Tag Archives: health policy

Less sleep for kids may mean higher blood sugar

Less sleep for kids may mean higher blood sugar

Young children may be more apt to have high blood sugar, a precursor to diabetes, if they average 8 hours or less of sleep a night, report Chinese and American researchers.

This risk may be even greater among obese youngsters, Dr. Zhijie Yu, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and colleagues note in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Moreover, Yu said in an email to Reuters Health, shorter sleep seemed to influence blood sugar “independently of a large variety of risk factors,” such as age, gender, birth-related influences, early life feeding or later diet, recent illness, physical activity, body mass, and waist girth.

Yu’s team investigated sleep duration and blood sugar levels in 619 obese and 617 non-obese children who were 3 to 6 years old and free of diabetes or blood sugar problems.

Parental reports showed a greater percentage of the obese (47 percent) than the non-obese (37 percent) kids averaged 8 or fewer hours of sleep nightly. These reports also showed nightly averages of 9 or 10, or 11-plus, hours of sleep less common in obese (37 and 16 percent) versus non-obese (43 and 20 percent) kids, respectively.

High blood sugar levels, defined as 100 milligrams of glucose per deciliter of blood after not eating for 8 hours, appeared about 1.35-fold and 2.15-fold more likely in the shorter-sleeping non-obese and obese kids, respectively. (For comparison, 110 milligrams per deciliter is considered “pre-diabetes,” while diabetes is diagnosed at 126 milligrams.)

High blood sugar levels were evident in 23 of the 217 non-obese and in 49 of the 291 obese kids sleeping less than 8 hours. By contrast, 21 each of the 175 non-obese and 229 obese kids getting 9 or 10 hours of sleep nightly had high blood sugar.

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Fast-acting impotency drug outpaces rivals: study

Fast-acting impotency drug outpaces rivals: study

Biotech firm Vivus unveiled a would-be player Monday in the 3.7-billion-dollar erectile dysfunction market: avanafil, effective in just 15 minutes, far faster than blockbuster rivals Viagra and Cialis.

“The magnitude of success in the first 15 minutes was surprising,” Leland Wilson, the company’s CEO, said in a statement.

Wilson put the spotlight on upbeat results for the class three investigational drug to treat male impotency, now in its last step before it can get a green light from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“This new data further strengthens the profile and differentiation of avanafil from other currently available oral ED therapies,” Wilson said, referring to erectile dysfunction.

While “we knew from the pharmacokinetic profile that avanafil works very quickly, this data is exciting evidence of how fast avanafil really works,” he stressed.

“From our discussions with patients and physicians, we knew that rapid onset was an important attribute in the selection of an ED therapy,” he added.

Knowing avanafil acts in 15 minutes and lasts the length of a sexual encounter should be huge pluses for the drug in this highly lucrative market, said Dr Charles Bowden with Vivus.

The company is eyeing a market launch in early 2012.

Pfizer, which makes Viagra, says its drug acts within 30 minutes to an hour after it is taken. Cialis, made by Eli Lilly, starts working from 30 minutes to six hours after ingestion.

A third competitor, Levitra, acts starting between 25 and 60 minutes after it is taken.

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Does junk food at non-food stores add pounds?

July 18, 2012Uncategorizedand, board of health, calories, candy, clinics health, colleagues, could, current health, department of health, food health, google health, health, health diet, health policy, health regulations, in, junk food, junk food dental health, junk food environmental health, junk food gov health, junk food health benefits, junk food health center, junk food health concerns, junk food health county, junk food health coverage, junk food health department, junk food health departments, junk food health dept, junk food health education, junk food health effects, junk food health insurance, junk food health nutrition, junk food health plans, junk food health products, junk food health promotion, junk food health risk assessment, junk food health supplements, junk food human health, junk food insurance health, junk food public health, junk food skin health, junk food womens health, may, natural health, not, nutrients health, nutrition and health, nutritional health, of, pounds, Public Health, researchers, snacks, study, to, total health, Tulane University School Public Health New Orleans, weight, womenazuan

Does junk food at non-food stores add pounds?

A new study shows that candy, soda and other junk foods are commonly sold at stores not traditionally associated with food — in a trend that researchers say may be contributing to the U.S. obesity problem.

The study, of more than 1,000 non-food retail stores across the U.S., found that 41 percent sold candy, soft drinks, chips and other sweet and salty snacks. The foods were most commonly placed at check-out counters, where they were “within arm’s reach” of impulsive buyers, the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

Nearly all drug stores and gas stations in the study sold snack foods — as did a majority of general merchandise stores, hardware and garden stores and automobile repair shops.

Even some stores selling clothes, books or furniture offered customers a snack selection.

The problem, the researchers contend, is that this “ubiquity” of snack foods may tempt many people into buying calories that they otherwise would not.

And over time, those calories could add up to extra pounds, write Dr. Thomas A. Farley and colleagues at Tulane University School of Public Health in New Orleans.

A number of studies, the researchers note, have found that when people grab snacks throughout the day, they typically do not compensate by eating less at meals.

“This suggests that calories consumed through impulse purchases of snack foods will increase total daily (calorie) intake and thus contribute to weight gain,” Farley and his colleagues write in their report.

They estimate that if a person sees snack foods at retail stores twice per week, and ends up buying a typical product only 10 percent of the time, that would mean an extra 2,600 calories in a year. That, in turn, could translate to close to a pound of weight gain per year.

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