Although many public and private schools have taken steps to ban sweet and salty snacks from the lunchroom and the classroom in recent years, a new study titled Competitive Food Sales in Schools and Childhood Obesity and published by Pennsylvania State University suggests that junk food availability in schools does not have an impact on childhood obesity rates. The study followed around 20,000 middle school children to determine if schools that sell popular junk food items experienced a higher incidence of obesity among students.

Published in the January issue of Sociology of Education, the Penn State study tracked the body mass index (BMI) of students in the fifth through the eighth grade and compared the weight of students in schools where junk food is available to the weight of students in schools where it has been banned. In addition, the study accounted for eighth graders who transferred to schools that sold junk food and compared the results of kids who had always been given access to snacks at school with those who had transferred out.

“Food preferences are established early in life,” shared Jennifer Van Hook, lead author on the study and professor of sociology and demography at Penn State. “This problem of childhood obesity cannot be placed solely in the hands of schools.”

Interestingly, the study found that in fifth grade 59% of participating children attended a school where junk food was available, while by eighth grade 86% of participating children had access to unhealthy snacks at school. Regardless of how researchers manipulated the data, they were unable to find any connection between childhood obesity and whether or not the schools offered junk food. There was a statistically insignificant difference of 35.5% of kids in schools with junk food found to be overweight, compared to 34.8% of kids in schools that did not offer junk food.

“Children’s environments at home and in their communities may provide so many opportunities to eat unhealthy foods that competitive food sales in schools have little influence on children’s weight,” Hook stated. “Schools only represent a small portion of children’s food environment.”

Earlier studies with smaller sample sizes have shown a connection between obesity and junk food availability in schools, prompting a number of public and private educational institutions to ban the sale of unhealthy snack foods such as chips, soda and candy, from their grounds. In fact, in 2007 the American Beverage Association announced it would stop selling sugar-laden soft drinks in public schools, and California schools now feature vending machines that offer fresh fruit and bottled water instead.

Hook admits to being surprised by the results of the new study, and suggests that perhaps time constraints while at school cause at-home eating habits to play a greater role in determining weight gain. Hook also points out that our eating habits are set early in life, making it essential for parents to teach children about health food options before they reach middle school. In addition, most of the schools in the study were found to offer junk food for sale, with those in low-income neighborhoods the most likely to do so.

ABC News, Yahoo, New York Times

Photo Copyright Kanko, Flickr

Somewhere dieters who love chocolate cake are high fiving each other right now as new research from the Tel Aviv University in Israel shows that eating chocolate cake for breakfast can actually help you keep unwanted weight gain at bay. The study showed that participants who consumed a piece of chocolate cake in addition to a breakfast high in protein were able to lose more weight than those who merely focused on consuming a low-carb or low-calorie breakfast.

As it turns out, the research has revealed that morning is actually the best time to consume sweets like cake because your metabolism is functioning at its peak when you wake up and also because you have the rest of the day to burn off the added calories. In addition, eating cookies or cake for breakfast, along with other proteins and carbs, can help curb cravings for sweets later in the day.

193 clinically obese but non-diabetic participants were involved in the 32-week study and were separated into two control groups, both of which consumed between 1400 and 1600 calories per day, depending on the sex of the participant. One of these groups consumed a low-carb, low-calorie breakfast, while the other group consumed a 600-calorie breakfast, which included a piece of chocolate cake. However, the participants in the low-carb, low-cal group reported feeling less satisfaction and greater hunger throughout the day.

“But the group that consumed a bigger breakfast, including desert, experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day,” shared study researcher Daniela Jakubowicz of Tel Aviv University.

In an interesting turn of events, during the first half of the study both groups lost an average of around 33 pounds per person, but during the second half of the study the low-carb group actually regained an average of 22 pounds per person. On the other hand, the dessert group lost another 15 pounds during the second half of the study, which has surprised some experts.

“I would never, in a million years, recommend cookies or cake for breakfast,” registered dietician and author Katherine Tallmadge told MSNBC. “

Regardless, both sides agree that consuming a balanced, substantial breakfast is key to long-term weight loss. Eating breakfast helps reduce cravings and consequently causes you to be less likely to gorge throughout the rest of the day. For anyone concerned with maintaining a healthy weight, it is never a good idea to be hungry late in the day, as most people are prone to overeating at night, which can really pack on the pounds.

It is also important to point out that favorite food items – such as sweets – should be incorporated into your diet in moderation and should not be consumed in large quantities – regardless of the time of day. In addition, sugar can sometimes increase cravings for sweets, so it’s important to consume healthy lean proteins and complex carbs to counteract this effect. Luckily, eating a large meal at breakfast is good for overall body function and long-term weight loss. So next time you’re eyeing that leftover piece of cake while preparing breakfast, go ahead and indulge. If you remember to pay attention to everything else you eat for the rest of the day, allowing yourself an early reward might actually help you reach a weight loss goal.

Sources: MSNBC, The Telegraph

Photo Copyright: Matt Gibson, Flickr

A recent study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology shows that people who don’t get enough sleep or suffer from insomnia could be at risk for a number of serious health concerns. This goes way beyond the standard grogginess and tired eyes to include anxiety, depression and heart attacks, according to the study findings.

Study participants who suffered from insomnia were found to be more likely to also suffer a heart attack. According to the results, those who merely experience difficulty falling asleep are 45% more likely to experience a heart attack, while those who find it tough to remain asleep are 30% more likely to experience a heart attack, and those who regularly wake up feeling tired are 27% more likely to experience cardiac arrest than those who sleep well and awake feeling refreshed.

“If the association is confirmed, addressing sleep problems could prove to be an important intervention to lower heart attack risk,” said study researcher Lars Erik Laugsand, MD. “Insomnia is quite common and it is fairly easy to treat.”

This most recent study merely seems to confirm what earlier research has already shown: That insomnia has a detrimental effect on the body’s cardiovascular system and can lead to heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. So how do you know if you are experiencing insomnia, or just the occasional difficulty sleeping? Insomnia can actually mean that a person has trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, or trouble sleeping at all. Furthermore, chronic insomnia can last for months or even years, and generally does not include just a few sleepless nights here and there.

According to a recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation, roughly 63% of those who participated said they regularly do not get enough sleep, while 43% reported regularly missing significant amounts of sleep on the weekend. Reasons for trouble sleeping include stress, medication, poor diet and inadequate exercise, so be sure to check with your doctor to regulate your sleeping patterns if insomnia becomes an issue.

The Norwegian study included direct participation from more than 50,000 adults between 1995 and 1997, as well as follow-up over the next eleven years. During that time, 2,386 of the study participants experienced first-time heart attacks and many of those affected also suffered from insomnia.

“Evaluation of insomnia might provide additional information in clinical risk assessment that could be useful in cardiovascular prevention,” stated study authors.

Study authors have acknowledged that more research is necessary before any definite conclusions can be drawn regarding the connection between insomnia and the increased potential for cardiac arrest. In addition, it is important for researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the effects of sleep apnea on heart disease and heart attacks, as well as how to accurately define “insomnia.” For example, it is still necessary to determine if the occasional sleepless night can also have an effect on heart health, or if only those who regularly experience sleep-related issues are at an increased risk for heart attacks.

Sources: SELF Magazine, WebMD

Photo Copyright CarbonNYC, Flickr

It’s month two of your New Years Resolution… are you still going strong?

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Hope you’re all holding strong on your New Years resolution diets, I know it’s easy to get all psyched up at the start of the year, but now is when it really matters since beach season is right around the corner!

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In an accidental discovery that could prove to be groundbreaking in the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers at the Case Western University School of Medicine have revealed that a widely used skin cancer drug actually reverse the effects of the disease in mice. This discovery could lead to new hope for the millions of people who are suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease around the world, given more research and development.

In a recent study, which was published late last week in Science journal, the skin cancer drug bexarotene (also known as Targetrin) was found to be very effective on mice, quickly reversing signs of the disease. The mice were given large doses of the drug, which is specifically used to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, and within a short 72-hour time span they were already displaying marked improvement. The positive early signs involved major boosts to memory and also the removal of more than 50 percent of the amyloid plaque present in the brain. Amyloid plaque is responsible for many of the detrimental effects associated with Alzheimer’s Disease.

“It’s really exciting,” said Maria Carillo, who is the senior director for medical and scientific relations for the Alzheimer’s Association, in a recent interview with CNN. “They saw very positive and robust behavior effects in the mice.”

Both mice and humans suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease have large amounts of the amyloid beta substance present in the brain. The bexarotene was shown in pathology tests to significantly lower the levels of amyloid beta, while substantially increasing the levels of apolipoprotein E, which helps to keep amyloid plaque at an acceptable level. Although it is commonly found in healthy human brains, when not properly cleared the plaque builds up, blocking synapses and killing nerve cells.

“No one, ourselves included, would have ever imagined that any drug would have worked with this speed,” stated neuroscientist Gary Landreth, who is also the lead researcher at Case Western University. “It’s stunning.”

The next step is to test the effects of the cancer drug on humans, because it is not certain that it will have the same positive effect on reversing Alzheimer’s. Landreth is hoping to begin trials involving humans later this year.

“I want to say as loudly and clearly as possible that this was a study in mice, not in humans,’ Landreth stated. “We’ve fixed Alzheimer’s in mice lots of times, so we need to move forward expeditiously but cautiously.”

This new development in the fight against this debilitating disease is promising for a number of reasons, including the fact that it could provide an early treatment option, which is something that has been lacking until now. In fact, one of the main challenges with treating Alzheimer’s Disease is that fact that once the nerve endings die they cannot be revived. Therefore, attacking the root of the problem early on is key to improving long-term results and preventing substantial memory loss.

“We’re not sure that this is going to actually show the desired clinical benefits,” stated Carillo. “But we owe it to ourselves and our constituents to follow every lead that we have.”

Sources: CNN, Dispatch.com

Photo Copyright Vince Alongi, Flickr

For those of you who are interested in using the Medifast diet to get in shape for the holidays, we now have November 2011 Medifast coupons available so you can save up to $50 off your next purchase of delicious Medifast shakes, bars, snacks, and other fine products.

The medical community has known for some time that risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes can lead to heart disease later in life. But a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has ruled out other factors, such as age, gender and ethnicity, which were also previously believed to play a significant role in determining whether or not an individual would contract heart disease.

Results from the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project indicate that individuals in their 40’s and 50’s who have at least one serious risk factor experience an elevated chance of contracting heart disease as they age, regardless of gender or ethnicity.

“Regardless of how old you are, male or female, white or black, what decade you were born in, your cardiovascular destiny is determined by risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes,” stated study author Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist and researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

The study involved data collected from 18 studies that involved more than 250,000 men and women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The individual risk factors of participants were measured at 45, 55, 65 and 75 years of age, which permitted the researchers to gain insight into the risk of dying from heart attack or stroke over the course of an entire lifetime.

The term “cardiovascular destiny” is used in the study to describe a person’s likelihood of perishing from a heart attack or stroke. According to Lloyd-Jones, this can be set by the time a person is in his or her mid-forties, which makes staying healthy at a young age even more critical to maintaining cardiovascular health into old age.

For example, a healthy man in his mid-forties with good cholesterol and blood pressure levels has about a 1.4% chance of dying from cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, a man with just two risk factors – such as smoking and diabetes – has about a 49.5% chance of dying from this disease. This large percentage jump related to the risk factors holds true for both men and women of all races, regardless of age.

Here’s how it works: After serious risk factors have developed, your cardiovascular destiny is affected, and even if you do not have a greater chance of experiencing a heart attack over the next five years, your chances of having one over the next 20 years are definitely increased.

The real takeaway from this study is that it is never too late to start preventative measures. By consuming the right foods, avoiding cigarettes and upping the amount of physical activity we engage in each week, we can seriously reduce our risk of contracting cardiovascular disease in the future. Stay active, eat right and understand your family’s history of hypertension and high cholesterol. If you are at risk, talk to your doctor about beginning treatment before it is too late.

“If we can get our young adults living healthier lifestyles and more of them into middle age with optimum risk factor levels, that would be fabulous news,” said Lloyd-Jones. “If you are middle-aged and you do have a risk factor or two or more, it’s really time to address those. Get in touch with your doctor, understand your numbers, and understand where your risk is coming from.”

Sources: CNN, TheHeart.org

Just a quick update… we now have October 2011 medifast coupons available for those of you looking to save a few bucks.