Move over Atkins. Step aside Scarsdale. The newest proven way to lose weight? Support public transport.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and the RAND Corporation studied the community of Charlotte, North Carolina, before and after a new light rail system for commuting was installed. The results surprised even the researchers.

Adults aren’t the only sugar addicts. Even many babies and toddlers are consuming more sugar than they should, according to a survey funded by the Centre for Science in the Public Interest Canada.

A whopping 53 percent of the food products targeted to babies and toddlers analyzed by a team led by University of Calgary professor Charlene Elliott get more than 20 percent of their calories from sugar. The foods included biscuits, cookies, fruit snacks, yogurts, cereals and snack bars. Some of the products marketed to the youngest consumers contained even more sugar than similar products marketed to adults.

If you want to boost athletic performance and overall vigor, get to bed early, suggests a new study.

Seven members of the Stanford University football team participated in the experiment, which was directed by Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory. All began the season showing signs of moderate fatigue and daytime sleepiness. For seven to eight weeks, they extended the amount of time they slept, aiming for a minimum of ten hours of shut-eye every night.

The benefits were dramatic.

New mothers have long been known to suffer depression after the birth of a baby. New research shows that more than 10 percent of fathers also suffer prenatal or postpartum depression, according Virginia Medical School researcher James F. Paulson, PhD.

The findings come from a meta-analysis of 43 studies involving 28,004 men. According to the data, depression among new fathers seems to be at its worst three to six months after a baby is born. If mom suffers postpartum depression, dad is more likely to, as well. American fathers were among the most troubled, with a 14 percent rate of depression, compared to only 8 percent internationally.

Organic vs. conventional? New findings link food pesticides to attention-deficit/hyperactivity in children.

The study, conducted by scientists at Harvard University and the University of Montreal, measured pesticide levels in the urine of 1,139 children across the U.S. Kids with higher levels of organophosphate pesticides were more likely to be diagnosed as having ADHD. For the most commonly-detected chemical, for instance, higher levels were associated with a two-fold increase in risk of ADHD.

Asthma sufferers, it’s time to lighten up. Rich, high-fat meals appear to increase airway inflammation, University of Newcastle researchers report. High-fat meals may also inhibit the asthma medication albuterol (Ventolin).

For the study, scientists offered a randomly selected group of asthmatics burgers and hash browns (1,000 calories, 52 percent from fat). The remaining subjects ate a meal containing reduced fat yogurt (200 calories, 13 percent from fat).

Within hours, the fast food group saw a significant increase in markers for inflammation, as well as reduced bronchodilator effect from the drug. Research has previously shown a link between high fat foods to inflammation, This was the first study to look specifically at asthma. The drug effect was a surprise and remains unexplained.

Every 90 seconds, an American family is forced to file for bankruptcy–not because they’ve mismanaged their finances but because their savings have been wiped out by medical expenses.

That shocking statistic is part of a new report from Harvard Medical School and Ohio University researchers that compares 2001 and 2007 bankruptcy data in the U.S. The experts found that 60 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were driven by unaffordable medical bills, up 50 percent from six years earlier. The odds that a bankruptcy resulted principally from medical expenses was almost 2.4 times greater in 2007 than in 2001.

That’s troubling enough. Even more disturbing: many of the families forced to declare bankruptcy had health insurance. Either it didn’t cover many of their expenses or the policies were cancelled when families needed them most. Among bankrupt families, those with health insurance had out-of-pocket expenses averaging $17,749. Those without insurance found themselves socked with bills averaging $26,971. Among families that had health insurance but then lost it, out-of-pocket expenses totalled an average of $22,568.

Those numbers won’t surprise many Americans who have gone in for health care recently, even basic recommended preventive care and screening. In our family of two, for instance, we were recently hit with more than $8,000 in out-of-pocket expenses after we followed our doctors’ orders and underwent screening colonoscopies. And we have insurance!

The latest statistics underscore a stubborn fact: Fixing the nation’s economy requires fixing the health care system.

Even when results from early clinical trials are overwhelmingly positive, medications once approved often prove less effective than first hoped. Indeed, there’s a joke among doctors about newly-approved drugs that goes like this: “Prescribe it now…while it still works.”

Why do drugs lose their lustre when they begin to be widely used? For many reasons. Initial enthusiasm on the part of investigators may bias the results to make them seem more favorable, even in controlled studies. Drug makers, who fund the clinical trials that are conducted to win approval, may intentionally make the results appear rosier by fiddling with statistics or leaving out less-encouraging results.

Now a new study offers another surprising reason. Volunteers chosen for clinical trials may not represent the patients who ultimately end up taking the drugs.

How worried should you be about swine flu?

That’s the question of the hour for world health officials and the rest of us alike.

For decades, virologists have worried about exactly this nightmare scenario: a brand new influenza virus makes the leap from birds or pigs to human beings and then begins to spread freely from person to person. The imaginary nightmare would be even scarier if it began in one of the world’s densely-crowded megacities–a place like Mexico City, for example–where it could infect millions of people before anyone knew it even existed.

That’s exactly the sort of nightmare that seemed to be unfolding as swine flu emerged and began to spread.

It comes as no surprise. As the gloomy economic news mounts and more and more Americans find themselves unemployed or underemployed, stress is on the rise. The number of respondents who reported that the economy is causing significant stress jumped from 66 percent a year ago to 80 percent last September, according to the American Psychological Association. Calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline surged from 39,465 in January 2008 to 50,158 this past January.

In a recent New York Times poll, 70 percent of respondents worry that a member of their household will become jobless. A vast majority say they’re convinced the recession will last another year or more.