25 Fast Food Chains Ranked on Antibiotics Usage

Photo: Getty Images

Antibiotic resistance is one of the top five health threats facing Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More than 2 million people in the U.S. get infections every year that are resistant to antibiotics, and around 23,000 people die from these infections. Contributing to that problem is the unrestricted use of antibiotics in animal rearing; drugs are used to fatten up livestock and prevent illness, and their routine application has contributed to the rise of so-called superbugs resistant to the drugs designed to kill them.

Responding to public pressure, some major fast food chains and meat suppliers have pledged to use fewer antibiotics. And now, a new report analyzed the practices and policies of 25 of the largest fast food and fast-casual restaurants in the U.S. to see how companies were faring. The paper, authored by several public interest groups, gave each chain a letter grade based on their use of antibiotics—and their transparency about it.

“Consumers should be as concerned as the foremost infectious disease doctors are—which is very concerned,” says Dr. David Wallinga, a senior health officer at the environmental nonprofit the National Resources Defense Council, who contributed to the report.

In the report card, only Panera and Chipotle received an A. The two companies both have a wide variety of meat offerings that do not use antibiotics. About 90% of the meat Chipotle sources is free of antibiotics. Panera says 100% of its chicken and pork is raised without antibiotics, and a third of its turkey. The company is still reviewing its beef policy: One of its beef suppliers does not use antibiotics, while another supplier only uses antibiotics when the animals are sick.

Chick-fil-A follows with the lone B rating. It has policies limiting the use of antibiotics in its chicken, and has pledged to be 100% antibiotic-free by 2019. In March of 2015, the report says, that 20% of Chick-fil-A’s chicken met the standard.

McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts were both given a C. While Dunkin’ Donuts says it has a policy limiting antibiotic use in its meat, it apparently does not have a timeline for meeting that goal. McDonald’s announced in 2015 that within two years, it would serve chicken that are only fed antibiotics when they’re sick.

Photo: Courtesy of Consumer’s Union

The researchers note that most chains have not come forward with policies regarding antibiotic use. The chains with no public policies include Burger King, Wendy’s, Olive Garden, KFC, Chili’s, Sonic, Denny’s, Domino’s, Starbucks, Papa John’s Pizza, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Applebee’s, Jack in the Box, Arby’s, Dairy Queen, IHOP, Outback Steakhouse, and Little Caesars.

“We know that overusing antibiotics, including in the meat supply, is a driver of the [drug-resistant bacteria] problem and yet the consumer public is in the dark when it comes to what companies’ policies are,” saysWallinga.

“We’ve seen some real positive developments recently among the companies that rank highly in the report, and also with their suppliers,” says Wallinga. “That’s a big part of the optimism behind the report. I think it’s not a stretch to say that a fast food company that wants to serve chicken that’s been raised without routine antibiotics should be able to do so right now with no delay. Companies are in business to satisfy their customers, and like never before, customers are asking for meat raised without antibiotics.”

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Women the Bigger Losers in Terms of Alzheimer’s Costs

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The cost of caring for a woman with Alzheimer’s disease is ultimately about six times more than it is for a man with this form of dementia, new research indicates.

When the patient is a man, the true value of the time and energy a female family member typically puts into her caregiving job is 20 times greater than that performed by a male family member when the patient-caregiver roles are reversed, the Emory University researchers said.

In other words, women perform more unreimbursed labor. And when men care for sick women, more money is spent on paid caregiving staff, driving up the overall cost, said study authors Zhou Yang and Allan Levey.

The findings will appear in the September/October issue of the journal Women’s Health Issues.

“This study demonstrates the importance of policies to address the needs not only of patients but of caregivers, the majority of whom are women,” said Women’s Health Issues editor-in-chief Chloe Bird in a journal news release.

To better understand the financial burdens wrought by the disease, Yang and Levey pored through data collected by the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey between 2000 and 2010.

Survey information included expenses covered by Medicare; long-term care covered by Medicaid; uncovered costs of providing home care and/or care in an assisted living facility, and the uncovered value of manpower by caregiving loved ones.

Caring for women with Alzheimer’s was found to cost more by every measure. Compared with caring for a male patient, Medicare expenses were 1.5 greater; Medicaid costs were 2.2 greater, and out-of-pocket home and/or assisted living costs were 5.8 times greater.

But it was the big falloff in the amount of work performed by male caregivers, relative to female caregivers, that ended up increasing the overall bill for female Alzheimer’s patients.

The study authors said policy reforms, including reforms to Medicare and Medicaid payments, must address the needs of Alzheimer’s patients.

“Public policy interventions that aim at curing or slowing the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, as well as those meeting the special home health care or long-term care need of the [Alzheimer’s] patients, will greatly benefit the welfare and economic status of women,” Yang said in the news release.

More information

There’s more on Alzheimer’s costs at the Alzheimer’s Association.

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E-Pillboxes Improve Medication Adherence, Study Finds

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Electronic reminders may help people with tuberculosis take their medication properly, a new study suggests.

Tuberculosis (TB) patients are less likely to miss doses when they receive alerts from an electronic pillbox, researchers report in the Sept. 15 issue of PLOS Medicine. Electronic pillboxes use visual, audio and/or vibration cues to signal when it’s time to take medication.

TB is a bacterial infection that mainly strikes the lungs. The traditional method of ensuring medical adherence in TB patients is to watch people take their medicine, but the study authors said this isn’t doable in remote areas such as rural China.

“Innovative approaches to enable patients to adhere to TB treatment are needed. Widespread use of medication monitors in national TB control programs can benefit from the development of a low-cost and reliable medication monitor as well as evidence that its use can improve clinical outcomes,” study co-author Katherine Fielding, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a journal news release.

The study involved more than 4,100 people with tuberculosis in 36 districts in the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Hunan and Chongqing. Researchers randomly selected patients to receive one of four approaches to help them follow through on treatment.

One group received text messages with medication reminders. Another group received alerts from an e-pillbox, while a third group received both electronic-pillbox alerts and text messages. A fourth group received no reminders at all, the study authors said.

More than one in five patients without reminders missed doses of their medication in about 30 percent of the months analyzed, according to the study.

Those who received reminders from an electronic pillbox didn’t take their medication properly in 17 percent of the months. The patients who received both text messages and electronic-pillbox reminders missed doses only about 14 percent of the months, the study found.

However, those who only received text messages took their medication no more reliably than those who received no reminders, the researchers pointed out.

Writing in an accompanying article, John Metcalfe, of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues said: “If replicated, [this study] will have important implications for global TB treatment in moving away from witnessed dosing, which is not universally feasible, towards a more personalized adherence model of patient-provider communication in which intervention is delivered where, when, and in whom it is needed to efficiently prevent adverse treatment outcome.”

More information

For more about taking medication correctly, see the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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FDA Bans Sale of New R.J. Reynolds Cigarettes

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has ordered the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. to stop selling four new cigarette brands because they violate provisions in the 2009 tobacco control law.

The agency determined that the cigarettes are substantially different from existing Reynolds tobacco products on the market and need a full agency review before they can be marketed. The cigarettes are Camel Crush Bold, Pall Mall Deep Set Recessed Filter, Pall Mall Deep Set Recessed Filter Menthol and Vantage Tech 13.

These new cigarettes contain higher levels of some ingredients and ingredients that were not in the comparison products, the agency said Tuesday. Camel Crush Bold, for example, contains a menthol capsule in its filter that the agency believes would make it more attractive to younger smokers.

“These products had been provisionally marketed while our scientific review has taken place,” Mitch Zeller, director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said during a morning news conference.

Going forward, these products can no longer “be sold, distributed, imported or marketed in interstate commerce,” Zeller said. Selling or distributing these brands could result in FDA enforcement action, including seizure, the agency said.

Retail stores, however, have 30 days to dispose of any inventory on hand.

These cigarettes were put on the market during a “grace period” granted under the 2009 Tobacco Control Act, which gave the FDA oversight authority for tobacco products. This grace period covered products that entered the market after February 2007 and before March 2011, Zeller explained.

Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the FDA order is precedent-setting.

“For the first time since being granted regulatory authority over tobacco products by a 2009 law, the FDA today ordered a tobacco company to pull a major cigarette brand off the market,” Myers said in a statement.

He said tobacco manufacturers have a long history of modifying their products to make them more attractive and more addictive. They also target new brands and styles to specific segments of the market, including children, he said.

“Today’s decision sets an important precedent that almost certainly will apply to other brands,” he said.

For the products to be marketed, R.J. Reynolds has to reapply to the FDA, Zeller said.

Zeller said that all four cigarette products have different characteristics than the comparison cigarettes that preceded them.

“The company did not adequately show that those differences did not cause these products to raise different questions of public health,” he said.

Speaking at the news briefing, David Ashley, director of the Office of Science at FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said that harmful ingredients in the new products included increased amounts of the chemicals formaldehyde and toluene, and dyes. There were also high levels of menthol and new ingredients that could affect toxicity, Ashley said.

Efforts by HealthDay to reach R.J. Reynolds for comment were unsuccessful.

More information

For more on the FDA and tobacco, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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Gender Disparities Persist in Academic Medicine

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Striking gender disparities remain among faculty at U.S. medical schools and in the medical research field, two new studies reveal.

Although half of all U.S. medical school graduates are women, there are about twice as many male faculty members at medical schools. And men represent more than double the number of women who’ve achieved the rank of full professor, the first study reported.

The second study found women who are medical school faculty members receive less research support from their institutions. Less than one-third of funded researchers are female, the study said. Researchers pointed out that women may have more trouble finding good mentors, receiving institutional resources and gaining recognition from senior colleagues than men do.

“These two articles add to the abundance of literature focusing on the disparities of careers of women in academic medicine. Similar disparities exist for individuals from racial and ethnic minorities and for those from other marginalized communities,” wrote Dr. Carrie Byington and Dr. Vivian Lee, from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, in an accompanying editorial.

“As the training ground for future generations of health care providers and biomedical scientists, academic medical centers should ensure that their students, faculty and staff represent the people they serve and that all can contribute to their fullest potential. It is time for academic medicine to move forward,” they added.

The first study pulled information on more than 91,000 doctors in the United States. All were faculty members at U.S. medical schools in 2014. Aside from the doctors’ gender, age, number of years in practice and specialty, the study authors also examined the their publications, clinical trials and funding from U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

There were almost 61,000 men who were medical faculty compared to more than 30,000 women, the study revealed. Full professor appointments were received by 29 percent of the men, while only 12 percent of women held those positions.

The average total number of publications was 25 for men, compared to 12 for women. The average number of publications as the lead or senior author was 14 for men and six for women, the study said.

Female medical school faculty were also less likely to have a NIH grant than male faculty members, the study found.

“These challenges may adversely affect research productivity and may also explain why even after adjusting for research productivity, women are still less likely than men to be full professors,” wrote study author Dr. Anupam Jena, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues.

A separate study looked at gender differences in support for junior biomedical researchers. Only 30 percent of funded scientists are women, the study led by Dr. Robert Sege, of Health Resources in Action in Boston revealed.

The study involved application data from two New England biomedical research programs. Information on more than 200 applicants, including 92 women, was reviewed. The researchers specifically examined start-up support, such as salary, equipment and supplies, provided to the applicants by their institution.

Men received much more start-up support than women. The median support received by men was $889,000, compared to $350,000 for women, the study said. Meanwhile, 40 percent of the men reported support exceeding $1 million. But, only 12 percent of woman received this level of support, the research showed.

Junior faculty women also have fewer peer-reviewed publications than men. This could be the result of a lack of institutional support early on, the researchers suggested.

“In this preliminary study of early-career grant applicants administered by one organization, junior faculty women received significantly less start-up support from their institutions than men,” the study’s authors wrote. “This first look suggests the need for systematic study of sex differences in institutional support and the relationship to career trajectories.”

More information

The Association of American Medical Colleges provides more information on women in academic medicine.

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Kylie Jenner Explains Her Unbelievable Cleavage

Yesterday Kylie Jenner teased the launch of her new website with this before and after picture of her chest with dramatically different looking cup sizes. “Watch my little trick on my app/website,” she wrote in the caption.

RELATED: 15 Things That Happen After a Breast Reduction

Well, we fell for the bait (it’s research, right?!). In the video on her new site, titled “Kylie Comes Clean: They’re Real” (you have to login to see it) Jenner denies having any work done (despite breast augmentation rumors) and reveals her top secret trick: a bra.

“I don’t share this with a lot of people, but everyone thinks I’ve gotten a breast augmentation recently, and I haven’t. I just use the Bombshell by Victoria’s Secret. It’s life-changing. I’ve gotten all my sisters on it and all my friends. If you want the look of bigger breasts, that’s what I do.”

Wow, a bra. Groundbreaking, we know. But even we have to admit, that is a dramatic difference.

RELATED: 5 Beauty Tricks to Make Your Cleavage Look Even Better

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Meet to Most Body Positive Yogi on Instagram

Photo: Instagram

If you’ve ever nixed the idea of trying yoga because you assume your body type doesn’t mesh with the bendy people who have been doing downward dog for years, we’d like to introduce you to someone who’s going to prove you wrong.

 

Twenty-eight-year-old Valerie Sagun’s Big Gal Yoga Instagram feed is everything you need for inspiration to get your butt to class. According to Buzzfeed the San Jose, California native has been practicing for four years and her poses are insanely impressive.

Run, don’t walk, to her Instagram account and you’ll be greeted with photos of this gal twisting into all sorts of contortions beautifully. She looks so confident, powerful and strong you can’t help but want to try the moves as well…or just be her best friend. Because, seriously, this woman is a bad ass.

 

“I’ve never really felt self-conscious about my body during yoga classes,” Sagun told Buzz Feed. “For me, yoga is all about the mind and positive thinking. I get anxiety and depression, and practicing has helped me through that.”

 This article originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

MIMI Chatter is an endless stream of beauty content. We bring together the must-knows and the how-tos from your favorite sites, beauty influencers, our editors, and YOU.

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MRI Helps Detect Brain Bleeding Soon After Traumatic Brain Injury

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Military service members who undergo brain imaging soon after suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI) may get better treatment more promptly, a new study suggests.

The researchers found that MRI can help doctors detect microbleeding on the brain, which can sometimes trigger serious secondary health conditions, like brain swelling or stroke.

“TBI is a large problem for our military service members and their families,” said study leader Dr. Gerard Riedy, chief of neuroimaging at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

“We found that many of those who have served and suffered this type of injury were not imaged until many, many months after injury occurred, thus resulting in lower rates of cerebral microhemorrhage detection, which delays treatment,” he added in a news release from the Radiological Society of North America.

In conducting the study, the researchers used special MRI scans to examine 603 military personnel diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. The imaging technique they used provides greater visibility of blood and is much more sensitive to bleeding than conventional MRI.

The median time that lapsed from when the participants were injured to their MRI was 856 days. The patients were divided into two groups: those who were injured within three months and those whose injury occurred at least three months to more than a year earlier.

Of the 603 military service members who participated in the study, 7 percent were found to have at least one occurrence of microbleeding on the brain, according to the study, which was published online Sept. 15 in Radiology.

Those who underwent an MRI more than a year after they were hurt had a lower rate of brain microbleeding than those scanned within 12 months following a traumatic brain injury. Brain bleeding was detected in 24 percent of those who had an MRI three months after their injury. In contrast, bleeding was found in only 5.2 percent of the patients imaged a year after their injury.

The researchers explained that bleeding becomes harder to diagnose with time as changes occur in iron deposits in the brain.

“Early characterization of cerebral microhemorrhages may help to explain clinical symptoms of acute TBI and identify the severity of brain damage,” Riedy said. “We believe that having access to MRI in the field would facilitate early detection of TBI, thus providing timely treatment.”

About 1.7 million people suffer traumatic brain injuries each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 23 percent of military service members serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq also sustain this type of injury.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke provides more on traumatic brain injury.

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Can More Outside Time Help Kids’ Eyesight?

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — More time outdoors may reduce the odds your young child will need eyeglasses, new research from China suggests.

In a three-year study, adding 40 minutes of outdoor activities daily was associated with lower rates of nearsightedness among school-aged Chinese children. People with nearsightedness, also called myopia, have trouble seeing things at a distance.

“Although prescribing this approach with the intent of helping to prevent myopia would appear to have no risk, parents should understand that the magnitude of the effect is likely to be small and the durability is uncertain,” said Dr. Michael Repka, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, published in the Sept. 15 issue of JAMA. Repka is professor of ophthalmology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Nearsightedness among children has increased dramatically in recent years in some urban areas of East and Southeast Asia. It is also on the rise in other parts of the world, including Europe and the Middle East, the researchers said.

Previous studies have suggested that more time outdoors could help reverse this trend. To investigate this further, researchers focused on first-graders at 12 schools in China. The children were almost 7 years old, on average.

About 950 kids from six schools were assigned one additional 40-minute class with outdoor activities each day. Their parents were also encouraged to help them spend more time outside after school and on the weekends. Roughly the same number of students from the other schools did not have the extra outdoor class and didn’t change their usual daily routine at home.

After three years, incidence of nearsightedness was 30.4 percent among the kids who spent more time outside, compared to nearly 40 percent among the kids who didn’t change their routine, according to the study.

This difference was less than anticipated, said the study’s authors, led by Dr. Mingguang He of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. “However, it is clinically important because small children who develop myopia early are most likely to progress to high myopia, which increases the risk of pathological myopia,” the researchers said in a journal news release.

“Thus, a delay in the onset of myopia in young children, who tend to have a higher rate of progression, could provide disproportionate long-term eye health benefits,” the researchers explained. In high myopia, the eyeball stretches and becomes too long, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Pathological myopia, or extreme nearsightedness, is a rare condition leading to blindness.

The Chinese researchers said more long-term studies are needed to support their findings.

Future studies should include information about the type of the additional outdoor activity and if the activity could be standardized, Repka said in the editorial.

“Establishing the long-term effect of additional outdoor activities on the development and progression of myopia is particularly important because the intervention is essentially free and may have other health benefits,” he said.

“Given the popular appeal of increased outdoor activities to improve the health of school-aged children in general,” Repka added, “the potential benefit of slowing myopia development and progression by those same activities is difficult to ignore.”

More information

The U.S. National Eye Institute provides more on myopia.

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Too Little Vitamin D May Hasten Mental Decline

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Mental function may decline faster in older adults with low levels of vitamin D, a new study suggests.

Among more than 380 people the researchers followed for an average of five years, those with dementia had the lowest levels of vitamin D.

“It is unclear what vitamin D might be doing,” said study author Joshua Miller, chair of the department of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in New Brunswick, N.J.

“There is good evidence that vitamin D gets into all cells of the body, including the brain,” Miller said, so it’s possible that vitamin D protects the brain from developing the plaques and tangles that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Unfortunately, “there’s a good chance that most people over 75 in the United States are vitamin D-deficient,” he noted.

Miller cautioned that there’s no proof that taking vitamin D supplements will slow mental decline, as this study only showed an association between the two.

“All we can say is that supplements might be helpful to you,” he said. “And the downside of taking supplements is very small.”

The report was published online Sept. 14 in the journal JAMA Neurology.

The recommended daily intake of vitamin D for older adults is 600 to 800 IU, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Vitamin D, called the sunshine vitamin, is found in fortified foods, such as milk, orange juice, cereals and yogurt. Fish, egg yolks and liver also contain the vitamin.

Miller and his colleagues defined four levels of vitamin D in blood: deficiency as less than 12 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL); insufficient as 12 to less than 20 ng/mL; adequate as 20 to less than 50 ng/mL; and high as 50 ng/mL or more.

The researchers found that most people in the study had levels of vitamin D that were too low; 26 percent were vitamin D-deficient and 35 percent were vitamin D-insufficient. Blacks and Hispanics had the lowest vitamin D levels, compared with whites.

Blacks and other minorities have higher concentrations of melanin, which makes their skin darker, but this inhibits synthesis of vitamin D, the researchers explained.

Also, dietary intake of vitamin D comes mostly from dairy products, and minority groups tend to consume low amounts of dairy foods, the study authors added.

The average age of participants in the study was slightly over 75 years old. At the start of the trial, 17.5 percent of the participants had dementia, almost 33 percent had some problems with thinking and memory (mild cognitive impairment) and 49.5 percent were mentally normal.

Vitamin D levels were lower among those with dementia at 16 ng/mL, compared with those with mild cognitive impairment (20 ng/mL) and mentally normal participants (19.7 ng/mL), Miller’s team found.

During follow-up, the rates of decline in memory, thinking and problem-solving among those who were vitamin D-deficient and vitamin D-insufficient were larger than among those with adequate levels of vitamin D, the researchers found.

Levels of vitamin D were not significantly linked with decline in the memory of things and events stored in long-term memory or with the ability to perceive visual and spatial relationships, the study found.

Dr. Sam Gandy, director of the Center for Cognitive Health at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, said, “Vitamin D levels should be checked at least once in people 55 and older, and should be a part of any evaluation of mental impairment.”

Gandy, who was not involved with the study, doesn’t think that older people should be taking vitamin D supplements as a matter of course, however.

“I would stop short of recommending general use of supplements by everyone,” he said. “But certainly everyone should have their levels checked at least once in midlife and if there is any mental issue.”

More information

Visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health for more on vitamin D.

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