Here’s a study that can help you save a lot of money by keeping you not only healthy, but reducing your food bill at the same time and creating more disposable income for you and your family. Multiply this by the millions of American families and you have a way of dealing with the health care crisis in America. Those areas highlighted are the keys, but how it’s implemented is up to you.

New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be.

A study presented on Friday at the European Congress on Obesity is the first to examine the question of the proportional contributions to the obesity epidemic by combining metabolic relationships, the laws of thermodynamics, epidemiological data and agricultural data.

“There have been a lot of assumptions that both reduced physical activity and increased energy intake have been major drivers of the obesity epidemic. Until now, nobody has proposed how to quantify their relative contributions to the rise in obesity since the 1970s. This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories. It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role,” said the study’s leader, Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia.

The scientists started by testing 1,399 adults and 963 children to determine how many calories their bodies burn in total under free-living conditions. The test is the most accurate measure of total calorie burning in real-life situations.

Once they had determined each person’s calorie burning rate, Swinburn and his colleagues were able to calculate how much adults needed to eat in order to maintain a stable weight and how much children needed to eat in order to maintain a normal growth curve.

They then worked out how much Americans were actually eating, using national food supply data (the amount of food produced and imported, minus the amount exported, thrown away and used for animals or other non-human uses) from the 1970s and the early 2000s.

The researchers used their findings to predict how much weight they would expect Americans to have gained over the 30-year period studied if food intake were the only influence. They used data from a nationally representative survey (NHANES) that recorded the weight of Americans in the 1970s and early 2000s to determine the actual weight gain over that period.

“If the actual weight increase was the same as what we predicted, that meant that food intake was virtually entirely responsible. If it wasn’t, that meant changes in physical activity also played a role,” Swinburn said. “If the actual weight gain was higher than predicted, that would suggest that a decrease in physical activity played a role.”

The researchers found that in children, the predicted and actual weight increase matched exactly, indicating that the increases in energy intake alone over the 30 years studied could explain the weight increase.

“For adults, we predicted that they would be 10.8 kg heavier, but in fact they were 8.6 kg heavier. That suggests that excess food intake still explains the weight gain, but that there may have been increases in physical activity over the 30 years that have blunted what would otherwise have been a higher weight gain,” Swinburn said.

“To return to the average weights of the 1970s, we would need to reverse the increased food intake of about 350 calories a day for children (about one can of fizzy drink and a small portion of French fries) and 500 calories a day for adults (about one large hamburger),” Swinburn said. “Alternatively, we could achieve similar results by increasing physical activity by about 150 minutes a day of extra walking for children and 110 minutes for adults, but realistically, although a combination of both is needed, the focus would have to be on reducing calorie intake.”

He emphasized that physical activity should not be ignored as a contributor to reducing obesity and should continue to be promoted because of its many other benefits, but that expectations regarding what can be achieved with exercise need to be lowered and public health policy shifted more toward encouraging people to eat less.

Of course you’re going to feel “sick” losing your job, but, according to this study you’ll get physically sick. And with a lost of job comes a lost of health insurance (who can afford COBRA), and that will add even more to your “I lost my job” sickness. It’s not a good situation either way.

BOSTON—In the face of rising unemployment and businesses declaring bankruptcy, a new study has found that losing your job can make you sick. Even when people find a new job quickly, there is an increased risk of developing a new health problem, such as hypertension, heart disease, heart attack, stroke or diabetes as a result of the job loss. The study will be published in the May 8 issue of Demography.

“In today’s economy, job loss can happen to anybody,” said Kate Strully, who conducted the research as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health. “We need to be aware of the health consequences of losing our jobs and do what we can to alleviate the negative effects.”

Workers who are in poor health have a 40 percent increase in the odds of being laid off or fired, but Strully’s findings go beyond sicker people being more likely to lose their jobs. She finds that “job churning,” defined as high rates of job loss but low unemployment, has negative health consequences for workers who were not already sick. For those who lost their job—white or blue collar—through no fault of their own, such as an establishment closure, the odds of reporting fair or poor health increased by 54 percent, and among respondents with no pre-existing health conditions, it increased the odds of a new health condition by 83 percent. Even when workers became re-employed, those workers had an increased risk of new stress-related health conditions.

Unlike the results of job loss due to an establishment closure, when health effects were analyzed based on workers who were fired or laid off, significant differences were found based on the workers’ occupations. While being fired or laid off or leaving a job voluntarily more than doubles the odds of a fair or poor health report among blue-collar workers, such job displacements have no significant association with the health reports of white-collar workers. The reasons for this disparity are unclear based on the study results.

“As we consider ways to improve health in America during a time of economic recession and rising unemployment, it is critical that we look beyond health care reform to understand the tremendous impact that factors like job loss have on our health,” says David R. Williams, Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University and staff director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America. “Where and how we live, work, learn and play have a greater impact on how healthy we are than the health care we receive.”

The study was conducted based on data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationally representative survey from 1999, 2001 and 2003. The study looked at establishment closures that included a range of occupations, including managerial or professional positions (30 percent displacement), sales, clerical, and craft jobs, (33 percent displacement), a machine operator jobs (20 percent displacement), and service positions (13 percent displacement).

If the problems facing our seniors aren’t bad enough, now a new study in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing has found that as many as one in six people who took part in a study of older people who live at home were under-nourished and at risk of malnutrition. The study found that overall risk is higher for women and depression increases for men.

Researchers at Linkoping University, Sweden, found an overall malnutrition risk of 14.5 per cent when they studied 579 older people aged 75 and 80 as part of an ongoing study. Fifty-two per cent of the people who took part in the study were male.

They found that women faced a higher overall risk and that men were more likely to be at risk if they were depressed.

At the first yearly follow-up ten per cent of the 436 people still in the study were under-nourished and faced a malnutrition risk. By the second yearly follow-up the number studied had fallen to 371 but the malnutrition risk had risen to just over 16 per cent.

The researchers continued studying the 75 year-olds for another two years, reporting malnutrition risk rates of 11 per cent (out of 157 people) at the third annual follow-up and eight per cent (out of 145 people) at the fourth.

“We carried out a wide range of physical and biochemical tests on the people who took part in the study and asked them lots of questions, including how they perceived their health and their health-related quality of life” explains Yvonne Johansson from the Department of Medical and Health Sciences at the University.

“Our aim was to discover how prevalent the problem was and identify key factors that can predict an increased risk of malnutrition among older people living at home.

“We discovered that people were most likely to be at risk of malnutrition if they felt their health was poor. The second factor was symptoms of depression – especially in men – and higher age.”

Key findings of the study, which was carried out between 2001 and 2006 in southern Sweden, include:

• Women were more likely to be at risk than men – for example,19 per cent versus 10.5 per cent at baseline, 11 per cent versus nine per cent at the first follow-up and 17 per cent versus 15.5 per cent at the second follow-up.
• Three-quarters of women in the at-risk group (75 per cent) described themselves as unhealthy compared with 44 per cent of the women who were not at risk. The figures for the men were 63 per cent and 38 per cent. Men and women in the at-risk groups were more likely to be registered with a doctor.
• Women in the at risk group were more likely to live alone than women in the no risk group (63.5 per cent versus 50 per cent) but the difference in the men’s group was less marked (19 per cent versus 17 per cent).
• Women in the at-risk group were more likely to be unsatisfied with contact with others (42 per cent) than women in the no risk group (16 per cent). The difference between the two male groups was less marked (25 per cent and 28 per cent).
• Men and women in the at-risk groups had lower handgrip strength than people in the no risk group.
• The risk of malnutrition was also higher in people who showed symptoms of depression. This was particularly apparent among men.

“We hope that the findings of our study will be of use to health professionals working with older people” concludes Yvonne Johansson. “They clearly show that people who feel their health is poor and show symptoms of depression face a higher risk of developing malnutrition and that the risk gets higher as people get older.

“Our population is ageing and it is vital to ensure that health professionals are looking after their nutritional health as well as caring for any medical conditions they may have. This study provides evidence of some of the key warning signs to look out for.”

Our modern diet and accompanying lifestyle is providing to be deadly.

It’s being reported that approximately 6.3 million adults—or one fourth of the people in the U.S. with diabetes mellitus—are unaware they have the disease, and this undiagnosed population accounts for an estimated $18 billion in health care costs each year. That’s according to a study in a recent issue of Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 

Diabetes costs the U.S. economy about $174 billion in 2007 in medical expenses and lost productivity, but that figure does not take into account the national economic costs associated with undiagnosed diabetes, which could raise the estimate to more than $192 billion.

Yearly health care needs for individuals with undiagnosed diabetes tend to be higher than for persons who do not have diabetes. The health care costs associated with diabetes begin to increase at least 8 years before diagnosis and grow at a faster rate shortly before and after diagnosis.

“Diabetes is one of the most devastating chronic diseases and costs the nation billions of dollars. Building an evidence base as to what works and what doesn’t is going to be critical,” says Journal Editor-in-Chief David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Dean and Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy, Jefferson School of Population Health, Philadelphia, PA.

From about.com, here are some signs you may have diabetes:

Frequent trips to the bathroom:

Are you visiting the bathroom much more lately? Does it seem like you urinate all day long? Urination becomes more frequent when there is too much glucose in the blood. If insulin is nonexistent or ineffective, the kidneys can’t filter glucose back to the blood. They become overwhelmed and try to draw extra water out of the blood to dilute the glucose. This keeps your bladder full and it keeps you running to the bathroom.

Unquenchable Thirst:

If it feels like you can’t get enough water and you’re drinking much more than usual, it could be a sign of diabetes, especially if it seems to go hand in hand with frequent urination. If your body is pulling extra water out of your blood and you’re running to the bathroom more, you will become dehydrated and feel the need to drink more to replace the water that you are losing.

Losing Weight Without Trying:

This symptom is more noticeable with Type 1 diabetes. In Type 1, the pancreas stops making insulin, possibly due to a viral attack on pancreas cells or because an autoimmune response makes the body attack the insulin producing cells. The body desperately looks for an energy source because the cells aren’t getting glucose. It starts to break down muscle tissue and fat for energy. Type 2 happens gradually with increasing insulin resistance so weight loss is not as noticeable.

Weakness and Fatigue:

It’s that bad boy glucose again. Glucose from the food we eat travels into the bloodstream where insulin is supposed to help it transition into the cells of our body. The cells use it to produce the energy we need to live. When the insulin isn’t there or if the cells don’t react to it anymore, then the glucose stays outside the cells in the bloodstream. The cells become energy starved and you feel tired and run down.

Tingling or Numbness in Your Hands, Legs or Feet:

This symptom is called neuropathy. It occurs gradually over time as consistently high glucose in the blood damages the nervous system, particularly in the extremities. Type 2 diabetes is a gradual onset, and people are often not aware that they have it. Therefore, blood sugar might have been high for more than a few years before a diagnosis is made. Nerve damage can creep up without our knowledge. Neuropathy can very often improve when tighter blood glucose control is achieved.

Other Signs and Symptoms That Can Occur:

Blurred vision, skin that is dry or itchy, frequent infections or cuts and bruises that take a long time to heal are also signs that something is amiss. Again, when these signs are associated with diabetes, they are the result of high glucose levels in the body. If you notice any of the above signs, schedule an appointment with your doctor. He or she will be able to tell you if you have reason to be concerned about a diagnosis of diabetes.