Disease Proof : Disease Proof : Health & Nutrition News & Commentary : Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Again, the news for obesity is never good. Now it’s being linked to a higher risk of death in men with prostate cancer. Robert Preidt of HealthDay News reports:

The study, by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, included 752 recently diagnosed prostate cancer patients who were followed for about 10 years. Of the men in the study, 50 died of prostate cancer, and 64 died of other causes.


"I was very surprised by the findings. We found the prostate-cancer-specific mortality risk associated with obesity was similar regardless of treatment, disease grade or disease stage at the time of diagnosis," senior author Alan Kristal, associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program in Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division, said in a prepared statement.

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For as long as I can remember I’ve heard people talk about the impending wave of destruction aging Baby Boomers will bring upon this country. I never paid it much attention, but maybe the critics are onto something. According to Gary Rotstein of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Baby Boomers are now encountering lots of health problems, for lots of reasons:

Studying data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, she and her colleagues found that people in their early to mid-50s were reporting more health problems than people that age had described previously.


Significantly, fewer such middle-aged people in 2004 than in 1992 rated their health highly. More of them rated pain as a regular problem. And a higher percentage had trouble climbing stairs or walking a few blocks…

… Dr. Richard Suzman, director of the National Institute on Aging Behavioral and Social Research Program, said most news about today's older adults has bred optimism that the 78 million baby boomers approaching old age won't overwhelm the health care system. He wants to see more research before making any assumption that such a huge population is either worse now, or will be worse in the future, than projected.

"If it's true, it's pretty important," he said.

He and others speculated that if there's actual health decline, obesity is a top suspect. Carrying excess weight contributes to the likelihood of diabetes and other disease, as well as to creating lethargy that can affect how people rate their health.

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Hazardous chemicals aren’t exactly man’s best friend. But could they be making us fat? New search sheds light on dangerous chemical compounds called phthalates. Amanda Gardner of HealthDay News reports:

The chemicals, known as phthalates, have already been implicated in male reproductive problems including low sperm counts and low testosterone levels. However, it's too soon to know whether they are actually causing these health problems, cautioned the researchers and others.

"It's premature for folks to be alarmed," said study author Dr. Richard Stahlhut, a resident in preventive medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry in New York.. "What is more alarming is the reason we are doing studies like this. Another study showed that testosterone levels had dropped about 22 percent in men, and that sperm counts had dropped to levels that are considered subfertile or infertile."

"It's an important observation that chemical exposures could be contributing to obesity and diabetes in the general population," added Dr. Ted Schettler, science director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. "This is one more example of a family of chemicals that may be contributing to this problem, but this study has obvious limits that the authors acknowledge in great detail."

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According to the AFP the number of obese people in Sweden has doubled over the past 25 years:

The problem has increased most among young women, non-labour workers and rural residents, though Swedes across all social groups registered weight gains during the period.


Obesity, blamed on changes in diet and lifedtyles, has long been a problem in the United States and is on the rise in many European countries. In France, nine percent of people are considered obese, compared to 12 percent in Germany and 23 percent in Britain.

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You don’t have to be a doctor to know that being obese isn’t exactly conducive to health. Need proof? How about this study linking obesity to early puberty? HealthDay News is on it:

The study of 354 girls from 10 different regions in the United States found that increased body fat in girls as young as age 3 and large increases in body fat between the age of 3 and the start of first grade were associated with earlier puberty, defined as the presence of breast development by age 9.


"Our finding that increased body fatness is associated with the earlier onset of puberty provides additional evidence that growing rates of obesity among children in this country may be contributing to the trend of early maturation in girls," study lead author Dr. Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan, said in a prepared statement.

Still not convinced? Well how does this strike you? According to Reuters an obese woman went to the hospital with stomach pain only to find out she was carrying a full-term fetus. I’m not kidding. More from the report:

Doctors discovered the baby as they took X-rays of Branum's abdominal area and referred her to UCI Medical Center in the nearby city of Orange, California, for prenatal testing, said Susan Mancia, a spokeswoman for UCI Medical Center.


No defects were detected and two days later on February 28, Branum gave birth by caesarean section to a healthy, 7-lb 7-oz (3.4 kg) boy named Walter Scott Edwards III.

Yeah, you probably want to know if you're pregnant or is that just over-thinking? Okay, clearly obesity is really a hot topic in health news. Be sure to check out DiseaseProof’s obesity archive for more posts on the subject.

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