According to data recently published by the US Centers for Disease Control, slightly over 20% of youths aged 12 – 19 had at least one abnormal blood lipid value (i.e., high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol and/or high serum triglycerides).  According to a Washington Post summary:

One out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.

A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.

Previous studies had indicated that unhealthy cholesterol levels, once a condition thought isolated to the middle-aged and elderly, were increasingly becoming a problem among the young, but the new data document the scope of the threat on a national level.

“This is the future of America,” said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who heads the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee. “These data really confirm the seriousness of our obesity epidemic. This really is an urgent call for health-care providers and families to take this issue seriously.”

The CDC report is here.

I was just over at the GNC web site, browsing through their list of popular new weight loss products when I came across Lipo 6 Black Hers. Since I’ve already completed a Lipo 6 Black review, I thought I’d take a quick look at the “just for women” version to see if it confirmed what I suspected…

… that it’s a “just-as-expensive-but-slightly-watered-down” version of the original formula. In the midst of my investigation, I reviewed the list of ingredients and while doing so, the “warning” label. Preceding the obligatory and standard warnings that accompany any stimulant-based product were these words…

“WARNING: NOT FOR USE BY SISSY GIRLS. NOT TO BE USED BY ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 21 OR THE UNDEDICATED AND/OR WEAK-HEARTED. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO EXPERIENCE EXTREME UNDERGROUND FAT-DESTROYING STIMULANTS, DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT.”

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But I’d vastly prefer to spend an hour pumping some REAL weight in the gym, vs. doing “Taskercise™.”  Working simple calisthenics into a housecleaning routine would burn some extra cals, I suppose, but life is just too short to be constantly focusing on “busywork” exercise.

It’s a good thing I shave my head. Seriously. Because every time I see Kevin Trudeau on television I am seized by a powerful and compelling desire to tear my hair out. Alas, with my locks so closely shorn, all I can do instead is grit my teeth in frustration and plan my next workout in earnest.

Anyhow, I digress. Let me explain how this all came about…

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The company actually got off pretty easily: a $500,000 fine vs. $5.6 million in revenue.

Men’s Health has a pretty good slideshow on deceptively labeled food products. Some of the examples are no-brainers (”fat-free” jelly beans, lol), but it highlights the need to parse label claims carefully… There are far too many unhealthy foods masquerading as healthy ones in your local supermarket.

Needless to state, the ”information” on the front of the package doesn’t always provide an accurate picture of what’s inside.

Click here to read “18 Supermarket Lies Revealed.”

Taylor LeBaron is one smart kid.

Taylor LeBaron is half the teen he used to be — and that’s a very good thing for both his health and self-esteem. An always-big boy who grew into a severely obese teen, the Georgia native dealt with schoolroom taunts and his own shrinking self-image even as he continued put on the pounds.

Finally, LeBaron took control of his life by turning to the thing that helped make him fat in the first place: video games. Based on the games he loved to play while he sat sedentary and stuffed himself, LeBaron created the “Ultimate Fitness Game” — not an actual video game but one that employs the same principles and strategy used to become a top gamesman.

…The fruits of LeBaron’s weight-loss labor are chronicled in his new book, “Cutting Myself in Half: 150 Pounds Lost One Byte at a Time,” in which he outlines the mechanics of his Ultimate Fitness Game while relating the story of how he went from a nearly 300-pound 14-year-old to the slim and trim 145-pounder he is today.

His is an awesome success story that hits all the right notes.  No fad diets, detox or starvation… just good nutrition, exercise and lots of patience.

This article by Chris Woolston – “The Healthy Skeptic” - made me do a facepalm.  Obviously, there are people out there with more money than sense.

Ionic foot baths are a “detoxifying” treatment that have become popular at health fairs, alternative health clinics and spas. Many companies also sell ionic foot baths online for home use. Wherever they show up, ionic foot baths follow the same basic approach to detoxification. Users stick their feet in a basin of salt water that’s buzzing with a small electric charge from two submerged electrodes. The water starts out clear, but after 30 minutes or so it tends to get brackish and foamy.

…A 30-minute foot bath at Le Petite Retreat day spa in L.A. costs $85. Lysa Kustek, the spa owner, says that about a dozen people get the treatment each day and that foot bath detoxes are popular for couples, although she warns them not to kiss during the procedure: “They could get a spark.”

If you want to detox your feet in the comfort of your home, you can — but it’ll cost you. The website ionicfootbath.com, run by Meridian Lifeforce Inc., sells Aqua Health Ionizer kits of various kinds for $1,495 to $1,995. The ionSpa Professional Foot Bath Kit from Bella Spa Products sells online for $1,395.

Kinoki Foot Pads are cheaper, and certainly just as effective (which is to say, not at all).  This quote says it all:

According to Gilbert, there’s simply no way to draw large amounts of chemicals, toxic or otherwise, through skin. “The skin is a darn good barrier that’s designed to keep things in the body. [Claiming to pull] stuff across that barrier is nutty.”

Indeed it is.

Normally, I roll my eyes when I see anti-supplement articles printed in the mainstream media.  But I’m going to make an exception for this article in the Chicago Tribune by Trine Tsouderos.

An industrial chemical developed to help separate heavy metals from polluted soil and mining drainage is being sold as a dietary supplement by a luminary in the world of alternative autism treatments.

Called OSR#1, the supplement is described on its Web site as an antioxidant not meant to treat any disease. But the site lists pharmacies and doctors who sell it to parents of children with autism, and the compound has been promoted to parents on popular autism Web sites.

…In an interview, Haley said that the compound had been tested on rats and that a food safety study was conducted on 10 people. Asked to provide documentation of the studies, he stopped communicating with the Tribune.

Experts expressed dismay upon hearing children were consuming a chemical not evaluated in formal clinical trials for safety, as would be required for a drug prescribed by doctors.

Ellen Silbergeld, an expert in environmental health and a researcher funded by the National Institutes of Health studying mercury and autism at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she found the sale of the chemical as a supplement for children “appalling.”

Creepy…

Now, it’s possible that the stuff is perfectly safe at recommended doses… and the hand-wringing is so much ado over nothing.

BUT: anyone who knows me, also knows that I’m a stickler for good science and transparency.  In addition, children represent a real gray area when it comes to drugs and – by extension – supplements.  So there’s no excuse – particularly for a former professor like Boyd Haley – for failing to produce toxicity/safety data.  Needless to state, controlled studies looking at efficacy are indicated too - especially when desperate people are involved. To offer false hope is cruel beyond belief.

As the LA Times puts it:

Americans may not be collectively doomed to die in their recliners after all, one hand in the chips bag, the other stretching for the remote. Obesity levels seem to be leveling off or slowing across most of the population, according to two new comprehensive studies of the nation’s heft.

The assessments, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a welcome respite from the seemingly endless reports of Americans getting fatter and fatter. The latest of several to find an obesity plateau, they suggest that those earlier findings were not aberrations but that Americans may truly have turned a corner.

…Cynthia Ogden, an epidemiologist for the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the children’s report, said the findings track with other reports, such as the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which saw a plateau among students in grades nine through 12 from 2005 to 2007.

“We’re continuing to see slowing,” Ogden said, “although the prevalence of obesity remains very high.”

It’s good news, although there’s still a long way to go.  Personally, I think this guy is spot on…

Dr. Howard Eisenson, program director of the Duke Diet & Fitness Center in Durham, N.C., sees glimmers of hope in the studies but says the real challenge is to get people to exercise. “The survey only looks at BMI; it doesn’t look at physical fitness, which doesn’t get enough attention,” he said. “Poor physical fitness is a matter of big concern.”

Bingo. Studies have already shown that physical fitness plays an important role in determining the health risks associated with being overweight. While exercise alone won’t win the battle of the bulge, it’s an important first step that could do a LOT to improve health and well-being.  There’s a lot more to the “obesity crisis” than BMI.

Germany’s most popular fashion magazine, Brigitte, began its new policy last week: no more professional models.

Normally she teaches history at a Hamburg grammar school, but elaborately made up to look like Marlene Dietrich and wearing a €480 (£425) silk dress, Sybille Zschaber was yesterday all over the fashion pages of Germany’s most popular women’s magazine as it began its ban on professional models.

 The 29-year-old blonde teacher was among a cast of more than six “normal women” selected by the mass circulation middle-market Brigitte to pose for its January fashion feature following an editorial pledge by the magazine to keep controversial size-zero models off its pages.

Andreas Lebert, editor of the 700,000-circulation magazine, announced the ban last October after receiving letters from hundreds of women readers who complained that they had no connection with the models shown in the magazine and that they no longer wanted to see “protruding bones”.

 He claimed that the models Brigitte used for years on its fashion pages were so skinny that editors had to “fatten them up” using Photoshop… 

Smart move.  The emphasis should be on lean and healthy – not unhealthy skin-and-bones.

They’re really reaching here…

Slimaluma May Fight Cellulite
1/11/2010 9:33:00 AM
        
BANGKOK, Thailand—According to an unpublished single-blind, intra-individual study conducted by Gencor Pacific, Slimaluma produced a significant anti-fat node effect more efficient than the placebo. A total of 20 female volunteers, aged between 20 and 53, with cellulite on their thighs, applied a white lotion (as Slimaluma, from Gencor Pacific) twice daily. After 56 days, the product induced a non-significant decrease in the three studied parameters (the arithmetic mean, the maximum applitude and the average volume), although non-significant, the results demonstrated an anti-fat node effect. After 84 days, the product induced a non-significant decrease in the arithmetic mean and the maximum amplitude, and a significant decrease in the average volume.

If anyone has an explanation for what a “fat node” is, I’d love to hear it.

Cellulite creams are a dime a dozen, and there’s little evidence that they’re effective.  Non-significant, unpublished results and (apparently) invented terms leads me to suspect this one’s no different than the rest.

According to the American Heart Association, a new study links TV viewing – and prolonged sedentary behavior in general – with an increase in all cause mortality and death from cardiovascular disease.

DALLAS, Jan. 11, 2010 — Couch potatoes beware: every hour of television watched per day may increase the risk of dying earlier from cardiovascular disease, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Australian researchers tracked the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults and found that each hour spent in front of the television daily was associated with:
• an 11 percent increased risk of death from all causes,
• a 9 percent increased risk of cancer death; and
• an 18 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related death.

Compared with people who watched less than two hours of television daily, those who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent increased risk for CVD-related death. This association held regardless of other independent and common cardiovascular disease risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, unhealthy diet, excessive waist circumference, and leisure-time exercises.

While the study focused specifically on television watching, the findings suggest that any prolonged sedentary behavior, such as sitting at a desk or in front of a computer, may pose a risk to one’s health.

This is hardly the first study to show that physical inactivity is bad for your health, but it’s still worth highlighting.  The more the message is repeated, the more likely it is to sink in.

So sayeth a new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.  According to this synopsis in TIME Magazine:

According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, prepared foods may contain an average of 8% more calories than their package labels own up to and restaurant meals may contain a whopping 18% more.

…The findings are the result of work conducted by Susan Roberts, professor of nutrition at Tufts University, and Jean Mayer, of Tufts’ USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. It was Roberts who initiated the study, and it was her own struggles with weight that got her started. Author of the book The Instant Diet, she was working on new recipes for the paperback version (retitled The “i” Diet) and, as was her practice, used herself as a guinea pig. As a rule, she lost weight on the menu plans she recommended to readers, but when she redeveloped some of the meals using what were supposed to be calorically equivalent supermarket or restaurant foods, the pounds stopped dropping off. Just as suspiciously, she always felt full.

“I went into the lab and said, ‘I don’t believe these calorie numbers,’ ” she says. “So we went out and started collecting foods and sampling their contents.”

For what it’s worth, though, I’ve always felt that calorie counting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… which may have been Dr. Roberts’ problem in the first place.  Rather than seeking out “calorically equivalent supermarket or restaurant foods,” I’ve always found it better to simply take my food values along with me when I shop or eat out.  In the end, that means NOT buying much in the way of prepared/packaged entrees in the store; and eating items like grilled fish, chicken, veggies and fruits in restaurants – while passing on most of the starchy/sauced/fatty stuff (not to mention cocktails and/or desserts). Life is so much simpler that way.

Uuuuurrrrgh.  Hot off the presses of the International Journal of Food Microbiology:

The study looked at 90 beverages from 30 soda fountains in Virginia. A follow-up study took a look at the microbes they found in 27 drinks (including water). Researchers found that 48% of the drinks were harboring “coliform” bacteria — which means they could contain fecal matter. 

“More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum,” according to the abstract. “Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia.”

Ewwwwww. 

And I don’t mean the pink mystery-meat made famous by Hormel, either.  It’s the e-mail kind… for weight loss products, in particular. According to this report on Psych Central:

Have you ever wondered who actually buys anything advertised via spam emails?

It turns out that when it comes to weight loss spam, the answer is simple — young adults.

New research has found that 41 percent of college students with weight problems opened and read spam e-mail advertising weight loss products.

The researchers found that those with weight problems were three times more likely to open/read and also three times more likely to purchase weight loss products from this spam e-mail, compared to those without weight problem. The study also found that increased psychological stress was associated with an increase in purchases of these weight loss products advertised in spam e-mail.

According to a related report in the NYT, Dr. Fogel was pretty surprised by the results:

“I was shocked by the results,” said Dr. Fogel, whose research focuses on the Internet and consumer behavior. “Even among those with no weight problems, 5.2 percent bought something. It may be that young adults are hypersensitive to weight issues and they think, ‘this can’t hurt.’ ”

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And I don’t mean from a nutritional perspective, either… A recent investigation by USA Today came up with some pretty disturbing findings.

Airport restaurants packed with holiday travelers have been cited in the past year for hundreds of food safety violations, local health department reports show.

A USA TODAY review of inspection records for nearly 800 restaurants at 10 airports found items such as tuna salad and turkey sandwiches stored at dangerously warm temperatures, raw meat contaminating ready-to-eat foods, rat droppings and kitchens lacking soap for workers to wash hands.

Serious violations, which can increase the risk of illness, are common. On the most recent inspections available online, 42% of 57 restaurants reviewed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had at least one “critical” violation. So did 77% of 35 restaurants reviewed at Reagan National Airport.

Urrrrgh - I’ve eaten at Sea-Tac on several occasions too, although only at one restaurant (Ivar’s), where my food was cooked to order.  But from now on, I think I’ll just stick to protein bars, nuts, jerky (which I can stuff in my purse) and commercial food products packaged outside the airport (like yogurt and cottage cheese) when I fly.  Not ideal, but going without meals for a few hours beats enduring a bout of food poisoning in a crowded plane.

I glanced at this blog post on Shakesville today about the XBox 360, and then did a double take…  Apparently Microsoft recently filed for a patent app, ”…to introduce a heightened degree of reality into the appearance of gamers’ avatars by utilizing a third-party health-care data repository… or a Wii Vitality Sensor-like device.”

In other words, Microsoft wants to create gamers’ avatars capable of collecting/storing user health info.  Why?

Evidently this is (partly) why:

To incentivize people to improve their physical well-being, Microsoft’s filing notes that gamers will be locked out of certain components of a game or a chat room until the proper health parameters are met.

“Physical data that reflects a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication,” the filing reads. “Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise.”

To the Shakesville blogger and commenter, this is yet another example of “fat hatred.”

But is it really?  Does Microsoft really intend to restrict gamers deemed unhealthy or overweight from playing XBox games?

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Quite honestly, I don’t have the slightest idea. 

Nor do I care… which is why I was a bit flummoxed by this article in the LA Times on estimating the calories burned during exercise.  The author goes into considerable detail about the margin of error involved with different devices – and she appears to have done a good job on her research.  She correctly points out that the calorie counters on different cardio devices may be off by as much as 25% – 30%, indirect calorimetry is a PITA, and that even high-tech gizmos like the BodyBugg  have their limits.

Okay then.

Problem is, she never asks – let alone answers –  the question, “is it necessary to count exercise calories at all?”  In my experience, it isn’t, and (in my humble opinion) borders on obsessive.  Whenever I had to change my weight (up or down), I simply kept track of a) my daily food intake; and b) my weekly weight and body comp.  That’s all I ever needed to know to assess my progress, and – if necessary – make adjustments to my program.

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Anyone remember Diana Nyad?  Once upon a time, she was a world-class athlete, and – in 1979 – swam 102.5 miles from Bimini to Florida.  In subsequent years, she also worked as a sportscaster/journalist, author and speaker. She’s an incredibly accomplished woman.

She’s also one of the founders of “Brava Body” a training site offering exercise DVDs and custom workouts.  In this capacity, she and her partner, Bonnie Stoll, appeared on “Good Morning America” to promote their “Holiday Remedy” – a program designed to “trim those holiday pounds.”

So what’s the problem? 

In the video (click the above link to view it on the GMA site), Nyad talked viewers through the first few exercises in the program (which Bonnie Stoll and the GMA interviewer demonstrated).  To be honest, I thought they looked pretty tame, and wouldn’t do much of anything to “rev the metabolism” as she claimed.  But even worse, in the process of discussing the merits of the program, she lent credence to one of the oldest, ”zombie lies” about women’s exercise in existence:

“So anyway, the idea again is no heavy muscles, we’re not building gigantic muscles, we’re just gonna rev the metabolism over the holidays…”

Diana Nyad was an elite athlete – she HAS to know how bogus the “big ‘n bulky” myth is.  Yet, instead of dismissing it as physiological nonsense, she reinforced it in the process of reassuring her female viewers.  WTF???

Yeah, I know it’s GMA, for heaven’s sakes, and Ms. Nyad’s now a businesswoman promoting workout DVDs, but I still found this depressing.  She was in a great position to deflate this BS for thousands of women, and she simply blew it.