| Top : 2006 : 2006_12_27 |
Study Weight loss may lower cancer riskWed, 27 Dec 2006 00:46:17 GMTBy DANIEL YEE, Associated Press Writer ATLANTA - Here's another reason for men to avoid packing on extra pounds over the holidays: A new study has found that losing weight reduces the risk of an aggressive form of prostate cancer. After tracking the weight of nearly 70,000 men between 1982 and 1992, researchers from the http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1055-9965.EPI-06-0754v1.pdf Big bellies tied to greater heart disease riskWed, 27 Dec 2006 03:50:20 GMTBy Anne Harding NEW YORK - The more your belly sticks out, the greater your risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows. "The message is really obesity in the abdomen matters even more than obesity overall," Dr. Carlos Iribarren of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California in Oakland, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. Body mass index , a gauge of weight in relation to height, is a fairly crude way to judge a person's heart disease risk based on obesity, he noted. For example, muscular people may have a high BMI and be perfectly healthy. In the current study, Iribarren and his team tested whether sagittal abdominal diameter, or SAD, which is the distance from the back to the upper abdomen midway between the top of the pelvis and the bottom of the ribs, would improve the accuracy of BMI in predicting heart disease risk. Waist circumference is widely used to measure obesity in the abdominal area, Iribarren noted. But while there are many ways to measure a person's waist, he added, SAD, which is evaluated by a doctor or nurse with a caliper, is much more standardized, and therefore probably less subject to error. He and his colleagues looked at 101,765 men and women who underwent checkups between 1965 and 1970, which included SAD measurements, and were then followed for about 12 years. Men with the largest SAD were 42 percent more likely to develop heart disease during follow-up compared to those with the smallest SAD, while a large SAD increased heart disease risk by 44 percent for women, Iribarren and his team found. Within BMI categories, the researchers found, heart disease risk rose with SAD; even among men of normal weight, heart disease risk was higher for those with bigger bellies. The relationship between SAD and heart disease risk was strongest among the youngest men and women, which is not surprising, Iribarren said, given that people who develop central obesity younger in life would likely have more serious problems. "I think it has important implications for prevention," he said. " Don't let this happen to you when you're young, that's kind of the message." SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, December 15, 2006 Calcium not a major factor in kids fat mass gainWed, 27 Dec 2006 03:48:41 GMTBy Anne Harding NEW YORK - The amount of fatty tissue that young children gain as they grow has little to do with their calcium intake, a new study shows. There is some evidence linking adequate calcium consumption to lower body fat percentage. But based on her study, Dr. Bonny L. Specker of South Dakota State University in Brookings, said, rather than giving kids calcium supplements, "you're going to want to get them out playing and running around to prevent obesity." To investigate whether calcium intake might affect body fat in children, Specker and colleagues analyzed results from a one-year trial of calcium supplementation in 178 children aged 3 to 5 years. There was no relationship between calcium intake and fat mass gain, except among the children who were consuming the lowest levels of calcium. For these children, there was a weak relationship, with children receiving calcium supplements gaining 0.3 kilograms in fat mass compared to 0.8 for those who weren't taking the supplements. Among children with very low calcium intake, Specker noted, issues of bone health are more of a concern than body fat levels. In general, she added, children in this age group get plenty of calcium. For children aged 1 to 3 years, she said, 500 milligrams of the mineral are recommended daily, while the requirement rises to 800 milligrams a day for kids 4 to 8 years old. In the current study, daily calcium intake averaged 900 mg. She and her colleagues say their study "suggests that if calcium intake is important, it is a weak relation that exists only among children with low dietary intakes. If children consume the recommended dietary intakes of calcium to optimize bone health, additional calcium is not likely to prevent fat mass accumulation." SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2006. |
