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Compression stockings are used to treat disorders like varicose veins, venous ulcers, blood clots, and lymphedema. These stockings apply pressure on veins and tissues that are close to the skin. The pressure ensures that the amount of blood that the veins can carry is restricted. This prevents the veins from swelling beyond a limit. Since the pressure applied by these stockings is highest at the ankle and lesser towards the upper parts of the leg, the blood is forced back to the heart. They also apply pressure on the tissues below the skin. These tissues transfer the pressure to the blood which gets pumped into the capillaries that go into the deeper tissues of the leg.

Effect on Varicose veins
Varicose veins are veins that cannot properly send blood to the heart because of the malfunctioning of the valves that are supposed to prevent the blood from flowing backwards. Veins of legs tend to be more susceptible to this condition because they have to withstand the pressure of standing and walking. Compression stockings artificially reduce the diameter of the veins and the blood circulation is partially normalized.

DVT/PTS
These stocking are also used to treat deep vein thrombosis (DVT). In this case blood is forced into the deeper veins where the blood has clotted. This usually happens to passengers who travel for long periods in planes that do not have properly adjusted humidity levels. Low humidity leads to DVT. The condition is commonly referred to as 'economy class syndrome'. Often patients who have DVT develop Post Thrombotic Syndrome (PTS). This disorder can be prevented by the use of compression stockings. Thus patients with DVT are suggested to wear them for two years after they have had DVT.

Other Uses
Compression stockings are worn by pregnant women too because their blood vessels are affected by pregnancy induced hormonal changes. This is because they produce more blood to ensure that the growing fetus gets the oxygen and nutrients it needs. These stockings are also prescribed for patients with lymphedema because they prevent the accumulation of lymph by preventing the fluid from seeping out of the capillaries.

It must be noted that these stockings are not similar to socks used by athletes to enhance performance. The pressure applied by these stockings is much higher and physician's prescriptions are required to purchase some types of compression stockings. The stockings are difficult to put on and require gloves to be worn on feet to reduce friction.



Posted by: Evelyn    Source

Corporations spend billions of dollars each year on food advertising. For example, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and McDonald's each spent more than $1 billion in advertising in 2007. A newly released study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests those advertisers are missing out if their ads only mention taste and ignore our other senses.

Naturally, most food ads mention the taste of the food being marketed. But authors Ryan S. Elder and Aradhna Krishna (both University of Michigan) demonstrate that tapping into our other senses can actually increase consumers' taste perceptions.

"Because taste is generated from multiple senses (smell, texture, sight, and sound), ads mentioning these senses will have a significant impact on taste over ads mentioning taste alone," write the authors.

In the experiments, participants were randomly assigned to view one of two ads. One ad was designed to appeal to multiple senses (for example, a tagline for a chewing gum read "stimulate your senses"), while the other ad mentioned taste alone ("long-lasting flavor"). After sampling the gum, the participants listed thoughts they had regarding the item and then rated the overall taste.

"The multiple-sense ad led to more positive sensory thoughts, which then led to higher taste perception than the single-sense ad," the authors write. "The differences in thoughts were shown to drive the differences in taste." The results were repeated with potato chips and popcorn.

The authors believe their research can help advertisers reword ad copy to lead to significant differences in taste. "These results are of great value not only to food advertisers, but also to restaurants, as the descriptions contained within menus can actually alter the taste experience," the authors write. "Further, companies can implement the findings into product packaging information to alter the taste of products consumed in the home. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, ensuring positive consumption experiences is critical to success".


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be.

A study presented on Friday at the European Congress on Obesity is the first to examine the question of the proportional contributions to the obesity epidemic by combining metabolic relationships, the laws of thermodynamics, epidemiological data and agricultural data.

"There have been a lot of assumptions that both reduced physical activity and increased energy intake have been major drivers of the obesity epidemic. Until now, nobody has proposed how to quantify their relative contributions to the rise in obesity since the 1970s. This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories. It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role," said the study's leader, Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia.

The researchers started by testing 1,399 adults and 963 children to determine how a number of calories their bodies burn in total under free-living conditions. The test is the most accurate measure of total calorie burning in real-life situations.

Once they had determined each person's calorie burning rate, Swinburn and colleagues were able to calculate how much adults needed to eat in order to maintain a stable weight and how much children needed to eat in order to maintain a normal growth curve.

They then worked out how much Americans were actually eating, using national food supply data (the amount of food produced and imported, minus the amount exported, thrown away and used for animals or other non-human uses) from the 1970s and the early 2000s.

The scientists used their findings to predict how much weight they would expect Americans to have gained over the 30-year period studied if food intake were the only influence. They used data from a nationally representative survey (NHANES) that recorded the weight of Americans in the 1970s and early 2000s to determine the actual weight gain over that period.

"If the actual weight increase was the same as what we predicted, that meant that food intake was virtually entirely responsible. If it wasn't, that meant changes in physical activity also played a role," Swinburn said. "If the actual weight gain was higher than predicted, that would suggest that a decrease in physical activity played a role."

The scientists observed that in children, the predicted and actual weight increase matched exactly, indicating that the increases in energy intake alone over the 30 years studied could explain the weight increase.

"For adults, we predicted that they would be 10.8 kg heavier, but in fact they were 8.6 kg heavier. That suggests that excess food intake still explains the weight gain, but that there may have been increases in physical activity over the 30 years that have blunted what would otherwise have been a higher weight gain," Swinburn said.

"To return to the average weights of the 1970s, we would need to reverse the increased food intake of about 350 calories a day for children (about one can of fizzy drink and a small portion of French fries) and 500 calories a day for adults (about one large hamburger)," Swinburn said. "Alternatively, we could achieve similar results by increasing physical activity by about 150 minutes a day of extra walking for children and 110 minutes for adults, but realistically, eventhough a combination of both is needed, the focus would have to be on reducing calorie intake".

He emphasized that physical activity should not be ignored as a contributor to reducing obesity and should continue to be promoted because of its a number of other benefits, but that expectations regarding what can be achieved with exercise need to be lowered and public health policy shifted more toward encouraging people to eat less.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

Diet and nutrition counseling for virtually all overweight and obese women of childbearing age can reduce health risks linked to excess weight for mothers and children alike, as per a newly released position paper from the American Dietetic Association and the American Society of Nutrition.

The position, reported in the recent issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, represents the associations' official stance on obesity, reproduction and pregnancy outcomes:

Given the detrimental influence of maternal overweight and obesity on reproductive and pregnancy outcomes for the mother and child, it is the position of the American Dietetic Association and the American Society for Nutrition that all overweight and obese women of reproductive age should receive counseling previous to pregnancy, during pregnancy and in the interconceptional period on the roles of diet and physical activity in reproductive health, in order to ameliorate these adverse outcomes.

The joint ADA/ASN position and accompanying paper were written by Anna Maria Siega-Riz, PhD, RD, LDN, assistant professor of maternal and child health at the University of North Carolina; and Janet C. King, PhD, senior scientist at Children's Hospital and Research Center, Oakland, Calif.

An estimated 33 percent of U.S. women are obese, as per the authors, who write that a long-term goal of health professionals must be to reduce the number of women who become pregnant while obese. They add that the effect of a woman's nutritional status previous to pregnancy is an issue of great public health importance.

"Among obese women, who already have aberrations in glucose and lipid metabolism, the further adjustments induced by hormonal changes in pregnancy create a metabolic milieu that enhances the risk for metabolic disorders such as gestational diabetes mellitus and preeclampsia," as per the position paper.

Infants born to obese mothers have "a higher prevalence of congenital anomalies than do offspring of normal-weight women, suggesting that maternal (obesity) alters development in the sensitive embryonic period." The authors note neural tube defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly are about twice as common among children of obese women. "Other birth defects more frequent in offspring of obese women include oral clefts, heart anomalies, hydrocephaly and abdominal wall abnormalities."

Objectives of the new ADA/ASN position are to provide guidance to nutrition professionals in becoming aware of risks and possible complications of excess weight and obesity for fertility, course of pregnancy, birth outcomes and short and long-term maternal and child health; and to commit ADA and ASN to identifying gaps in scientific research needed to improve knowledge of risks and complications and develop effective strategies "that can be implemented before and during pregnancy as well as during the interconceptional period," the authors write.

The American Dietetic Association is the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. ADA is committed to improving the nation's health and advancing the profession of dietetics through research, education and advocacy. Visit the American Dietetic Association at www.eatright.org/.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

Young children who do not display an ability to regulate their behavior or to delay gratification in exchange for a larger reward appear predisposed to gain extra weight by their pre-teen years, as per two reports reported in the recent issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Obesity in childhood and adolescence appears to track into adulthood, increasing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and certain cancers in adulthood," the authors write as background information in one of the articles. "To mount effective preventive efforts, we need better information regarding the factors involved in the etiology of childhood overweight and obesity".

In one study, Lori A. Francis, Ph.D., and Elizabeth J. Susman, Ph.D., of Pennsylvania State University, State College, assessed self-regulation behavior in 1,061 children. Data were collected when children were ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12 years old. At age 3, the children participated in a self-control evaluation that involved sitting alone in a room with a toy for 150 seconds. Those who waited at least 75 seconds to play with the toy were classified as high in self-regulation. At age 5, the children participated in an exercise in delayed gratification that involved choosing a smaller portion of a favorite food immediately or a larger portion several minutes later. High self-regulation was defined as waiting at least 210 seconds to eat the food.

Compared with children who showed high self-control on both tests, those who were unable to regulate their behavior at both ages had the highest body mass index (BMI) scores for their age at 12 years and the most rapid increases in BMI over the nine-year follow-up.

"The findings reported herein have potential for early prevention of obesity," the authors write. "The implication is that interventions to enhance energy-balance regulation in young children will benefit from efforts to encourage self-regulation in other domains, such as encouraging self-control and delay of gratification, both of which are important factors in regulating energy intake".

In another study, Desiree M. Seeyave, M.B.B.S., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his colleagues used a similar self-imposed waiting task to gauge 4-year-olds' ability to delay gratification. The children were asked to choose candy, animal crackers or pretzels as their preferred food and then left alone with two plates of different quantities of the food. "The child was told that he would be allowed to eat the large quantity of the chosen food if he waited until the examiner returned," the authors write. "If he could not wait until the examiner returned, he could ring a bell to summon the examiner back into the room, at which time he could eat the small quantity".

Of the 805 children who participated, 47 percent failed the test, either by ringing the bell before the seven-minute waiting period elapsed, spontaneously beginning to eat the food, becoming distressed, going to the door or calling for a parent or the examiner.

Those who displayed a limited ability to delay gratification were 29 percent more likely to be overweight at age 11. The association was partially explained by mothers' weight status. "The influence of maternal weight status on child weight reflects genetic as well as environmental factors, such as feeding patterns and availability of food," the authors write.

Parenting techniques appears to be available to help children develop an ability to delay gratification, the authors note. "Some strategies that have been described in previous studies have been keeping the desired item (in this case, food) out of sight (and therefore out of mind) or distracting the child's attention from the food to another engaging activity. Another possibility is simply providing a logical structure to snacks and mealtimes such that the child learns that food is not to be eaten the moment it is desired, but to wait until the next snack or meal time," the authors write.

(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2009;163[4]:297-302, 303-308. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.).

Editor's Note: Please see the articles for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.


Editorial: Possibilities Exist for Improving Children's Self-Control
"Can a child's self-regulation capacity be changed or is it an innate and immutable human trait?" write Robert C. Whitaker, M.D., M.P.H., and Rachel A. Gooze, B.A., of Temple University, Philadelphia, in an accompanying editorial. "Self-regulation is shaped by both nature and nurture; it is influenced by environments and experiences during early childhood".

"There are still not any tested 'office-based' interventions for improving children's capacity for self-regulation," they write. "However, there are promising results from randomized controlled trials showing that interventions in preschools can increase children's positive social behaviors".

(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2009;163[4]: 386-387. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.).

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source