Ten Tips for guaranteed weight loss

Ten Tips for guaranteed weight loss - With fad diets and fitness routines round every corner, it is quite difficult to keep a tab on which weight loss tips really do work and which don't. Should you join that bhangra aerobics class, adopt that no-carb diet, or eat dinner at 6pm? Never mind all that loophole-ridden weight loss jargon, step over to the healthy side. Here are 10 tips for guaranteed weight loss that will set your weight straight, and help you adopt some really healthy, weight-friendly habits for life.

Weight loss tip 1: Decide how much weight you need to lose - Most people start their weight loss journey by claiming to be xyz kilos overweight. This isn't a healthy way to project or aim for weight loss. Calculate your desired weight against your height by using reliable methods like the BMI, and set a healthy weight loss target. This is often half the battle won.

Weight loss tip 2: Time management - This is quite often overlooked. Decide which part of your day will be dedicated to exercise, when in the week you will stock up on groceries, and when you will do the cooking - all within your current work and home life routine. If you don't do this now, your days will be rushed and unplanned, and you won't be able to sustain your weight loss efforts.

Weight loss tip 3: Stock your kitchen - Keep your house well-stocked with fruits, vegetables, healthy meats, grains, cereals, spices, and flavourers. Follow our tricks to healthy cooking, cooking vegetables for the week, and low-fat cooking posts to understand how best you can stock your kitchen with healthy and delicious ingredients. All of this will go into helping the next step - cooking healthy meals at home.

Weight loss tip 4: Eat healthy homecooked meals - Whether it's you who's cooking, a family member, or house help, ensure that every one practises healthy cooking methods, and ingredients. Ask any person who's lost weight the healthy way, and you will always hear about how healthy homecooked meals were a big reason behind it. Use less oil, low salt, fresh produce, and you'll start seeing results in no time.

Weight loss tip 5 : Start a cardio + weights workout - A healthy weight loss programme is incomplete without a good exercise routine, and weight training mixed with cardio is the best way to lose weight. Of course, variations and forms exist, but any workout that stresses on muscle tone and increased heart rate will always help you lose weight and keep it off. You can either start a home workout today, or rely on gyms for fitness training.

Weight loss tip 6: Alter your snacking habits - At Health Me Up, we have several healthy snacking ideas for you. Set those French fries aside, skip that aerated drink, and ban those unhealthy deep fried samosas. Explore the healthy snack world and you will find several appetisers, party snacks, movie snacks and meal accompaniments that'll satisfy every craving of yours.

Weight loss tip 7: Have at least one active hobby - It isn't sufficient to rely on just 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity per day. Moving from bed to office chair, and back to bed, isn't a healthy way to live. Buy a motion sensor gaming console that lets you enjoy social games with friends and family, plan weekend trips, clean your house once a week, dance, play sports, the list is endless. Get out of the coffee shop and dining table rut, and you'll have fun along with the healthy weight loss.

Weight loss tip 8: Find a solution to combat stress - As we pointed out in our post about stress and weight loss, stress is always detrimental to healthy weight loss in the long run. Find ways to combat stress and you'll soon realise that your diet and exercise aren't sabotaged anymore, and that you truly do see results. Look at yoga, meditation, deep breathing exercises, or simple hobbies like reading to fight stress.

Weight loss tip 9: Drink plenty of water - You've known that your body relies heavily on water for all important bodily functions, and yet you skimp on drinking adequate quantities of water every day. Well, it's time to stop that. Check out some exciting ways to make water interesting and you'll be packing it away in no time. Do not forget to carry a water bottle to your workout, and take a few sips after every 2-3 minutes of exercise.

Weight loss tip 10: Plan healthy vacations - Why go all the way with healthy weight loss, when one tiny vacation will just come along and topple it all? Healthy vacations aren't impossible. Take a look at how you can eat smart on a holiday, and then at bodyweight workouts that you can carry with you wherever you go, to understand how to holiday right. Above all, remember that these are lifelong habits that'll help you stay fit forever and not short term weight loss quickfixes. ( indiatimes.com )

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Rise of the Pitchforkers

Rise of the Pitchforkers - Can a group of protesters waving farm implements bring about new rules for pesticide use?

It was a typical morning when the helicopter flew by. Neila Owen was milking the goats and tending to her garden in the Coastal Range of Oregon when it passed. She watched the herbicide that trailed it form a cloud on a hill above her home, then drift slowly across the valley. Within hours, a heavy feeling gripped her muscles, then settled into her joints. Vomiting followed arthritic aches. Her menstrual cycle arrived five days early, she says, with pelvic pain that felt like bones splitting. Later, the farm’s fruit trees stood dead in the yard.

The Pitchfork Rebellion alleges a connection between pesticides and illness in coastal Oregon - Photo by Martin Fischer

Owen would report the incident to state officials, without result. The call was not her first. It came two years after she and some 70 of her neighbors took to the streets waving pitchforks to rally against the local timber industry's practice of swiping the trees from the hilltops, which had led to mudslides that wiped out the road to the nearest town. Since their first days of protest with farm implements, the so-called Pitchfork Rebellion, angry over the clear-cuts and sliding earth, has become increasingly concerned with the routine spraying of herbicides on the hills around their homes, a practice that typically follows timber harvests. Since then, their community has become an object of study.

A public health investigation near Triangle Lake, Ore., now involves three federal agencies and the state. It is the first to probe how Americans like Owen, who live in the low-lying areas between patchworks of timberland, fare amid frequent sprays of herbicides. If the study finds evidence that these chemicals are finding their way into people’s bodies there, it could lead to new rules on spraying at the state level and feed into a national inquiry on the matter.

Until now, state officials said they had no more to provoke inquiry in Triangle Lake than reports of flulike symptoms. Photos of rashes and burns lived in private collections. Older women, stricken with rollercoaster menstrual cycles and crushing fatigue, blamed hormones. Right now there's no way to know for sure what to make of these symptoms, but the spraying of herbicides seems like a possible culprit—and one that should be investigated.

There are some more specific signs of a problem. Since those early days of pitchfork waving, several dozen people, including Pitchforkers and schoolchildren, were found to be urinating traces of 2,4-D and Atrazine—two controversial compounds that some have linked to cancer and hormonal disruption. Pitchfork organizer Day Owen, husband to Neila and the face of the Pitchfork Rebellion, recruited Dana Barr of Emory University to conduct the study, and she found signs of exposure in all 44 people she tested. That’s surprising, even in rural areas where residents are frequently exposed to pesticides, because exposure so rarely affects everyone—though the health effects of that exposure are still in question.

Now, the EPA, the CDC, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the state are investigating. Federal experts have criticized Oregon’s Pesticide Analytical Response Center for an erratic handling of potential poisonings in the past, and the Oregon Health Authority is now testing people, plants, and water in the area. State and federal agencies are splitting the cost of a likely $200,000 first-phase tab and targeting the two herbicides that might be dangerous.

The inquiry comes as the EPA takes a second look at Atrazine. Years ago it was shown to be noncarcinogenic, but now there's evidence that it's polluting our water supplies and wreaks havoc on hormones. (Some have taken issue with the noncarcinogenicity findings as well.) The review will include data from local efforts to probe the effects of Atrazine exposure in Arkansas and California, as well as the data now being collected in Oregon. Depending on what they find, we may see new restrictions on spraying crops and timber, particularly above and next to people’s homes. The EPA plans a similar safety review of 2,4-D in 2013.

The first health problems that were said to be caused by this recent spraying of herbicides did little but provoke conflict and derision in Oregon. Pitchforkers say they could find no one in state government with an interest in exploring the issue. After protests escalated, Owen was roughed up and taken to the Lane County jail following a rally on May 30, 2008, arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and interfering with a police officer. There, a stiff-looking man read to him from his own credit card statements, making clear Owen was being watched. An ensuing court case found Owen had been under surveillance by Homeland Security for advocating for “revolution” during rallies. The surveillance and bust-up of the event, along with Owen’s arrest, made such a public display—another organizer was repeatedly TASERed—that the story landed on MTV. The charges against Owen were dropped.

Timber lobbyist Terry Witt said local companies have used Atrazine and 2,4-D as directed by federal guidelines. But until now, they have dismissed Owen as an irksome eccentric—he happens to be the founder of an unusual religious sect that incorporates vegetarianism, yoga, meditation, and martial arts into the spiritual teachings of the ancient Essenes—and other Triangle Lake critics as extremists. Several years ago, someone torched a helicopter and poured sugar into the gas tanks of heavy equipment, but today’s Rebellion relies on letter-writing campaigns, newspaper op-eds, and major ad campaigns. One well-off couple has spent tens of thousands of dollars on private environmental testing. Most participants in the movement say they don’t condone eco-terrorism but acknowledge that tempers get hot at times, and that it takes effort to tamp down talk of shooting helicopters.

Witt said the industry would like to know whether the herbicides do cause harm and that it's ready to make changes based on sound science. It’s been hard for the industry to separate today’s issues, however, with the area’s troubling history with spraying—one that’s pushed many of its residents near paranoia. In the 1970s, spraying of another pesticide called 2,4,5-T led to dioxin contamination of water supplies, deer and elk tissue, and was linked to human health problems. That herbicide—which, by the way, was a key ingredient in Agent Orange—has since been banned, but it left its mark on the minds of those living on the Coastal Range.

Some say the local concerns are warranted. The prior contamination of water by 2,4,5-T was at first concealed by the EPA. And during the last safety review of Atrazine in 2003, the agency held more than 50 closed-door meetings with Syngenta, the company that manufactures the substance, indicating behind-the-scenes pressure from industry while scientists analyzed available research. While the American research community remains divided on the question of whether it causes cancer, data suggesting that Atrazine can affect pregnancy and childhood health through hormone disruption are now accepted by the EPA. It has meanwhile been banned in the European Union and even in Switzerland, where Syngenta is based.

It’s amid this climate that the EPA has landed in Triangle Lake as a test case in the field. The agency first responded to a petition filed by the Pitchfork Rebellion in February 2010 pointing to community health problems and requesting drift and buffer protection zones around homes and schools. By the time Barr’s test results were made public, the EPA had already begun an inquiry, coinciding with the broader safety review of Atrazine that was under way in Washington.

Oregon and federal officials have said they do not know where the health study will lead, but while they anticipate sampling to continue through the summer of 2012, the state could react swiftly if a first round of government testing shows similar levels of pesticide exposure to the Barr tests. Oregon has the latitude to create pesticide buffer zones around sensitive areas like schools, homes, and farms and could follow the lead of some agricultural counties in California that have done the same. Pitchforkers are pushing for the idea and have rejected offers from law firms to finance a class-action lawsuit. For now, all they want are new regulations. ( slate.com )

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Want to boost your brain? Take a tip from Mother Nature

Want to boost your brain? Take a tip from Mother Nature - Time spent away from electronic gadgets can stimulate creative abilities study finds

Wandering lonely as a cloud high o’er vales and hills may be the best way to recharge your batteries - so long as you leave your conventional battery-powered devices at home.

What writers have known for centuries, scientists are now endeavouring to prove – that contact with nature can boost creativity and problem solving skills.

Backpackers who spent four days in the wilderness without access to electronic devices scored 50 per cent better on a creativity test at the end of the trip, according to researchers.

The backpackers – 56 in all – joined one of four separate expeditions run by the Outward Bound organisation and took a ten item “creativity test” at the start and end of the hike. On average they got four out of ten questions right at the start and six right at the end.

The researchers used the Remote Associates Test, a standard measure of creative thinking, in which participants are given three words and asked to supply a fourth that is linked with the other three. For example the answer to SAME/TENNIS/HEAD might be MATCH – because a match is the same, tennis match and match head.

Earlier studies have shown that going for a long walk can improve the accuracy of proof-reading, the ability to perceive an optical illusion and the capacity to repeat a list of numbers backwards.

Yet the time people spend outdoors and in contact with nature is diminishing. Children spend only 15-25 minutes daily in outdoor play and sport and the average teenager spends more than 7.5 hours a day using mobile phones or computers and watching TV, according to the US researchers.

Psychologists from the University of Utah who led the study said: “Our modern society is filled with sudden events (sirens, horns, ringing phones, alarms, television) that hijack attention. By contrast natural environments are associated with gentle soft fascination, allowing the executive attentional system to replenish.”

“Executive attention” is the ability to switch rapidly among tasks which is important in a modern society but is overtaxed by the constant demands from a technological environment.

However, the authors of the study, published in the online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One, say they cannot be sure if the effects they observed were due to exposure to nature or withdrawal of electronic devices – or a combination of both.

“We show that four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multimedia and technology, increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50 percent,” the researchers conclude.

The participants had an average age of 28 and took part in treks in Alaska, Colorado, Washington State and Maine.

The results were controlled for age differences between the groups that took the test, because “as you get older, you have greater verbal abilities,” the researchers said.

“This is a way of showing that interacting with nature has real, measurable benefits to creative problem-solving that really hadn't been formally demonstrated before,” said David Strayer, a co-author of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Utah.

“It provides a rationale for trying to understand what is a healthy way to interact in the world, and that burying yourself in front of a computer 24/7 may have costs that can be remediated by taking a hike in nature.” ( independent.co.uk )

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Stephen Hawking to turn 70, defying disease

Stephen Hawking to turn 70, defying disease — British scientist Stephen Hawking has decoded some of the most puzzling mysteries of the universe but he has left one mystery unsolved: How he has managed to survive so long with such a crippling disease.

The physicist and cosmologist was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease when he was a 21-year-old student at Cambridge University. Most people die within a few years of the diagnosis, called motor neurone disease in the U.K. On Sunday, Hawking will turn 70.

"I don't know of anyone who's survived this long," said Ammar Al-Chalabi, director of the Motor Neurone Disease Care and Research Centre at King's College London. He does not treat Hawking and described his longevity as "extraordinary."

"It is unusual for (motor neurone disease) patients to survive for decades, but not unheard of," said Dr. Rup Tandan, a neurology professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Still, Tandan said many longtime survivors had ventilators to breathe for them — which Hawking does not.

Hawking first gained attention with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," a simplified overview of the universe. It sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. His subsequent theories have revolutionized modern understanding of concepts like black holes and the Big Bang theory of how the universe began.

FILE In this June 19, 2006 file photo Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking speaks at an international gathering of scientists on the origins of the universe at Beijing's Great Hall of the People in China. British scientist Stephen Hawking has decoded some of the most puzzling mysteries of the universe but he has left one mystery for others to explain: How he managed to survive so long with such a crippling disease. The physicist and cosmologist was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, or motor neuron disease, when he was a 21-year-old student at Cambridge University. Most people die within a few years of the disease being identified. On Sunday, Hawking will turn 70.(AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel-File)

To mark his birthday Sunday, Cambridge University is holding a public symposium on "The State of the Universe," featuring talks from 27 leading scientists, including Hawking himself. For 30 years, he held a mathematics post at the university previously held by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking retired from that position in 2009 and is now director of research at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

Hawking achieved all that despite being nearly entirely paralyzed and in a wheelchair since 1970. He now communicates only by twitching his right cheek. Since catching pneumonia in 1985, Hawking has needed around-the-clock care and relies on a computer and voice synthesizer to speak.

A tiny infrared sensor sits on his glasses, hooked up to a computer. The sensor detects Hawking's cheek pulses, which select words displayed on a computer screen. The chosen words are then spoken by the voice synthesizer. It can take up to 10 minutes for Hawking to formulate a single sentence.

"The only trouble is (the voice synthesizer) gives me an American accent," the Briton wrote on his website.

It took Hawking four years to write his last book, "The Grand Design," missing his publisher's original deadline.

Hawking declined requests from The Associated Press for an interview, but his personal assistant, Judith Croasdell, spoke to the AP. She described her boss as remarkably patient.

"The way he communicates can seem frustratingly slow to most people but he doesn't let that impede his thinking," she said.

After a brief hospital stay, Hawking told her that he spent the time thinking about black holes.

Hawking typically comes into the office after a big breakfast and reading the news, Croasdell said. "He's not an early morning person, but he does stay quite late," until about 7 or 8 in the evening, she said.

Hawking's rooftop university office is crammed full of memorabilia: family photos, a miniature NASA shuttle, and a signed picture of himself with President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. On top of physics books sits a disability access guide for the university.

Hawking's fame has led to guest appearances on some of his favorite television shows including "The Simpsons" and "Star Trek." His animated likeness from "The Simpsons" has even been turned into an action figure — one of which sits proudly on his office desk. There's also a Homer Simpson clock that Hawking is known to glare at when visitors are late for an appointment.

"He's a big ham, he loves the spotlight," said Kitty Ferguson, who's written two biographies of the physicist.

She said he has a wry sense of humor and has programmed his computer to respond to random encounters with people who ask if he's Stephen Hawking. "No, but I'm often mistaken for that man," his voice synthesizer deadpans.

Lou Gehrig's disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks motor neurons, cells that control the muscles. Patients typically suffer muscle weakness and wasting, become paralyzed and have problems talking, swallowing and breathing. Only about 10 percent of patients live longer than a decade.

People who are stricken at a young age, as Hawking was, generally have a better chance of surviving longer. Most people are diagnosed between 50 and 70. Life expectancy generally ranges from two to five years after symptoms like slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and muscle weakness set in. Hawking's personal physicians don't discuss his condition with the press, Croasdell said.

For some reason, the disease has progressed more slowly in Hawking than in most. Al-Chalabi and colleagues are analyzing a DNA sample from Hawking, along with those of other patients, to see if there is something rare about his disease or any genetic mutations that could explain his long survival and if that information could be used to help others.

Some experts said the type of care Hawking has, including about a dozen health workers 24 hours a day, may have extended his life expectancy.

"The disease can sometimes stabilize and then the kind of care delivered may be a factor in survival," said Virginia Lee, a brain disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. "Remaining mentally alert is also extremely important and he has clearly done that."

Hawking says he tries not to think about his limitations.

"I have had (Lou Gehrig's disease) for practically all my adult life," he says on his website. "Yet it has not prevented me from having a very attractive family and being successful in my work," he writes. "I try to lead as normal a life as possible and not think about my condition or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many."

From the office pictures documenting his achievements, that certainly seems to be the case. Framed photos show the physicist with several popes and on memorable trips to China and Easter Island.

He has even flown in a space simulator. In 2007, Hawking took a zero-gravity flight in Florida, the first time in 40 years he abandoned his wheelchair.

"That was the happiest I've ever seen Stephen," said Sam Blackburn, Hawking's graduate assistant, who accompanied him on the ride along with about a half-dozen others, including two doctors. "He just had the biggest grin on his face."

Hawking has also been married twice and has three children and three grandchildren. With his daughter Lucy, he has written several children's books on physics.

Al-Chalabi said most patients with Lou Gehrig's disease succumb after their breathing muscles stop working. He had no predictions for what the biggest health risks to Hawking's future might be.

"He is truly remarkable," Al-Chalabi said. "This is someone who's managed to find ways around every single problem the disease has thrown at him." ( Associated Press. )

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Healthy two-headed baby born in Brazil

Healthy two-headed baby born in Brazil - A Brazilian woman has given birth to a two-headed baby boy and doctors say the newborn appears to be in good health. Maria de Nazare has decided to name the pair, who share a heart, lungs, liver and pelvis, Emanoel and Jesus.

"When doctors scanned her they realized that the baby had two heads and that a normal birth would be a great risk both for mother and baby," hospital director Claudionor Assis de Vasconcelos told Brazil's O Povo newspaper. "The caesarean took an hour because the baby was sitting down."

"Despite all the problems we have as a small interior hospital we managed to save both mother and baby, which was our aim," he said. "And for us it was a great surprise to find out that the child was in really good health."

De Nazare was expecting twins and only found out about the two-headed child minutes before doctors advised her to have a caesarean birth in order to save both her life and that of her baby. Along with two heads, the 9.9 pound newborns have separate spines.

A two-headed baby born in Brazil is reportedly healthy

In some two-headed births where one brain is less developed, one head is removed in order to save the child's life. But rarer cases like this one, where there are two functioning brains, complicates the decision making process for doctors.

"If both their brains are functioning, how are we going to choose which head to remove?" said Neila Dahas, director of the Santa Casa hospital. "We are not considering the possibility of surgery. What we've got to think about at this moment is to maintain the children in good condition and see how they will develop."

Conjoined twins sharing a body, but with separate heads, are extremely rare but not without precedent. This is the second such birth in Brazil this year. However, the other child died after a few hours because of a lack of oxygen to one of the child's heads.

There have been at least 14 dicephalic conjoined twins born over the past 200 years.

In the United States, 21-year-old Abigail and Brittany Hensel were the subject of a 1996 documentary from The Learning Channel and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. ( The Sideshow )

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Yuck! Most Kids Don't Shower Before Using Public Pools

Yuck! Most Kids Don't Shower Before Using Public Pools - Most people shower after a day at the pool, but do you know anyone who's adamant about showering before going in the water? Many parents don't understand the risk of water infections from public pools and water parks, and few realize a pre-swim shower can largely prevent these illnesses, new research shows.

Recreational water illnesses (RWI), which are spread by swallowing, breathing in or contacting contaminated water in some way, affect more than 10,000 Americans each year. Public pools and water parks play a major role in spreading RWIs, but few parents have their kids take the necessary preventive steps, according to the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.

The poll asked 865 parents, with children ages 5 to 12, questions regarding their opinions about water park risks and basic water park rules. When asked about whose responsibility it is to prevent infections, 28 percent of parents indicated it's the sole responsibility of the water park's staff. Furthermore, most parents chose to ignore parks' requests for hygienic pre-swim showers.

Showering before a swim isn't just about curbing germs. A 2010 study by University of Illinois researchers found that when swimmers' nitrogen-rich consumer products, such as cosmetics and sunscreens, mixed with pool disinfectants, the products become chemically modified and converted into more toxic agents. Long-term exposure to toxic disinfection byproducts may be able to mutate genes, induce birth defects, accelerate the aging process, cause respiratory ailments and even induce cancer, according to the University of Illinois researchers.

"While 64 percent of parents feel it is very important for children to not swallow the water at a water park, only 26 percent of parents think it is very important to shower before getting in the water," Matthew Davis, director of the poll and associate professor in the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the university's medical school, said in a statement.

It's true that water parks should make sure that their water has been correctly disinfected — but disinfection can only go so far, the researchers say. Although chlorine kills most of the germs that cause RWIs within an hour, cryptosporidiosis, a parasite that causes abdominal cramping, diarrhea and nausea, can survive for days even in properly disinfected water.

The best way to fight the spread of RWIs like cryptosporidiosis is to prevent the parasites from entering public pools and water parks in the first place.

The researchers recommend that parents make sure their children wash thoroughly with soap and water before swimming.

Parents should also take their kids on bathroom breaks and frequently conduct diaper checks to prevent their children from urinating in the pool. Unfortunately, this problem isn't limited to children, as one in five adults admit to peeing in swimming pools, according to 2009 survey conducted by the Water Quality and Health Council. ( foxnews.com )

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Five Things Men Should Know

Five Things Men Should Know - If the development and use of Botox has contributed anything to society, it's that the paralyzing and toxic beauty aid served as an effective reminder of just how important eyebrows are when communicating. When you can't move them, your face is jammed in first gear — like you're constantly reacting to a surprise party. Indeed, one of many things you likely didn't know about eyebrows is that by simply freezing them, we effectively wipe out the intricate expressiveness of the human face.

It's a bit unsettling to consider, but it helps to illustrate the extraordinary role of the eyebrows in our culture. Not only do they accent the face and contribute to attractiveness, they also convey a wealth of emotional expression, and, at one time in our development, they likely provided visual clues of sexual dimorphism to others at a distance (big brow, man; little brow, woman).

For all that our eyebrows do for us, we guys tend to do very little for them. So, let's take a moment and honor the eyebrows with five things men should know about them.

Actor Robert Pattinson shows off his sexy eyebrows as he poses for pictures as he arrives at the French premiere of his movie "Water for Elephants" in Paris, April 28, 2011.

1. The average eyebrow has 500 hairs

The first thing to know about eyebrows is that most men don’t likely have any extras other than the two God gave them, so take heed when it comes to shaping and grooming them.

Not only do most brows feature fewer hairs per square inch than what's found on the head, they also tend to grow back twice as slowly. The lesson here is that any decision made to manscape your eyebrows should come on the heels of plenty of consideration, because you’ll have to live with the consequences longer than you might expect.

2. Fashionable eyebrows were once made from mouse skin

The look isn't as hideous as it sounds. In fact, if contemporary portraits of the colonial elite in America near the end of the 18th century are any indication, the gray mouse skin looks fairly normal, if not slightly bushy by our standards.

In The Eyebrow, authors Robyn Cosio and Cynthia Robins trace the evolution of the eyebrow as a target of beauty and fashion in both men and women back to the earliest-known civilizations. It's clear that, while we may celebrate the eyes as the most beautiful facial feature, it is in fact the brow that is the object of that attention and the area where alterations can bring about the most dramatic change in one's looks.

3. Eyebrows are more vital to facial recognition than eyes

Another thing men should know about eyebrows is that they, not the eyes, are the more likely mirrors into the soul.

In one of the only studies of its kind, researchers from MIT sought to determine whether the eyes or the eyebrows, when omitted from familiar faces, would cause more recognition problems. Not surprising, when, considering the topic of this piece, subjects had significantly more trouble identifying familiar faces when they were presented without eyebrows.

4. Your eyebrows give you away

What you probably didn't know about eyebrows or human physiology in general is that the human face differs from the rest of the body in that many of the muscles used for facial expressions — namely the frontalis and orbicularis oris — are attached or connected to other muscles, making their actions largely involuntary.

This leads to what Dr. Paul Ekman calls "microexpressions," or tiny, split-second tics and other gestures that surrender our intentions to those that can read them. Thus, no matter how hard you try to conceal the truth or tell a lie, your eyebrows are likely to give you away.

5. Men with unibrows were once considered inherent criminals

The last thing men should know about eyebrows is that some styles may subject them to criminal profiling.

The unibrow has been vilified in the West, attributed by various unscientific methods as having a strong association with criminal behavior, substandard intelligence and other perceived human shortcomings, none of which possessed any clinical validity. That said, short of a meticulous goatee on an evil twin, has any specific facial hair ever undergone the same negative scrutiny as the unibrow?

While it is a highly desirable quality in some cultures, the most recent indirect attempt to bring the unibrow into fashion in the West occurred in 2002, when Salma Hayek portrayed iconic unibrowed artist Frida Kahlo in Frida. The film won two Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Makeup, but, alas, the unibrow failed to catch on. If even the sexy Hayek couldn't make it stylish, you couldn't possibly make it work on anyone else. ( foxnews.com )

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IUDs Most Effective, Reversible Form of Birth Control

IUDs Most Effective, Reversible Form of Birth Control - A report released Monday by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods—specifically intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants—are the safest and the most effective contraceptive for all reproductive-age women.

IUDs are small T-shaped devices, which are inserted by a doctor into the uterus to prevent pregnancy. One type is the copper IUD, which emits a small amount of copper into the uterus to prevents fertilization by interfering with sperm and also stops a fertilized egg to attach to the uterine wall. The copper IUD is effective for up to 10 years. The second type is the hormonal IUD, which releases the hormone progestin into the uterus to prevent pregnancy for up to five years.

The contraceptive implant is a matchstick-sized rod that is inserted under the skin of the upper arm and releases a controlled amount of an ovulation-suppressing hormone for up to three years—and is the most effective reversible contraception available with a pregnancy rate of 0.05 percent, according to the report.

IUDs and implants are only available in a doctor’s office.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing editor of Fox News Health and head of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Hackensack University Medical Center, said he agrees with the report, but said precautions need to be taken before deciding on an implant or device.

“IUD’s do give a significant degree of protection to prevent pregnancy,” he said. “They still are invasive and they do have potential side effects, like infection. Sometimes these infections are unknown because the patient doesn’t have any symptoms. It could cause damage to the reproductive organs, especially the fallopian tubes.”

Another side effect for women using a copper IUD is increased menstrual bleeding and cramping for the first few months, which is the main cause of discontinuation among users. Alvarez said there are additional, more serious side effects.

“One of the leading causes of infertility for women is Chlamydia—and whether it is here in the U.S. or around the world its is pervasive, it is sexually transmitted and can lead to the obstruction of the fallopian tubes but also causes chronic inflammation and it may be just as significant in preventing women in getting pregnant,” he said.

Alvarez said women thinking about an IUD or implant should discuss the potential risks with her doctor.

“Even though IUDs—especially in the last 10 years or so—have proven to be quite effective, doctors need to take a long, hard look at who uses them and account for the risk of infertility,” Alvarez said.

According to The College, more than half of women who have an unplanned pregnancy were actively using contraception, but were inconsistent. LARCs have the highest continuation rates of all reversible contraceptives because of their low maintenance.

“LARC methods are the best tool we have to fight against unintended pregnancies, which currently account for 49 percent of U.S. pregnancies each year,” said Dr. Eve Espey, co-author of the report, said in a press release.“The major advantage is that after insertion, LARCs work without having to do anything else. There’s no maintenance required.”

Fewer than six percent of U.S. women who use a form of birth control choose the LARC method despite the benefits, according to The College, and say that the cost and lack of knowledge may be to blame.

“Women need to know that today’s IUDs are much improved from earlier versions, and complications are extremely rare. IUDs are not abortifacients—they work before pregnancy is established—and are safe for the majority of women, including adolescents and women who have never had children. And while upfront costs may be higher, LARCs are much more cost-effective than other contraceptive methods in the long run,” Espey said. ( foxnews.com )

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Japanese Scientists Create Meat From Poop

Japanese Scientists Create Meat From Poop - Anyone up for some poop burgers?

Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda from the Okayama Laboratory certainly doesn't believe in human waste.

He thinks that's perfectly good protein you're sending out to sea, and he's found a way to extract it, mix it with steak sauce and create a fecal feast fit for a king.

And despite the downside of having to add soya to bind it all together, Prof Ikeda thinks there's no reason why we shouldn't all tuck into his turd burgers.

The grossest potential solution to the global food crisis: poop meat.

Why would he even think of it, you might ask.

Because Tokyo Sewage asked him to. Tokyo is swimming in sewage mud, it seems, and there's only one way it can save itself and that's eat it.

Prof Ikeda found the mud was loaded with protein due to the high bacteria content. Combine it with reaction enhancer and put it in a magical machine called an "exploder" and artificial steak comes out the other end.

According to Digital Trends, it's 63 percent protein, 25 percent carbohydrates, 3 percent lipids and 9 percent minerals.

It's colored red so you don't know it's poo.

"Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef," Digital Trends reports.

Prof Ikeda and his colleagues say it's the perfect solution for reducing waste and emissions from flatulent cows.

Which is understandable, because if someone told you that Whopper you just ate was actually made from yesterday's leftover feces, you'd probably be too traumatized to masticate meat ever again.

Of course, there's a hitch - besides the fact it's made from poo and soya. The cost of producing Prof Ikeda's stinky steaks at the moment is about "10 to 20 times" the price of carving it off a cow.

Leave it to the fast food chains to work out the economics. You can't argue the mass production side of the equation is already sorted... ( foxnews.com )

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Bipolar Disease: Facts About a Treatable Illness

Bipolar Disease: Facts About a Treatable Illness - Actress Catherine Zeta Jones, the wife of actor Michael Douglas, recently received inpatient treatment for Bipolar II disorder. Bipolar disorder is a mental illness that affects millions of individuals, and can be managed with medication and sometimes therapy. Here are some interesting facts about the disease

Bipolar Disease: Facts About a Treatable Illness

- Bipolar disorder is characterized by a cycle of depression periods, with some hypomanic episodes, but with no full-blown manic episodes. This is one of the key differences between a Bipolar I and a Bipolar II diagnosis.

- Bipolar disorder is one of the mental illnesses which can be managed with medication and/or therapy. Known also as manic-depressive illness, bipolar disorder is one of the mood disorders characterized by variable shifts in mood, activity levels, energy and the capability to perform routine daily tasks adequately.

- Symptoms may be severe and can cause relationship issues, workplace difficulties and suicide. Bipolar disorder is usually able to be managed with medication.

- Bipolar disorder develops at a young age, usually in the teen or early adult years, with 50 percent of the cases developing before age 25.

- The prevalence in the U.S. is approximately one percent for a lifetime, with no distinction among various ethnic groups. The incidence of Bipolar II disorder is higher in women, but there is no difference with Bipolar I disorder.

- Almost six million people, or approximately 2.5 percent of the U.S. population have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Rarely are there any occurrences which begin after the age of 50.

- If you have an immediate relative with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder you have an increased risk of developing this illness, as there is a genetic component to bipolar disorder, as is also true with many of the mental illnesses.

- Hypomanic episodes can appear to others as continuous optimism and energy. No treatment is usually necessary until unhealthy behavior occurs, or a depressive cycle begins. This is in contrast with the manic episodes of Bipolar I disorder, in which treatment is always necessary.

- Examples of medications for the treatment of bipolar disorder include Abilify, Lamictal, Cymbalta, fish oil, Wellbutrin, Seroquel, Lithium and Zoloft. One of the key components to relapse is patients discontinuing their medications once they are feeling better. Education of patients is crucial to prevent this complication.

- Celebrities who have admitted to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder include Richard Dreyfuss, Mel Gibson, Kurt Cobain, Ozzy Osbourne, Axl Rose, Linda Hamilton, composers Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann. ( news.yahoo.com )

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How to Clear Wax From the Ear

How to Clear Wax From the Ear - Earwax is beneficial to the ear because it traps dirt and foreign particles and prevents them from reaching the eardrum. Sometimes earwax can build up in the ear. It may harden and become trapped inside the ear. If the hardened wax presses up against the eardrum, it can cause hearing loss and ringing in the ear. Wax buildup can usually be treated at home and does not require the care of a doctor.

How to Clear Wax From the Ear

Step 1

Place a few drops of mineral oil in the ear canal. Use an eyedropper to carefully drop the mineral oil into the ear to help soften the wax, says the Mayo Clinic. Repeat once a day for up to five days.


Step 2

Irrigate the ear. Buy an at-home earwax removal kit that includes a rubber bulb syringe. Fill the syringe with warm water, then squeeze the water into the ear. Tip your head over the sink to remove the water and excess wax from the ear. Repeat once a day for several days until all excess wax is removed.


Step 3

Dry the ear with a clean towel. Do not use cotton swabs or your finger to wipe out the ear, says ear, nose and throat doctor Douglas Hoffman M.D., Ph.D. Cotton swabs can push the wax farther down into the ear canal.


Step 4

Consult a doctor. If you are unable to remove the wax on your own, a doctor can use a syringe or a curette, a curved instrument designed to protect the eardrum, to remove the wax.


Tips and Warnings

• Rinse your ear out in the shower with water daily to help reduce ear wax buildup.
• Do not stick foreign objects into your ear to dislodge the hardened wax.

Things You'll Need

• Mineral oil Eyedropper At-home earwax removal kit Towel

( livestrong.com )

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How Aggressive Is Your Hospital?

How Aggressive Is Your Hospital? - One morning during my training, I noticed that the belly of a patient in the I.C.U. had grown rounder and tighter overnight. The patient had gone through a difficult liver transplant a day earlier and was bleeding, it seemed, into his abdomen. I was the newest member of the transplant team, but even so, I knew what had to be done right away: We had to take this man back to the operating room.

But I hesitated for a moment. Not because I was unsure of whom to call or how to go about scheduling an emergency operation at the hospital. I paused because I wanted to brace myself for what I imagined would be the reaction of the surgeon in charge.

Can aggressive care be better?

Wiry and impeccable in his person, the head surgeon of the transplant team was considered one of the finest, and most fearless, in his field. Patients whom others would have considered too far gone or who would have normally just lingered and died made Lazarean recoveries under this doctor’s meticulous care. But my guess was that he wouldn’t be happy to hear about a complication. Particularly one serious enough to require an urgent return to the operating room.

I was wrong. The doctor barely flinched when I told him the news. Instead of the blast of angry expletives I’d feared, I was greeted with a calm and simple request: “Book him for a take-back to the operating room.”

When I later relayed the morning’s events to a friend, another surgeon-in-training who was ahead of me in the same program by a year, he laughed. “It’s not a lack of complications that makes a great surgeon,” he said. “It’s being aggressive about taking care of those complications.”

Over the last few years, no other aspect of the health care system has lost its luster as much as aggressive care. Once considered a point of pride and a source of strength, aggressive care has now been transformed into the whipping boy for health care reformers of all stripes. Armed with data that shows geographic variations in spending and the outcomes of patients who have recently died, politicians from both sides of the aisle, administration officials and even insurers have transformed the nuanced caveats of the research into a broad “more-is-worse” rallying cry. In this heated environment, restricting payments to hospitals whose total expenditures, total I.C.U. days and total hospital days exceed the norm has become a foregone conclusion so appealing that even usually wary consumer watchdog groups have enthusiastically added their own licks.

The notion that aggressive care leads to worse outcomes has been easy to buy into because it seems to offer an easy remedy for spiraling costs while playing into our worst fears about overzealous health care providers.

But in journals and in newspapers there have been a few brave voices issuing cautions. And most recently one group of researchers has gone so far as to say that at least for one group of patients, hospitals that offer aggressive care are better than those that don’t.

Analyzing the insurance claims data of more than four million Medicare patients admitted for vascular, orthopedic or general surgery operations, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the University of Illinois in Chicago found no difference in the rate of complications for aggressive and nonaggressive hospitals. But when they looked at all the patients who had complications and examined their outcomes, the researchers found that regardless of the urgency of their operations, those patients who were cared for at more aggressive hospitals were significantly more likely to survive their complications than those who had their operations at less aggressive hospitals.

“There is something that is going right at those more aggressive hospitals,” said Dr. Jeffrey H. Silber, lead author and a professor of pediatrics and health care management at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Aggressive hospitals don’t increase your chance of complications, but they decrease your chance of dying if you get a complication because you survive those complications better.”

Referred to as “failure to rescue,” the inability of a hospital to help its patients survive surgical complications may be a more accurate measure of quality than traditional indicators. Mortality rates, for example, are as dependent on the general health of a hospital’s patient population as they are on the quality of care delivered. “The best hospitals are going to attract the sickest and most complicated patients, and that will inevitably taint mortality rates,” Dr. Silber noted.

While Dr. Silber and his co-investigators found that a hospital’s failure or success in treating surgical complications correlated consistently with factors that also characterized intensity of care — general expenditures, intensive care unit use and the total days of hospitalization — they found that benefits of this more aggressive care extended well beyond the time of the operation. “It’s not like these patients were filled up with antibiotics only to die later,” Dr. Silber said.

Clearly, lowering health care costs and increasing quality and efficiency will require approaches far more complex than broad penalties for hospitals that offer more aggressive care. “Most people have been saying that the health care system is too aggressive, implying that aggressiveness is bad because people are being operated on unnecessarily or too much stuff is being done on them and can harm them,” Dr. Silber said. “But we have to do detailed research that compares the effectiveness of different treatment approaches, because aggressiveness is not necessarily bad and may in fact be sometimes associated with better outcomes.”

He added, “We need to rein in expenditures, but we need to do it very carefully.” ( nytimes.com )

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Help on Losing Weight With Diabetes

Help on Losing Weight With Diabetes - Diabetics often struggle with weight issues. If you use insulin, you're even more likely to experience weight gain, the Mayo Clinic explains. Insulin is a hormone that regulates the body's absorption of sugar. Making lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise modifications, can help diabetics who want to lose weight. Consult your doctor before beginning any new diet or exercise regimen, and for tips on how to account for your diabetes.

Help on Losing Weight With Diabetes

Cut Calories

Consuming fewer calories results in weight loss. Start a low-calorie diet, including plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Pre-measure portion sizes to prevent eating large amounts of calories and swap high-calorie beverages for water. Also, eat breakfast. Diabetics shouldn't skip meals. Eating breakfast jump-starts the metabolism and helps to prevent overeating during the day.

Plan Meals

The American Diabetes Association recommends managing diabetes and weight loss with a plate measurement strategy. Put a line down the middle of a dinner plate. Divide one side again so you have a total of three sections on the plate. The largest section should include non-starchy vegetables, such as green beans, broccoli, spinach, carrots or cucumber. Include a starchy food on one of the small sections of the plate, such as whole-grain bread, high-fiber cereal, pasta or rice.

Include meat or meat substitutes on the final small section --- skinless turkey, chicken, fresh water fish, tofu, eggs or low-fat cheese. Consume an 8-ounce glass of milk with your meal, or eat up to 6 oz. of low-fat yogurt if you don't drink milk.

Diabetes Medications

Some diabetes medications promote weight loss. Weight loss is linked to metformin, exenatide and pramlintide, the Mayo Clinic reports. Taking these medications may also help reduce your insulin dosage. Work closely with your doctor to manage medications and follow his instructions; avoid skipping insulin doses. While skipping insulin may cause weight loss in the short term, the risks are serious. Blood sugar levels rise, boosting your risk for complications.

Physical Activity

Exercise is an effective tool for diabetics interested in losing weight. Talk with your doctor before starting an exercise plan. Measure your blood sugar before, during and after exercise. Discuss highs and lows with your doctor to ensure exercise safety. Healthy adults need 2 1/2 hours of activity weekly. Swimming, biking or walking briskly counts as moderate exercise.

Stop exercising if your blood sugar is 70 milligrams per deciliter or lower or if you feel shaky, the Mayo Clinic instructs. Consume ½-cup of fruit juice or five pieces of hard candy to get your blood sugar higher. Then, check your blood sugar again in 15 minutes. ( livestrong.com )

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Rise in Some Head and Neck Cancers Tied to Oral Sex

Rise in Some Head and Neck Cancers Tied to Oral Sex -- There's a worrisome uptick in the incidence of certain head and neck cancers among middle-aged and even younger Americans, and some experts link the trend to a rise in the popularity of oral sex over the past few decades.

That's because the human papillomavirus (HPV) is a major trigger for these cancers, and HPV can be transmitted through this type of sexual activity.

"It seems like a pretty good link that more sexual activity, particularly oral sex, is associated with increased HPV infection," said Dr. Greg Hartig, professor of otolaryngology--head and neck surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

According to Dr. William Lydiatt, professor and chief of head and neck surgical oncology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the overall incidence of head and neck cancers is going down, largely because fewer people are smoking (tobacco and drinking are the major traditional risk factors).

But the incidence of cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been going up over the past decades, he said. And those are the ones that are more likely to test positive for HPV.

"It's gotten to the point now where 60 to 70 percent of all tonsil cancers in the U.S. are HPV-related," Lydiatt said.

Although the link between HPV and these types of cancers is indisputable, the association with oral sex is strong but a little more speculative, experts say.

A 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that younger people with head and neck cancers who tested positive for oral HPV infection were more likely to have had multiple vaginal and oral sex partners in their lifetime.

In the study, having six or more oral sex partners over a lifetime was associated with a 3.4 times higher risk for oropharyngeal cancer -- cancers of the base of the tongue, back of the throat or tonsils. Having 26 or more vaginal-sex partners tripled the risk.

And the association increased as the number of partners -- in either category -- increased.

The researchers also reported that cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been increasing every year since 1973, and wrote that "widespread oral sex practices among adolescents may be a contributing factor in this increase."

The researchers concluded that in their study, oral sex was "strongly associated" with oropharyngeal cancer, but noted that they could not "rule out transmission through direct mouth-to-mouth contact" such as French kissing.

In 90 percent of cases of HPV infection in the body, the immune system clears HPV naturally within two years, according to federal health agencies, but in some cases, certain types of HPV can lead to cervical cancer or less common malignancies, such as oropharyngeal cancer. A 2010 Swedish study, in fact, suggested that the rise in oropharyngeal squamous cell cancer in a number of countries "is caused by a slow epidemic of HPV infection-induced [cancers]."

HPV tends to be site specific, explained Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, an adjunct instructor in the division of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In other words, it tends to stay wherever it first enters the body, be it the vagina (which in some cases could lead to cervical cancer), or the mouth and throat.

So does the increase in incidence mean that recent generations are having more sex than their grandparents?

"The general consensus on the street is that because people's [sexual] practices have changed over time, we're seeing an increase in these cancers," said Hartig. "I don't know why they're having more oral sex [but] the concept of having oral sex is something that seems less obscure to you than it did to your parents or grandparents."

"The thought would be that the Baby Boomers -- the 60s and early 70s generation -- probably had more freedom in sexual relationships in general, including oral sex," added Dr. Bert W. O'Malley, Jr., chair of otorhinolaryngology--head and neck surgery at the University of Pennsylvania.

And at least in terms of oral sex, that appears true for those younger than Boomers.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, in 2002, some 90 percent of males and 88 percent of females aged 25 to 44 reported ever having oral sex with a partner of the opposite sex.

Comparable figures from 1992 showed that about three-quarters of men aged 20 to 39 and closer to 70 percent of women aged 18 to 59 having ever given or received oral sex.

The silver lining is that the HPV-related head and neck cancers are eminently more treatable than those attributable to smoking or drinking, even though they tend to be diagnosed at a later stage.

"[HPV-related head-and-neck cancers] have been a lot easier to treat. You can use less-intensive radiation," said Dr. D.J. Verret, clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and a facial plastic surgeon in Plano, Texas.

About 85 percent of non-smoking people with HPV-positive tumors survive. That number drops to 45 or 50 percent in people who smoke and are HPV-negative, Lydiatt said.

And tongue and tonsil cancers remain relatively rare in the United States. The other good news -- at least for the younger set -- is that there is a relatively new vaccine to prevent against HPV infection. It's not going to help those who are already infected, but it "absolutely" could help those who aren't yet infected with the ubiquitous virus, Verret said.

Meanwhile, people, especially younger people, need to realize that smoking is not the only risk factor for head and neck cancer. If you find a lump in your neck, even if you're only 20 or 30, "pay attention to it," Lydiatt said. ( HealthDay News )

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150 years of dieting fads and still no quick fix

150 years of dieting fads and still no quick fix – Before there was Dr. Atkins, there was William Banting. He invented the low-carb diet of 1863. Even then Americans were trying out advice that urged fish, mutton or "any meat except pork" for breakfast, lunch and dinner — hold the potatoes, please.

It turns out our obsession with weight and how to lose it dates back at least 150 years. And while now we say "overweight" instead of "corpulent" — and obesity has become epidemic — a look back at dieting history shows what hasn't changed is the quest for an easy fix.

1940s advertisement provided for Bile Beans - A 1940s advertisement provided by The Advertising Archives via Library of Congress for Bile Beans, which offered the World War II generation an unsafe laxative approach to slim down — even as the first ideal height-and-weight charts arrived. A look back at diet history shows what hasn't changed is the quest for an easy fix.

"We grossly, grossly underestimate" the difficulty of changing behaviors that fuel obesity, says Clemson University sociologist Ellen Granberg, who examined archives at the Library of Congress. She believes it's important to show "we're not dealing with some brand new, scary phenomenon we've never dealt with before."

Indeed, the aging documents are eerily familiar.

Consider Englishman William Banting's account of losing almost 50 pounds in a year. He did it by shunning "bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer and potatoes, which had been the main (and I thought innocent) elements of my existence" in favor of loads of meat.

His pamphlet, "Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public," quickly crossed the Atlantic and become so popular here that "banting" became slang for dieting, Granberg says.

While obesity has rapidly surged in the last few decades, we first changed from a nation where being plump was desirable into a nation of on-again, off-again dieters around the end of the 19th century, Granberg says.

Before then, people figured a little extra weight might help withstand infectious diseases that vaccines and antibiotics later would tame. It also was a sign of prosperity. But just as doctors today bemoan a high-tech, immobile society, the emergence of trolleys, cars and other machinery in the late 19th century scaled back the sheer number of calories people once burned, Granberg explains. Increasing prosperity meant easier access to food.

"An excess of flesh is to be looked upon as one of the most objectionable forms of disease," the Philadelphia Cookbook declared in 1900. Low-cal cookbooks hadn't arrived yet; the calorie wasn't quite in vogue.

By 1903, La Parle obesity soap that "never fails to reduce flesh" was selling at a pricey $1 a bar. The Louisenbad Reduction Salt pledged to "wash away your fat." Soon came an exercise machine, the Graybar Stimulator to jiggle the pounds. Bile Beans promoted a laxative approach.

As the government prepares to update U.S. dietary guidelines next week, the Library of Congress culled its archives and, with Weight Watchers International, gathered experts recently to discuss this country's history of weight loss.

Granberg recounted how real nutrition science was born.

The government's first advice to balance proteins, carbohydrates and fat came in 1894. A few years later, life insurance companies reported that being overweight raised the risk of death. In 1916, the Department of Agriculture came up with the five food groups. Around World War II, charts showing ideal weight-for-height emerged, surprisingly close to what today is considered a healthy body mass index.

Diet foods quickly followed, as did weight loss support groups like Overeaters Anonymous and Weight Watchers — putting today's diet infrastructure in place by 1970, Granberg says.

Yet fast-forward and two-thirds of Americans today are either overweight or obese, and childhood obesity has tripled in the past three decades. Weight-loss surgery is skyrocketing. Diet pills have been pulled from the market for deadly side effects, with only a few possible new ones in the pipeline.

More and more, specialists question how our society and culture fuel overeating.

"Should it be socially desirable to walk down the street with a 30-ounce Big Gulp?" asks Patrick O'Neill, president-elect of The Obesity Society and weight-management director at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Negotiating a weight-loss menu for a family with different food preferences is a minefield that affects how people feel about themselves and their relationships with loved ones, adds Clemson's Granberg, who began studying the sociology of obesity after losing 120 pounds herself.

"If what you need is a nutritionally sound, healthful weight-loss plan, you can get 100 of them," she says. "That, we have figured out in the last 100 years. It's how to do all this other stuff that I think is the real challenge." ( Associated Press )

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Organic milk is less fatty than 'ordinary' milk

Organic milk is less fatty than 'ordinary' milk - Milk from organic cattle that eat a fresh grass diet is consistently better for your health, a new study claims.

Researchers have found that organic milk generally contained less saturated fat and more good fatty acids than milk produced at intensive commercial dairy farms.

Its health giving properties were also much less likely to be affected by changes in the weather.

Scientists at the University of Newcastle found non-organic milk collected during a particularly poor UK summer and the following winter had significantly higher saturated fat content and far less beneficial fatty acids than in a more "normal" year.

But they also discovered that switching to organic milk could help overcome these problems.

Organic supermarket milk showed higher levels of nutritionally beneficial fatty acids

Organic supermarket milk showed higher levels of nutritionally beneficial fatty acids compared with "ordinary" milk regardless of the time of year or weather conditions.

Gillian Butler, who led the study, puts the differences down to a lower reliance on grazing and fertiliser suppressing clover on conventional farms.

"The results suggest greater uniformity of feeding practice on farms supplying organic milk since there were no brands which differed consistently in fat composition," she said.

"This implies a fairly uniform approach to feeding practised across these suppliers."

Organic dairying standards prescribe a reliance on forage, especially grazing, and, in the absence of nitrogen fertiliser, tend to encourage swards of red and white clover, which have been shown to alter the fatty acid intake and composition of milk.

While protein, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and some mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids in milk are considered beneficial, saturated fatty acids are believed to have a negative effect on human health.

"We're always being told to cut down on the saturated fat we consume and switching to organic milk and dairy products provides a natural way to increase our intake of nutritionally desirable fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants without increasing our intake of less desirable fatty acids," said Mrs Butler.

"By choosing organic milk you can cut saturated fats by 30-50 per cent and still get the same intake of beneficial fatty acids, as the omega-3 levels are higher but omega-6 is not, which helps to improve the crucial ratio between the two."

While undertaking their research into the differences between organic and conventional milk, the researchers discovered the surprising link between milk quality and our changing climate.

Their results suggest that if we continue to have wetter, cooler summers then farmers may have to rethink their current dairy practices.

There was a considerable difference between the milk bought in the first sampling period (July 2006 and January 2007) and corresponding times a year later.

The second set of samples, following a particularly wet summer in 2007, was higher in saturated fat and lower in beneficial fatty acids.

The researchers, who are part of the University's Nafferton Ecological Farming Group and its Human Nutrition Centre, looked at the quality of 88 different milks in supermarkets across North East England at varying times of year over a two-year period.

They concluded that organic brands of milk available in supermarkets are higher in beneficial fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids in summer and winter.

Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, said: "This groundbreaking research proves for the first time that people buying organic milk will be benefiting from the higher levels of beneficial fatty acids in organic milk through the whole year." ( telegraph.co.uk )

The study was published in the Journal of Dairy Science.

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