Disease Proof

• Personally I don’t put much stake in the Body Mass Index, but in case you’re interested, Abby Ellin of The New York Times reports on its growing popularity:

“Our society is really fixated on numbers, and the problem is when it comes to weight distribution and the risk for heart disease, it’s not just one number — it’s the percentage of body fat, B.M.I. and waist size that matters,” said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.

• Diet-Blog asks the question, “Does Dieting = Misery?” Check it out:

Dieting will be with us for a long time to come, and so will a plethora of popular diets. My hope is that the popular diets today (many of which have useful nutritional advice) will not just be used as a brief attempt at a quick fix - but that the good principles of nutrition will be taken to heart.

• According to HealthDay News obesity hits the poor early and hard. Randy Dotinga has more:

A review of nearly 2,000 3-year-old, low-income children and their mothers found that one-third of white and black children were overweight or obese, while a stunning 44 percent of Latino children fell into those categories.

• Fast Weight Loss offers up some pretty basic diet tips. I’m not sure Dr. Fuhrman would agree with all of them, but here are a few that seem okay:

  5. Give some time to exercise. It is not going to take hours to exercise. What you have to do is give 30 or 40 minute to exercise.
  
  6. Avoid drinking soda as much as you can and replace that by water.
  
  7. Avoid breads, cereals and pasta in your food.

• Next time you’ve got aches and pains you might want to reach for the spice-rack. At least that seems to be the message of this CNN report. More from Amy Paturel:

Turmeric: Because rates of Alzheimer's disease are lower in India, where the population eats a diet containing more turmeric than Western diets, scientists have suggested the spice may be linked to preserving mental function. "The compounds in turmeric have demonstrated antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and cholesterol-lowering properties -- all thought to be involved in the onset of Alzheimer's disease," says Sally Frautschy, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine and neurology at UCLA.

• DisappearingJohn RN had a very busy holiday season:

Lots of craziness and hilarity at work these last few nights. Christmas night wasn’t horrible, but it was busier than I expected. At least the holiday kept the violence down… until 0016, when there was a shooting two miles from the hospital and we got two really bad gunshot wounds in as traumas… It was sort of a nice, “well, it’s not Christmas anymore” moment… Not Norman Rockwell, exactly…

• Behold the power of the mother. These two moms wanted a fitness magazine for kids, so they started one. Jodi Mailander Farrell of The Detroit Free Press tells their tale:

Inside a recent issue: an interview with pro volleyball player Kerri Walsh, stories on flag football and kids' cross-country running, and step-by-step photos that demonstrate how to do five morning exercises, such as squats and shoulder rotations. There are also articles on how to pick a healthy lunch at school, study smarter and snack right.

• Diabetes Knowledge is all over research linking vegan diets to the improved health of diabetes patients:

Researchers from George Washington University tested a vegan diet and the ADA-recommended diet to see which worked best in the management of diabetes, kidney function, cholesterol levels and weight loss. Around 100 adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes participated, with half following a low-fat vegan diet and half following the ADA-recommended guidelines. Overweight ADA dieters were also advised to reduce their calorie intake by 500-1,000 calories. According to experts, one small risk associated with a vegan diet is a lack of vitamin B12, so the vegan participants’ meals were supplemented with B12 vitamins.