Immigrants Craving to be American and Fat

Immigrants adopting American diets, to their detriment
4:26 PM Wednesday May 18, 2011
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'Dietary decline' means even though immigrants have a lower rate of obesity when they arrive in the US, switching to American fare is helping them to catch up.
Immigrants to the United States often ditch their ethnic diets for high-calorie American fare, partly because it is cheap and easy to find but also as a way to fit in, a new study shows.

Immigrants who eat American are consuming, on average, 182 extra calories and seven additional grams of saturated fat compared to immigrants who stick to their traditional diet, leaving the fast-food immigrants more likely to become obese and suffer chronic illnesses related to obesity.

In fact, immigrant children who have lived in the US for 15 years are as prone to obesity as American-born kids, one in three of whom is overweight or obese, says the study by researchers from the University of Washington, University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University.

Earlier studies have identified the phenomenon of "dietary decline after arrival in the US" in many immigrant groups, including from Africa and Latin America.

But the researchers in this study, conducted by the US-born child of Indian immigrants, Sapna Cheryan; the daughter of Chilean immigrants, Maya Guendelman; and French immigrant Benoit Monin, focused on whether Asian-Americans "consume American foods...


to convey that they belong in America."

In the first of two experiments conducted for the study, a group of Asian-Americans was "threatened" by being asked if they could speak English, and then asked to note down their favorite food. A control group noted down their preferred dish without having their American-ness "threatened".

"'Do you speak English' doesn't seem so bad on the face of it, but if you're the target, it does feel that you're being singled out because of the way you look or your skin colour," Cheryan told AFP.

The threatened group in the first experiment was three times more likely than the unthreatened group to say they liked a typical American dish like macaroni and cheese or a hamburger best.

In the second experiment, Asian-Americans were asked to choose from items on a menu listing typically American fare like bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, fried chicken, hot dogs and hamburgers; or one featuring Asian fare like sushi, pad Thai rice noodle dishes, or chicken teriyaki.

Sixty per cent of participants whose American identity was questioned - they were told they "had to be an American" to be in the experiment - chose food from the US menu while the majority of those in the non-threatened control group - 70 per cent - chose items from the Asian menu.

The Asian-Americans who were trying to assert their US identity after having it challenged were eating "the caloric and fat equivalent of an extra four-piece order of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets over those who were not threatened," says the study.

That adds up over time, and even though immigrants have a lower rate of obesity when they arrive in the United States, switching to American food is helping them to catch up to US-born Americans, one in four of whom is obese, says the study, which will appear in the June issue of Psychological Science.

- AFP

Obesity in America: The Obese dont see it as a problem!

Overview
When it comes to obesity, Americans have no difficulty recognizing that our society has a
problem. The majority agree that obesity is the number one threat to public health.

And it is:
More than six out of ten people in the United States are overweight or obese.

But seeing themselves as part of the problem and doing something about it? That’s a very
different story.

A new study of 1,500 Americans, ages 18-65, by Catalyst Healthcare Research finds:
• Most adults who are overweight or obese – even the well-educated – say their health is
excellent or good.
• Most of the overweight or obese say their fitness level is the same as it was last year,
suggesting that they are not motivated to change.
• That attitude is reflected in their exercise patterns: More than half either don’t exercise at
all or merely engage in “naturally occurring exercise,” such as walking up the stairs in their
own home.

“These results suggest that health advocates, health providers, and health plans face a much
deeper problem than merely persuading people of the benefits of losing weight,” says Dan
Prince, president of Catalyst Healthcare Research. “They must find ways to help people face
the hard truth about themselves, while society continues to send mixed messages that soften
the psychological stigma of being overweight.”

Can Happiness be Measured?

Some happy states have high suicide rates, says study

WASHINGTON
Tuesday, April 26, 2011

DOES misery really love company?

An intriguing new study suggests that may be the case.

Researchers who study how people's sense of well-being varies from place to place decided to compare their findings with suicide rates.

The surprising result: The happiest places sometimes also have the highest suicide rates.

"Discontented people in a happy place may feel particularly harshly treated by life," suggested Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England.

Or, put another way by co-author Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, those surrounded by unhappy people may not feel so bad for themselves.

But Wu urged caution in drawing conclusions, saying: "I don't think that means if you are unhappy you should be around others who are unhappy." Their study ranked Utah as the No 1 US state for residents' sense of well-being, but it also scored a high No 9 in suicide rate. By contrast New York State ranked a low 45th in well-being, but an even lower 50th in suicides.

The researchers came up with their rankings from a federal survey of behavioral risk factors and US Census Bureau numbers on suicide rates.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, who wasn't involved in the research, agreed that living around people who are, on average, pretty satisfied with their lives, when you are not, can make you feel more miserable.

In an interview by email, she said the findings remind her of an effect researchers have discussed in cases where a city with a reputation for being a good place to live also has a high suicide rate.

The idea is, "If you're unhappy there, you conclude, 'something must be really wrong with me,' or 'nothing will make me happy,' so you're more likely to get depressed and take your life," said Lyubomirsky, who researches happiness and well-being.

However, she added, other things may also be at play.

She suggested there may be other factors that states with high life satisfaction have in common that could be associated with high suicide rates. For example, if they are more likely to be rural, that could mean people also are more isolated. Religious beliefs that vary among states may also have an effect, she said.

John F. Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, who has studied well-being and suicide rates internationally, said suicides tend to peak when days are longer, "not as you might have thought, when days are shortest." Researchers have suggested that when people who are unhappy see others in happy, social situations such as picnics, that may bring their own crisis to a head.

The new study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, looked at the 50 US states and Washington, DC.

It lists the top 10 states for well-being as Utah, Louisiana, Colorado, Minnesota, Wyoming, Hawaii, Arizona, Delaware, Florida and Nevada.

Four of those states also are in the top 10 for suicide rates, with Nevada ranked 3rd, Wyoming, 5th; Colorado, 6th; and Utah, 9th. Among the others, Arizona was 11th and Florida, 15th.

The 10 states with the lowest well-being ratings are: Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan and Rhode Island.

Just one of those states, West Virginia, is among the top 10 for suicides, ranking No 8. The only other state in the top 20 was Kentucky at 16th. Wu noted that international studies have found that Scandinavian countries also display high satisfaction levels and high suicide rates.

But the researchers said that because of variations in culture and suicide-reporting systems, it's hard to make comparisons from one country to another.

To develop their data, Wu and colleagues used information collected by the federal government in the Behavioral Risk-Factor Surveillance System, a monthly survey designed to gather health data and identify emerging problems. One survey question asks people how satisfied they are with their life and the responses to that from people aged 18 to 85 formed the basis for the well-being assessment.

The survey interviews more than 350,000 people each year. The suicide rankings are based on mortality data reported by the Census Bureau in 2008.

LOSARTAN an ARB blocker may help SARCOPENIA

SARCOPENIA
Losartan Restores Skeletal Muscle Remodeling and Protects Against Disuse Atrophy in Sarcopenia
Tyesha N. Burks1, Eva Andres-Mateos1, Ruth Marx1, Rebeca Mejias1, Christel Van Erp1, Jessica L. Simmers1, Jeremy D. Walston2, Christopher W. Ward3 and Ronald D. Cohn1,4,*
+ Author Affiliations

1McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
2Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
3University of Maryland School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
4Department of Pediatrics and Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
*↵To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rcohn2@jhmi.edu
ABSTRACT

Sarcopenia, a critical loss of muscle mass and function because of the physiological process of aging, contributes to disability and mortality in older adults. It increases the incidence of pathologic fractures, causing prolonged periods of hospitalization and rehabilitation. The molecular mechanisms underlying sarcopenia are poorly understood, but recent evidence suggests that increased transforming growth factor–β (TGF-β) signaling contributes to impaired satellite cell function and muscle repair in aged skeletal muscle. We therefore evaluated whether antagonism of TGF-β signaling via losartan, an angiotensin II receptor antagonist commonly used to treat high blood pressure, had a beneficial impact on the muscle remodeling process of sarcopenic mice. We demonstrated that mice treated with losartan developed significantly less fibrosis and exhibited improved in vivo muscle function after cardiotoxin-induced injury. We found that losartan not only blunted the canonical TGF-β signaling cascade but also modulated the noncanonical TGF-β mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway. We next assessed whether losartan was able to combat disuse atrophy in aged mice that were subjected to hindlimb immobilization. We showed that immobilized mice treated with losartan were protected against loss of muscle mass. Unexpectedly, this protective mechanism was not mediated by TGF-β signaling but was due to an increased activation of the insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)/Akt/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway. Thus, blockade of the AT1 (angiotensin II type I) receptor improved muscle remodeling and protected against disuse atrophy by differentially regulating the TGF-β and IGF-1/Akt/mTOR signaling cascades, two pathways critical for skeletal muscle homeostasis. Thus, losartan, a Food and Drug Administration–approved drug, may prove to have clinical benefits to combat injury-related muscle remodeling and provide protection against disuse atrophy in humans with sarcopenia.

Macular Degeneration 2000 dollars vs 50 dollars a treatment: Same Results

Bevacizumab versus Ranibizumab — The Verdict
Philip J. Rosenfeld, M.D., Ph.D.
April 28, 2011 (10.1056/NEJMe1103334)
ArticleReferences
For 5 years, patients and clinicians have wrestled with the choice between two drugs for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common cause of irreversible blindness among the elderly worldwide. Vision loss results from the abnormal growth and leakage of blood vessels in the macula, a specialized portion of the retina responsible for the best visual acuity. Without this macular vision, patients become legally blind. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), the cytokine primarily responsible for blood-vessel growth, is inhibited when anti-VEGF drugs are injected repeatedly into the eye, and blindness is prevented in most patients. The majority of treated patients go on to have some improvement in vision.
A well planned study comparing the effects of these two drugs : Bevacizumab vs Ranizumab (50 dollars per month vs 2000 dollars per month for one injection into the eye) showed that the produce the same results.
This is not the first time that expensive medications have proved not to do what they were advertised to do.
In the field of Diabetes: no drug has been, in practical terms, shown to be superior to the old fashioned METFORMIN.. all the new drugs sometimes ten times more expensive, are no better than METFORMIN and Change in the Quality of LIFE

All that Glitters is not God has never been so true... in the introduction of newer medications for chronic diseases.
Dont be the first to use a new medication, and at the same time dont be the last one either, said a professor of mine at University of Miami.

Atherosclerosis An Old Disease

Egypt mummy recorded with world's oldest case of clogged arteries: study

Photo shows Egypt's antiquities chief Dr Zahi Hawass (2nd R) as he supervises the removal of the mummy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. The world's first known case of clogged arteries has been found in the mummy of an Egyptian princessPicture: EPA

NEW ORLEANS, USA

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

THE first known case of clogged arteries, or atherosclerosis, has been found in the mummy of an Egyptian princess, said a study presented on Sunday at a major US cardiology conference.

Researchers have long known that ancient Egyptians suffered from plaque build-up in the arteries that supply the heart, but the latest finding suggests that the syndrome may be more prevalent, and mysterious, than previously thought.

"Commonly, we think of coronary artery or heart disease as a consequence of modern lifestyles, mainly because it has increased in developing countries as they become more westernised," said Gregory Thomas of the University of California, Irvine.

"These data point to a missing link in our understanding of heart disease, and we may not be so different from our ancestors," he said.

Researchers performed computerised tomography (CT) scans on 52 Egyptian mummies to determine whether they had atherosclerosis.

Of the 44 that had detectable arteries or hearts, 45 per cent of them had calcium build-ups in their vessel walls.

The oldest among them was an Egyptian princess who likely lived between 1580 and 1550 BC, and probably died when she was in her early 40s, researchers believe.

Even though ancient Egyptians ate a leaner diet, including less meat, and did not smoke cigarettes, they ended up with the same disease as modern humans.

But that does not mean people should disregard modern research, said co-author of the study Adel Allam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

"Recent studies have shown that by not smoking, having a lower blood pressure and a lower cholesterol level, calcification of our arteries is delayed," said Allam.

"On the other hand, from what we can tell from this study, humans are predisposed to atherosclerosis, so it behooves us to take the proper measures necessary to delay it as long as we can.

Sleep vs Switch off your laptop..Conserve Battery..

some good piece of advice here...not from me but a maven on computers... gracias..

Q: Does putting my computer to sleep help extend the battery life? What else can I do to save energy and make my new computer last?

A: We’ve all heard stories about what's best for a computer’s battery. That’s why I was excited to make friends with Fred Peters, president of Huntington Beach IT Services.

In addition to teaching computing courses in Orange County, Calif., Peters happily makes house calls to revive frazzled computers and the people who rely on them.

Here are his expert tips on how to keep your new laptop running smoothly.

Sleep mode vs. shutting down

Peters notes that your work process will determine whether it’s more efficient to use “Sleep” mode or simply shut down the computer. “It is never fun to have to consistently wait any amount of time if the shut downs are too frequent,” he says. "‘Sleep’ requires more power, but it boots up faster, while ‘Hibernate’ uses less power, but takes longer to come online.” That same logic applies to shutting off your computer completely.

“Your computer will become obsolete before you wear out your computer by turning it on and off a lot,” he adds. “It also doesn't take more energy to start a computer than to keep it running.”

Sleep mode requires a constant, though reduced use of power (0-6 watts). Peters also notes that colorful screensavers do nothing to conserve energy. Accessing your computer remotely with the Wake on LAN feature also can drain the power.

To get the most for your money, Peters advises adjusting power settings so that it automatically goes into Sleep/Standby mode after about 15 minutes of inactivity, and then shut it down at the end of your day.

Bionic battery life

To get the most out of your computer battery, Peters says to you have to give it a workout. Don’t keep your machine plugged in to an outlet. Instead, discharge the battery daily.

Size does matter

By purchasing a laptop, Peters says that you are ahead in the energy-saving game. Laptops use about 15-60 watts, while desktops use 65-250 watts — plus another 15-80 watts for a monitor.

He also adds that you can further conserve energy by using an LCD monitor and ditching the high-end video card unless it’s absolutely necessary. Also, turn off printers and other peripherals when they are not in use.

To kill “vampire power,” TreeHugger.com suggests purchasing a power strip. With all peripherals connected to one source, it’s easy to simply flip the switch on power hogs any time.

Establish a backup process

In addition to Peters’ great advice about conserving energy, I discovered the hard way that it also pays to save backup versions of your work. Invest in an external hard drive to hold your digital music library, special photos, and other key documents. Frequent backups ensure that your data doesn’t die with your laptop.

While you are in the process of backing things up, create an emergency file (on good old-fashioned paper) that contains your computer’s serial number along with other key data such as your credit card numbers and phone numbers to reach each company, along with contact info to your insurance company. Access to that information is vital, particularly in the event of an accident, fire, computer theft, or other catastrophe.

Peters warns that those key pieces of information are not safe on your computer. If you are like me and absolutely need a digital holding space for those nuggets of information, he suggests sites like LastPass as your online vault.