could skip the treadmill and pop a pill is premature. A team of scientists led by Ronald M. Evans, an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at the Salk Institute’s Gene Expression Laboratory, studied two drugs that trigger genetic changes in the body – changes that are typically stimulated by exercise and can ultimately lead to improved muscle functioning and energy-burning abilities. And in mice, at least, the drugs seem to show some positive results. When given to exercise-trained mice, the first drug, known as GW1516, increased their running time by 68 percent and distance by 70 percent. The second, called AICAR, increased running time by 23 percent and distance by 44 percent – but in mice that were “couch potato[es],” Evans says. It was as if, he says, the mice had achieved the “impossible goal” of gaining muscle tone and endurance without having exercised. The research was published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Cell. “Perhaps the most significant finding is that one can actually develop a pill that can confer exercise,” Evans says. But scientists are sure they can duplicate the same results in humans. At best, the study shows some promise that a new drug could be developed to fight obesity, some day.

Mexican farm linked to Salmonella outbreak. Laboratory testing by the Food and Drug Administration has linked a Mexican farm to the salmonella outbreak in the United States, the agency said yesterday. A sample of serrano peppers and irrigation water taken from the farm, in Nuevo León, Mexico, contained the same strain of salmonella that caused the U.S. outbreak. A contaminated jalapeño pepper had been identified two weeks ago at another farm in a different part of Mexico. Until further notice, the FDA advises consumers to avoid eating raw serrano or jalapeño peppers from Mexico or any foods that contain them.

Vital Signs: When Black America is shortchanged in the fight for HIV/AIDS funds it has a terrible consequence: fewer Black women get the help the need. Read more at Vital Signs.