Public Health

Searching for the perfect equation You can discuss obesity and weight loss without using math...in the same way you can discuss Astronomy without using math. While there may be a way to present a conjecture in either field using just logic and pure reason, math becomes necessary as the questions tackle more complex and defined aspects of the science. The mathematical regulation of body weight is easy understand and comes directly from a simple energy balance equation with “R” equaling the amount of weight gain or loss, based on calories in, “I”, minus calories expended, “E.” R = I - E…

For decades the Federal government has insisted they want fewer Americans to smoke but recent regulatory missteps have instead led to worries by health professionals that policies designed to create winners and losers in the smoking cessation market instead keep people addicted to tobacco. There has always been a bit of inconsistency in how smoking cessation has been handled; raising taxes on cigarettes, for example, unfairly impacts poor people, and those taxes fund government services, making the government more reliant on the industry they say they want to make smaller. Smoking public…

The acidity of urine -- as well as the presence of small molecules related to diet -- may influence how well bacteria can grow in the urinary tract, a new study shows.  Urinary tract infections (UTIs) often are caused by a strain of bacteria called Escherichia coli (E. coli), and doctors long have relied on antibiotics to kill the microbes. But increasing bacterial resistance to these drugs is leading researchers to look for alternative treatment strategies. "Many physicians can tell you that they see patients who are particularly susceptible to urinary tract infections," said senior…

Teenagers are very familiar with the risks of smoking cigarettes but thanks to misinformation campaigns by advocates regarding marijuana, and campaigns against the poorly-named "e-cigarettes" by pharmaceutical companies selling competing smoking cessation tools like gums and patches, they are less likely to buy into advertised claims. "Kids were really good at describing the harmful things that happen with cigarette smoking, but when we asked about other products, there was a lot of confusion," said the study's lead author, Maria Roditis, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in adolescent health at…

Sexual dysfunction in women can be linked to low resting heart rate variability, a finding that could help clinicians treat the condition, according to a study by psychologists from The University of Texas at Austin. Heart rate variability (HRV) -- the variation in the time intervals between a person's consecutive heartbeats -- can indicate how well an individual responds to physiological and environmental changes. Low resting heart rate variability has been associated with several mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety and alcohol dependence, as well as erectile dysfunction…

The inclusion of experimenters who are unlikely to become habitual users in e-cigarette prevalence studies is of 'questionable' value for monitoring population public health trends, finds research published online in the journal Tobacco Control. A more valid approach, setting the threshold at a minimum of use on 6 out of the past 30 days, would eliminate many of those who are motivated primarily by curiosity and unlikely to become regular users, and it would provide a more accurate picture of use, say the researchers. There is no uniform definition for current users of e-cigarettes but after…

It's not a surprise that doctors may believe people obsessed with food - be they nocebos or migrating from fad to fad - have a psychological condition rather than a gastrointestinal one. The gluten obsession, where 75 percent of people without celiac disease claim they have a reaction to gluten but do not, is an example. A new paper seeks to legitimize some of the complaints that may have been dismissed as psychosomatic. Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a prevalent functional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) defined by chronic epigastric symptoms in the absence of organic abnormalities likely to…

A rigorous analysis of more than 20,000 medical records concludes that erectile dysfunction drugs, such as Viagra, are not a cause of melanoma, an often deadly form of skin cancer, despite the higher risk for the disease among users of these drugs.  The analysis, led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, of medical records for some 20,235 mostly white men suggests instead that the likely source of the observed uptick in malignant melanoma risk among users of erectile dysfunction drugs is socioeconomic and lifestyle based. "What our…

In 1984, I was a Freshman in high school and much more interested in making the soccer team, getting kicked out of my honors classes and that girl sitting over there, than I was into the medical literature of the day. Which would explain why I missed an article by Rudolph Leibel and Jules Hirsch examining why we can't keep lost weight from coming back. This was pre-Oprah, if such a thing can be imagined, so it seems that the public mostly missed this article as well. It appeared in the February issue of Metabolism and was titled "Diminished Energy Requirements in Reduced-Obese Patients."…

Mortality from coronary heart disease declined in Sweden from 1986 to 2002. The improvement was due mainly to a reduction in risk factors among the healthy population (primary prevention) and, to a lesser extent, treatment of people who already had developed heart disease (secondary prevention). A study conducted at Sahlgrenska Academy explored the reasons for the trend. Deaths from coronary heart disease fell by 53% among men and 52% among women in 1986-2002. The improvement was evident among all age groups. A study conducted by researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg,…