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. Residents who switched to public transit saw a significant reduction in body mass index, or BMI, a measure of fatness that takes into account both weight and height. The study found that a 5-foot, 5-inch woman would have lost an average of 6.45 pounds 12 to 18 months after starting to take public transit. Commuters using the new system were 81 percent less likely than non-users to become obese over time.

“Public transit systems can generate positive health impacts by encouraging greater numbers of users to walk to station stops and maintain more physically active lives,” said John M. MacDonald, PhD, the University of Pennsylvania researcher who led the study.

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.

To be fair, some products contain sugars from natural products such as fruit. But many are laced with added sugar. As Dr. Elliott noted: “It remains fair to ask why it is necessary to add sugar to these baby or toddler products in the first place.”

For now, there are no recommended limits on added sugars for infant and toddler food products (unlike foods for adults).

The best advice: read the ingredient labels carefully and avoid foods with added sugars.

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. Average sprint times in the 20-yard shuttle improved from 4.71 seconds to 4.61 seconds. Average 40-yard dash times decreased from 4.99 seconds to 4.89 seconds. The footballers reported feeling more vigorous and less sleepy and fatigued during the day.

In previous research, Mah has shown that competitive swimmers improve their times by sleeping longer. “Sleep duration may be an important consideration for an athlete’s daily training regimen,” she concluded in a press release issued by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

The advice is simple: Make sleep a top priority if you plan to compete in any strenuous athletic events. Extend the amount of time you sleep for several weeks before the event. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day to maintain a regular sleep-wake schedule.

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.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, 2010, vol 303: pp 1961-1969.

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.

Although residential bug spray may play a part, most research suggests that food is the principle source of pesticide exposure. In a 2008 report by the U.S. Pesticide Residue Program, detectable levels of organophosphates were found in 28 percent of frozen blueberry samples, 25 percent of strawberries, and 19 percent of celery.

Earlier alarms have sounded. Animals exposed to some organophosphate compounds have been shown to  develop hyperactivity and brain deficits. These chemicals are also known to target brain and nerve cells. Buying conventional produce may cost more. But for parents of young kids, they may be worth the price.  

SOURCE: Bouchard, MF et al, “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Urinary Metabolites of Organophosphate Pesticides,” Pediatrics, June 2010, vol 125: pp 1270-1277

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.

That shocking statistic is part of a new report from Harvard Medical School and Ohio University that compares 2001 and 2007 bankruptcy data in the US. Researchers 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 2001.

That’s disturbing enough. Even more troubling: 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 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, we were recently slammed 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.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and primary care physician in Cambridge, Mass.–as well as co-author of the paper published in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine–didn’t mince her words: “We need to rethink health reform. Covering the uninsured isn’t enough. Reform also needs to help families who already have insurance by upgrading their coverage and assuring that they never lose it.

“Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy,” Dr. Woolhandler went on to say. “Unfortunately, Washington politicians seem ready to cave in to insurance firms and keep them and their counterfeit coverage at the core of our system. Reforms that expand phony insurance – stripped-down plans riddled with co-payments, deductibles and exclusions – won’t stem the rising tide of medical bankruptcy.”

James E. Dalen, MD, MPH, a physician and researcher at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, agreed. “This study provides further evidence that the US health care system is broken,” he said. “Medical bankruptcy is almost a unique American phenomenon, which does not occur in countries that have national health insurance. These long-time advocates of a single payer system give us another compelling reason to work toward this goal as a nation.”

Opponents of that goal are already mobilizing their considerable forces. Private insurers have resorted to expensive television ads that use scare tactics to protect the status quo. Tragically, the system they are fighting to preserve, while it enriches private insurers and shareholders, is driving more and more American families into bankruptcy simply because they encountered medical problems they couldn’t afford. That’s a shame and a disgrace.

It must change.

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.

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center looked at participants in an investigation called the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study, which set out to measure the effectiveness of several treatment alternatives for depression. Only 22 percent of the 2,855 volunteers in that trial, the scientists found, would have met the criteria for inclusion in a typical antidepressant medication study.

Why not? Again, there are plenty of reasons. Patients who are obese or have diabetes are typically excluded from drug studies, for example, even though a large proportion of depressed patients (indeed, of all patients) fit into those categories. Patients who have tried other antidepressants without success are also often excluded from trials of new psychotropic drugs. Patients who report having suicidal thoughts or who have other psychiatric illnesses are also barred. As Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, a professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern, who led the study, points out: “These are the patients impacted by depression the most — highest suicide potential, highest unemployment rates, highest social impairment, and they are likely to produce poorer outcomes. That population doesn’t get studied systematically in traditional pharmaceutical industry studies.”

Dr. Trivedi’s startling conclusion: “We are basing our judgment of clinical care in the United States on samples of patients that are totally different from the patient population actually treated in primary care and mental health facilities.”

The same problem is likely to afflict studies of many kinds of drugs, from insomnia medications to blood pressure pills.

In order to get clear results from studies, researchers do need to set criteria for eligibility. But if those criteria eliminate many of the very people most likely to use the drug, what good are the results? We think the scientific committees that approve research protocols need to do a better job of assessing eligibility criteria. The goal: to make sure that the people enlisted for clinical trials represent a good cross-section of the people most likely to use a drug once it’s approved.

© 2009 PDQhealth

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 was 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.

Well, that nightmare is now unfolding hour by hour, from the epicenter of the pandemic in Mexico City to the furthest outposts of New Zealand and Eastern Europe. Mexico has shut down schools and is now asking all nonessential businesses to remain shuttered for a week. The latest report: Fort Worth, Texas has shut down its schools.

Given the nature of the highly infectious flu bug, there’s virtually no way to contain it, although precautions like closing school and cancelling big public events can slow its spread. That’s important, because it means less strain on the already beleaguered health care systems in many parts of the world. But no country or region or city can hope to prevent the virus from arriving. Chances are it’s already there.

For now, the biggest question is how virulent this new virus will be. Because it is new, none of us have immunity to it from previous exposures. Our immune systems have to recognize it, gear up our defenses, and eliminate the virus. In the meantime, it can make us pretty sick.

In people with compromised immune systems or who are already in poor health, bad flus can be deadly. The more virulent the strain, the more severe the symptoms and the deadlier it is likely to be.

The news from Mexico, where dozens of deaths have been confirmed, isn’t reassuring. But the relative mildness of cases elsewhere paints a more hopeful picture. No one really knows at the moment, so much of the world holds its breath, following the latest reports. (If you’re a flu tracker, one of the best places to stay abreast is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s swine flu information site.)

Keep this in mind: whatever the outcome of the next few weeks, researchers still won’t know exactly how this virus will behave when the next flu season rolls around in the fall. In previous pandemics, new viruses have caused mild cases when they first appeared, only to roar back with deadly force the following season.

So how worried should you be? Enough to be cautious. If cases have been reported in your area, it’s worth avoiding big public gatherings. Washing your hands is another good idea, since you can pick up the virus on surfaces and then contaminate yourself. Is it worth wearing a face mask? Although millions of people are wearing them in Mexico and elsewhere, health officials admit that they have no evidence to say whether or not masks can protect against swine flu.

Indeed, this newest epidemic reminds us that doctors and medical researchers don’t have all the answers. Science has made dramatic advances in understanding viruses and in developing vaccines to protect against them. But viruses remain a potent and unpredictable threat.

One thing is clear: when a vaccine to protect against the new swine flu is available, public health officials won’t have to spend much effort encouraging Americans to get a shot.

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.

Emotional stress, many studies show, can cause physical woes, from outbreaks of chronic infections to a greater risk of heart palpitations and even heart attacks. Stress gets in the way of a good night’s sleep–and sleeplessness itself is associated with a host of health problems and a heightened danger of accidents.

What can you do if your household is living under a cloud of anxiety? Although many sufferers are showing up in doctors offices asking for anti-anxiety medications, we think there are better ways. The good news: a variety of different relaxation approaches all seem to help. When researchers at the Togus Veterans Administration Center in Augusta, Maine recently compared a five-week course in mindfulness meditation with progressive muscle relaxation, for example, both of these very different strategies were equally effective at taming stress. Other studies have found that just sitting quietly for 20 minutes listening to music you enjoy can take the sting out of stress. So can a brisk walk around the neighborhood. Studies of volunteers show that an hour a week spent doing something for others also eases anxiety.

Perhaps one of the lessons we’ll all learn in these times of distress and uncertainty is the importance of taking time out–a chance to chat with a friend or lend a helping hand to a stranger, a few minutes to close our eyes and calm our spirits, a welcome break from the 24/7 chatter of television and the internet.  If these bad times remind us of the simpler pleasures that make up a good life, we’ll all end up richer for it.