KCHealth.info | Longevity, Health, & Wellness in the 21st Century

People who follow a healthy diet and regularly exercise tend to have less abdominal fat, including the deep layers of belly fat that are especially unhealthy.

A new study has found that among nearly 3,000 middle-aged adults, those who maintained a healthy diet generally had less abdominal fat than those with less-desirable diets. The same was true of men and women who regularly exercised.

Like healthy eaters, exercisers had less abdominal fat just below the skin, and also less visceral fat -- deep layers of fat that surround the abdominal organs and are especially likely to contribute to diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

Cadbury and Mars have attracted severe criticism from food watchdog groups who say the confectioners have not fulfilled promises to remove certain artificial food colors from their products.

Last year, the companies both pledged to reformulate products containing the so-called “Southampton Six” colors, which have been linked to hyperactivity in children. Mars set the deadline of the end of 2007 and Cadbury said it would take out the colors by end of last 2008.

However the Food Commission’s Action on Additives campaign has identified some products that still contain the additives, including popular Easter products like Cadbury’s Creme Egg and Mini Eggs.

The artificial colors implicated in a Southampton study are Tartrazine (E102), Quinoline Yellow (E104), Sunset Yellow (E110), Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124) and Allura Red (E129).

Regularity is important for your health -- here's how to achieve it without dangerous drugs.  One important factor to check is whether or not you have hypothyroidism.

Sugar, long reviled by dentists and dietitians have long reviled, is now being dressed up as a natural, healthful ingredient. Some of the biggest players in the American food business have started replacing high-fructose corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar, and using this as a selling point.

ConAgra uses only sugar or honey in its new Healthy Choice All Natural frozen entrees, and Kraft Foods recently removed HFCS from its salad dressings.

The change comes after three decades during which HFCS had been gaining on sugar in the American diet. Per capita, American adults ate about 44 pounds of sugar in 2007, compared with about 40 pounds of HFCS.

With sugar sales up, the Sugar Association last year ended its Sweet by Nature campaign, which pointed out that sugar is found in fruits and vegetables.

Though research is still under way, many nutrition and obesity experts say sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are equally bad in excess.

The daughters of women who eat fish laced with the toxic remnants of DDT are at greater risk of becoming obese, according to a new study.

Researchers have discovered that prenatal exposure to a derivative of DDT (an insecticide banned in the 1970’s) may play a role in the obesity epidemic. Scientists studied the adult daughters of 250 West Michigan mothers who ate Lake Michigan fish.

The study found that women with intermediate levels of DDE, a breakdown product of DDT, gained an average of 13 pounds of excess weight. Women with higher levels of DDE gained more than 20 pounds of excess weight.

Human clinical studies confirm that a new yogurt fights the bacteria that cause gastritis and stomach ulcers -- with what researchers describe as almost vaccine-like effects.

Some brands of yogurt are now made with "probiotics" -- certain types of bacteria intended to improve health. The new yogurt represents a unique approach to fighting stomach ulcers, and is part of a growing "functional food" market.

The new yogurt is already on store shelves in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. However, people who are allergic to milk or eggs should avoid the product -- the yogurt contains egg yolk, which tends to have lower allergen levels than egg white, but an allergy risk still exists.

Last week the Fed decided to inject ANOTHER trillion to buy treasury bonds and mortgage securities. In another words they simply decided to print another trillion dollars. So I thought you would really enjoy this graphic illustration to help you put that number into perspective.

$100

Start with a simple $100 bill.

$10,000

A packet of $100 bills worth $10,000 is less than 1/2 inch thick.

$1,000,000

This little pile of cash can easily fit into any backpack and weighs just about 22 lbs.

$100,000,000

$100 million fits neatly on any standard pallet, weighing in at a little over one ton.

$1,000,000,000

$1 billion is ten pallets worth of cold, hard cash.

$1,000,000,000,000

Finally, here’s one trillion dollars:

Could fish oil capsules contain the harmful pollutant found in some species of fish?

Two major studies found that PSA tests saves few if any lives, so where does that leave men?

Does vitamin E do anything to help prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s disease or heart disease?

Infants in middle-income countries are getting vaccines weeks later than recommended.

Online tool can predict your risk of developing adult-onset diabetes.

Figuring out whether a child has head lice may require more than just taking a look.

Exercising after a heart attack can be helpful to one’s recovery, but the benefits can vanish in weeks if the exercise is stopped, a new study has found.

(University of California - San Diego) Diabetes and eczema may appear to be two completely unrelated diseases. But UC San Diego biologists have uncovered what appears to be a crucial biochemical link between the two.

(Oregon State University) Older adults who worry about their health engage in less physical activity, and those who participate in less activity are more likely to report having difficulty walking, according to a new study.

(Oregon State University) Researchers at Oregon State University have found one gene in the human body that appears to be a master regulator for skin development, in research that could help address everything from skin diseases such as eczema or psoriasis to the wrinkling of skin as people age.

(McGill University Health Centre) A team of researchers from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre has received the largest grant ever awarded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a clinical trial of latent tuberculosis (TB) therapy.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) The "are you driving yet?" talk should become part of every pediatrician's regular physical exam for teenagers, Hopkins Children's experts say.

(Rush University Medical Center) Contrary to common belief, softball pitching subjects the biceps to high forces and torques when the player's arm swings around to release the ball, according to an analysis of muscle firing patterns conducted at Rush University Medical Center.