Bill Clinton, Health Groups to Tackle Childhood Obesity

(HealthDay News) -- In what they called a "landmark agreement," former President Bill Clinton and the American Heart Association announced Thursday the launch of a national initiative on childhood obesity, aimed at getting up to 6 million American kids covered for routine visits to both primary care physicians and dietitians.

"I think we want the children of America to know, No. 1, that we want them to be healthy, we want them to grow up healthy, and we want them to start now," Clinton told reporters at his foundation's headquarters in New York City.

The new collaboration, which Clinton called "a really big deal," links medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association with insurance companies such as Aetna, WellPoint, Blue Cross of North Carolina and of Massachusetts and private companies like PepsiCo, Owens Corning and Paychex. This, Clinton said, is "the first time our three stakeholders have come together to tackle childhood obesity in a comprehensive way."
The current initiative aims to address the obesity-related healthcare needs of almost 1 million children in the program's first year, by reimbursing doctors and registered dietitians for providing health care and in-depth nutritional counseling to kids on an ongoing basis. In addition, participating companies will offer their employees access to the initiative's benefits. The new alliance will also offer parents educational and nutritional information on tackling childhood obesity.

The planned coverage is set to ratchet up to approximately 6.2 million children (25 percent of all overweight American children) by the end of three years.

Observing that millions of American families simply don't know where to turn for help on their child's weight issues -- or just can't afford the help when they find it -- Clinton said he hoped that the new initiative would address what for many parents is "somewhere between a problem and a nightmare."

The new effort, called the "Alliance Healthcare Initiative," is the latest venture of The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, created in 2005 by the AHA and the William J. Clinton Foundation. In 2006, the Alliance helped shepherd an agreement among soft drink manufacturers that established sweetener, calorie and fat guidelines, and limited the sale of sodas in elementary, middle, and high schools attended by 35 million American students.

For his part, AHA president Dr. Tim Gardner described the new initiative as "a very historic moment" and one that is needed as the nation's medical system becomes increasingly burdened by obesity-related costs amid growing economic hardship.

He noted that the direct health care costs for the treatment of children who are already overweight or obese currently tops $14 billion annually, and, overall, obesity costs the nation an estimated $117 billion annually in both healthcare costs and lost productivity.

"We're here today because there is an obesity epidemic in this country," Gardner said. "One in three teens in this country are overweight or obese."

And, he added, "there's a risk that this generation will be the first in our history to have a shorter lifespan than their parents."

More information
For additional information on childhood nutrition, visit the American Heart Association.

Experimental Weight-Loss Pill Passes Early Test

(HealthDay News) -- Researchers are hoping that an experimental new weight-loss drug will prove to be a valuable new weapon in the crusade against obesity.

In recently released phase 2 trials, the drug, known as lorcaserin, resulted in substantial weight loss in obese men and women.




"Lorcaserin is a completely novel mechanism and we think it can bring very robust weight loss. But, also, the safety profile of the compound is excellent," said Dominic P. Behan, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Arena Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, which makes the drug and sponsored a study published in the Dec. 4 issue of the journal Obesity.

"We demonstrated a highly statistically significant, progressive weight loss. This study involved no diet or exercise and the weight loss was rapid and we saw the weight loss in as little as two weeks," he added.

A phase 3 trial is under way and, if all goes well, Arena Pharmaceuticals may file a new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at the end of 2009, Behan said.

With some two-thirds of Americans either overweight or obese, the need for an effective weight loss tool is tremendous. Excess weight can lead to a variety of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, arthritis and type 2 diabetes.

"Obesity is an epidemic," said Dr. Stuart Weiss, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University's Langone Medical Center in New York City. "Diabetes trails behind obesity by a short few years and the numbers of patients that are developing diabetes is staggering."

Diet and exercise are proven antidotes for excess weight, but few people are able to sustain such changes and, even if they lose weight, will regain it.

Some weight-loss drugs are already on the market -- such as Xenical and Meridia -- but have certain side effects.

The drug Fen-phen, a combination of fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, worked for many but was withdrawn from the market in 1997 when it was linked with increased rates of heart valve problems in patients.

Fen-phen acted on serotonin receptors both in the brain and in the heart and therein lay the problem, Behan said.

"The challenge was to design a compound that was purely selective for the receptor involved, namely the 2c receptor [located in the hypothalamus region of the brain and involved in weight loss] and avoiding the 2b receptor [located in the heart]," Behan said.

The result was lorcaserin, which targets the 5-HT2C serotonin receptor only.

For the phase 2 trial, 469 men and women with a body mass index ranging from 30 to 45 were randomly assigned to one of four groups: 10 milligrams (mg) of lorcaserin once a day, 15 mg once a day, 10 mg twice a day, or a placebo.

Participants taking lorcaserin at 10 mg, 15 mg and 20 mg a day lost 4 pounds, 5.7 pounds and 7.9 pounds, respectively, over the 12-week period. Those in the placebo group lost less than a pound.

In the 10 mg, 15 mg and 20 mg groups, respectively, 12.8 percent, 19.5 percent and 31.2 percent of participants lost 5 percent or more of their starting body weight, versus only 2.3 percent of patients on the placebo.

Participants taking the two higher doses of lorcaserin also shaved inches off their waist and dropped their cholesterol levels.

Also, their echocardiograms -- ultrasound images of the heart -- were normal.

"It [lorcaserin] certainly looks a bit better [than other weight-loss medications]," Weiss said. "We don't have much out there. They're really just modest medications and they don't do much at all."

More information
Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on overweight and obesity.

Texting Food Diaries Helps Kids Stick With Diets

(HealthDay News) -- Experts hope that letting kids have their fingers do the texting will increase compliance with the food diaries that are such a critical part of successful dieting.

As a first proof that such a method might work, a new University of North Carolina study shows that kids aged 5 to 13 are almost twice as likely to text daily records of their food intake, exercise and screen time as those using the old-fashioned kinds of diaries. The research was published in the November/December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

Previous studies have shown that dieters who keep these types of records are more likely to lose weight and to keep it off, according to study author Jennifer Shapiro, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry.

"What we're looking for is a fun way for people, particularly children," to keep these diaries, Shapiro said. "If people enjoy doing it, they're more likely to do it and more likely to lose weight."



The eight-week study following 31 families with children aged 5 to 13 showed that those kids who used text messaging were almost twice as likely to comply with the program than kids who used paper and pencil.

The popularity of this approach was demonstrated by the fact 100 percent of the participating children and parents initially said they hoped they would be selected for the text-messaging group.

In the study, an immediate text message responded to the children's report on how well they met their goals. Children who used the paper-and-pencil diaries had to wait a week to report to their nutritionist for a response to their progress.

"Feedback is very important," Shapiro explained. "It makes them feel like there is someone on the other line paying attention, and they need to be more accountable."

The study's goal was to measure adherence to the dieting diary process and did not measure weight loss, Shapiro said. Because it was such a small study, the results did not reach statistical significance, but the researchers hope to repeat the study with a larger population and for a longer time.

"The idea of text messaging is really interesting, particularly to communicate with a new generation," added Dorothy Teegarden, a professor in the department of foods and nutrition at Purdue University.

But Teegarden agreed further research needs to be done on the effectiveness of this approach, given the wide gap in the age range and the fact that parents also were involved. She explained that some research shows that it's easier to modify behavior within the context of a family environment. "So, just that part of the study might have contributed to better compliance," she added.

The fact that all of the kids wanted to be part of the text-messaging group also may have biased the study, said Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The children who were assigned the paper-and-pencil diary might not have been as compliant, because they didn't get the tool they wanted, she explained.

Research has shown that 19 percent of kids aged 6 to 11 are overweight, and 80 percent of those kids become obese adults, according to the study.

More information
For more on children and obesity, go to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

6 Simple Ways a Woman Can Be Healthy Every Day

6 Simple Ways a Woman Can Be Healthy Every Day - By cutting down on the number of calories taken in and being physically active , women can reduce their chances of becoming overweight or overweight or obese.... Read more

Obesity, Insulin Level Impact Prostate Cancer Survival

(HealthDay News) -- Men who are overweight and who have high insulin levels when they are diagnosed with prostate cancer may be more likely to die from the disease, research shows.

This striking finding, published early online and expected to be in the November issue of The Lancet Oncology, is yet more reason to continue fighting the battle of the bulge, experts say.

"I don't want to be sensationalist, but obesity effects and the insulin effects are so big that I think if you had to choose between being thin and having a low insulin level or having access to the best chemotherapy, you would be more likely to survive without chemotherapy," said study senior author Dr. Michael Pollak, professor of oncology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

"Tens of thousands of men are taking chemotherapy for prostate cancer -- as they should, because it is a good treatment. Doing so is actually helping," he said. "But potentially, dealing with insulin, obesity may one day be of more benefit."

The findings also have scientific import, giving researchers a clue that could lead to new prevention and treatment strategies.

Experts have long known that androgens, or male hormones, play a critical role in spurring prostate cancer.

In fact, these cancers are often treated with approaches that deprive the tumors of testosterone.

Smaller reports have suggested that obese patients with prostate cancer have a worse prognosis than patients of regular weight, though weight hasn't been related to actually developing a malignancy.

"We found in a large sample that obesity has a very important influence on prostate cancer outcome," Pollak said. "Then the question becomes, why would obesity make the outcome worse?"

Pollak and his colleagues looked at information on more than 2,500 men who had been followed for 24 years as part of the Physicians' Health Study. Information on body mass index (BMI) was available for all of these men, while information on C-peptide concentration (a marker of insulin levels in the blood) was available for 827 men.

Overweight men (those with a BMI of 25 to 29) had a 47 percent higher risk of dying from prostate cancer, while obese men (BMI of 30 or over) were more than two-and-a-half times more likely to die of the disease, compared with men of healthy weight (BMI under 25).

Men with the highest C-peptide concentrations also had more than double the risk of dying from their cancer compared with men with the lowest levels, the study found.

Finally, men who had a BMI of more than 25 and high C-peptide concentrations had quadruple the risk of dying from their cancer compared with men who had lower BMIs and lower C-peptide levels, the researchers reported.

"This suggests that there may be a whole new story to tell, whereby not just androgens have something to do with cancer behavior, but also insulin," Pollak said.

The insulin hormone may be latching onto insulin receptors located on prostate cancer cells, he speculated.

Some pharmaceutical companies are already testing drug candidates that target insulin signaling, Pollak added.

And the findings could have broader implications for other cancers, said study lead author Dr. Jing Ma, of Harvard University's Channing Laboratory.

"The simple things are still the important things. Don't drink, don't smoke, exercise, and eat well," said Dr. Ganesh Palapattu, assistant professor of urology, pathology and oncology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. "This is yet another piece of evidence suggesting that obesity is not a good thing for many reasons."

"Obesity is the second leading cause of cancer death in this country next to tobacco," emphasized Dr. Jay Brooks, chief of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "Two years ago, I would never have told my patients that obesity is increasing their risk of death from cancer. Today, I do."

More information
There's more on prostate cancer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Obesity Surgery: Less Successful for Diabetics?

By Theresa Tamkins

A gastric bypass is a radical operation for desperate people. But a new study shows that this dramatic procedure—during which surgeons fashion a tiny new pouch that bypasses the old, larger stomach and part of the small intestine—isn’t always a weight-loss home run.

Certain patients—5% to 15%—lose some, but not all, of their excess weight after surgery. The new research, published today in Archives of Surgery, shows that people with type 2 diabetes diabetes are three times as likely as those without diabetes to fall into this group. Read More

Fat Cells in Obese People Are 'Sick'

(HealthDay News) -- Fat cells in obese people are "sick" compared to those in lean people, a new study shows.

Published in the September issue of Diabetes, a group of researchers from the Temple University School of Medicine analyzed fat samples from the upper thighs of six lean and six obese people.

They found significant differences in the fat cells of the obese participants compared with the lean participants.

"The fat cells we found in our obese patients were deficient in several areas," study author Guenther Boden, the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Medicine and chief of endocrinology, said in Temple press release.

Boden said that the obese people's fat cells showed stress on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which helps cells synthesize proteins and monitor how they are folded. When the ER is stressed, Boden explained, it produces several proteins that ultimately lead to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance, in turn, plays a major role in the development of obesity-related conditions.

The differences in the fat cells between obese and lean people may help explain the link between obesity and a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, Boden theorized.

More information
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about overweight and obesity.

Health Tip: Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle

(HealthDay News) -- No one knows precisely why people get cancer, and there's no surefire cure.

But if you maintain a healthy lifestyle, you can help reduce your risk. Here are some suggestions, courtesy of AARP:

• Eat a healthy diet, including plenty of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Limit intake of red meat, saturated fats, smoked and salt-cured foods, and foods preserved with nitrates.


• Get regular exercise of 30 minutes or more at least five days a week.


• Maintain a healthy body weight.


• If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.


• Wear sunscreen and avoid prolonged exposure to direct sun during the midday hours.


• Get screened for cancers for which you may be most susceptible.