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Study: Obese friends not the best to have

Sat, 11/06/2010 - 10:38 by Prince damin

Cambridge, Mass. -- Gaining weight may be socially contagious and the more obese friends you have the more likely you are to become obese, a study suggests.

Health experts say about a third of Americans are obese and at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and many types of cancer, USA Today reported.

Harvard scientists studying the obesity epidemic have applied an infectious-disease mathematical model to data from recent obesity studies.

"We find that having four obese friends doubled people's chance of becoming obese compared to people with no obese friends," researcher Alison Hill, the study's lead author, says.

Collaboration on Alzheimer's a success

Fri, 08/13/2010 - 22:56 by Prince damin

New York -- An unprecedented and ambitious sharing of data on Alzheimer's disease has led to advances in diagnosis and treatment, health experts say.

It is the end result of an effort begun in 2003 by scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and non-profit groups, The New York Times reported Friday.

The goal was to find and identify the biological markers that reveal the progression of the disease in the human brain.

The key to the project was an agreement to share all the data so anyone with a computer anywhere in the world would have full and immediate access to the findings, the newspaper said.

Consumer Corner: Bottles yes, plastic no

Mon, 07/19/2010 - 09:09 by Pankaj Damin

Chicago -- Health experts recommend drinking eight glasses of water a day, but unless it's portable, it's tough to accomplish while running around all day.

Plastic is convenient but it doesn't disintegrate in landfills and can leach chemicals that can cause cancer.

What's the answer?

Bradford Schulman may have it: Green Planet, a company producing bottled water packaged in more environmentally friendly materials.

With processed plant waste material from Cargill's Natureworks subsidiary, Schulman's is one of a handful of companies bottling water in plastic-like bottles that are reusable and biodegradable.

'Developing countries ill-prepared for swine flu outbreak'

Wed, 04/29/2009 - 17:33 by Salinder Kumar

London, April 29: Low and middle-income countries are less prepared than developed nations to fight an outbreak of swine flu, health experts say.

"Of particular concern is the ability of low-income and middle-income countries to detect and mitigate the effects of this new virus on their populations," said The Lancet, an authoritative medical journal.

"History has shown that developing countries are disproportionately affected by an influenza pandemic," it said in an editorial published Tuesday.