Model Robyn Lawley Shows Off Her ‘Badass’ Stretch Marks

 

Robyn Lawley isn’t ashamed of her stretch marks—instead she’s proudly displaying them for the world to see and simultaneously standing up for new moms (and women in general) everywhere.

Last Thursday, she Instagrammed a topless post-pregancy photo and added a link to an explanation on Facebook to her bio. In the post, she says that a magazine in the United Kingdom published rumors that she almost had an abortion to “avoid stretch marks.”

“I was shocked, not only because that is not what I said—not to mention I already had a ton of stretch marks like 90 percent of the world—but to read that entire article and be already heavily pregnant, that’s their angle?” she wrote.

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Not only did Lawley shut down the derogatory claims, but she also proudly defended the body she “earned” after giving birth to her adorable daughter, Ripley Dorothy, in February:

“As for my stretch marks I knew they were coming and as they’re fading into white (like all my others) I thought I might capture them. Because they are some bad ass #tigerstripes. And I earned them.”

RELATED: 10 Foods Pregnant Women Should Eat

Lawley isn’t the first woman to label her stretch marks as “tiger stripes.” However, just like she broke the mold when she was the first “plus-size” model to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, she continues to pave the way for women everywhere to feel more confident in their own skin.

“We put an unbelievable amount of ridiculous time-consuming pressure on women to care so much about their flaws they forget how truly beautiful they (you) are today,” Lawley wrote in her post. “And to anyone who feels bad about your body especially after a baby, you are a warrior, you created a life inside of you, that’s no easy feat.”

 

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Death Rates From Major Illnesses Fall in U.S.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Fewer Americans are dying from heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and injuries, a new study reveals.

American Cancer Society researchers analyzed age-standardized rates of death for six leading diseases and conditions over nearly five decades and found significant progress overall.

However, deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — a debilitating disease often caused by smoking — increased dramatically during the time period studied, 1969 to 2013.

The COPD death rate reflects the different smoking patterns among men and women. COPD deaths have started to decrease among men, since males started smoking — and quitting — years earlier. But COPD deaths are still increasing among women, who took up smoking later and began quitting later, the researchers said.

“We continue to make progress in reducing death rates from five of the six major causes of death,” said lead researcher Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, the society’s vice president for the surveillance and health services research program. “But the death rate from COPD doubled.”

Jemal credited the overall progress to a decline in smoking, early diagnosis and better treatment of heart disease, cancer and stroke.

But better diagnosis and treatment can only go so far, he said. Noting that reductions in deaths from heart disease, stroke and diabetes have slowed in recent years, Jemal emphasized the need to prevent these diseases in the first place.

“If we apply what we know in preventing cancer, heart disease, stroke, COPD and diabetes, we could reduce deaths by half,” he said. “There is a huge opportunity to prevent these diseases.”

Prevention includes a healthy lifestyle — avoiding smoking, reducing obesity, eating a healthful diet and exercising, Jemal said.

The report was published Oct. 27 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Deaths from all causes, including these conditions, dropped about 1.3 percent a year over the near half century studied for a 43 percent decline overall, the researchers found.

Deaths from heart disease dropped 68 percent and from stroke, 77 percent. Injury-related deaths fell 40 percent, and deaths from cancer and diabetes dropped 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively. But COPD-related deaths jumped 101 percent, according to the report.

Although deaths from heart disease continue to drop, the decline slowed to 1.4 percent in 2010-2013, the researchers found. The drop in death rates has also slowed for stroke and diabetes.

This falloff may reflect the consequences of increased obesity since the 1980s, the study authors say.

Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, from the National Academy of Medicine, said more progress is possible, but it will take individual and community effort.

“A substantial component of the reduction in deaths is due to prevention, as a result, for example, of reduced use of tobacco, better control of high blood pressure and reduction in cholesterol levels,” he said.

More has been learned in the past generation about what makes people healthy or not, said McGinnis, author of an accompanying journal editorial. These factors include genetics, health care, behavior, environment and social circumstances, he said.

“We need to modernize our view to focus on the most important things we now know and can measure about what really makes people, communities, and the nation healthy or not,” McGinnis said.

More information

For more on healthy living, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Cutting Sugar From Diet Boosts Kids’ Health Immediately: Study

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Cutting most of the sugar from a child’s diet can immediately improve health, even if the diet still contains the same amount of calories and carbohydrates as before, a new study suggests.

Researchers put a group of 43 obese kids on a nine-day diet that severely restricted sugar intake, but replaced added sugars with starchy foods to maintain the children’s intake of calories and carbs.

That diet caused immediate reductions in their high blood pressure and improvement in their blood sugar and cholesterol levels, the investigators found.

“Every aspect of their metabolic health got better, with no change in calories,” said study author Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. “This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful not because of its calories or its effects on weight. Rather, sugar is metabolically harmful because it’s sugar.”

The finding raises serious concerns about the health effects of sugar, and calls into question the longstanding belief that “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie,” regardless of its food source, said Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, director of metabolic support in the division of endocrinology, diabetes and bone disease at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York City.

“It’s an important study that adds to the weight of evidence, and really calls out for us to examine the fact that eating patterns, and what a healthy eating pattern is for the American public, are as important as total caloric intake,” said Mechanick, who is president-elect of the American College of Endocrinology and a past president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

For the study, researchers recruited kids aged 8 to 18 who were obese and had at least one other chronic metabolic problem, such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels or signs of insulin resistance.

The study only involved black and Hispanic kids, because of their higher risk for certain conditions associated with metabolic syndrome, such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

The researchers provided the study participants with nine days of food, including all snacks and drinks.

The menu was crafted to be kid-friendly, but restricted foods loaded with added sugars such as high-sugar cereals, pastries and sweetened yogurt.

All of the foods — which included turkey hot dogs, potato chips and pizza — came from local supermarkets, and researchers provided starchy carbs from foods such as bagels, cereal and pasta to replace the carbs that normally would have come from sugary treats.

The end result: kids consumed the same amount of carbs, but their total dietary sugar intake dropped from 28 percent to 10 percent.

The children were given a scale and told to weigh themselves every day. If they started to drop weight drastically, they were given more low-sugar foods so that weight loss could be discounted as a factor in any positive health effects that might occur.

After just nine days on the sugar-restricted diet, virtually every aspect of the participants’ metabolic health improved without a huge change in weight.

Blood pressure began to move toward normal, and levels of triglycerides and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol decreased. Fasting blood glucose went down by 5 points, and insulin levels were cut by a third, the findings showed.

“We took kids who are sick and we made them healthy,” Lustig said. “We didn’t completely reverse it, but within 10 days we went a very long way in reversing their metabolic dysfunction, with no change in calories and no change in weight.”

Other studies have shown that sugar can have bad metabolic effects outside of promoting weight gain through additional calories, Lustig said.

The sugar contained in foods is made up of two simple sugars called glucose and fructose, and studies have found that fructose can promote cellular aging, he said.

Fructose also acts directly upon the reward system in a person’s brain, causing them to crave more sugar. “The more sugar you get, the more you want,” Lustig said.

These findings show that people would do well to follow dietary guidelines that already encourage them to limit sugar intake and eat more fruits and vegetables, Mechanick said.

However, he noted that the study involved only a handful of kids over a short amount of time, and needs to be replicated in a larger group.

“It’s an important study to file along with the total weight of evidence,” Mechanick said. “Obviously, it’s going to need to be corroborated in a different setting and a different population.”

The study was published online Oct. 27 in the journal Obesity.

The Sugar Association did not respond to a request for comment on the findings.

More information

For more on dietary sugar, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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What Training for an Ironman Taught Me About Getting Older

That’s me on the right, and my friend Jean Zaniewski on the left, celebrating her 60th with an Ironman. Photos: Courtesy of Jackie Faye.

The first thing I saw when I woke up in the back of the ambulance, confused and in pain, was the sight of my bicycle being taken away.

The EMTs told me not to move; I had a concussion, they said. Suddenly, it all came back to me: the 10 months of training I had already put in, and how this race, a triathlon I wasn’t going to finish, was only a warm-up for a much harder one, the Ironman. Taped to a stretcher in a neck brace, I realized I was badly injured, and that I might not be able to continue my training.

This had all started in September of 2014—when I decided to uproot my life and move to New York City. I sold my car and most of my belongings, quit my job, and went back to school.

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Personally, I thought graduate school was a great idea, but some people just didn’t quite get it. My dad, who has never, ever asked me about the men in my life started badgering me about dating. My uncle suggested that if I didn’t find someone soon, all the men would be gone. Suddenly, I got the hint that expectations change fast when you’re approaching 30.

It was true that most of the women I grew up with in South Carolina were securely married and already pregnant with not only first, but also second children. Meanwhile, at 29, I was a poor student living in arguably the most expensive city in the country just trying to figure out how to afford food—and this comparison started to wear on me.

I felt like I needed to do something huge to mark the big 3-0. Okay, so I don’t have a husband or children, but I must have other things to celebrate, I thought. I started thinking about what I could do and what I wanted out of it, and the first thing I asked myself was what do I really love? Well, as a fitness instructor, I love working out.

So eventually I settled on something that would require a lot of working out: the toughest single-day sporting event in the world—the Ironman, a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and a 26.2-mile run.

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Even as a fitness instructor, this was more than a little daunting because:

(A) My swimming experience was pretty much limited to doggy paddle.

(B) I did not own a bicycle.

(C) And, while I do have one marathon under my belt this was going to be like three marathons in a single day.

When I told guy friends about my plan they would say, “Wow, I’ve never met a woman who did an Ironman.” To date, there are only around 400,000 Ironman finishers—and just 20 percent are women.

Yes, this was exactly the kind of challenge I needed; walking across the Ironman finish line would be much cooler than walking down the aisle.

Getting started

First thing, I talked to a swim coach who invited me to one of his classes. My first trip to the pool lasted about 5 minutes. He told me to get out of the water because I was so awful, and then he emailed me an article about the fatal risks of triathlon.

Determined not to get discouraged, I found another class that was a little more my speed, and I set a goal to swim for at least an hour, three times a week starting in January.

Around my school schedule, I taught as many fitness classes as I could so I would have money to buy a bicycle, and I signed up for a shorter triathlon in June, about two months before the real deal.

As I wiggled into my wetsuit for my warm-up triathlon I felt ready. I knew how hard I had worked to get to that point, and when I dove confidently into the water for the first part of the race, I was a far cry from the girl who got kicked out of the pool at her first swim class. Everything was going well until I woke up in that ambulance.

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After getting to the hospital, I found out that during the biking part of the race, another cyclist hit me from behind at full-speed as we careened down a hill. I slammed into the concrete multiple times, with my head hitting the ground so hard my helmet split. The cyclist who hit me didn’t even stop.

My bicycle frame, the one I’d just bought, also cracked during the race and that meant I had to buy a whole new one, not to mention pay the hospital bills. For weeks I woke up in the middle of the night crying in pain from the headaches.

Because I didn’t finish the triathlon, I started to question whether I could really finish my actual goal, the Ironman. I saw it slipping away and started to feel afraid. I remembered that article the mean swim instructor sent me. Now that I was seriously injured, not making it through this seemed an actual possibility. But at the same time, I could not allow myself to turn 30 without doing what I’d set out to do.

I thought about all the phrases I say each day when I’m teaching cardio sports training or bootcamp at my gym. I could hear myself screaming, “If it were easy everyone would do it!” I had to take my own advice.

RELATED: 6 Things That Happen When You Turn 40

Getting back on my feet

Before I could go on, I had to rest. By the time I could really work out again the race was just a month away. After weeks of doctoring my wounds, I knew I had to get back on the bike—and that honestly made me cry like a baby, not just because I still had skinned knees and it hurt, but because I was so, so scared.

On top of that, I felt eons behind in my training, but each time I forced myself out for a ride I felt a little bit safer and little bit more confident.

In August of 2015, as I checked into my hotel for the big weekend, the first person I met was Jean Zaniewski. I asked her if she was racing and when I found out she was, we decided to grab dinner together that night.

Over pasta, I found out that Jean was also celebrating a birthday–the big 6-0.

As she told me about herself and her goal, I laughed at myself. I thought I was pushing the boundaries of what it meant to turn 30, but Jean had already been there, done that. Jean explained that as a former federal law enforcement agent, she spent her 20s and 30s focused on her career and her athletic goals. After marrying at 40, she had her first child at 41, adopted another at 45, and had her third child at 47. She laughed when she told me that now that she was retired she could be a stay-at-home mom.

I don’t know that Jean quite understood what our meeting meant to me. She really was the epitome of the type of woman I want to be. Two days after we met we rode to the race together like two peas in a pod, one generation apart.

RELATED: 15 Ways Exercise Makes You Look and Feel Younger

My Ironman finish

Just six days before my birthday, I found myself at the starting line once again.
I was so terrified of what I was about to attempt that I taped a goodbye video on my cell phone the night before. With 140.6 miles ahead of me I heard my fitness instructor voice again, “Just keep moving.”

Well, trying to move with 1,200 people in the water at once isn’t easy. About a mile and half into the swim, I got kicked in the face, which knocked my nose plugs off. I can’t put my head in the water without them, so I did the entire last mile backstroke. By the time I got to the hilly bicycle course, I wasn’t afraid; I was relieved.

Then, as I ran the last leg, the entire 26.2 miles, I thought about how far I had come. A year before I could hardly swim in a pool. I had worked so hard to train and then the unexpected—my accident—blindsided me. Despite my fear, I chose to get up and try again. And that is life in a nutshell isn’t it? You can accomplish amazing things if you push yourself to the limit and don’t live by anyone’s rules but your own.

But most importantly, I thought about Jean, who was running this race at twice my age. I realized that it is never too late to achieve what you want, and if you open yourself up to experiences you never know who you’ll meet, or inspire.

When I crossed the finish line I couldn’t have been prouder of where I was at in my life. The announcer loudly said, “Jackie Faye, you are an Ironman,” and with tears streaming down my face I wanted to scream, “I am 30!”

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Jackie Faye is a fitness instructor and journalist in Manhattan. She has a MA in Business Journalism from Columbia University and attended Georgetown University’s Institute of Political Journalism. Her reports have been featured across the country on NBC, CBS, and Yahoo News.

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Halloween Can Be a Fright for Kids With Food Allergies

TUESDAY, Oct. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Parents of youngsters with food allergies may feel Halloween is more trick than treat, but the holiday’s risks can be reduced with some simple precautions, an expert says.

“Every year Halloween is a bigger celebration. And every year, parents of kids with food allergies have to think about ways to keep their child safe from potential allergic reactions,” allergist Dr. Janna Tuck said in an American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) news release.

“About 4 to 6 percent of children in the United States have a food allergy. And while many kids are good at knowing what they’re allergic to, sometimes there are hidden dangers kids and parents need to be aware of,” she added.

One way to make Halloween safer for children with food allergies is to put the emphasis on spookiness rather than treats. There are many fun things to do that don’t involve eating, such as watching scary movies, going to haunted houses or on treasure hunts, making masks, or carving pumpkins.

While you and your child may know which foods trigger an allergic reaction, some Halloween treats don’t provide information about their ingredients and are not safe for children with food allergies. Let your kids know that mini-sized snacks may not carry the usual food allergy warnings. It’s also important for parents to tell their children it’s fine to say “No, thank you” to treats they know are not safe for them.

One thing parents of children with food allergies can do is drop off safe treats with neighbors before Halloween. And if you’re worried that your youngster will be tempted to snack while trick-or-treating, make them a special treat sack to help them avoid the temptation of snacking before they get home.

A campaign to boost awareness of food allergies was launched last year by the nonprofit organization Food Allergy Research & Education. The group suggests buying inexpensive nonfood treats and placing a pumpkin painted teal — the color of food allergy awareness — in front of your house, so that parents and children with food allergies know that’s a house that will offer them a safe, nonfood treat.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about food allergies.

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Risk of More Aggressive Early Breast Cancers Rises With Age, Study Finds

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — While experts know the chances of finding a type of early stage breast cancer known as DCIS increase with age, a new study from Germany shows these cancers are more likely to be aggressive when discovered in older women.

“DCIS detection rates increase with age, mostly due to a rise of DCIS high- and intermediate-grade [tumors],” said Dr. Stefanie Weigel, a researcher at University Hospital Muenster in Germany. These tumors, she said, are lesions that “carry a higher risk for transition to aggressive cancers than DCIS low-grade.”

DCIS, or ductal carcinoma in situ, is an early stage cancer that is potentially invasive. It is confined within the milk ducts and a common finding on mammography. Treating DCIS is controversial, because some cases may never progress and cause problems during a woman’s lifetime.

Weigel’s team aimed to look at the link between age at screening and detection rates of the different grades of DCIS. The investigators looked at the medical records of nearly 734,000 women, aged 50 to 69, who were screened with digital mammography between 2005 and 2008.

The study authors looked at DCIS rates for five-year age groups, determining the rate per 1,000 women. They then divided their findings into DCIS of low-, intermediate- and high-grades.

In all, the investigators found 989 DCIS diagnoses. Of those, 419 were high-grade, 388 were intermediate-grade and 182 were low-grade, according to the report published online Oct. 27 in the journal Radiology.

The older the woman, the more likely she was to have a DCIS found, mostly due to an increase in intermediate- or high-grade DCIS. In the group aged 50 to 54, just 1.2 percent had a DCIS finding. By ages 65 to 69, 1.7 percent did, the findings showed.

What is new about this study is the finding about the grades, Weigel said. That is important because the higher the grade, the more likely the progression to invasive cancer, she explained. “For the most aggressive type, high-grade DCIS, intervals between DCIS detection and the occurrence of invasive carcinoma have been described to be five years, on average,” Weigel added.

The findings confirm other research that has shown DCIS increases with age, said Dr. Rita Gidwaney, an assistant clinical professor of diagnostic radiology at the City of Hope Cancer Center, in Duarte, Calif.

Even though the rate of DCIS increased as women got older, Gidwaney said, the sensitivity of mammography to pick up DCIS does not vary with different ages. About 85 percent of DCIS cases were found on screening mammograms, she said.

Gidwaney does take issue with the study design, which omitted women aged 40 to 49. These younger women tend to have more aggressive cancers, so including them in the study would have been ideal, Gidwaney said.

More information

To learn more about DCIS, visit American Cancer Society.

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Chronic Heartburn Drugs Tied to Higher Risk of Kidney Disease

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 27, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A common type of heartburn medication called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) seem to be linked with increased risk of chronic kidney disease, two new studies suggest.

Prilosec, Nexium and Prevacid belong to this class of drugs, which treat heartburn and acid reflux by lowering the amount of acid produced by the stomach.

While the current studies have shown an association between these drugs and the development of chronic kidney disease, they did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Still, the lead author of one of the studies believes, “It is very reasonable to assume that PPIs themselves can cause chronic kidney disease,” said Dr. Pradeep Arora, a nephrologist and associate professor at the SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Science in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Patients should only use PPIs for [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]-approved indications, and not to treat simple heartburn or [indigestion],” he cautioned.

Chronic kidney disease is increasing in the United States, with more than 20 million Americans now suffering with it, according to the American Society of Nephrology. This occurs when a person’s kidneys become damaged and can’t filter blood as they should. Diabetes and high blood pressure are two common risk factors for kidney disease, the society said.

Previously, PPIs have been tied to short-term kidney problems like acute kidney injury and an inflammatory kidney disease called acute interstitial nephritis, Arora said.

Arora’s study involved more than 24,000 patients who developed chronic kidney disease between 2001 and 2008.

One out of four of the kidney patients had been previously treated using a PPI. People taking a PPI also had nearly twice the risk of dying prematurely, the researchers found.

In the second study, researchers were led by Dr. Benjamin Lazarus from Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Australia, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. They followed more than 10,000 adults with normal kidney function from 1996 to 2011.

They found that PPI users were up to 50 percent more likely to develop chronic kidney disease than non-PPI users, even after adjusting for differences between the two groups.

The researchers pointed out that people did not have a higher risk of chronic kidney disease if they used a different class of drugs called H2-blockers that also suppress stomach acid. Tagamet and Zantac are included in this drug group.

The same team also replicated this link in a larger second study that followed 240,000 patients from 1997 to 2014, the researchers said.

Findings from the studies are scheduled to be presented next week at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting in San Diego. Data and conclusions presented at meetings are usually considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Arora said there are a couple of theories that might explain this link between PPIs and chronic kidney disease.

The kidneys might become damaged over time if patients suffer repeated bouts of acute interstitial nephritis (a form of tissue inflammation), which has been linked with short-term use of PPIs, he said.

PPIs also can cause magnesium levels in the blood to decline. A lack of this important mineral might also cause damage to the kidneys, Arora added.

However, patients who take PPIs also tend to be obese and have other health problems such as diabetes, and these conditions might explain the observed link, said Dr. Michael Wolfe, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.

Sick patients also take a lot of painkilling NSAIDs, or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and those over-the-counter medications also have been tied to chronic kidney disease, he said.

“I suspect if [researchers] correct for NSAID use, they will see this correlation disappear,” Wolfe said.

Arora said that his research team did not initially account for NSAID use in the study, but did control for other health problems.

“We did not [control the data for NSAID use], but we have the data for NSAID use and we are looking over that,” he said. “That is a very good point.”

Arora recommends that people only use proton pump inhibitors to treat serious gastrointestinal disorders like GERD, as originally intended by the FDA.

“According to U.S. data, 90 percent of the prescriptions for PPI are not related to FDA-approved indications,” he said. “We are using this medication right and left, and it may be counterproductive for many patients.”

More information

For more information on heartburn, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Doctors Blamed This Plus-Sized Model’s Symptoms on Her Weight—Until They Found Cancer

When plus-sized model Elly Mayday first landed in the emergency room with terrible lower back pain, she knew this wasn’t regular back pain or a pulled muscle. But the doctors sent her home, advising her to take the prescribed medication and work on her weight. The same thing happened the second, third and fourth times she went back to the ER looking for help.

“They told me to work out my core,” Mayday explains in the video above. “Like, ‘it’s your fault. You don’t feel good because you’re overweight.'”

Finally, thanks to Mayday’s persistence, the results of a CT scan revealed an ovarian cyst as the source of her back pain—but then she got the worst news of all: a biopsy revealed that she had a rare form of ovarian cancer, a low grade serous carcinoma, requiring immediate treatment, she explained in another interview with People.

“I felt really stupid, going into the emergency and someone’s just saying, ‘What do you want us to do for you?'”  she recounted in the video, which is part of StyleLikeU’s “What’s Underneath Project.” “How dare you think I’m not aware of my body enough to tell you that there’s something wrong, and to go in there and say that something’s wrong?”

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The pain started in the summer of 2013, and since getting her diagnosis, she’s undergone a hysterectomy, three months of chemotherapy, a nine-hour surgery to remove tumors, and a procedure this past August to take out another small mass. In the process, they had to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, and they were unable to save any of her eggs.

“People say, ‘Oh well, thank god they caught it.’ They didn’t catch it at all. I did,” Mayday said. “If I had listened to them I would be dead. For sure.”

Mayday continued to model throughout the ordeal, posing while bald from the chemotherapy. And though she’s doing better, she’s not ready to say she’s in remission. “I don’t refer to myself as [cancer-free],” she told People, but “I’m as good as I can be.”

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But even then, her troubles didn’t end. During the course of chemotherapy, she lost around 60 pounds, putting her at a slim 120, and people started attacking her for being too thin. But she wasn’t going to let it bother her.

“People started saying, ‘I’m not following you anymore,’ or ‘I see how it is, you get a little bit more famous and then you lose all the weight.’ Like, are you f-cking kidding me?” Mayday said in the video. “I realized that your glow comes from within. I’ll always be me, no matter what, whatever weight I am. I just want to be healthy.”

“My body has brought me through hell and back,” she adds. “I would choose this body again, even if it had cancer. Cause it’s mine and I’m happy with it.”

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U.S. Task Force Urges Broader Screening for Type 2 Diabetes

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Oct. 26, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Doctors should screen overweight and obese adults between 40 and 70 years old for abnormal blood sugar levels and type 2 diabetes, according to new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

People with elevated blood sugar (glucose) levels should then be referred to intensive behavioral counseling that emphasizes healthy eating and regular exercise, the guidelines say.

“People with abnormal blood glucose have a higher risk for progression to [type 2] diabetes. By finding abnormal blood glucose early, you may prevent that pathway by starting lifestyle interventions early,” said Dr. Michael Pignone, a task force member and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As many as 86 million American adults have abnormal blood sugar levels. Without lifestyle changes, between 15 and 30 percent of them will develop type 2 diabetes within five years, according to background information in the guidelines.

Diabetes, which is increasingly prevalent in the United States, is a leading cause of heart attack and stroke, Pignone said.

Being overweight or obese is a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes, Pignone said. What constitutes overweight? For a woman 5 feet 6 inches tall, overweight begins at about 155 pounds. Obesity for that same woman starts at 186 pounds, according to the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. For a man 6 feet tall, overweight begins at 184 pounds, and obesity at 221.

Other modifiable risk factors include having a high percentage of abdominal fat, being physically inactive and smoking, the guidelines said.

Currently, the American Diabetes Association recommends routine screening in adults 45 years or older, and earlier screening in people with multiple risk factors for type 2 diabetes. A number of other health groups recommend screening for type 2 diabetes only in people who have risk factors, the new guidelines said.

The new recommendations were published in the Oct. 27 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The task force, an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention, last issued guidelines on screening for blood sugar in 2008. The new review found six studies suggesting lifestyle-modification programs can help prevent type 2 diabetes, Pignone said. The research concerned people younger than 70, which is why the guidelines stop at that age, he added.

The task force recommends screening blood sugar using one of three inexpensive tests. One is a blood test that gives an estimate of what someone’s blood sugar has been during the past two or three months.

The two other tests require fasting, so may be less convenient, Pignone said.

If your test results come back abnormal, the test should be repeated for confirmation, the guidelines advise.

For those who still have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, the task force said the most helpful interventions combine multiple sessions of counseling to promote a healthy diet and physical activity. Such programs benefit blood sugar levels, and also help lower cholesterol and blood pressure levels, the authors said.

“Programs need to teach you the skills and habits that will be long-lasting. Three months of change, and then back to what you were doing before isn’t likely to be effective,” said Pignone.

Pignone said the YMCA has a worthwhile program that accepts people without health insurance. And now that the task force has changed its recommendation, screening and lifestyle interventions should be covered under the Affordable Care Act, he added.

The task force also found that medications can help lower blood sugar. But because of potential side effects, the task force didn’t find a “net benefit” to drug therapy.

The new recommendations aren’t radical, one expert said.

“I think most doctors are already doing this,” said Dr. Howard Andrew Selinger, chair of family medicine at Quinnipiac University School of Medicine in Hamden, Conn.

The good news about lifestyle interventions is that they can be “simple, safe and cheap,” Selinger said.

“While more commercial, formalized programs may be covered by insurance, if you want to help prevent type 2 diabetes, it doesn’t have to cost anything,” he said. “Open the front door and take a walk. Start with a 10-minute walk, and then work up to 20 minutes.”

Selinger also said some major supermarket chains have nutritionists who can walk you through the store and “show you how to eat in a healthier way that you can afford.”

More information

Learn more about the YMCA diabetes prevention program.

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End-of-Life Care for Dementia Much Pricier Than for Other Ills

By Maureen Salamon
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Oct. 26, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Health care and caregiving costs for dementia patients in the final five years of life are far more burdensome than they are for patients with cancer, heart disease and other illnesses, a new study suggests.

The study found that total “social costs” — such as government spending, private insurance and out-of-pocket expenditures for dementia patients — were 57 percent greater than costs associated with death from other conditions.

“The magnitude of the difference was shocking to me, even though the trend is what I expected,” said study author Dr. Amy Kelley, an associate professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “I don’t think the vast majority of people have any idea about these costs unless they’re living it.”

The study findings were published online Oct. 26 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, a progressive condition marked by declines in memory, language, problem-solving and other skills that enable everyday activities, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. About 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. More than 15 million Americans provide unpaid care for these patients and others with dementia, the association said.

Kelley and her team reviewed an “exhaustive list” of all spending related to health care for more than 1,700 patients aged 70 or older who died between 2005 and 2010. Participants were split into four groups. One group had a high probability of dementia. Another had people who died from heart disease. The third had people who died from cancer, and the fourth had people who died of other causes, the study noted.

The average total cost per person with dementia five years before death was more than $287,000. That number compared to costs ranging from $173,000 to $197,000 among the other groups. Medicare expenses were similar among patient groups. But, the average out-of-pocket spending for dementia patients was 81 percent higher than it was for those without dementia, the study showed.

The financial burden was disproportionately higher for blacks and those who were unmarried or had less than a high school education, the findings showed. For these groups, out-of-pocket dementia costs represented 32 percent of their household wealth, compared with 11 percent of household wealth for non-dementia patients.

“At these numbers, the burden of spending for all these older adults was tremendous, and for the dementia population it was astronomical,” Kelley said. She explained that specific costs related to dementia care in the final years of life range from live-in or visiting aides; nursing homes; medical transport services; adult day care or respite care; and home modifications to make living quarters safer.

Matthew Baumgart, senior director of public policy for the Alzheimer’s Association, praised the study for helping to “put a face on this disease that very few people see.”

Baumgart said that “people don’t often see the toll this disease takes at the end of life. So focusing on this financial burden really helps put the spotlight on those who are often forgotten.”

Kelley said future research should look more at caregiving-related issues related to dementia, such as if patients’ loved ones are forced to sell their assets to pay for care. Medicare doesn’t cover health-related expenses such as non-rehabilitative nursing home care, the researchers said. Medicaid coverage for such expenses only kicks in after patients’ financial assets are nearly depleted, the study authors said.

“If we’re finding that the next generation is reducing their work hours or selling their assets or leaving their jobs completely to provide that informal, unpaid care . . . then we need to ask ourselves as a society what the implication of that is for our economy and that next generation,” she said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging offers information about dementia end-of-life care.

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