Category: obesity

MEwens
Social Media and Funding Brouhaha: Social media helped galvanize supporters of Planned Parenthood last week after Susan G. Komen for the Cure said it would cut off funding for the women’s health nonprofit — and then reversed its stance, the WSJ reports. According to social-media monitor NetBase Solutions, Komen-related chatter rose 80% from […]

MEwens
Doctors who need to drop pounds themselves may be less likely to bring up the topic of weight loss with their obese patients, a new study suggests.
The study, published in the journal Obesity, covered 498 primary-care physicians. Of them, 47% were normal-weight, 38% were overweight and 15% were obese, based on their body […]

MEwens
Americans may be as heavy as they’re going to get — at least for now.
That’s what new government data suggest. While obesity rates climbed sharply in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, their increase has slowed or leveled off in many population groups since then, according to data from the Centers for […]

Laura Landro
Gut Brain: The health of the gut is tied to more than digestion, with links to processes and conditions including bone formation, learning and memory, Parkinson’s disease and, in lab rats, depression and anxiety, the WSJ reports. Researchers call the enteric nervous system the “gut brain” and note that about 95% of […]

MEwens
By John Revill
Forget about corporate fat cats: a new scheme launched by food giant Nestlé is targeting real overweight pets, which could also help their chubby owners battling their own expanding waistlines.
The world’s largest food company has launched a new weight-loss program to help pet owners and their cats, dogs and other household […]

MEwens
Will skimping on sleep make it easier to pile on the pounds and tougher to lose them?
We tackled that question as part of our “Is It True?” video series here at the Health Blog — you can see the video below.
The WSJ’s Christina Tsuei reports that a host of hormones are […]

MEwens
Weight-Loss Research: Want to lose body fat? A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that focusing on calories — not the balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate — is the key, the WSJ reports. Those on a low-protein diet did gain less weight than those on regimens with […]

MEwens
Sleep disorders are common among police officers, and are associated with job-performance, health and safety problems.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association covering 4,957 police officers in the U.S. and Canada found that 40.4% screened positive for some kind of sleep disorder, most commonly obstructive sleep apnea.
A smaller percentage […]

MEwens
During our daily subway commute to and from Health Blog HQ, we’ve noticed posters telling us exactly how far we’d have to walk to work off various sugar-sweetened drinks.
Now a study just published online by the American Journal of Public Health makes us think that the NYC Department of Public Health, which is […]

MEwens
It’s no secret that reversing the childhood obesity epidemic in the U.S. will be a long slog. While obesity rates among children and teens appear to have leveled off in recent years, nearly a third remain overweight, and about 17% are obese.
And while many cities and towns have programs and events to attack […]