Obesity by states...find out where your's rank

The percentage of obese adults increased in 16 states over past year and didn't decline in any state, a report says. In addition, the number of adults who say they don't do any physical activity increased in 14 states this past year.

This report is based on state-by-state obesity data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in which people self-report their height and weight. Because people tend to underreport their weight, the percentage of people who are obese is probably higher than the statistics indicate.

To find how your state ranks, please click here


Yogurt helps you lose weight

 A federally funded study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health found these foods can affect your weight, for better and for worse.

 The study found that several foods, including yogurt, nuts and grains, actually reduced weight gain over time in adults.

Among all the foods studied, potatoes stood out. Every additional serving of potatoes people added to their regular diet each day made them gain about a pound over four years. It was no surprise that french fries and potato chips are especially fattening. But the study found that even mashed, baked or boiled potatoes were unexpectedly plumping, perhaps because of their effect on the hormone insulin.


To read complete article please click here




First person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years today

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctores could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging, banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

Read more: 

Diet drinks may be causing type 2 diabetes

In one study, researchers from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, looked at aggregate data from 474 older adults in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging, or SALSA. At the time of enrollment and at three follow-up exams thereafter, all participants reported their diet soda intake and were measured for height, weight and waist circumference. The researchers wanted to track any association between diet soda drinking and body fat over time.What they found was that all participants saw their waistlines expand, but those who reported drinking diet soda had 70% greater increases in waistline growth than non-drinkers 9.5 years later. Among frequent drinkers — those who consumed two or more diet sodas a day — waistline growth was 500% greater than among non-drinkers.
For more details read: Studies: Why Diet Sodas Are No Benefit to Dieters

Healthy People 2020

Healthy People is a set of goals and objectives with 10-year targets designed to guide national health promotion and disease prevention efforts to improve the health of all people in the United State.

Healthy People 2020 is committed to the vision of a society in which all people live long, healthy lives. This decade, several new features will help make this vision a reality:
  • Emphasizing ideas of health equity that address social determinants of health and promote health across all stages of life
  • Replacing the traditional print publication with an interactive Web site as the main vehicle for dissemination
  • Maintaining a Web site that allows users to tailor information to their needs and explore evidence based resources for implementation
For more information click here

What is a dietary supplement?

As defined by Congress in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which became law in 1994, a dietary supplement is a product (other than tobacco) 
  • that is intended to supplement the diet;
  • contains one or more dietary ingredients (including vitamins; 
  • minerals; herbs or other botanicals; amino acids; and other substances) or their constituents;
  • is intended to be taken by mouth as a pill, capsule, tablet, or liquid; andis  labeled on the front panel as being a dietary supplement.

Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) VS. the Daily Value (DV).

Many terms are used when referring to either the amount of a particular nutrient (such as calcium or vitamin D) you should get or the amount in a food or dietary supplement. The two most common are the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) and the Daily Value (DV). These terms can be confusing.

RDAs are recommended daily intakes of a nutrient for healthy people. They tell you how much of that nutrient you should get on average each day. RDAs are developed by the Food and Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. They vary by age, gender and whether a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding; so there are many different RDAs for each nutrient.

DVs, established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are used on food and dietary supplement labels. For each nutrient, there is one DV for all people ages 4 years and older. Therefore, DVs aren't recommended intakes, but suggest how much of a nutrient a serving of the food or supplement provides in the context of a total daily diet. DVs often match or exceed the RDAs for most people, but not in all cases.

DVs are presented on food and supplement labels as a percentage. They help you compare one product with another. As an example, the %DV for calcium on a food label might say 20%. This means it has 200 mg (milligrams) of calcium in one serving because the DV for calcium is 1,000 mg/day. If another food has 40% of the DV for calcium, it's easy to see that it provides much more calcium than the first food.

The FDA has a Web page that lists the DVs for all nutrients and provides additional details.

Survey results on Health/Diet Awareness



More than half of consumers in the United States often read the food label when buying a product for the first time. These consumers are also increasingly aware of the link between diet and heart disease.

Those are among the key findings that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released from its latest Health and Diet Survey, a snapshot of the nation's dietary habits.

Among the highlights of survey findings in regard to how diet affects health:

More U.S. consumers know of the relationship between diet and heart disease. Ninety-one percent knew of this link, an 8 percent jump from 2002. In addition, 62 percent of consumers mentioned fats as a factor related to heart disease, compared to 53 percent in 2002.


More than half (54 percent) of consumers said they read a product's label the first time they buy the product. That's a 10 percent increase from 2002

Herbs at a glance

What are herbs?
An herb (also called a botanical) is a plant or plant part used for its scent, flavor, and/or therapeutic properties. An herbal supplement is a type of dietary supplement that contains herbs, either alone or in mixtures

People have used herbs as medicine since ancient times. For example, aloe vera’s use can be traced back to arly Egypt, where the plant was depicted on stone carvings.Known as the “plant of  immortality,” it was presented as a burial gift to deceased pharaohs. Lavender, native to the Mediterranean region, was used in ancient Egypt as part of the process for mummifying bodies. Chasteberry, the fruit of the chaste tree, has long been used by women to ease menstrual problems and to stimulate the production of breast milk. Cat’s claw, which grows wild in Central and South America, especially in the Amazon rainforest, has been used for centuries to prevent and treat disease. Hoodia, a flowering, cactus-like plant native to the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa, has been used by the Kalahari Bushmen to reduce hunger and thirst during long hunts."

Herbs at a Glance

Herbs at a Glance is a series of fact sheets that provides basic information about specific herbs or botanicals—common names, uses, potential side effects, and resources for more information.

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/NIH_Herbs_at_a_Glance.pdf
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