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Diet, exercise key to cancer prevention
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DALLAS, June 30 (UPI) -- Healthy nutrition and exercise have just as much, if not more, impact on lowering cancer risks and mortality rates as screening, a U.S. nutritionist says.
Dr. Jo Ann Carson, a clinical nutritionist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said whether a person wants to avoid cancer or prevent its return, it is wise to move toward a healthy weight.
"Do so by combining a plant-based diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains with regular physical activity," Carson said in a statement. "Maintaining an energy-balanced diet is not only a good preventive measure, but also benefits patients after cancer treatment, especially in breast and colon cancer cases."
At Southwestern, groundbreaking work is being spearheaded by the Task Force for Obesity Research, a collaborative effort of various medical disciplines including genetics, endocrinology, nutrition and metabolism, Carson said.
The National Institutes of Health awarded researchers at the medical center a $22 million grant in 2007 to enhance efforts to attack obesity from every angle, from studying fat cells to developing medicines.
"Previous studies have linked obesity to higher rates of breast, colon, lung and prostate cancers. Obesity also is associated with increased risks of kidney, gallbladder, thyroid and pancreatic cancers, among others," Carson said. "The National Institute of Health recently predicted that trends in obesity, if left unchecked, will lead to about 500,000 additional cancer cases in the United States by 2030."
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Diet, exercise key to cancer prevention
Fitness Centers Growing, But Facing Serious Competition
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Planet Fitness in North Lakelandis part of a health club chain that charges as little as $10 per month. Even with membership growing again, some moderately priced chains face pressure from competitors' low costs.
LAKELAND | How healthy is the health club industry?
It maybe is a question worth asking in the wake of a recent announcement by Lifestyle Family Fitness that the fitness chain is throwing in the towel after 30 years in business. Lifestyle, which began in Lakeland, is selling its 32 remaining Florida locations to L.A. Fitness and is closing another site in Naples.
Despite Lifestyle's exit, health club consultants and local gym owners say customer demand has weathered the poor economy and remains strong. But some observers say the industry is suffering from intense price competition as gyms rush to add members and to expand.
In the case of St. Petersburg-based Lifestyle, "what happened to them is they tried to grow too quick," said Richard Quinn, a health club consultant based in Cape Coral.
"The business plan was out of hand for them. Everybody wants to grow fast but they forget where the industry started: with service," he said.
Lifestyle, founded in Lakeland in 1982, once had as many as 55 clubs and about 200,000 members in four states. The chain sold its locations in Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina in December and shuttered its North Lakeland gym about the same time.
"In the months that followed, we evaluated our option to remain an independent company or sell to a larger organization," said Lifestyle CEO Stuart Lasher in a memo to employees last month, announcing the sale to Irvine, Calif.-based L.A. Fitness.
Two Curves gym locations also closed in Lakeland last year.
Data from the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association shows the U.S. health club industry is still seeing modest growth. Total revenue increased 5 percent to $21.4 billion last year, and club memberships inched up 2.4 percent to 51.4 million.
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Fitness Centers Growing, But Facing Serious Competition
Dieting suggested for more pregnant women
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BALTIMORE Before Aiesha Eddins got pregnant, she didn't give much thought to her diet.
"I ate whatever," said the 27-year-old Owings Mills, Md., woman. "We ordered take-out."
But when she weighed in at 220 pounds during her initial prenatal visit, she quickly earned a spot at the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Nutrition in Pregnancy Clinic, launched in December to counsel and treat obese women. The clinic has around a dozen patients but already is expanding.
An estimated one in five pregnant women are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an epidemic according to some doctors who have begun to buck conventional ideas about "eating for two." They now recommend healthy diets, little or no weight gain and even bariatric surgery for obese women before they get pregnant.
Obese pregnant women are at increased risk of miscarriage, high blood pressure, diabetes, pre-term delivery, stillbirth, cesarean section and other problems. Their babies, which are harder to see on ultrasounds, are more likely to be obese and diabetic and have other maladies.
Conventional advice for these women since 2009 has been to gain 11 to 20 pounds, reflecting guidance from the Institute of Medicine, the influential federal advisory panel. Normal weight women are told to gain 25 to 35 pounds.
Most doctors generally stick to the guidance and treat obesity complications, said Dr. Janice Henderson, an obstetrician for high-risk pregnancies at
Eddins was counseled to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Now seven months pregnant, she's lost 20 pounds.
"Over the course of a pregnancy they learn a lot that we hope will have a carry-over effect postpartum both for themselves, their child, and perhaps even spill over to other family members," Henderson said about the women in the Hopkins clinic. "Imagine if we don't begin to address this problem what the next generation or the generation after that will look like with respect to obesity rates."
Henderson said some women gain too much weight in pregnancy, but most already are overweight. Federal statistics show that nearly a third of women of reproductive age are obese, and the numbers are higher among minorities.
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Dieting suggested for more pregnant women
Why you really ought to take your older cat to the vet
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Taking proper care of your aging cat can drastically extend its lifespan.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- Indoor cats can reach the ripe old age of 20. With advanced years come health-related issues such as arthritis or diabetes. But a study by the American Pet Products Association notes that feline veterinary visits have declined in recent years.
"Where are all the cats?" asks Dr. Annie Price of the Ormewood Animal Hospital in Atlanta. "A lot of times if we can find diseases early, we can really lengthen life expectancy and improve quality of life by addressing the issue early."
A well-cared-for indoor cat can live into its teen years, says Dr. Emmy Pointer, medical coordinator of the ASPCA Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital in New York. Cats that go outside significantly reduce their odds, according to petplace.com, which estimates that most indoor cats can reach 12 to 18 years while outdoor cats only reach 4 to 5. While there is no set rule for when a pet becomes geriatric, Pointer considers cats seniors when they hit the last third of their life, typically around age 12.
If your cat has reached its golden years, take note of these common health issues:
MNN.com: 10 wacky pet accessories
Chronic kidney disease
An older cat that consumes lots of water and urinates a lot may be showing signs of kidney disease. Pointer notes that cats with chronic kidney disease also are prone to urinary tract infections. While there is no cure, she says low-protein and low-phosphorous diets can help by giving the kidneys less work to do. Early detection also allows veterinarians to slow the progression of symptoms. Since cats do a better job than dogs when it comes to hiding health problems, your vet may recommend blood work to detect underlying issues.
"I like dealing with elderly cats because there are so many things you can do for them; it's just a matter of being mindful," Price says. "They can seemingly have no clinical signs and look perfectly healthy, and you check blood work and determine early kidney problems or thyroid conditions or changes in liver values."
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Alternative Medicines
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While traveling in China in 1971, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Reston underwent an emergency appendectomy, after which Chinese medical personnel treated his pain with acupuncture. His description of the experience in the pages of the New York Times brought the practice of traditional Chinese medicine front and center.
Two years later, Lewis Thomas, then president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, delivered an address in which he said, These are bad times for reason, all around. Suddenly, all of the major ills are being coped with by acupuncture. If not acupuncture, it is apricot pits. Thomas was referring to laetrile, a compound extracted from the pits of apricots and bitter almonds, one of the most sought-after alternative treatments for cancer at the time, but one whose effectiveness had been the topic of bitter controversy for years. Banned since 1963 in the U.S., laetrile is reported to still be readily available in the Bahamas and Mexico and is sold online.
And the examples dont end there. Lots of ballyhoo, head-scratching, and accusations of quackery attended growing patient demand for alternative treatments, hyped in the popular press as cures that were natural and based on millennia-old medical traditions practiced in places such as China and India.
In 1999, in response to a growing outcry for some kind of evidence-based scientific analysis of the safety and efficacy of this blizzard of nonconventional treatments, the National Institutes of Health, then under the direction of Harold Varmus, established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Since its founding, NCCAM has funded basic and clinical research at institutions around the world on plant and animal products such as acai, black cohosh, gingko biloba, and shark cartilage, as well as on the therapeutic value of treatments including acupuncture, yoga, massage, reiki, and meditation.
Almost 40 percent of US adults and 12 percent of US children have used complementary or alternative therapies, according to a 2007 survey by NCCAM, and much of what was once considered alternative, including acupuncture, is now part of more-holistic regimens offered at 40 percent of US hospitals, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. According to a 2010 survey by the American Hospital Association and the Samueli Institute, a nonprofit center for the study of wellness and healing, this trend is driven by patients demanding alternative or complementary treatment options for conditions that are difficult to manage or cure, such as diabetes, chronic pain, and cancer.Most physicians have lukewarmly embraced such therapies, often because they feel that patients will desert conventional therapy out of desperation if they are not offered a wider range of treatment options.
Researchers who study the scientific validity of nonconventional treatments rarely see them as stand-alone remedies, preferring to call the union of conventional and nonconventional integrated therapy.
The Scientist staff asked experts about the scientific evidence for a number of treatments that may be on the verge of becoming incorporated into integrated therapies, from acupuncture and probiotics to marijuana and psychedelics. We sought to highlight the data that either supports or contravenes the effectiveness of these alternative therapies. As with most health interventions, we uncovered both positive and negative aspects of these treatments for which patients are clamoring and physicians are demanding evidence. Mary Beth Aberlin
Though research is deepening our understanding of the role of microbes in our health, good clinical trials are still needed before consumers can be sure they will enjoy any benefits.
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Alternative Medicines
Turning Point: Maple Grove man donates kidney to one-time stranger
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Triathlete John Barker of Maple Grove donated a kidney to his parents' neighbor. ( Photo courtesy of John Barker)
Relationships Turning Point
In 2007, John Barker of Maple Grove began participating in triathlons as a way to lose weight and feel better. In 2009, a chance encounter with his parents' neighbor in Wisconsin gave him additional perspective on the gift of health.
"It was Thanksgiving 2009," Barker said. "We were visiting my parents in Wisconsin. We were putzing around in the yard when we saw their neighbor, Lee Kreklow."
Barker, 43, a married father with two grown daughters, and Kreklow, 48, a married father with two young daughters, didn't really know each other.
"I moved into the neighborhood back in 1987, the same year that John left for college," Kreklow said.
"Until that day, we had never actually talked," Barker said.
"We would just wave hello," Kreklow said.
It changed that day.
"(Kreklow) was walking around with his two little girls, helping them deliver goodie baskets they had made at church," Barker said. "By the way he was carrying himself, I could tell he was pretty ill. I got to talking to him and I learned he was dying of kidney disease."
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Turning Point: Maple Grove man donates kidney to one-time stranger
Tiger Woods' Fitness Carries Him Through Heat, into Contention at Congressional
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COMMENTARY | Though his health has been in question in recent years, it was the fitness of Tiger Woods that allowed him to overcome a shaky start and put himself back into contention at the AT&T National at Congressional Country Club.
The Southern California native and current Florida resident dealt with a heat index of 107 degrees and managed a 3-under 68 on Friday to move to 2-under for the tournament through two rounds. He was clearly comfortable and undaunted by the severe temperatures, which dominated the tournament talk as much as the difficulty of the course and supreme play of the leaders.
Moving into the weekend, Woods will have confidence and knowledge that some of his competitors may not be as prepared as he is to deal with the extreme heat wave that will continue to plague the Washington D.C. area.
Even though he's had success at this difficult test before, the sports world still needs to see a major championship victory from the current world No. 4 to consider him back to form. Without it, he's just another standout PGA TOUR player.
That's the standard that he set for himself over the stretch of a legendary career that includes 72 professional victories. It's a standard that he'll have to live up to in order to get his most stalwart critics to believe in him once again.
At age 36, his dedication to fitness could be exactly what allows him to remain competitive for many more years to come. Though he has had significant knee issues that stemmed from his rigorous workout regimen, that same commitment to staying in shape could bring his ultimate goal of surpassing jack Nicklaus' 18 professional majors within reach.
Woods is at the forefront of a generation that has placed a premium on athleticism in golf -- gone are the days of the best players in the world looking like they just got done scarfing down a hot dog and a six pack of beer at the local municipal course. Players like Woods and those who grew up watching and emulating his every move are now elite athletes.
Whether or not Woods' fitness translates into a win at Congressional will be worth following through the weekend.
It's a pretty good golf tournament, too.
Michael C. Jones is a Yahoo! Featured Contributor in Sports and covers the PGA TOUR. He has written for Southern California's Press-Enterprise and Examiner.com. For more insight, follow him on Twitter.
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Tiger Woods' Fitness Carries Him Through Heat, into Contention at Congressional
Healthways Announces Partnership with Anytime Fitness for SilverSneakers and Prime Fitness Programs
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NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Healthways (HWAY) announced today a partnership with Anytime Fitness to offer the award-winning SilverSneakers Fitness Program and the Prime Fitness Program at 1,700 Anytime Fitness locations throughout the United States beginning August 1st. Anytime Fitness is the worlds largest and fastest growing co-ed fitness club franchise providing top-quality facilities 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The agreement brings the Healthways fitness center network total to more than 15,000 participating fitness and wellness facilities nationwide.
We are excited to partner with Healthways to deliver the Anytime Fitness model of convenience and personalized attention to its members, said Dave Mortensen, co-founder and President of Anytime Fitness. Our clubs have always been a strong supporter of programs that engage members in regular physical activity. In fact, Anytime Fitness was created to fit the lifestyles of busy people with our 24/7 convenience, and we are committed to providing the latest technology and equipment to ensure the best possible workout in a supportive environment.
The SilverSneakers Fitness Program engages participants in active behavior change through access to a variety of physical activity venues. The program is available to Medicare beneficiaries through many Medicare plans, Medicare Supplement carriers and group retiree plans. Prime Fitness is Healthways commercial well-being fitness program, inspiring participants to take charge of their own health and fitness by providing tools, resources and incentives they need to stay motivated and active. Based on years of proven science and outcomes, the programs result in members adopting more active lifestyles.
Any increase in physical activity levels can improve overall health. Physical activity guidelines suggest that in order to achieve health benefits, American adults should try to accumulate 2 hours per week of moderate physical activity (or 1 hours of vigorous activity) and engage in activities that strengthen the major muscles of the body twice per week1. Physical activity can also mitigate health-related risks and improve the quality of life for those who already have chronic conditions.
This collaboration with Anytime Fitness demonstrates Healthways ongoing commitment to enhancing our already-extensive network of fitness centers to provide our members with more choices, greater access and state-of-the-art options to improve their physical activity, stated Debbie James, Vice President of Healthways Fitness Market. We continue to make our member experiences a top priority and know that the addition of such a notable partner will support further member engagement with our programs.
About Anytime Fitness
Founded in 2002, Anytime Fitness is the fastest-growing fitness club franchise in the world, with more than 1,400,000 members and nearly 2,000 clubs worldwide. Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Anytime Fitness prides itself on providing its members with convenient and affordable fitness options in friendly, well-maintained facilities which feature top-quality exercise equipment. Clubs are now open in 49 states, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Grand Cayman, Poland, the Netherlands, Japan, and Qatar. With Anywhere Club Access, members join one club and can use them all. Included with an Anytime Fitness membership is access to AnytimeHealth.com, the most comprehensive wellness website available.
The vision at Anytime Fitness is to improve the self-esteem of the world. Learn more at http://www.anytimefitness.com.
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Healthways Announces Partnership with Anytime Fitness for SilverSneakers and Prime Fitness Programs
Can you eat late and still lose weight?
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Lately we've heard the only thing that matters to your waistline is how much you eat. But there's a growing body of research that says when you eat really does make a difference in how much you weigh.
"Your body is more prone to burn fat at certain times of day and store fat at other times," said Satchin Panda, associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Cali.
New studies reveal that to burn the most fat, you need to go 12 hours without eatingsay, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. So it's smart to time your calorie intake accordingly. Read on for the science-backed rules that will help you use the clock to shed excess pounds.
To keep pounds off, don't eat after dark
Before electricity and all-night diners, we humans used to spend a long stretch every night without food passing our lips. "Staying up and eating late is a very recent phenomenon in human history," Panda noted. So our metabolisms are hardwired to expect a nightly fast, which is a key time for your body to burn fat.
Here's how that works: During the day, your brain and muscles use some of the calories you eat for fuel, and the rest gets stored in the liver in the form of glycogen. At night, your body converts that glycogen into glucose and releases it into your bloodstream to keep your blood-sugar levels steady while you sleep. Once the stored glycogen is gone, your liver starts burning fat cells for energy. Yes, you read that rightyou burn fat while you sleep.
The catch: "It takes a few hours to use up the day's glycogen stores," Panda said. So if you snack until midnight and sit down to your breakfast of oatmeal or eggs at 7 a.m., your body may never get the opportunity to burn any fat before you start reloading your glycogen stores again.
It doesn't help that you're also likely to overeat when you're up lateindeed, night owls consume an average of 248 calories more per day than those who go to bed earlier, and most of those excess calories rack up after 8 p.m., according to a 2011 study published in the journal Obesity.
"Willpower is lower when you're sleepy," explained study author Kelly Baron, a clinical health psychologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. "So if you're eating in the middle of the night, you're more likely to overeat and make poor food choices."
On the other hand, Panda said, "eating only between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and then not eating for at least 12 hours, should give your body enough time to burn all of the stored glycogen plus some fat every night."
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Slate: Changes in both individual thinking, structure needed to fix American food system
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A few years ago, the chef and organic pioneer Alice Waters did a spin on "60 Minutes" that managed to showcase exactly why foodies get branded as elitist. "Some people want to buy Nikes, two pairs," she said in a casual moment at a farmers' market. "And some people want to eat Bronx grapes and nourish themselves."
This was vintage foodie-ism, a smug and irritating noblesse oblige transposed onto a discussion of our meals. That didn't change the fact that much of everything else Waters said was right: The way we eat is making us sick; it's a good idea for kids to learn to cook; even, in a more formal moment, "good food should be a right and not a privilege." But her aside about sneakers made it unlikely that anyone not yet onboard with Waters would listen to her in the first place.
I bring this up because roughly half of the conversation about how to secure the future of America's food supply has been driven by the same just-buy-better-stuff logic Waters embraces, despite its disturbing similarity to Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake." The other half of the discussion focuses on the structural challenges of eating well, sort of a caricature of liberal analysis. It's strikingly rare for those two halves to cleave together in public discourse - and that is a serious problem for anyone sincere about changing food and eating in America.
Foodie analysis like Waters' suggests that individual preferences, which are seen solely as a product of a person and her culture, are the key to fixing the American way of eating. This gives foodies some strange bedfellows, ranging from Sarah Palin brandishing cookies at a school fundraiser as a way of championing individual choice (much to the chagrin of fellow conservatives), to journalists parroting Waters, to the USDA's long-standing, often futile efforts to offer dietary guidance. Indeed, individual preference has arguably been our primary strategy in attempts to change both American diets and American agriculture for decades. (The obesity epidemic might be one reason to think this approach has largely failed.)
Then, a second, and no more perfect, strategy for changing America's food and diet emerged: treating it as a structural problem. In the last decade, concern over food deserts - neighborhoods with insufficient grocery stores, and thus insufficient supplies of healthy food - has boomed. The food desert analysis holds that access to a supermarket is a key part of making sure Americans eat healthier meals. It's an approach that is arguably more sympathetic to the poor, but can also imply that people are solely products of systems, rather than agents of free will.
The term "food desert" itself is relatively new. It wasn't even in circulation a decade ago, but last year the USDA began measuring the presence of food deserts nationwide. Last July, first lady Michelle Obama put their eradication on her to-do list, announcing a series of partnerships with national grocers. "We can give people all of the information and advice in the world about healthy eating and exercise, she said. "But if parents can't buy the food they need to prepare those meals . . . then all that is just talk."
Food deserts are - and have always been - a flawed conceit. As a measure of access to healthy food, supermarkets are crude. Some are flush with high-quality produce, but others have little concern for quality control. And while all supermarkets sell produce, they are also rife with processed junk (even Whole Foods).
What's more, the method by which supermarkets are identified leaves out important nuances. Typically, a local list of food stores is screened for those that exceed a certain size. Modest green grocers, farmers' markets or street vendors won't show up in the measure of "food access." Indeed, one of the more obscure debates in policy circles is whether "food swamps" or "food grasslands" might be more apt descriptors. And while early studies found links between food access and either lower obesity rates or better diets, more recent ones question whether access plays a role in the obesity epidemic at all.
Despite the divided national debate about food choice vs. food access, the two camps are not diametrically opposed. I've been covering food and class for nearly a decade, and I've yet to meet someone doing supermarket development work who doesn't think food education is important too. The efforts of Brahm Ahmadi, who's trying to open People's Community Market - a community grocery store in West Oakland, a textbook example of a food desert - is a case in point. And for all of Waters' foibles, most chefs I've met grasp the economic difficulty faced by working-class Americans (not to mention the problem of time). Check out Tamar Adler's "An Everlasting Meal" for an example of someone using the language of high culture to promote very proletarian ideals.
I can't quite pinpoint why journalists play up this divide. Surely some of it has to do with the way each approach, in caricature, lines up neatly with right wing (individualistic) and left wing (social) ideology. The clean lines of an absolute make for crisper copy - and sexier headlines - than nuance. And they are typically drawn, somewhat laboriously, around the elephant in the room: economic class.
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Slate: Changes in both individual thinking, structure needed to fix American food system