Posted by VicPlough on Aug 31, 2011 in
Health (CNN) — Vita Food Products says it is recalling more than 8,000 packages of its smoked salmon because the product may be contaminated.
The recall affects the Vita Classic Premium Sliced Smoked Atlantic Nova Salmon.
The Chicago-based company says 8,088 packages could be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause fatal infections to people with weakened immune systems, children and the elderly.
"To date, no confirmed illnesses or complaints have been reported by customers, although the company is closely monitoring the situation," the company said in a statement Friday.
The company says the salmon was sold throughout the country.
Grocery stores that received the salmon include Publix in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida.
The salmon was also sold to Safeway stores in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and California.
Genuardi’s stores in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Winn Dixie stores in Florida also got the salmon.
CNN’s Greg Morrison contributed to this report.
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 31, 2011 in
Health (CNN) — Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. didn’t become a doctor to change the way America eats. He was a general surgeon.
But researching cancer, he stumbled on a fact that changed his career: Certain cultures around the world do not suffer from heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the Western world.
Esselstyn’s practice took a dramatic turn — from performing surgery to promoting nutrition. For more than 20 years, the Cleveland Clinic doctor has tried to get Americans to eat like the Papua New Guinea highlanders, rural Chinese, central Africans and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico.
Follow his dietary prescription, the 77-year-old Esselstyn says, and you will be "heart attack proof" — regardless of your family history.
"It’s a foodborne illness, and we’re never going to end the epidemic with stents, with bypasses, with the drugs, because none of it is treating causation of the illness," Esselstyn says.
The Esselstyn diet is tough for most Americans to swallow: no meat, no eggs, no dairy, no added oils.
Bill Clinton’s new vegan diet
Esselstyn has written a book to spread the word, "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease — The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure," and he has given talks around the world.
He is also a focus of the new documentary "Forks Over Knives." Esselstyn has won some high-profile allies — such as Dr. T. Colin Campbell, co-author of "The China Study," and Dr. Terry Mason, chief medical officer at Cook County Hospitals in Chicago and the city’s former health commissioner.
"We’ve eaten ourselves into a problem, and we can eat ourselves out of it," Mason says. But Esselstyn’s prescription goes against conventional wisdom, which considers diet only one factor in preventing heart disease.
"Diet alone is not going to be the reason that heart attacks are eliminated," says Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association.
Ornish: Asking the right health care questions
Other key factors include physical activity, cholesterol, blood pressure and weight, she says. The meat, dairy and egg industries defend the benefits of their protein-rich foods, all of which remain on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate dietary guidelines for healthy eating.
Esselstyn’s plant-based prescription also runs up against a culture where meat is served at most meals.
"Most doctors eat meat because most Americans eat meat, and if they don’t really see for themselves or for their family why it might be a good idea to cut down or even cut meat out of their diet altogether, they might not be so inclined to recommend it to their patients," says Michele Simon, author of "Appetite for Profit."
Tests predict heart attack risks
Even doctors who see the benefits of Esselstyn’s diet may not prescribe it for their patients.
"Anyone who is able to do that diet can have dramatic success. The problem is that many people are unable or unwilling to make these changes so in my practice, I try to take baby steps — one step at a time," says Dr. Erin Michos, a cardiologist at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins University.
Esselstyn diet worked for me: One patient’s story
To help heart patients and others make the leap to his diet, Esselstyn holds a monthly, five-hour seminar at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute to explain the science behind "plant-based" nutrition.
Esselstyn’s wife, Ann, offers practical advice on how to prepare kale, bok choy, collard greens and other foods that may not be on the typical family’s shopping list.
Esselstyn began recruiting patients in 1985 and says his diet has worked even on people deemed too sick for surgery. Esselstyn has published results from a small group of patients showing how his diet either halted the progression of heart disease or reduced the blockages in the blood vessels leading to the heart.
"We know if people are eating this way they are not going to have a heart attack," says Esselstyn, whose father had a heart attack at 43.
Anthony Yen, an entrepreneur who emigrated from China and came to love the fried foods, meat and desserts of the American diet, adopted the Esselstyn program in 1987 after undergoing bypass surgery.
"I’m still alive because of this diet," Yen says, now 78.
Esselstyn says people shouldn’t hold off on starting his diet until after they develop symptoms of heart disease because most heart attacks strike with no warning.
"The reason you don’t wait until you have heart disease to eat this way is often, sadly, the first symptom of your heart disease may be your sudden death," he says.
Esselstyn says his diet works because it keeps the lining of the blood vessels free of the dangerous blisters or bubbles or cholesterol-laden plaque that causes heart attacks.
Two decades after Esselstyn started trying to spread the gospel of his plant-based diet, the American Heart Association says 83 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease and many of the traditional risk factors for heart disease, such as obesity, are at all time highs. The association says the cost of treating heart disease tops $270 billion and is expected to more than double by 2025.
Esselstyn, a member of the U.S. gold medal rowing team at the 1956 Olympics, is not someone who gives up easily.
"We are on the cusp of what could be an absolute revolution in health — not dependent on pills, procedures or operations, but on lifestyle," Esselstyn says.
Watch Sanjay Gupta MD Saturday and Sunday at 7:30am ET. For the latest from Sanjay Gupta MD click here.
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 31, 2011 in
Health (CNN) — When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg instructed five hospitals to evacuate their patients from Hurricane Irene’s path, one replied it couldn’t follow his order.
Administrators from New York University-Langone Medical Center explained that six patients in the intensive care unit were so sick that moving them might kill them, and so the mayor’s office gave permission to keep them in the hospital throughout the storm.
It then fell to Elaine Rowinski, nurse manager of the intensive care unit, to find seven nurses willing to stay at the hospital, right in the hurricane’s predicted path and just 100 yards from the East River, which many feared would overflow. It turned out she had nothing to worry about.
"I could have had 20 nurses if I’d needed them," she said. "That’s how many called me up to volunteer."
Rowinski stayed at the hospital all weekend as the doctors and nurses who also stayed listened to the wind and the rain through the boarded-up windows.
"I had no qualms about staying, no fears at all," she said. "We train for these disasters."
Brainstorming with her staff, Rowinski came up with a list of what they might need during the storm. The nurses kept flashlights by each bedside and plugged machines into the red outlets on the wall, which connect to the generators on top of the building, in case they lost power from Con Edison. They also kept a three-day supply of medicine next to each patient’s bed in the event they needed to evacuate quickly.
About 200 staff members stayed at NYU, including engineers, security guards, housekeepers, blood bank staff, and two doctors.
Four family members stayed all weekend with the patients. Some of the patients had neurological diseases, while others had respiratory problems or infectious diseases. Many were on life support, but those that were conscious were told Friday they might have to be evacuated.
"They were so relieved when they found out they could stay," Rowinski said.
As for Rowinski, she finally went home Monday afternoon after nearly three days straight at the hospital. While she was working, her husband had to evacuate their house in Oceanside, on Long Island.
"He told me he kept a picture of me by the dog so he’d remember me," she said with a laugh.
CNN’s John Bonifield contributed to this report.
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 30, 2011 in
Health (CNN) — If you’re not overweight, eat pretty well and exercise now and then, you might think you’re in good heart health. But doctors say you don’t have to look like a heart attack waiting to happen to be one.
Tom Bare, 54, is a case in point. The high school science teacher was thin, active and ate well, but still needed open-heart surgery this spring to bypass blocked coronary arteries.
"I had taken care of myself, taken care of my body," Bare said.
Bare received a telltale warning sign this spring when he went for a jog outside his Lincoln, Nebraska, home.
"Made it about three tenths of a mile and then had the classic symptoms. Chest pain … and then pain down the left arm and shortness of breath," Bare said. That’s what prompted him to see his doctor. Within days, he was scheduled for surgery.
"He’s at risk for heart attack just because of the amount of plaque that he has," said surgeon Ed Raines just before performing a quintuple bypass on Bare.
Bill Clinton: Omnivore to vegan
Family history
Bare has a strong family history of heart disease: His mother’s parents both died of heart attacks, and his mother and brother both required heart surgery, he said.
Still, he was trying to do everything right. He was on a statin medicine, which he said had lowered his cholesterol from just under 300 to 125. Total cholesterol of 240 or above is considered a risk factor for heart disease.
Also, Bare’s typical diet was better than most: oatmeal for breakfast, fruit for lunch, chicken or Mexican food for dinner.
He didn’t smoke. He was not overweight or diabetic.
"Friends are saying if there’s anybody in the group that shouldn’t be going through this, it would be me, because of my lifestyle," Bare said. But, he added, "My brother has gone through this. My mom has gone through this. I knew it was coming."
Dr. Dean Ornish, who has researched the relationship between lifestyle and health, says even the most malignant family history can be overcome.
"I don’t think anyone is doomed to have heart disease," said Ornish, founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute.
"You know, even if your mother and your father and your sister and your brother all die from heart disease it doesn’t mean you need ever to die from it," he added. "It just means you need to make bigger changes in your life than someone else who doesn’t have those kinds of genes."
For someone like Bare, that might mean adopting a plant-based diet, Ornish said.
Heart attack-proof diet?
Red flag
Bare was worried enough about his heart health that he underwent a coronary calcium scan four years ago. The test showed plaque building up in his coronary arteries.
"My score was 111," Bare said. Zero is the best score. Five is the average score for someone his age. A score over 100 meant an elevated risk of heart attack. He had another coronary calcium scan this year. His score was up to 243.
A survey by the American Heart Association suggests many are misguided about their heart health. Some 39% of Americans think their heart health is ideal. The actual number is less than 1%, said Nancy Brown, CEO of the heart association.
Will you have a heart attack? Tests that can tell
"We’re very concerned because we’re seeing the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease increasing," Brown said.
Future
Bare has returned to school part-time until he regains his strength and he’s hoping bypass surgery has given him a new lease on life. The science teacher says he’d like to travel, maybe see a volcano erupt.
"I’m told that I’m good for another 40 years or so, and I’m hoping that’s the case, but with my history, I’m going to have to watch it," Bare said.
Even so, Bare said he has no plans to give up the food he loves.
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 30, 2011 in
Health (CNN) — About 200,000 Americans are estimated to have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which means the disease is found before age 65. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, and it a causes significant memory and thinking problems. There is no cure.
Tennessee Women’s Basketball Coach Pat Summitt, who announced her diagnosis — and her intention to keep coaching — this week, is 59.
SI.com: Summitt reveals dementia, plans to coach this year
There is no typical job scenario for early-onset Alzheimer’s. Whether a person with the progressive disorder can continue working successfully depends on his or her case and circumstances, and to what extent the disease has impaired brain function.
"Every case is different and different patients progress at different rates," said Dr. Patrick Lyden, chairman of the neurology department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. "The most important thing is to work closely with a neurologist, talk to your family and your co-workers, and everybody is different. Some people can work longer than others."
What should Summitt know? Your Alzheimer’s wisdom
The disease can strike people even in their 30s, and others who are in their mid-life, at the peak of their careers — even while raising young children. For those like Summitt who vow to keep working, it takes a dedicated support system.
In a video announcement of her news 
, Summitt noted that she would be "relying on my outstanding coaching staff like never before."
Lyden recalled one patient who served as the CEO of a Fortune 1,000 company when he developed dementia. His co-workers were able to double-check his work and still benefit from his expertise for several years.
Another of his patients continued working at his family’s dry cleaning company every day until his condition worsened.
"It’s a topic that we all need to think through. This is going to be happening more and more. If a workplace doesn’t have a plan, they might want to think about developing one," Lyden said.
Alzheimer’s: Early detection, risk factors are crucial
Summitt told the Washington Post that she hopes to coach at least three more years.
According to the newspaper, the first signs of memory problems started when Summitt started losing her keys more frequently, forgetting basketball team meetings and freezing when it came to offensive plays.
"I’m very impressed that she decided to go public because I think a lot of people would have a tendency to feel like they would retire for personal reasons and not be open," said Dr. Marc Gordon, neurologist and Alzheimer’s researcher at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York.
The disease is a spectrum — some people stay in the mild phases longer than others, but ultimately patients lose their ability to remember and learn new information.
The disorder begins in the hippocampus, the structure of the brain crucial for formation of new memories. The pathology of Alzheimer’s, characterized by plaques in the brain, then spreads, but its course is unpredictable.
If a brain region you need for your job hasn’t been hit, you can continue performing certain tasks, but you may need assistance as time goes on, says Dr. Scott Small, professor of neurology at Columbia University.
In mild dementia, people can answer their own phones and communicate, which may allow them to work in some capacity, depending on the person. The mild stage usually lasts for about two years, but varies individually.
"Early-stage people can be pretty independent. As time goes on, they may need increasing assistance," Gordon said.
It was a tricky path for Lou Bordisso, 57.
His job as a licensed therapist was to help people in their worst moments. He counseled feuding married couples, families in distress and criminal defendants who were found not guilty by reason of insanity in his forensic mental health work for Contra Costa County in California. He was also a bishop.
By no means was he ready to slow down.
But seven years ago, he started losing his way around office buildings. He’d forget where the conference room was located. He missed meeting friends because he couldn’t find the exit from the Macy’s department store in San Francisco.
Finally in May 2010 after spinal taps, neuropsychological testing, MRIs and other tests, the doctor told him he had early onset Alzheimer’s.
He tried to compensate for the deficiencies in his memory by working harder and taking more notes.
Although he had testified in court and written reports to judges in his role evaluating defendants’ mental health, he realized that the disease affected the quality of his work.
"I had been writing a lot of reports to the judge making considerable errors," Bordisso said. "It became evident with my co-workers, peers and supervisors. It was time to take some time off."
The decision was mutual. But retiring from his full-time counseling job and his duties as bishop was "devastating," he said.
"It’s a sense of despair and grief," he said. "I’m going through what’s similar to when someone loses a loved one in life. I’m hopefully moving to the point of acceptance."
He continues his counseling work, although he has drastically reduced the number of clients he sees.
Because his long-term memory is better than his short-term memory, Bordisso moved back to his childhood home in Sacramento, California. The move makes it easier for him navigate his neighborhood and home.
"I’m used to contributing as a responsible, accountable person," he said. "There’s nothing worse for me than not being able to give back.
"Being on the receiving end of services is granting me a new perspective in life. I’m becoming more appreciative of what others are going through. My sense of empathy has increased as well."
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 30, 2011 in
Health Care Researchers have laid bare the DNA of a kangaroo species for the first time.
An international team of scientists, writing in the Biomed Central journal, Genome Biology, say they have even indentified a gene responsible for the kangaroo's hop.
The group focussed on a small species of kangaroo that inhabits islands off Australia's south and western coasts.
The tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) is only the third marsupial to have its genome sequenced.
Making up the trio are the Tasmanian devil and the South American opossum.
The team says the first kangaroo genome is a milestone in the study of mammalian evolution. The ancestors of kangaroos and other marsupials diverged from other mammals at least 130 million years ago.
Professor Marilyn Renfree of the University of Melbourne, a lead researcher on the project, said: "The tammar wallaby sequencing project has provided us with many possibilities for understanding how marsupials are different from us."
Dr Elizabeth Murchison, a marsupial specialist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, described the study as "a wonderful tool for studying the evolution of marsupials, and mammals in general, and an impressive piece of work looking at one of Australia's iconic species."
Aside from identifying the "hop" gene, the researchers pinpointed the genes responsible for other key marsupial traits.
For example, tammar wallaby young are only the size of a grain of rice when born. They spend the next stage of their development in their mother's pouch, feeding on her milk.
The pouch is external to the mother's body and therefore the developing animal comes under attack from many pathogens. Antibiotics in the mother's milk are key to the survival of the offspring.
Dr Murchison told BBC News: "It's always really valuable to look at an organism that is a bit different to understand how humans and other mammals have evolved.
"It gives you a perspective on mammalian evolution by looking at mammals that have diverged fairly early on, like the kangaroo.
The researchers also studied the way tammar wallaby genes are turned "on" or "off" at different stages of the animal's life cycle and in different parts of the body.
They hope their work may help produce future treatments for human disease.
"This is the first genome project to be led by Australian scientists," commented Dr Murchison.
"It's been a huge project. It's been going on for almost my entire career. I'm from Australia and it was going on when I was an undergraduate there 10 years ago.
"It was a very early conceived genome project and it has evolved through various different stages as genome sequencing technologies have changed a lot. The team has adapted and kept up and so they have a huge amount of data." e.
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 29, 2011 in
Health Editor’s note: Tune in as Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the signs, tests and lifestyle changes that could make cardiac problems a thing of the past on "The Last Heart Attack," Sunday 8 p.m. ET.
(CNN) — By the time he reached the White House, Bill Clinton’s appetite was legend. He loved hamburgers, steaks, chicken enchiladas, barbecue and french fries but wasn’t too picky. At one campaign stop in New Hampshire, he reportedly bought a dozen doughnuts and was working his way through the box until an aide stopped him.
Former President Clinton now considers himself a vegan. He’s dropped more than 20 pounds, and he says he’s healthier than ever. His dramatic dietary transformation took almost two decades and came about only after a pair of heart procedures and some advice from a trusted doctor.
His dietary saga began in 1993, when first lady Hillary Clinton decided to inaugurate a new, healthier diet for her husband. In a meeting, she asked Dr. Dean Ornish to work with the White House chefs, who were accustomed to high fat, French cuisine.
What your cholesterol numbers really mean
"The president did like unhealthy foods, and we were able to put soy burgers in White House, for example, and get foods that were delicious and nutritious," said Ornish, director and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. Other new menu items included such healthy fare as stir fry vegetables with tofu, and salmon with vegetables.
Ornish: Asking the right questions about health care
Even with the revamped White House menu, Clinton battled his weight throughout his two terms as president. At his annual physical in 1999, the White House physician noted the president had put on 18 pounds since a checkup two years earlier. The prescription: refocus on exercise and a low-calorie diet.
Clinton didn’t know it, but weight was not his biggest health concern. The 42nd president has a family history of heart disease, and plaque was building up in the coronary arteries leading to his heart, undetected by White House doctors.
American Heart Association: Learn and live
In 2004, less than four years after leaving office, the 58-year-old Clinton felt what he described as a tightness in his chest as he returned home from New Orleans, where he was promoting his memoir, "My Life." Days later, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery to restore blood flow to his heart.
"I was lucky I did not die of a heart attack," Clinton told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. After the surgery, the former president cut down on his calories and lowered the cholesterol in his diet, but his heart troubles were not over.
Last year, the former president went to Haiti to support the relief efforts but he felt weak. When he returned home, he learned he needed another heart procedure: two stents to open one of the veins from his bypass surgery, which had become, in Clinton’s words, "pretty bent and ugly."
Ornish recalls meeting with Clinton a few days after his angioplasty. "I shared with him that because of his genetics, moderate changes in diet and lifestyle weren’t enough to keep his disease from progressing. However, our research showed that more intensive changes change actually reverse progression of heart disease in most people."
Will you have a heart attack? These tests can tell
"I told him, ‘The friends that mean the most to me are the ones that tell me what I need to hear, not necessarily what I want to hear. And you need to know your genes are not your fate. And I say this not to blame you but to empower you. And I’m happy to work with you to whatever extent you want,’" Ornish recalled. They met a few days later, he said.
Clinton then decided to make profound changes in the way he eats.
"I essentially concluded that I had played Russian roulette," Clinton said, "because even though I had changed my diet some and cut down on the caloric total of my ingestion and cut back on much of the cholesterol in the food I was eating, I still — without any scientific basis to support what I did — was taking in a lot of extra cholesterol without knowing if my body would produce enough of the enzyme to support it, and clearly it didn’t or I wouldn’t have had that blockage. So that’s when I made a decision to really change."
The former president now says he consumes no meat, no dairy, no eggs, almost no oil.
"I like the vegetables, the fruits, the beans, the stuff I eat now," Clinton told Gupta.
The former president’s goal is to avoid any food that could damage his blood vessels. His dietary guides are Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., who directs the cardiovascular prevention and reversal program at The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Both doctors have concluded that a plant-based diet can prevent and, in some cases, actually reverse heart disease.
"All my blood tests are good, and my vital signs are good, and I feel good, and I also have, believe it or not, more energy," Clinton said. His latest goal: getting his weight down to 185, what he weighed when he was 13 years old.
Clinton is trying to spread his newfound zeal for healthy eating to children. The Clinton Foundation has teamed up with the American Heart Association and is helping 12,000 schools promote exercise and offer better lunches so decades from now, today’s children will not face the same heart troubles he has.
"It’s turning a ship around before it hits the iceberg, but I think we’re beginning to turn it around," Clinton said.
Watch Sanjay Gupta MD Saturday and Sunday at 7:30am ET. For the latest from Sanjay Gupta MD click here.
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 29, 2011 in
Health Care A team from Chester Zoo will join conservationists in Malaysian Borneo later this year to help construct special "orangutan bridges".
Mr Ancrenaz is a wildlife vet based at a field station in a village called Sukau, He and his colleagues have been building the bridges for the last five years.
They undertook the project after studies showed that the local orangutan population had been fragmented into 20 sub-populations isolated from each other by vast tracts of palm oil plantations, roads, villages, and rivers.
Unlike many other primate species, orangutans cannot swim, so as well as the river being an impassable barrier, logging activities have disrupted the tree canopy above smaller river tributaries, making these impossible to cross.
Dr Davis told BBC Nature: "[The aim of the bridges] is to cover the drainage channels and tributaries that come from the palm oil plantations."
The team will head to Borneo in October and hope to support the work in the region in the long-term.
"This is just a first stage – we're going to try different designs," said Dr Davis.
"The worry is that the forest out there has been so fragmented that the orangutans can't move around at all."
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 29, 2011 in
Health (CNN) — You may be obese, but does that automatically mean you’re unhealthy?
The conventional wisdom is that if you’re overweight or obese, you’re in mortal danger because that extra weight is like a ticking time bomb ready to unleash diabetes, heart disease and other health complications.
But doctors have known for years that obesity doesn’t affect all people the same way. An obese person could lead a healthy life while another person with the same body mass index, or BMI, could have severe medical problems.
Two studies published Monday suggest reframing the way medical practitioners look at overweight and obese patients. The studies question the notion that BMI and weight determine health — even when someone is severely obese.
"Our study challenges the idea that all obese individuals need to lose weight," said Dr. Jennifer Kuk, assistant professor in York University’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science in Toronto. One in five obese people may not have medical problems, the authors estimated.
The challenge is determining who are the "healthy obese" and those who may not have complications now but may develop them in the future.
The studies appear in two publications, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism.
The first study analyzed data from 8,000 people in the National Health and Human Nutrition Examination Surveys, a cross section of the U.S. population.
The main question was whether BMI alone could determine who dies early, said Dr. Arya Sharma, the lead author.
The BMI measures weight relative to height but does not calculate body fat. A person who has a BMI between 25 and 29 qualifies as overweight; a BMI greater than 30 is obese. This measurement has been used as an indicator for obesity since the 1980s.
In the Canadian research, each person who qualified as overweight was given a ranking based on the Edmonton Obesity Staging System, which Sharma designed.
A person can be ranked from zero, which indicates no apparent medical risk, although his or her weight is considered obese. As the stages progress, the symptoms become more serious.
Stage one is borderline hypertension and elevated blood pressure. The person may have elevated glucose levels and mild physical symptoms such as pain and aches. The person does not have a clinical disease at this point.
Stage two is classified with obesity-related diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and sleep apnea. The person may face limitations on daily activities.
Stage three means the person has organ damage such as heart failure, diabetic complications and debilitating arthritis. The person may also be suicidal and depressed.
Stage four is the most severe, with end-stage chronic diseases, severe disabilities and functional limitations.
This method of ranking risk more accurately predicted someone’s death in 20 years than using BMI.
"What the study clearly shows is you can’t make that call based on BMI," Sharma said. "You’re going to have to look at additional risk factors."
But the study looked at mortality — not quality of life.
"Their study was largely mortality in the outcome," said Dr. Steven Heymsfield, executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was not involved in the research. "It doesn’t mean your knees and hips don’t have to be replaced. I still think that’s an issue. You suffer certain social and employment stigma."
Researchers predictably found a correlation between health complications and heavier weight. But they also found "people who are out there, who are pretty healthy despite being large," Sharma said.
"Of course, people at a high BMI are more likely to have these problems, but 20% may be doing OK," he said.
In the other article published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, Canadian researchers found similar results. Although higher BMI was associated with increased death risk, there was "considerable variation in the health risk profile" in the obese population, according to the report.
The study used data from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study consisting of 29,533 individuals and assessed their mortality 16 years later.
They found no difference in death risks between normal-weight individuals and obese individuals who were in stages zero or one of the Edmonton Obesity Staging System.
They "are at no greater risk of dying than normal weight individuals," said Kuk, the Toronto professor. "It challenges the notion all obese individuals need to lose weight"
Who are the ‘healthy obese’?
Why are some people considered the "healthy obese" versus others who might be less overweight but have more obesity-related complications?
Genetics could play a role. A person’s chances of getting diabetes, high blood pressure or arthritis with weight gain are stronger if he or she has parents or grandparents who also had the conditions.
Another factor is the quality of diet and level of fitness. These factors lower a person’s risks even though his or her weight may qualify as obese. But other factors remain unclear.
Rather than focus on weight, Sharma suggests checking for chronic disease risk such as blood pressure and other factors in obese patients.
"The key message is I can’t tell you how healthy someone is if you tell me height or weight on a scale," said Sharma, chair for obesity research and management at the University of Alberta. "I have to do additional tests for other health problems."
He designed the ranking system because of long waiting lists for obesity treatment on Canadian public health care. Doctors had to decide who should be treated first.
The ranking system shows not everyone is the same and helps "to identify who should actually lose weight and who are we torturing for no reason," Kuk said.
"It’s a bad thing to have a sweeping brush for everybody," she said.
While doctors who treat obesity agree that BMI is not a good solitary measure of health, they said the papers have limitations.
Dr. Allen Rader, a member of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians, noted that a patient could need weight loss intervention even in the early stages of disease risk to "prevent or delay progression."
Dr. Howard Eisenson, executive director of the Duke Diet & Fitness Center, echoed the same concern.
If he had a 25-year-old patient, Eisenson said, he wouldn’t tell the person, "You’re fine. Don’t worry because you don’t have any chronic diseases."
"If we don’t intervene now, by the time the person is 35 … maybe some damage has been done and the unhealthy habits are more established," Eisenson said.
Doctors agreed that there should be a more sophisticated method of assessing risk in obese patients, rather than just weight or BMI.
Health groups such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have been using BMI as measure of obesity, which also determines whether people qualify for drugs or bariatric surgery.
While calling the proposed ranking system intriguing, Eisenson said, "It’s not quite clear what the average physician should do."
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
Posted by VicPlough on Aug 29, 2011 in
Health Care Within decades, solar storms are likely to become more disruptive to planes and spacecraft, say researchers at Reading University.
The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts towards an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth.
The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum.
This phase began in the 1920s – and has lasted throughout the space age.
Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading, said: "All the evidence suggests that the Sun will shortly exit from a grand solar maximum that has persisted since before the start of the space age.
"In a grand solar maximum, the peaks of the 11-year sunspot cycle are larger and the average number of solar flares and associated events such as coronal mass ejections are greater.
"On the other hand in a grand solar minimum there are almost no sunspots for several decades. The last time this happened was during the Maunder Minimum, between about 1650 and 1700."
The research indicates that most radiation hits the Earth during periods of middling solar activity. Increased radiation is a particular problem for aviation and communications – technology that did not exist the last time the sun cycle ended its grand maximum.
The research is based on evidence from ice cores and tree trunks going back 10,000 years. The team measured levels of nitrates and cosmogenic isotopes which enter our atmosphere and are deposited in ice and organic material.
Professor Lockwood told BBC News: "You can tell by the concentration of nitrates in ice sheets that there has been a solar event. What we showed was that they all cropped up at more middling activity than we have been used to.
"We used this data to say that an unfortunate combination of solar conditions is coming our way in the next few decades.
"It's just a question of how much worse the radiation gets and how long it lasts."
The most disruptive radiation is from solar energetic particles, which are carried away from the Sun by coronal mass ejections, or solar storms, which explode from the Sun's surface.
The evidence seems to indicate that although there are fewer solar storms once the Sun leaves its grand maximum, they are more powerful, faster and therefore carry more particles.
A decline in solar activity also allows more radiation from other parts of the galaxy to enter the Solar System.
In a separate study, a team at Stanford University in California, say they have a developed a technique that could give advance warning of the formation of sunspots before they become visible on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are areas of high magnetic activity. They are significant because these are the areas where solar storms or coronal mass ejections erupt.
Stathis Ilondis and colleagues, writing in the Journal Science, say their findings will help give advance warning of solar storms and the resulting radiation which disrupt communications and transport on Earth.
The Stanford team used a novel technique called helioseismology, which is based on analysis of vibrations on the solar surface. The team discovered that these acoustic signals causing the vibrations moved faster in regions where sunspots were forming up to 65,000km (40,000m) deep.
The resulting sunspots appeared on the surface between one and two days after the differences in vibrations were detected.
Mr Ilondis told BBC News: "It's an early warning for emerging sunspots. This is our main finding."
"We can also predict the size and strength of the sunspot. And if it is a large sunspot then it is more probable to produce some big space weather events like some strong flares."