December 2022 - Page 21 Of 27

Jump-start a healthier New Year with four holiday eating tips

Satisfying strategies to adopt during a season of festive food.

Many people wait until January 1st to begin eating healthier. After all, the holidays are full of stress and extra helpings of rich festive foods, so why bother?

But banish that negative thought, because this is an ideal time to adopt new habits. “The dietary changes you make now can help you manage the stress and avoid overindulging on holiday fare,” says Teresa Fung, a registered dietitian with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Plus, by practicing healthier eating, you can begin the new year with momentum and motivation.”

4 keys to healthy holiday eating patterns

Fung suggests four great strategies for healthier fare that can give you a jump-start on a healthful 2023.

Focus on portion control and mindful eating. People often overeat during the holidays because of tempting food choices and larger portions — think family dinners and party spreads. “This is a wonderful chance to practice portion control,” says Fung. For example, if three different cakes are offered at the party and you like all three, take a tiny slice of each. “This way, you can enjoy a variety of goodies without overdoing it,” says Fung.

Eating at big gatherings is also a chance to practice mindful eating, which can reduce overeating. “Focus on eating slowly and savoring the flavors, and pause to talk and socialize,” says Fung. “The slower pace gives your body time to sense what you’ve eaten and signal the brain that you are full, so you are less likely to reach for seconds or third servings.”

Push the plants. When considering your holiday dishes, make plant-based foods a high priority. For instance, the Mediterranean and MIND diets emphasize eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and using healthy oils. These diets are rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals that help lower blood pressure and maintain a healthy weight (both welcomed gifts during the holidays).

“The holidays are an ideal opportunity to begin the transition into a plant-based diet, since you are cooking more than usual and often need new ideas for meals,” says Fung. Here are some ways you can begin adopting plant-based habits.

Eat more salads. These are great for holiday parties and family meals, as you can make large amounts. “Another approach is to add a side salad to at least one daily meal,” says Fung.

Adopt a vegetarian day. Once a week, go vegetarian for the entire day and eat nothing but fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. “This can help you recognize the types and amounts of foods you need to eat without the overwhelming pressure to do it all the time,” says Fung. As you get more comfortable, try two days a week. A fun option is to consider specific meals or foods for certain days of the week, like Whole-Grain Wednesdays and Stir-Fry Fridays.

Try new recipes. Creating just one new vegetarian meal per week can help make preparing meals less daunting. “There are many easy, healthy recipes on the Internet,” says Fung. “Find something that uses ingredients you like and that requires only a few steps or minimal cooking skills.”

Get spicy. With all the extra baking and cooking, the holidays are the ideal time to add more spices to your diet. Many spices contain antioxidants, flavonoids, and other beneficial compounds that are involved in mood and inflammation regulation.

“There are a lot of spice mixes available that combine a variety of spices and can be used on all kinds of meals, from poultry to soups to side dishes,” says Fung. Better yet, experiment with creating your own spice mix. “You don’t have to know what you are doing, just give it a try and enjoy your creation,” says Fung.

Go light on the alcohol. One survey found that the average adult consumes three alcoholic drinks daily during the holidays. And a new study suggests that just one daily drink may raise a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Then there are the extra calories to consider. Depending on the type of beverage (beer, wine, spirits) and the amount, calories per serving can range from about 120 to more than 200.

If you do enjoy raising a glass of celebratory cheer, Fung suggests switching to sparkling water or a cocktail made of one-third fruit juice and two-thirds sparkling water after one or two drinks. “This can help keep you from drinking too much, and help you realize you can enjoy social settings without alcohol even after the holidays are over,” she says.

Children’s medical equipment damaged on Frontier flight

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (KDVR) — A Castle Rock couple with two disabled children told FOX31 they were heartbroken to discover expensive medical equipment was damaged after their flight on Frontier Airlines.

The Leao family faces challenges, but they take them on with patience and love. When asked about 2-year-old son Bellamy and 4-year-old daughter Annabel, Morgan Leao said, “they are nonverbal but their lives and their smiles tell everything.”

Annabel copes with a seizure disorder that can be triggered by a lack of rest, so she needs to sleep in a specially-designed bed.

“It just provides her with an enclosed space to stay in her bed at night and really be able to relax,” Morgan Leao said.

Charges, missing and damaged parts

On Nov. 30, the family flew from Atlanta to Denver on Frontier Airlines. Morgan Leao said she was shocked to be charged for the medical equipment.

“I had to open the bag for her, and I was like, even with proof, you have the audacity to charge me?” Morgan said.

When the family got home, they discovered seven parts from Annabel’s bed were missing.

“We went to put her bed up and it was just like a nightmare,” Annabel’s father, Waltier Leao, said.

A special stroller was damaged as well. The cost to replace the items is nearly $8,000, but Morgan Leao said she had trouble getting the airline to respond to her request for compensation.

“I’m obviously not enough to fight for myself. I need help,” she said.

Frontier Airlines responds

The Problem Solvers contacted Frontier and asked what could be done. The company provided FOX31 with the following statement:

“Since the customer reached out to us, we have been actively working with our third-party vendor that specializes in assistive device repairs and replacements. Upon evaluation, replacement for both a pediatric stroller and safety bed was approved. In the meantime, we have refunded the checked bag and overweight fees associated with the equipment. We extend our sincere apologies to the family for the inconvenience they have experienced.”

Frontier Airlines

Annabel’s new bed will arrive in seven weeks.

“I am relieved, I’m grateful for being able to receive those items and grateful to have such support on my side and people to fight for me,” Morgan Leao said.

Consumer protection experts advise all parents to carry proof of the need for medical equipment and check policies before boarding any airline’s flight. Ask about how customer service can be contacted before you go on your trip.

Can a Healthy Lifestyle Prevent IBD?

Adopting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle may prevent inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to findings from an analysis of three prospective U.S. cohort studies, which were validated in three external European cohorts.

In the primary analysis, maintaining low modifiable risk scores — based on risk factors including body mass index, smoking status, use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, physical activity, and daily consumption of fruit, vegetables, fiber, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and red meat — could have prevented 42.9{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of Crohn’s disease cases and 44.4{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of ulcerative colitis cases, reported Hamed Khalili, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues.

Moreover, adherence to a healthy lifestyle could have prevented 61.1{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of Crohn’s disease cases and 42.2{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of ulcerative colitis cases, they noted in Gut.

“We were surprised by the proportion of cases that could have been prevented through lifestyle modifications,” Khalili told MedPage Today. “One reason for this finding may be that our population was older and therefore most of our cases of IBD happened in older adults.”

“We know that lifestyle and environmental factors play a bigger role in the development of IBD in this population as compared to those who are diagnosed with disease earlier in life,” he added.

These findings from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), the NHS II, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) were largely validated in three external European cohorts — the Swedish Mammography Cohort, Cohort of Swedish Men, and the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.

Looking at cases of Crohn’s disease among the European validation cohorts, adhering to low-risk factors could have prevented 44{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} to 51{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of cases, while adhering to a healthy lifestyle could have prevented 49{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} to 60{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} cases. For ulcerative colitis, adherence to low-risk factors could have prevented 21{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} to 28{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of cases, while healthy lifestyle adherence could have prevented 47{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} to 56{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of cases.

For every 1-point increase in modifiable risk score, a higher risk of Crohn’s disease (P for trend<0.0001) and ulcerative colitis (P for trend=0.008) was observed, and was similar for men and women.

IBD affects about 3.1 million people in the U.S. and 1.3 million in Europe, with incidence rising globally, especially among newly industrialized countries, Khalili’s group said. IBD is associated with an annual healthcare cost of $23,000 per patient in the U.S., and there are no current strategies to prevent the development of IBD. While one approach to preventing many chronic diseases is modification of lifestyle and dietary factors, the success of adhering to such changes remains unclear.

For this study, Khalili and colleagues examined data on 72,290 participants from the NHS, 93,909 from the NHS II, and 41,871 from the HPFS. The NHS enrolled female nurses ages 30 to 55 across 11 states in 1976. NHS II assessed a slightly younger cohort of female nurses (ages 25 to 42) from 15 states starting in 1989, while the HPFS enrolled male physicians ages 40 to 75 across all states in 1986.

In order to externally validate their findings, the researchers assessed data on 40,810 participants in the Cohort of Swedish Men, 404,144 from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, and 37,275 from the Swedish Mammography Cohort.

Using participant baseline and biennial questionnaires that assessed lifestyle factors, anthropomorphic data, and medical history, Khalili and colleagues developed modifiable risk scores ranging from 0 to 6 for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, with higher scores indicating more risk factors. Healthy lifestyle scores ranging from 0 to 9 were also developed, based on recommendations from the American Heart Association and other organizations, with higher scores indicating a healthier lifestyle.

A healthy lifestyle included never smoking, a BMI between 18.5 and 25, and engaging in physical activity of at least 7.5 metabolic equivalent of task-hours per week, in addition to consuming less than half a serving of red meat per day, at least eight daily servings of fruit/vegetables, at least half a serving of nuts or seeds per day, at least two servings of fish per week, at least 25 g of daily fiber, and a maximum of one daily alcoholic beverage for women and two for men.

Across 5,117,021 person-years of follow-up, 346 cases of Crohn’s disease and 456 cases of ulcerative colitis were reported.

On falsification analysis, adherence to low-risk factors for Crohn’s disease could have also prevented 32.3{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of cases of rheumatoid arthritis, 13.3{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of cases of colorectal cancer, and 14{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of cases of cardiovascular disease, though this was not the case for ulcerative colitis.

“This is largely due to differences in strength of associations and prevalence of risk factors, and presence of other modifiable risk factors such as alcohol and medications or supplements which are strongly associated with these other conditions,” Khalili and colleagues suggested.

They acknowledged that younger-onset IBD was under-represented in their study, since the mean age of the cohort (about 45) was higher than the usual age at onset of IBD. In addition, data on other modifiable risk factors such as stress were not explored, and high-risk individuals were not assessed.

Zaina Hamza is a staff writer for MedPage Today, covering Gastroenterology and Infectious disease. She is based in Chicago.

Disclosures

This study was primarily supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Khalili reported support from the American College of Gastroenterology Senior Research Award and the Beker Foundation, as well as consulting fees from AbbVie and Takeda, and grant funding from Pfizer and Takeda.

Co-authors also reported multiple relationships with industry.

The best diet and nutrition tracking apps on Android in 2022

Part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is looking after your dietary habits. Of course, snagging takeout frequently and snacking on the wrong kinds of foods won’t do you any favors in the long term. But sometimes, we need more awareness of how to overcome our current eating habits, and we need to know where to start when it comes to developing a better diet. So we’ve created a list of some of the best Android apps that are easily accessible on your favorite Android phone to help enable healthier choices for your daily food intake and meal planning.

ANDROIDPOLICE VIDEO OF THE DAY

MyFitnessPal

You can’t go wrong with MyFitnessPal, the all-in-one food tracking app. The app serves as your nutrition coach and food diary, helping to recommend well-balanced meals so you meet your dietary goals. MyFitnessPal also saves you time as you record your daily food intake since you can scan the barcodes for the products you own/consume to get the information you need to record instantly. Never forget to miscount your calories again now that you have access to the best food tracker.

Lose it!

If you’re looking for a more personalized food-tracking app, Lose it! is an excellent choice. You can take pictures of your food to help log what you’ve consumed, set macro dietary goals for weight loss plans, and select custom recipes that exactly fit your needs. Sometimes the cookie-cutter methodologies don’t work out for us, but why not just create our own goals using the help of an app instead? The Lose it! app might just be the push that gets us there.

Lifesum

You may be completely lost and don’t know where to begin when it comes to dieting. Thankfully, Lifesum provides complete meal plans for every type of diet/goal, along with healthy recipes to help you create a balanced diet. It also offers a built-in calorie tracker with a sleek UI to view macros and calories at a glance. Unfortunately, you’ll need a paid subscription to sync with third-party services, which can be a roadblock for some users.

Mealime

Starting fresh on any diet can be cumbersome. Not only do you have to keep track of your eating activities, but you require a lot of meal planning. It’s not easy to shop for all the ingredients to carefully prep those meals, which is why we turn to Mealime. Mealime helps plan your meals for you and your family, generate grocery store shopping lists, and a paid subscription giving access to detailed nutritional information, meal plan tracking, and exclusive recipes. Have personal preferences or allergies you need to note down? Mealime takes care of all that for you.

Freeletics Nutrition

You may know Freeletics for its popular bodyweight training app, but Freeletics Nutrition is a standalone app dedicated to improving your nutritional and weight goals. Basically, you are what you eat. Freeletics Nutrition doesn’t believe in focusing on calorie counting; it is all about the final results to get to where you want to be for healthy eating and weight. In addition, you can pay for a subscription to access a nutritional coach to help you along the way. Are you worried about finding the right meal plans without meat? Well, vegetarians and pescatarians are also well accommodated within this app. There’s a plan for literally anyone.

BodyFast Intermittent Fasting

A beginner-friendly app to get ahold of a safe and effective fasting plan. It includes recipes, fasting plans, coaching tips, and food/water tracking; you’ll learn what you’re eating and how each stage affects your body. If not done correctly, fasting may pose some risks, which is why you’ll turn to the help of BodyFast Intermittent Fasting. In addition, you’ll have access to a BodyFast coach, trackers with timers and reminders, and plans tailored to your dietary needs and goals. So never worry about learning how to fast on your own ever again.

Senza

Senza is the ultimate ketogenic and fasting dietary help; you gain access to beginner guides, keto-specific recipes, and daily recommendations. The app also includes carnivore and paleo diets for recipes and tips. It also has advanced features like potassium, sodium, magnesium, glucose, and ketone intakes. Instead of acquiring a virtual coach, you’ll connect with live nutritionists for advanced support. In addition, you can now sync your progression with Fitbit and Google Fit; that way, you can keep up with your exercise, weight, and dietary advancement, all in a single place.

Yuka — Food & cosmetic scan

A set dietary plan can only do so much for your weightless goals. However, it is possible to maintain a healthy lifestyle if you know how to make informed choices. This is where Yuka comes in. Yuka is the ultimate food scanning app that takes scientific data to evaluate the nutritional value, additives (how much), and the organic dimension of the product. It’ll then assess a level of risk and recommend better alternatives. Yuka is the app to take with you while you’re shopping or taking a trip to your food pantry. Don’t get fooled by what you’re eating ever again!

Live life to the fullest while eating healthy

A healthy body is also a healthy mind. So be sure to take care of your physical health and well-being to live life to the fullest. The best Android apps are also companion apps that enable a healthier lifestyle that enforces your nutritional and dietary plans. So not only is being health conscious for your daily food intake vital, but you’ll also want to look into the best Android apps for health and fitness to supplement your lifestyle goals.

Should racism and discrimination be viewed as public health threats? A new study argues they should

LONDON — Racism and discrimination must be acknowledged as public health threats in the fight to address global health disparities, according to a new study.

As part of the four-paper series published in The Lancet medical journal Thursday, researchers from countries around the world, including the U.S., U.K., Brazil and India, carried out a major review of scientific literature and used data from hundreds of articles in recent years.

The tendency among health professionals has been to explain unequal health outcomes on either genetics or economic conditions, according to the study’s authors. But in order to tackle racial health inequities, racism and discrimination themselves should be classified as public health threats globally, the authors say.

“Racism has always been a public health threat,” Alexandre White, assistant professor of sociology and the history of medicine at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, told ABC News. “It has emerged time and time again, especially over the last 10 to 15 years.”

Research into the intersection of race and health disparities has advanced in recent years, particularly in the U.S. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention almost every two in three pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. A 2020 report found that non-Hispanic Black women experienced a higher pregnancy-related mortality rate — a disparity placing them nearly three times more at risk of dying due to pregnancy-related causes compared to non-Hispanic white women.

The report’s authors also found evidence of disproportionate impact from the pandemic, vaccine inequality and climate change on minority groups.

Should racism and discrimination be viewed as public health threats? A new study argues they should

“This study is tremendously important [as] it sheds light on the fundamental role that racism, xenophobia and forms of discrimination actually play on health, both from a structural level and generational level over time,” White said. “But also fundamentally since the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve seen the ways in which, especially racism and xenophobia, affects who gets sick, how seriously and why.”

The study also reports that racial biases in health care can lead to a stress response — affirming previous studies that found discrimination, whether overt or covert, can lead to chronic stress responses which can affect human neurological and immune systems. That chronic stress response can lead to lower life expectancies and is associated with other health complications such as anxiety, depression and heart disease.

“It’s not only because of racism at the individual interpersonal level,” Dr. Abi Deivanayagam, a public health doctor, researcher, activist and one of the study’s authors, told ABC News. “It’s racism in the way that our society is structured. And that’s very real. And it’s really important that we acknowledge this in a medical journal like The Lancet so that health people recognize that this is something this is our duty of care to patients. And our care really has to go beyond the individual to making sure that our systems are safe for our patients.”

Although discrimination against minority groups comes in different forms around the world according to such factors as race, ethnicity and religion, a pattern of worse health outcomes for minority groups can be seen globally.

According to Deivanayagam, the study has drawn two major conclusions.

“One thing is that there is evidence globally that shows that racism, xenophobia and discrimination affect a range of different health outcomes, and that this is embedded across different levels of society and that it affects people across the course of their lives ranging from COVID-19, to vaccines, to actually getting health care access,” she told ABC News. “The second thing is that we need to get to the root cause of this. And the way we do that as health professionals is to recognize that racism, xenophobia and discrimination are actually a public health threat.”

‘Exhausting’ and ‘energizing’: First leader of high-risk medical research agency discusses startup | Science

Nine months after it was made by Congress, President Joe Biden’s new company for substantial-danger biomedical research has begun to choose condition below its first chief, Renee Wegrzyn. The 45-calendar year-old used biologist is a veteran of the Protection Sophisticated Investigation Jobs Company (DARPA), the product for the new company that, for now, is component of the National Institutes of Wellbeing (NIH).

Wegrzyn, who started out as director of the Sophisticated Research Jobs Company for Overall health (ARPA-H) on 11 October, has given that quintupled the agency’s employees, launched a web-site and Twitter account, and started to meet with the several analysis leaders, legislators, and patient advocates who pushed to build the agency and disagreed in excess of irrespective of whether it must be impartial of NIH.

ARPA-H has also rolled out 4 “mission focus areas.” They are: developing resources and platforms that reduce throughout ailments, overcoming geographic and manufacturing problems that hold solutions from reaching clients, crafting preventative health and fitness packages, and building resilient wellness care devices that can deal with crises this sort of as pandemics and local climate adjust.

As with DARPA, the coronary heart of the new company will be its highly effective program supervisors. Every single will get $50 million to $150 million to spend on projects they will find, without the need of the rigid oversight of peer-critique panels. Wegrzyn expects to use up to 20 application administrators by the finish of 2023 to start out paying out the $1 billion Congress gave ARPA-H to get began.

Wegrzyn says her major priority right now is using the services of these application managers. In their apps, they must pitch two suggestions and solution some concerns formulated by former DARPA Director George Heilmeier, this kind of as: What are you hoping to do? What is new? Who cares? (The concerns are recognized as the Heilmeier Catechism.)

Whilst the agency does not still know the place its headquarters will be—some say it really should be considerably from the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland—Wegrzyn states software administrators will not have to relocate and can do the job remotely.

Yesterday, Wegrzyn spoke with ScienceInsider about her ideas. This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What are you looking for in the application supervisors?

A: What’s key is that we have a assorted staff not only in demographics, but the subject areas that they function on. There’s a ton of scope for health, from molecular abilities all the way to surgeons. But also varied geographies are essential to us. And various experiences—government, field, academia. And they should really be hazard takers and very good collaborators.

Q: Are you having a lot of apps?

A: Yes, it is been fairly exciting to see the diversity of responses. Not everyone has observed the Heilmeier questions before. We’re supporting coach some of the folks. How do you formulate your principles, make positive that they are quantitative? And why ARPA-H? There’s so a lot of other funding organizations out there, we will need to actually swiftly household in on options that are quite special for our agency.

Q: You anticipate to collaborate with NIH on ideas. How will you keep away from getting just one more NIH institute?

A: When I was at the DARPA organic sciences workplace, I labored with NIH all the time due to the fact I experienced a professional medical countermeasures software. All govt stakeholders enable their other governing administration partners.

NIH is there to explain to us about the science. Would this remove a blocker in your area? And to really make certain that they are stakeholders in our program simply because we will also probably changeover thriving applications to them.

What is significant is that the method manager will be the conclusion-maker on whether or not or not to fund a little something mainly because they will presume the possibility.

Q: You’ve claimed it could get 5 to 15 many years for ARPA-H to have effects. So how are you likely to convince Congress to improve your spending budget?

A: We have to have several examples of courses exactly where you can say, “I get it, there is no other dwelling for that.” Since the goals are so bold, no matter whether it is the magnitude or the timeline.

We also want to exhibit that we have a lifestyle exactly where there’s an knowledge that you will fail, and you ought to study from individuals failures and move on very speedily. Right up until we have wins, that will be the way that we exhibit our worth.

Q: You’ve already experienced 30 meetings with members of Congress and satisfied with 10 individual illness teams. It appears like you’re getting pulled in a lot of directions.

A: There’s a ton of electricity and exhilaration. … People today want us to be successful. Patient communities all want us to share the hyperlink to the program manager software with the analysis communities that treatment about their conditions.

It is exhausting to check out to build a government company, I will be the initial to say that. But it is extremely energizing.