Public Health

A new study in Clinical Pediatrics claims that the obesity 'tipping point', the point at which children begin their progression towards obesity in adulthood, begins at the age of two and sometimes as early as three months.  The authors warn that while many adults consider a chubby baby healthy, too many plump infants grow up to be obese teens, saddling them with Type-2 diabetes, elevated cholesterol and high blood pressure The researchers examined records from a pediatric practice of 111 children whose body mass index (BMI) exceeded 85 percent of the general population. Researchers…

According to a study of 1025 13-17 year-olds, gaming, texting, or staring at the TV for hours on end are unlikely to cause headaches in adolescents, but listening to one or two hours of music every day may do the trick. The study appears this week in BMC Neurology. The researchers interviewed 489 teenagers who claimed to suffer from headaches and 536 who said they did not. When the two groups were compared, no associations were found for television viewing, electronic gaming, mobile phone usage or computer usage. 85 percent of study participants used computers, 90 percent watched television…

Despite the over-promotion of nicotine replacement therapies by drug companies and anti-tobacco activists, the most successful method used by ex-smokers is unassisted cessation, according to a new policy forum in PLoS Medicine. In the article, researchers from the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, Australia take a critical look at most tobacco control campaigns, which emphasize that serious attempts at quitting smoking must be pharmacologically or professionally mediated. The authors explain that this overemphasis on quit methods like nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) has…

Previously blamed for cognitive deficits in children, so called third hand smoke, the nicotine residue from tobacco smoke that clings to virtually all surfaces long after a cigarette has been extinguished, also reacts with the common indoor air pollutant nitrous acid to produce cancer causing carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), according to a new study appearing in PNAS. In laboratory tests using cellulose as a model indoor material exposed to smoke, levels of newly formed TSNAs detected on cellulose surfaces were 10 times higher than those originally present in the sample…

Researchers studying the relationship between commercial beer production methods and the resulting silicon content say that beer is a rich source of dietary silicon (a key ingredient for increasing bone mineral density) and may help prevent osteoporosis.  The study appears in the February issue of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. Silicon is present in beer in the soluble form of orthosilicic acid (OSA), which yields 50% bioavailability, making the frosty beverage a major contributor to silicon intake in the Western diet. According to the National Institutes of Health (…

Family meals, adequate sleep, and limited TV time may reduce obesity prevelance among preschoolers by almost 40 percent, according to a study in the March Issue of Pediatrics. The new research is the first to assess the combination of all three routines with obesity prevalence in a national sample of preschoolers. Each routine on its own was associated with lower obesity, and more routines translated to lower obesity prevalence among 4-year-olds, according to the analysis. The link between the routines and lower obesity prevalence was also seen in children with and without other risk factors…

Despite the endless anti-smoking campaigns and serious health risks associated with tobacco use, many smokers don't give up the habit. Currently, the smoking quit rate remains discouragingly low. Smokers try to quit on average 12 to 14 times before they succeed, and every year about 41% of smokers try to quit but only 10% succeed. So what, then, is the best to way to convince smokers to stop for good? Giving them information about their individual risk of serious illness may be a good place to start, according to a paper published in the current issue of the Postgraduate Medical Journal. The…

Is Homeopathy Good For The British Economy? The UK's National Health Service, the NHS, is funded from taxation. A committee of MPs is to produce a report soon regarding NHS spending on homeopathic water - I decline to use the term 'remedies'.  This is an ongoing saga - many eminent scientists in the UK have spoken out against the use of NHS funds for homeopathic 'cures' while some evidence-based treatments are not being funded. “At a time when we are struggling to gain access for our patients to Herceptin, which is absolutely proven to extend survival in breast cancer, I find it…

By considering molecular-level events on a broader scale, researchers now have a clearer and more complicated picture of how one class of immune cells goes wrong when loaded with cholesterol. The findings reported in Cell Metabolism show that, when it comes to the development of atherosclerosis and heart disease, it's not about any one bad actor—it's about a network gone awry. The new findings also highlight a pretty remarkable thing: researchers still aren't sure how cholesterol causes heart disease. Earlier studies had shown that heart disease is about more than just high LDL ("bad")…

Extended use of nicotine patches – 24 weeks versus the standard eight weeks recommended by manufacturers – boosts the number of smokers who maintain their cigarette abstinence and helps more of those who backslide into the habit while wearing the patch, according to new a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers studied 568 adult smokers who smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day for at least the past year. At the end of the 24-week study, smokers who used a nicotine patch throughout the whole trial were about two times as likely to have been successful in their quitting…