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To: LindyBill who wrote (15216)	4/20/2011 9:33:24 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Respond to of 39297

Religious people are fat people! Religious Young Adults Become Obese By Middle Age Researchers say cause may be unhealthy food at religious activities By Marla Paul CHICAGO --- Could it be the potato salad? Young adults who frequently attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age as young adults with no religious involvement, according to new Northwestern Medicine research. This is the first longitudinal study to examine the development of obesity in people with various degrees of religious involvement. “We don’t know why frequent religious participation is associated with development of obesity, but the upshot is these findings highlight a group that could benefit from targeted efforts at obesity prevention,” said Matthew Feinstein, the study’s lead investigator and a fourth-year student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. ”It’s possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity.” Previous Northwestern Medicine research established a correlation between religious involvement and obesity in middle-age and older adults at a single point in time. By tracking participants’ weight gain over time, the new study makes it clear that normal weight younger adults with high religious involvement became obese, rather than obese adults becoming more religious. The research is being presented at the American Heart Association’s Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Scientific Sessions 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia. The study, which tracked 2,433 men and women for 18 years, found normal weight young adults ages 20 to 32 years with a high frequency of religious participation were 50 percent more likely to be obese by middle age after adjusting for differences in age, race, sex, education, income and baseline body mass index. High frequency of religious participation was defined as attending a religious function at least once a week. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher. A woman who is 5’5 and 180 pounds has a BMI of 30, for example. The men and women in the study were part of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) multi-center study, supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. “Obesity is the major epidemic that is facing the U.S. population right now,” said senior study author Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a cardiologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “We know that people with obesity have substantial risks for developing diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancer, and of dying much younger. So, we need to use all of the tools at our disposal to identify groups at risk and to provide education and support to prevent the development of obesity in the first place. Once the weight is on, it is much harder to lose it.” The authors caution that their findings should only be taken to mean people with frequent religious involvement are more likely to become obese, and not that they have worse overall health status than those who are non-religious. In fact, previous studies have shown religious people tend to live longer than those who aren’t religious in part because they tend to smoke less. “Here’s an opportunity for religious organizations to initiate programs to help their congregations live even longer,” Feinstein said. “The organizations already have groups of people getting together and infrastructures in place that could be leveraged to initiate programs that prevent people from becoming obese and treat existing obesity.” Feinstein noted Northwestern is leading such an educational intervention in a church on Chicago’s West Side where members are taught how dietary changes and increased physical activity can lower cardiovascular disease risk factors such as obesity, cholesterol and high blood pressure. “Church-based interventions have shown promising results,” he said. Marla Paul is the health sciences editor. Contact her at marla-paul@northwestern.edu

To: LindyBill who wrote (15216)	4/21/2011 10:27:53 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Respond to of 39297

Bill Use It Or Lose It Starts Earlier Then You Think! ========== Kiddo couch potatoes have narrowed arteries Sedentary kids have arterial narrowing behind the eyes, an early sign of high blood pressure Amanda Chan MyHealthNewsDaily updated 4/20/2011 5:17:11 PM ET For kids, too much time spent in front of a computer or TV screen can lead to narrowed arteries in the back of the eyes — an early sign of high blood pressure and future heart disease, according to a new study. Kids who exercised an hour or more each day had wider arteries there than did children who spent a half hour or less each day being active, the study said. And the more time spent watching TV, the narrower the arteries were, which translates to an increase in blood pressure. The arterial narrowing from each hour of screen time would lead to a 10 millimeter of mercury (mm HG) increase in systolic blood pressure (the top number on a blood pressure reading), researchers said. For a child who is already borderline for high blood pressure, that 10-point increase can be a lot, said Dr. John Stevens Jr., director of preventive cardiology at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Sibley Heart Center in Georgia. "It's more evidence that you can see effects at early life of unhealthy habits," Stevens, who was not involved with the study, told MyHealthNewsDaily. The study was published today (April 20) in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association. Australian researchers surveyed the parents of 1,492 children age 6 or 7 on the number of hours their children spend being physically active and sedentary each week. Then the researchers took digital photographs of the arteries in the back of each child's eyes to measure how wide or narrow they were. Researchers also recorded the children's height, weight and body mass index (BMI, a measure of height in relation to weight). They also averaged three separate blood pressure measurements. On average, the children spent 1.9 hours a day being sedentary in front of a TV or computer screen, and 36 minutes a day being physically active, the study said. Children who spent the most time being physically active (more than an hour each day) had arteries that were, on average, 2.2 microns wider than the children who spent the least time being active (less than a half hour a day), according to the study. Each hour of TV time a day was associated with an average arterial narrowing of 1.53 microns, which is associated with an increase of 10 mm HG in systolic blood pressure. Stevens guessed that the researchers looked at the arteries in the backs of the eyes because they are the one set of arteries that can be looked at directly without a sophisticated noninvasive test. "You have a clear window to see the health of the artery," Stevens said. Why are narrowed arteries bad? It's long been known that narrowing of the arteries is correlated with high blood pressure, Stevens said. But the study shows that signs of heart risks can show up even at a young age, just by being sedentary. Narrowed arteries put people at increased risk of heart problems because the blood vessels aren't able to dilate as well in response to changes in blood flow, thereby increasing blood pressure, he said. "When you get increased demands for flow, can they handle it? Can they stretch?" Stevens said of the arteries. There can be other factors in arterial narrowing, such as blood pressure, cholesterol and weight, he said. But "even before kids are overweight, even before they have elevated cholesterol and blood pressure, just with the mere fact of being physically inactive there are already some of the changes with blood vessels," Stevens said. That goes to show that "they're all interrelated."