ODDITIES, MUSINGS AND NEWS FROM THE HEALTH WORLD
Organic label makes foods seem tastier, more healthful
Updated 13 hours agoThere's a new "organic" twist on the various creative credos that allow people to rationalize their less-than-stellar eating habits. Among them:
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Alcohol may be linked to cancer
Updated Apr 09, 2011The latest alarming headlines warn that alcohol may raise your risk for certain cancers—not exactly a finding to which to raise your glass tonight. But don’t abandon those evening plans just yet.
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Talk Back: Abortion -- will U.S. politics ever be free of the issue?
Updated Apr 09, 2011Abortion is in the news. Again. Planned Parenthood is under attack. Again. Women's health is either being held hostage or used as political cannon fodder, depending on your perspective. Again.
More...Spring season brings flowers ... and pollen ... and allergies
Updated Apr 08, 2011Allergy season is now underway, according to news reports, and as climate change continues, it means that the season of pollen may be lasting longer and longer across different regions of the country.
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Eating more carbs at dinner may help with weight loss and cholesterol levels, a study finds
Updated Apr 08, 2011Eating a low-calorie diet in which carbs have a heavier presence at dinner may offer a host of healthful benefits, a study finds.
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Rodent of the Week: A message from mice to teens about binge drinking
Updated Apr 08, 2011Drinking at a young age is simply bad for the brain, according to a growing number of studies. The latest study looks at the relationship between alcohol and the brain in mice. And the results are not pretty.
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Hospital errors -- how to avoid them
Updated Apr 08, 2011Hospitals don’t appear to be as safe as we, the potential patients, would like, a new study has found.
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Bethenny Frankel comes from a place of yes to talk about maintaining a balanced life
Updated Apr 08, 2011Reality TV star Bethenny Frankel of Bravo's "Bethenny Ever After" was our guest recently on a live Web chat about staying fit and healthy physically and mentally. Frankel, the author of "A Place of Yes: 10 Rules for Getting Everything You Want Out of Life," talked with readers about exercise, nutrition and having a balanced life. She spent an extra few minutes with us answering a few more questions about the book and about her attitude toward diet and fitness. Be sure to read the archived chat in its entirely on our chat page.
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Measles may be forgotten, and sometimes unrecognized, but it's not gone
Updated Apr 08, 2011Measles, an itchy, highly contagious and sometimes deadly infection, was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000. Even doctors began to pay the disease little mind, as it turns out.
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Planned Parenthood in middle of funding debate
Updated Apr 08, 2011Planned Parenthood is yet again at the center of a political maelstrom. Republican lawmakers want to cut funding to the organization, or else they will not agree to a budget that has spending cuts of more than $30 billion. Defenders of Planned Parenthood say the cuts are dangerous for women’s health.
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Muffin top? Now that it's official, what do we do with it?
Updated Apr 07, 2011With the first stirrings of spring, so, too, have come the first sightings of extra flesh spilling over the tops of low-slung jeans and jiggling beneath belly-baring cropped tops. If you call that roll of abdominal adiposity a "muffin top," you're in high-falutin' company: Late last month, the Oxford English Dictionary -- arguably the arbiter of the English language -- added the phrase "muffin top" to the list of new figures of speech it recognizes and defines.
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17-day diet works for some, as do most diets
Updated Apr 07, 2011Diet secrets don’t change much: Eat healthful food in smaller portions and add more exercise. Your body stores fewer calories, and you lose weight.
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Restless legs syndrome drug approved; questions linger
Updated Apr 07, 2011For those who believe their twitchy legs are an illness -- there's another pill for that.
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Lung cancer patients more likely to have high-risk human papilloma virus
Updated Apr 07, 2011People who have lung cancer are more likely to have antibodies to a high-risk form of human papilloma virus, according to research presented Monday. Certain strains of human papilloma virus -- or HPV -- can cause cervical cancer.
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Food technology has been bad for human health since long before the invention of high-fructose corn syrup
Updated Apr 07, 2011The diet of modern Americans bears little resemblance to the foods our ancestors ate, and this discrepancy is often noted in discussions about the causes of the current “obesity epidemic.” The argument goes like this: Since fat and sugar were historically hard to come by, our bodies are built to hold on to them to help us get through the lean times. This may have served us well in the caveman days, but not so much in the era of the KFC Double Down sandwich.
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Retail therapy doesn't just perk you up, it could help you live longer
Updated Apr 07, 2011We knew it all along. Shopping may help you live longer.
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Meditation instead of morphine -- not so fast
Updated Apr 07, 2011Meditation appears to be a powerful way to take away pain -- just a short session is more potent than even morphine, if we’re to believe the headlines -- but let’s take a closer look.
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Coffee drinkers, what do those genes say about your health?
Updated Apr 07, 2011Coffee drinkers, the urge to refill your mug may be in your DNA, scientists said this week, adding that people with one of two “caffeine genes” drink about half a cup of coffee more every day than those without the genes. The next question is:
More...Heavyweight teens risk adult heart disease but can outrun diabetes risk if they slim down
Updated Apr 07, 2011When obese teen boys grow into adulthood they're more likely to develop early cardiovascular disease -- that's no surprise. But compared with the scrawny adolescents at the lowest end of teens' weight range, even those of "normal weight" are at higher risk of clogged arteries and heart attacks in young adulthood, says a new study.
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Medical errors in hospitals go undetected, study suggests
Updated Apr 07, 2011A 1999 study from the Institute of Medicine reported that avoidable medical errors contributed to tens of thousands of deaths in U.S. hospitals each year.
More...Organic label makes foods seem tastier, more healthful
If we told you these cookies were organic, would they suddenly taste better and have fewer calories? (Kevin P. Casey/Los Angeles Times)
There's a new "organic" twist on the various creative credos that allow people to rationalize their less-than-stellar eating habits. Among them:
- The calories in food don’t count if you don't have to pay for the food. (That’s great for shopping at Costco, or when a co-worker brings in doughnuts on Friday.)
- If you eat something healthy for dinner (like a salad) and then reward yourself with a hot fudge sundae for dessert, the calories cancel each other out.
And now, Cornell University graduate student Jenny Wan-chen has added another myth to this list -- cookies and chips have fewer calories, less fat and more fiber when they are organic.
She discovered this myth when she offered 144 mall shoppers samples of yogurt, chips and chocolate sandwich cookies. Each shopper was given two samples of each food -- one that was supposedly organic and one that was allegedly of the conventional variety. After tasting the food pairs, the shoppers were asked to score both samples on a 9-point scale for qualities including taste and fat content. Wan-chen also asked the shoppers to estimate how many calories were in each food.
RELATED: Estimating calories may be more difficult than you think.
Overall, shoppers consistently said the organic foods were tastier. They also estimated that the organic foods had more fiber, less fat and fewer calories. They even said they’d be willing to pay more for the “organic” snacks than the “regular” ones.
Perhaps you see where this is going.
In actual fact, all of the cookies, chips and yogurts were organic -- indeed they were identical. So Wan-chen concludes that people have a bias in favor of foods with the organic label. She calls this a “health halo.”
As if any chocolate sandwich cookie would qualify as healthy.
Wan-chen presented her research on Sunday at the Experimental Biology 2011 annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Obese exercise: How four found exercise that worked
Finding a doable exercise is crucial for obese people. Diets come and go, but exercise sticks, and it prompts vital lifestyle changes. Take a look at how four people joined the movement.
I'd never seen anyone this big move this fast.
Shay Sorrells, all 350 pounds of her, was up ahead on the bike path, absolutely flying. Furiously pumping arms and legs, the former "Biggest Loser" contestant was riding a Street Strider, a newfangled rolling elliptical machine. Once 476 pounds, she'd taken the Strider home after leaving the show and was riding it an hour a day around Newport Bay, hammering the flats at 13 miles per hour and soaring down hills at 30 — no different than me, about half her size.
"When you're this big, you can't move much without discomfort, which is why I love this," Sorrells said when we got back to her Costa Mesa apartment. "Yes, it's fast and fun, but more importantly it's low-impact and standing-up."
Do-ability is the key to enjoying a workout, and body size is a major factor that is often overlooked, she said. "People my size can't do 'normal' fitness activities like biking and rowing and weight machines because they're too uncomfortable," she said. "Our bodies get in our own way. We can't bend over. We don't fit. We can't run, either — the impact hurts our joints. So we give up on exercise before we try it."
Finding a doable exercise is crucial for obese people because movement is often the key that locks in weight loss. Diets come and go, but exercise sticks, and it prompts the lifestyle changes necessary to shed pound and keep them off, according to Dr. James A. Levine, a Mayo Clinic expert on nutrition and endocrinology.
"There are psychological and chemical advantages of moving over eating," Levine says. "A diet is a restriction — by definition unpleasant, to be avoided. But when you move it is something you have done and achieved. Every time you do it, you are winning, and feel good about yourself and want to do it again. You not only burn lots of calories, but may be motivated to make better food decisions."
Research is finding that just six weeks of exercise is enough to change both brain chemistry and body chemistry for the better, he adds. Diets alone don't have the same effect.
Exercise feeds on itself — once you get moving, you might not want to stop. As Sorrells and others have discovered, it is essential that all people hoping to slim down find some kind of exercise they can look forward to every day. Options that fit the largest bodies can be surprisingly fun, including walking, water running, swimming, elliptical training (on wheels or in a gym) and even a new three-wheeled sport called Trikking.
Read on for four success stories from obese people who have made working out work for them.
The Latest | news as it happens 
- Populist ex-army officer leads in Peru election - L.A. Times - World News 04/11/2011, 12:00 a.m.
- African Union says Kadafi has accepted peace 'road map' - L.A. Times - World News 04/11/2011, 12:00 a.m.
- At least 3 die in Syria protests, witnesses say - L.A. Times - World News 04/11/2011, 12:00 a.m.
- Egypt's Hosni Mubarak decries 'falsehood, slander and defamation' - L.A. Times - World News 04/11/2011, 12:00 a.m.
- Chinese police detain members of unregistered church - L.A. Times - World News 04/11/2011, 12:00 a.m.
Six days, six Bay Area restaurants
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