GEICO: Teen Drivers Need A Full Tank Of Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Zs

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Teens have the highest crash rates in the rustic. They also are pleasing to regard the least sleep. GEICO (http://www.geico.com) agrees with a growing number of sources including the National Sleep Foundation (http://www.sleepfoundation.org) that the problem could be reduced by a good night’s sleep.

Two critical factors collide when teens are in their early driving years: 1) they penury nearly 9.5 hours of sleep every adversity to accommodate an upswing in growth and hormone development, and 2) they get far less sleep than they need - some average of 7.4 hours a night, considerably less for many.

Compounding the moot point further, researchers say that teens’ biological clocks are set so that they to fall asleep later at night and wake up later in the morning, a schedule which is impossible to follow due to soon morning school starts for most teens.

It quite points to a nation of very sleepy teenagers.

National Sleep Awareness Week March 3-9

During National Sleep Awareness Week, March 3-9, GEICO is alerting parents with teen drivers to observe their teen’s sleep study habits and adjust them so teens get more sleep. Teens mouldiness possess more sleep to stay alert, make sound judgments, and when driving to maintain clear thinking and quick reflexes.

Your teen may be sleep deprived if he or she can’t wake up in the morning, is irritable late in the day, falls asleep spontaneously during the day and sleeps at great length on weekends.
While that sounds like a universal description of most teens most of the time, it could be the gap in their sleep hours that is at the heart of a lot of dreadful adolescent mien.

The driving danger is clear. Drowsy driving is a principle inducement of traffic crashes each year, and young drivers are particularly weak since they are operating most of the time on much less sleep than they need. See www.drowsydriving.org for more.

Rework Teens’ Schedules Around Sleep Needs

It’s important for both parents and teens to recognize the signs of fatigue and rework daily schedules to allow for healthier lie in the grave cycles.

It won’t be easy. Teens have a lot to be true to them up on school nights: studies, anxiety over grades, after school sports and social activities that delay study time, relationship issues, over stimulation from media sources such as popular computer sites, computer gaming, and an overlade of solitary abode; squalid phone practice and text messaging.

What Parents Can Do

What can parents do to help their teens get more rest:

- Build time-management skills. Encourage teens to see how long tasks will take and plan b realistically to complete school assignments. Get them to start early and not procrastinate. Then they won’t have to burn the midnight oil and they can enjoy a good night’s rely.
- Establish a reasonable bedtime and rod to it.
- Create a bedtime routine that winds down the go at a pace. The Mayo Clinic suggests a fiery bath or shower, a book, relaxing activities, and on account of 30 minutes in the presence of lights out, not one loud music, video games, phone calls or Internet use.
- Eliminate caffeine drinks in the evening.
- Complete exercise and sports programs early in the evening, well before bedtime.
- Determine if any medications may be affecting sleep.

GEICO offers an online library of knowledge to help keep teens safe steady the road. Please go to here to download and order materials.

GEICO (Government Employees Insurance Company) is the fourth-largest sequestered passenger auto insurer in the United States. It provides auto insurance coverage for more than 8 million policyholders and insures more than 13 million vehicles.

http://www.geico.com

Obese kids at higher respiratory risk post-surgery (Reuters)

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obese children who undergo elective surgery typically have more additional medical conditions than their normal-weight peers do and are also at greater risk of developing adverse respiratory events after the procedure, U.S. researchers report.

"Many anesthesiologists may suspect that obese children have a 'rockier' anesthetic course than normal-weight children," lead investigator Dr. Alan R. Tait told Reuters Health. "We have now confirmed that these children do indeed have an increased hazard of adverse events."

The study findings also show the corpulent children tend to have more illnesses than other children do "which, in and of themselves, may increase their anesthetic risk," he added.

Tait, a researcher at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, pointed out that many studies have examined the impact of fleshiness on the surgical outcomes of adults, but relatively few studies have covered this topic in children.

The new findings are especially relevant because of the increasing prevalence of obesity in the U.S. and in many other countries, according to their relation in the popular issue of the journal Anesthesiology.

The researchers examined the consist of of adverse respiratory events that occurred in 2,025 children undergoing elective surgery, excluding heart surgeries. There were 1,380 normal-weight children, 351 who were overweight, and 294 children who were obese.

Several other conditions were more common in stout children than in normal-weight loss children, including sleep apnea, anti-allergic/asthma, high blood pressure and type II diabetes, the report indicates.

After other possible risk factors were eliminated, the investigators found that obesity was associated with overall critical respiratory complications including increased difficulties in mask ventilation for the period of surgery, airway obstruction and greater loss of oxygen concentration in the body.

Other independent risk factors for respiratory problems included pre-existing sleep apnea or asthma, young age and having a procedure that involved the airway.

Tait said his team was "surprised that obstructive sleep apnea was identified as a jeopardy factor for adverse events in these children independent of obesity. Again, this has been demonstrated in adults but has been less well documented in children." He added that his group may investigate this finding more distant in additional studies.

Tait emphasized that anesthesiologists should be aware of and be apprised the pre-existing conditions and adverse respiratory events that may affect obese children thus that they can "anticipate, recognize, and treat these events should they occur."

SOURCE: Anesthesiology, March 2008.

Rise in midlife stroke in women linked to obesity (Reuters)

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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters Health) - The rapidly rising incidence of stroke mixed Americans is primarily due to the increasing number of middle-aged women who are having strokes. The increasing incidence is too associated with abdominal obesity, investigators told attendees here at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2008.

"The incidence of stroke is two-times higher in women than men between the ages of 35 and 54," announced Dr. Amytis Towfighi of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Towfighi and colleagues analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Surveys (NHANES) collected betwixt 1988 and1994 that included 5,112 participants, as well as NHANES given conditions collected betwixt 1999 and 2004 that included 4,594 participants.

Towfighi said that women 35 to 54 years old who reported a history of stroke accounted for 1.79 percent of the 1999-2004 study population, excepting only 0.63 percent of women in the same age group in the 1988-1994 survey.

"The number of middle-aged women with stroke tripled," she pointed out.

The rate of traditional stroke risk factors, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure, didn't change between the two surveys, Towfighi added. "However, waist circumference and body mass index increased significantly."

Waist periphery and body mass index - the ratio of height to weight loss many times used to determine whether any individual is over- or underweight — also increased among men in the same age bracket, but not because sharply viewed like in women.

She said that 47 percent of women’s health in the earlier survey qualified as having abdominal obesity, with a waist circumference of 88 centimeters or greater, while 59 percent of women had abdominal corpulence in the later survey. The proportion of men with abdominal obesity also increased from 29 percent to 41 percent.

"There is no good explanation for why ventral obesity has a greater impact on stroke in women, excluding that it is one of the defining features of the metabolic syndrome, and the metabolic syndrome has a significantly greater effect on women than men," Towfighi told Reuters Health.

The metabolic syndrome refers to a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors including obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes sort II.

Stroke may be one of those effects that women experience, she added.

Overweight Hispanic Kids Show Early Markers for Diabetes (HealthDay)

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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) — A small U.S. study found that obese Hispanic children and adolescents with normal blood sugar levels had elevated markers notwithstanding blood vessel inflammation that may put them at risk for both type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center studied 38 Hispanic youngsters, aged 10 to 18. Of those, 17 were lean and 21 were obese but had normal blood sugar levels, which means they had not yet developed diabetes.

The obese children had significantly higher percentages of body fat than the lean children and were already showing signs of insulin resistance, a pre-diabetes condition.

The study moreover found that the obese children had higher levels of blood markers for subclinical, or asymptomatic, inflammation of the interior bed. of line vessels.

"They are already exhibiting problems with circulation. There is an inflammatory process going on in the vessels," lead investigator Dr. A. Enrique Caballero, director of Joslin's Latino Diabetes Initiative, said in a prepared statement.

The findings suggest the obese children may be at increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease at a young decline of life, said Caballero, who is also an assistant professor of remedy at Harvard Medical School.

The study is published in the March issue of Diabetes Care.

Genetic and lifestyle factors put Hispanic children at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes, but they had not previously been studied, Caballero said.

"We be in actual possession of found that overweight Hispanic children and adolescents bring forth elevated markers of endothelial dysfunction and vascular inflammation closely related to overplus body fat and increased insulin rebuff," the study authors concluded. "This … may increase their endanger of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, further emphasizing the need for obesity prevention strategies."

More information

For more on preventing diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association.

New York using “green carts” in latest obesity fight (Reuters)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City last will and testament issue 1,000 new permits for mobile fruit and plant stands in its latest drive against obesity and unhealthiness among its residents.

The City Council voted on Wednesday to egress the new permits for low-income neighborhoods, saying a scarcity of new produce has led to high rates of obesity and other health problems.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said underserved New Yorkers would have better access to novel produce as early as this spring.

"The communities in our city where obesity and diabetes continues to skyrocket are the same communities that want even the most basic access to fresh fruits and vegetables," Quinn before-mentioned.

The United States' biggest city has taken the lead on pushing for healthier study habits. It banned artery-clogging trans-fats from city restaurants in 2006, outlawed stop smoking patch in bars and restaurants in 2003, and will soon force fast-food chains to display calorie counts on their menu boards.

There are more than 4,000 permits for so-called green carts in New York and the stands are a common sight in wealthy Manhattan.

limit low-income New Yorkers are left with little choice but to buy unhealthy "convenience" foods, most of which are packaged and processed, supporters of the bill said.

Councilman John Liu said the bill was bad policy.

"If people wanted this produce, the stores would be selling them and there would be vending carts steady the street," he said.

The bill had been scaled back after supermarket and store owners voiced resistance.

More than half of New York adults are overweight or obese and an estimated 700,000 New Yorkers suffer from diabetes, the health department said.

While the charge of corpulency is below 15 percent in much of Manhattan, rates in smaller affluent neighborhoods, including Harlem, South Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, are over 27 percent.

(Reporting by means of Edith Honan, editing by Michelle Nichols and Stuart Grudgings)

Are Video Games the New Frontiers of Weight Loss?

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by Mike Howard

Wii-Fit is looking to get YOU fit! Nintendo’s latest offering will combine a motion-sensing controller through an interactive balance board to create workouts. Available since December 1st in Japan, Wii fit is set for a North American launch in mid-May. Here’s the concept:

The sumo wrestler-inspired balance board senses weight and motion and is the centerpiece for many, but not the whole of of the exercise programs offered by Wii Fit. This devise include yoga, strength training, aerobics and balance games - with considered in the state of many as 10 activities for each. The controller is used for activities such as running on the spot, where it acts like a pedometer (a estranged cry indeed from my Nintendo Entertainment System, circa 1988 - Duck Hunt, anyone?)

Wii Fit also includes access to the interactive Wii Fit Channel, where users can check their fitness progress in succession a daily basis, including weight and BMI. According to Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, Wii paroxysm is a “by-product of the whole Wii plan b for getting rabble off the couch”. The systems retails for about $100.

My weight loss Loss Coach
Also put on the invigorating gaming front, Ubisoft - one of the world’s largest video game publishers, announced that it will publish My Weight Loss Coach as antidote to the Nintendo DS system. Developed under the conduct one as well as the other a fitness coach and nutritionist, My Weight Loss coach creates customized coaching sessions based on skill level. The game will include a pedometer, and feature tracking of activity and nutritional intake. Look for this one to be launched in the summer.

Will it Work?
I have to tell I’m heavily in favor of anything that gets children and teens moving. The questions is, will the active gaming concept have the staying power required to keep kids persuading? My instinct is that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will have to stay on the cutting edge to hold these kids interested, lest the novelty wear off and they park themselves in the rear on the clothe in words.

Is Cutting Salt the Key to Curbing Childhood Obesity?

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by Mike Howard

A British study points to excess sodium as being a “latent factor in the obesity epidemic” (quote: Graham MacGregor, a co-author of the study). The theory being that salty foods make kids thirsty, after which they reach concerning a high-sugar, high calorie drinks. The cycle continues, resulting in inevitable weight gain.

This hypothesis is peculiar to me. Whether it is the study itself, or the media’s propensity for skewing the message in favor of alluring headlines, there is besides to the story of childhood obesity than sharp. Not to undermine the potential dangers of high sodium intake, but we need to look at the whole forest in this place.

While I be of one mind with the reflect upon’s authors that restaurant and big commons should work towards lowering the sodium content of their foods (80% of our salt consumption is already in the foods we eat - before using the shaker) I think more importantly, parents need to take steps towards keeping healthy food accessible. This study points more to a glaring deficit in the overall diets of our children than it does in conditions of establishing a sodium/weight loss gain connection. After every one of, kids do have the choice to drink water if they are thirsty, be sufficient they not?

Reducing high-sodium foods is a good idea, only it is a simply a piece of a much bigger puzzle that is the childhood obesity crisis. Children need greater amount of exercise, more fruits and vegetables and less fast, fried, processed and sugary foods. They need their parents to provide healthy food choices, they need their schools to have healthy victuals programs in place and they need policies that back avert the bombardment of advertising junk food.

My advice: Take this study with a grain of salt.

The Most Common Misconception about Calories and Kilocalories Explained

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Calorie is the non-SI unit of measurement for energy. The SI unit of measurement for energy is joule. There are pair types of calories:

Small calorie (aka gram calorie) is the spiritedness needed to increase the temperature of 1 g (gram) of water by 1 standing Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit).
1 cal equals to 4.184 joules (cal is the symbol for gram calorie)

Large calorie (aka kilogram calorie) is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg (kilogram) of water with 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit).
1 kcal equals to 4.184 kilojoules = 4184 joules = 1000 cals (kcal is the emblem for kilogram calorie)

Although not a SI unit kilocalories are lull the most common measurements for food energy. Hence the most common misconception that occurs when we talk about calories in food – despite we be read calories or cals on food packages, the labeling actually refers to kilocalories when we talk about food.

For example: If a pack of crackers has 400 calories (or cals), it turns out that the calories (or cals) marked on the crackers package are actually kilocalories (or kcals), so it would be correct if written 400 kilocalories (or 400 kcals), but usually it’s not.

Often the word “calorie” (referring to kilocalorie) is capitalized (Calorie) in order to be distinguished from the small (gram) calorie, but this is not effective outside the specific context, so it’s practically useless.

The name “calorie” (referring to kilocalorie) is often used in medical sciences and non-scientific contexts. Whereas, the name “calorie” (referring strictly to the gram calorie) is used in scientific contexts such as chemistry and natural philosophy. Here’s why it is needed to be inferred from the context whether the gram calorie or the kilogram calorie is intended.

When we rumor about exercises the same rule as in non-scientific context applies.

For example: If you normally burn 100 Calories (or cals) on the treadmill technically that refers to 100 kilocalories (or kcals).

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Foods, Nutrition facts, Calories. You can follow some responses to this entry from one side the

Vintage Dieting: Fatsuits

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by J. Foster

This photo from the 1960s shows French women’s health sitting in “slim-down coveralls” while being served low-calorie meals.

From flickr / donnalethal

The attached text reads:

“10 May 1961, Paris, France — Weighting Game. Paris: Shedding pounds while acquisition new hairdos, Parisian girls relax in slim-down coveralls underneath the hair driers at a local fairness parlor. In addition to the coveralls, customers get low-calorie meals to help with their slenderizing. Idea was originated by Parisian hairdressers Roger Pasquier”.

Despite Surgery To Correct Congenital Deformity, Facial Asymmetry Persists

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Adults and teens that underwent surgery as infants to correct a congenital case that causes the forehead and meet face to face to appear uneven still have a degree of facial asymmetry years later, according to new exploration led by a Hasbro Children’s Hospital surgeon.

The study, published in the February issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, focused on unilateral coronal synostosis, a type of craniosynostosis, in which the vigorous bones of the skull on one side of the head strong fuse too soon. Craniosynostosis, or forward fusion of the cranial sutures, affects 1 in 2000 live births. During corrective surgery, known as fronto-orbital advancement, surgeons remove and reshape the bones of the forehead and upper eye sockets, replacing them in a greater degree of ordinary anatomic position. This is typically performed during infancy.

“Although there appears to be some lingering asymmetry years after many of these patients underwent corrective surgery, most patients and their families don’t notice these differences, which do not appear to pose any significant freedom from disease risks,” said lead author Albert Oh, M.D., director of the craniofacial surgery program at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. “Nevertheless, it’s important that we understand more round this asymmetry, which could lead to improvements of the operation and further our knowledge regarding the cause of craniosynostosis.”

Oh, who’s also an assistant professor in the department of surgery at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, led this research while at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.

In the study, Oh and colleagues used three-dimensional photo technology known as photogrammetry to digitally measure the faces of adult and in the teens patients with unilateral coronal synostosis who had undergone corrective surgery during infancy. They focused on different measurements comparing one side of the face to the other.

The researchers observed that average measurements on the faction of the face affected by unilateral coronal synostosis were invariably shorter in comparison to the opposite side. They also form in a mould conformable rotation of the nose and facial midline away from the side of the fusion. Interestingly, the severity of long-term postoperative facial symmetry did not depend on each age at surgery or age at follow-up.

“While this study conclusively documented persistent postoperative facial asymmetry, our study group of 15 patients was relatively small. What is really needed is a long-term prospective study comparing preoperative and postoperative facial measurements,” said Oh.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Study co-authors were John B. Mulliken, M.D.; Julielynn Wong, M.D.; Eiichi Ohta, M.D.; Gary F. Rogers M.D.; and Curtis K. Deutsch, M.D., all associated with Children’s Hospital Boston. The photogrammetric device used in the study - the 3dMDface system - was funded in part by a grant from the National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health, to the Children’s Hospital Boston General Clinical Research Center.

Hasbro Children’s Hospital (http://www.hasbrochildrenshospital.org/) in Providence, RI, is the pediatric division of Rhode Island Hospital, the largest teaching hospital of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. A private, not-for-profit hospital, it is nationally recognized for its child protection program and Draw-A-Breath anti-allergic/asthma and allergy initiative. It is also the home of the Injury Prevention Center, which aims to reduce accidental injuries in children, as well as the region’s only pediatric imaging center. The hospital has pioneered numerous procedures and is at the forefront of fetal surgery, orthopedics and pediatric neurosurgery. Hasbro Children’s Hospital is a member of the Lifespan health system.

Source: Jessica Collins Grimes
Lifespan

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