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Keeping Kids Slim, Fit During Lockdown Isn’t Easy: Here Are Some Tips

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Lots of TV time, no PE classes, and a fridge full of food: It’s a recipe for weight gain for kids under “stay at home” rules. But there are ways parents can help them stay healthy, says registered dietitian Audrey Koltun. “During quarantine, we hear we should try to stay healthy, not overeat, and exercise, but it is easier said than done,” said Koltun, who’s also a diabetes care and education specialist at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y. When it comes to kids’ diets, having to stay at home might have some advantages, she noted. “Many people are cooking much more than they ever did,” Koltun said, and “this allows more control over caloric intake and possibly healthier options.” Children just don’t have the same access to fast food or fattening snacks. “The kids that go out to get an 800-calorie smoothie, a 400-calorie iced coffee, or a 500-calorie slice of pizza are not having this now — or not as much,” Koltun said. But if chips, cookies and other snacks crowd kitchen cupboards, the battle against weight gain can easily be lost, the nutritionist stressed. “Your kids can only eat what you buy, so if you are buying a year’s worth of snacks, they will eat them all day and night,” she said. While chowing down on unhealthy snacks might…  read on >

AHA News: As COVID-19 Stalls Vacation, Achieve Travel’s Health Benefits at Home

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(American Heart Association News) — Since marrying in 2002, Doug Behan and Lise Deguire have gone on safari in Tanzania, watched the sunset over the Santorini caldera in the Greek Islands and walked through the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. And those are just a few of their annual excursions. “It’s on my bucket list that I want to visit every continent,” Deguire said. Early this year, the Yardley, Pennsylvania, couple began planning a 12-day trip to Japan in March. But then news of COVID-19 began saturating the airwaves. By February, the couple made the difficult decision to cancel, instead booking a one-week trip to New Mexico. As the virus continued to spread even more, they nixed that, too, replacing it with a three-day retreat at a local spa. But on March 19, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered all non-life-sustaining businesses to close their physical locations. “That was pretty devastating,” Deguire said. “Travel makes me feel very alive, like living on the edge in a way that’s exciting and fulfilling.” It’s not just tourists who are canceling trips. North Carolina’s Outer Banks set up checkpoints to greet visitors, temporarily barring non-permanent residents and those without an entry permit. It’s one of several resort communities around the country, including Key West and California’s Mono County, which requested visitors stay away – sacrificing vital tourism dollars…  read on >

Keto Diet Might Change Your Gut in More Ways Than One

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The now-trendy keto diet is said to turn fat into fuel. But a new, small study says it may also change the vast array of microbes residing in your gut (the microbiome). That could be a good thing, as those changes may ultimately strengthen the immune system by tamping down inflammation, researchers say. The keto diet, which severely restricts carbohydrates and emphasizes fats and protein, has been touted as a way to rein in epilepsy, diabetes and expanding waistlines. Yet despite rising popularity, it remains controversial, and much is unknown about its true impact on health. The new finding follows a two-month study that tracked diet-related shifts in microbiome content among 17 overweight or obese men, with follow-up tests in mice. “There has been a lot of work on ketogenic diets,” noted study author Peter Turnbaugh, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. “But we didn’t know much about how these diets differ from other high-fat diets, how exactly they impact microbes, or whether or not these diet-induced changes to gut microbes matter,” he said. To find out, Turnbaugh and his colleagues first placed half the men on a one-month “standard” Western diet composed of 50% carbs, 15% protein and 35% fat. The other half started off on a keto diet made up of 5% carbs, 15% protein…  read on >

Lost Pregnancies, Diabetes May Be Linked

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The more pregnancies losses a woman has, the greater her risk of developing diabetes, a new study suggests. Researchers examined data on nearly 25,000 Danish women who were born between 1957 and 1997 and diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 1977 to 2017. The women were compared with a control group of nearly 248,000 women with the same ages and educational levels who didn’t have diabetes. Compared to women who’d never miscarried, those who had one, two or three lost pregnancies had an 18%, 38% and 71% higher risk, respectively, of developing type 2 diabetes. The study was published May 20 in the journal Diabetologia. “We cannot rule out that the psychological distress related to pregnancy loss can initiate lifestyle changes that increase BMI and thereby the risk of type 2 diabetes,” wrote researcher Pia Egerup, of Copenhagen University Hospital, and colleagues. BMI is short for body mass index, an estimate of body fat based on weight and height. The researchers only had BMI information for 12% of the diabetes group and 17% of the control group. Even so, they said: “Our subgroup analysis in which we adjusted for obesity still showed a significant association between pregnancy loss and type 2 diabetes, with more losses leading to a higher risk. This subgroup analysis indicated that the higher risk for type 2 diabetes in women with…  read on >

Earlier Lockdowns Would Have Saved Thousands of American Lives, Model Shows

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(HealthDay News) — Nearly 36,000 American lives would have been spared if strict social distancing measures had been enacted across the country just one week earlier than they were, new estimates suggest. And if those measures had been imposed two weeks before most people started staying home, about 54,000 COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided by early May, Columbia University disease models show, The New York Times reported. The U.S. coronavirus death toll stretched past 93,000 on Thursday, with more than 1.5 million cases. “It’s a big, big difference,” Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and leader of the modeling team, told Times. “That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths.” On the economic front, another round of weekly jobless claims delivered more bad news: 2.4 million filed for unemployment, bringing the total jobless number for the past nine weeks to more than 38 million. Meanwhile, all 50 states have started reopening their economies, more than two months after the new coronavirus first forced America into lockdown. States in the Northeast and on the West Coast, as well as Democratic-led states in the Midwest, have moved more slowly toward reopening, the Times reported. But a number of states in the South opened earlier and more expansively, albeit with social distancing restrictions in place,…  read on >

Lockdown Got You Feeling Low? Yoga May Help

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Many people under stay-at-home orders have turned to online yoga as a way to manage the stress. And a new research review suggests they’re onto something. The review, of 19 clinical trials, focused on the benefits of yoga for people with clinical mental health conditions ranging from anxiety disorders to alcohol dependence to schizophrenia. Overall, it found yoga classes helped ease those patients’ depression symptoms. And while the trials focused on in-person classes for people with formal diagnoses, there are broader implications, the researchers said. “Definitely, if you’ve thought about trying yoga, now is a great time to take the opportunity,” said Jacinta Brinsley, lead author on the review and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Australia School of Health Sciences in Adelaide. With yoga teachers worldwide now offering live-stream classes, she noted, people have a chance to find something that is right for them in their own homes. “Sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right type [of yoga],” Brinsley said. “Enjoyment is a really great indicator that it’s a good fit.” In general, physical activity is a recommended part of managing mental health disorders, according to Brinsley. Yoga — which combines physical movement with breathing exercises, meditation and other “mindfulness” practices — has been the subject of many studies. Some have found it can ease depression. That said, there…  read on >

Keto Diet Might Change Your Gut in More Ways Than One

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The now-trendy keto diet is said to turn fat into fuel. But a new, small study says it may also change the vast array of microbes residing in your gut (the microbiome). That could be a good thing, as those changes may ultimately strengthen the immune system by tamping down inflammation, researchers say. The keto diet, which severely restricts carbohydrates and emphasizes fats and protein, has been touted as a way to rein in epilepsy, diabetes and expanding waistlines. Yet despite rising popularity, it remains controversial, and much is unknown about its true impact on health. The new finding follows a two-month study that tracked diet-related shifts in microbiome content among 17 overweight or obese men, with follow-up tests in mice. “There has been a lot of work on ketogenic diets,” noted study author Peter Turnbaugh, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. “But we didn’t know much about how these diets differ from other high-fat diets, how exactly they impact microbes, or whether or not these diet-induced changes to gut microbes matter,” he said. To find out, Turnbaugh and his colleagues first placed half the men on a one-month “standard” Western diet composed of 50% carbs, 15% protein and 35% fat. The other half started off on a keto diet made up of 5% carbs, 15% protein…  read on >

Lost Pregnancies, Diabetes May Be Linked

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The more pregnancies losses a woman has, the greater her risk of developing diabetes, a new study suggests. Researchers examined data on nearly 25,000 Danish women who were born between 1957 and 1997 and diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 1977 to 2017. The women were compared with a control group of nearly 248,000 women with the same ages and educational levels who didn’t have diabetes. Compared to women who’d never miscarried, those who had one, two or three lost pregnancies had an 18%, 38% and 71% higher risk, respectively, of developing type 2 diabetes. The study was published May 20 in the journal Diabetologia. “We cannot rule out that the psychological distress related to pregnancy loss can initiate lifestyle changes that increase BMI and thereby the risk of type 2 diabetes,” wrote researcher Pia Egerup, of Copenhagen University Hospital, and colleagues. BMI is short for body mass index, an estimate of body fat based on weight and height. The researchers only had BMI information for 12% of the diabetes group and 17% of the control group. Even so, they said: “Our subgroup analysis in which we adjusted for obesity still showed a significant association between pregnancy loss and type 2 diabetes, with more losses leading to a higher risk. This subgroup analysis indicated that the higher risk for type 2 diabetes in women with…  read on >

Earlier Lockdowns Would Have Saved Thousands of American Lives, Model Shows

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(HealthDay News) — Nearly 36,000 American lives would have been spared if strict social distancing measures had been enacted across the country just one week earlier than they were, new estimates suggest. And if those measures had been imposed two weeks before most people started staying home, about 54,000 COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided by early May, Columbia University disease models show, The New York Times reported. The U.S. coronavirus death toll stretched past 93,000 on Thursday, with more than 1.5 million cases. “It’s a big, big difference,” Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and leader of the modeling team, told Times. “That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths.” On the economic front, another round of weekly jobless claims delivered more bad news: 2.4 million filed for unemployment, bringing the total jobless number for the past nine weeks to more than 38 million. Meanwhile, all 50 states have started reopening their economies, more than two months after the new coronavirus first forced America into lockdown. States in the Northeast and on the West Coast, as well as Democratic-led states in the Midwest, have moved more slowly toward reopening, the Times reported. But a number of states in the South opened earlier and more expansively, albeit with social distancing restrictions in place,…  read on >

Obesity Ups Odds for Dangerous Lung Clots in COVID-19 Patients

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Obesity makes COVID-19 worse and may lead to deadly blood clots in the lungs, a new study finds. The researchers said that obese patients with COVID-19 may have nearly three times the risk of developing what is known as a pulmonary embolism. “Clinicians can utilize our findings to aid in determining which patients should have evaluation for pulmonary embolism with pulmonary CT angiography, as the symptoms for COVID-19 and pulmonary embolism overlap,” said lead researcher Dr. Neo Poyiadi, from the department of diagnostic radiology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. “Early detection of pulmonary embolism can allow prompt treatment with anticoagulation and minimize clinical problems,” he said. Hospitalized obese patients with COVID-19 should be evaluated for increases in clotting indicated by a rising D-dimer — a blood test for clotting. According to the study, 22% of 328 patients suffering from COVID-19 who had a CT scan angiography had a pulmonary embolism. Researchers also found that patients taking statins to lower cholesterol before coming down with COVID-19 were less likely to have a pulmonary embolism. “Further studies are needed to determine if statins have a protective effect against pulmonary embolism in COVID-19 patients,” Poyiadi said. Poyiadi added that a recent study suggests that COVID-19 patients should be placed on blood thinners to prevent clotting. Obesity may make COVID-19 worse because it’s associated with an increase in…  read on >