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Underweight or Obese Women Who Drink and Smoke May Have Higher Asthma Risk

SATURDAY, April 9, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Researchers say they have pinpointed several factors that increase asthma risk in women and — to a lesser extent — in men.

They analyzed data from about 175,000 people between the ages of 18 and 44 in 51 countries. They found that underweight or obese women who drank and smoked were twice as likely to have asthma as those with a healthy weight who didn’t drink or smoke.

Underweight or obese women who smoked and drank were also two to three times more likely to have wheezing, according to the study published April 4 in the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research. But the study did not prove that these factors cause asthma, it only showed an association.

“Although individual physical and behavioral factors associated with asthma have been examined before, people are often exposed to multiple risk factors so it’s important we understand the combined impact,” lead author Jayadeep Patra said in a news release from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Patra is an epidemiologist in the Center for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s.

“Our research found overall increased risk for wheezing and asthma in both men and women, but the magnitude of the combined effects from low or high BMI, smoking and drinking was consistently higher among women than men,” Patra said.

People with asthma have trouble breathing due to spasms in the tubes that carry air in and out of the lungs. It affects 334 million people worldwide.

It is more prevalent in low- and middle-income countries, possibly due to a larger number of risk factors, including widespread indoor use of solid fuels such as charcoal, wood or dung for cooking, Patra said. These fuels increase the risk of lung and heart problems.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more on asthma.

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Doctors Report on Success of Throat Reconstruction

FRIDAY, April 8, 2016 (HealthDay News) — An American man who underwent throat reconstruction seven years ago has no swallowing problems and can eat normal food, researchers report.

The man’s severely damaged esophagus was reconstructed using commercially available metal stents and donated skin tissue. The stents — approved in the United States to help esophageal cancer patients with a throat obstruction to swallow — provided a scaffold for the tissue to grow on.

“This is a first in human operation and one that we undertook as a lifesaving measure once we had exhausted all other options available to us and the patient,” said study author Dr. Kulwinder Dua. He is a professor in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee.

The stents were removed four years ago, according to the study published April 8 in The Lancet.

“The approach we used is novel because we used commercially available products, which are already approved for use in the human body and hence didn’t require complex tissue engineering,” Dua explained in a journal news release.

Initially, the 24-year-old man had a life-threatening infection and couldn’t swallow because of complications from an earlier car crash that left him partially paralyzed. The patient had a nearly 2-inch defect in his esophagus that was too large to repair with conventional surgery, despite several attempts.

Previously, the tissue regeneration technique had only been tested in animals. Further research in animals and people is needed to determine if this method can be repeated and used in similar cases, Dua said.

The medical team had planned to remove the stents 12 weeks after reconstruction surgery. But, the patient put off removal for three-and-a-half years due to fears about possible narrowing or leakage in his esophagus, according to the report.

One year after the stents were removed, endoscopy showed scarring and regeneration of all five layers of the esophagus wall. In addition, swallowing tests showed the esophagus muscles were functioning normally.

However, it’s not known how long the regeneration process actually took because of the delay in stent removal, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more on esophageal disorders.

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A 6-Move TRX Workout to Strengthen Your Entire Body

Think about gymnasts, rock climbers, and dancers. What do these athletes all have in common?

Their sports involve supporting their own bodyweight, and they all have stunning physiques. Training with your own bodyweight is actually one of the best ways to improve your overall strength, muscle tone, flexibility, and cardiovascular capacity. That’s why I love TRX. This simple tool allows you to perform a variety of effective exercises using your own weight—and you can use it just about anywhere. Whether you’re brand new to TRX or a total pro, here’s a circuit will give you a killer total-body workout.

Perform 10 reps of each exercise. Then rest for 1 minute and repeat the circuit. Aim for 2-3 rounds.

Squat to squat jump

squat-squat-jen-cohen

Start by holding the TRX straps with your arms straight in front of you. Step back a few feet so that your arms are raised forward. From here, squat down and sit back into your heels. Stand back up. Then squat down again, but this time jump straight up, using the straps to counter your weight. The squat plus jump counts as one rep. (If you have any knee issues, stick to just the squat and skip the jump).

RELATED: How to Do a Body-Weight Squat

Plank pikes

Photo: Jen Cohen

Place your feet in the TRX straps with your toes pointing down. From here, get into a plank position with your hands just below your shoulders and your core tight. To begin the movement, slowly pull your feet towards your face. Be sure to keep your legs straight the entire time. Continue moving upward until your body creates an ‘A’ shape. Hold for 1 second before lowering down back to plank position.

Push-ups

Photo: Jen Cohen

Grab both TRX handles and walk your feet forward as you lean into the strap. Make sure your body creates a straight line and your core is tight throughout the movement. Start by bringing your hands wider than shoulder width, with your arms straight. Slowly bend your arms and lower down until your chest is parallel with your hands. From here, press back up until your arms are straight again. Keep in mind, the closer to parallel your body gets to the floor, the harder the movement will be.

Reverse lunges

Photo: Jen Cohen

Hold onto the TRX straps with both arms straight and your feet together. From here, step back with your left foot and lower your left knee towards the floor. Step your left foot back up to meet your right. Repeat on your other side.

Rows

Photo: Jen Cohen

Grab both TRX handles and lean back as you walk your feet forward. Throughout the movement, be sure to keep your core tight and body in a straight line. At the beginning of this movement, your arms should be straight. From here, pull your body towards your hands while driving your elbows straight back. Hold for 1 second and then slowly lower back down until your arms are straight again. The further you walk your feet forward, the harder the movement will be.

Shoulder Flys

Photo: Jen Cohen

Grab both TRX handles and lean back as you walk your feet forward. Once again, keep your core tight and body in a straight line. While keeping your arms straight, pull your hands out wide as your body comes forward. Hold for 1 second and then slowly allow your arms to come back together while lowering the body down.

Looking for more articles like this? Check out An 8 Move Circuit for People Who Hate Cardio

Jennifer Cohen is a leading fitness authority, TV personality, best-selling author, and entrepreneur. With her signature, straight-talking approach to wellness, Jennifer was the featured trainer on The CW’s Shedding for the Wedding, mentoring the contestants’ to lose hundreds of pounds before their big day, and she appears regularly on NBC’s Today Show, Extra, The Doctors and Good Morning America. Connect with Jennifer on Facebook, Twitter, G+ and on Pinterest.

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Driving Curfews May Curb Teen Crime: Study

FRIDAY, April 8, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Teen driving curfews can not only cut car crashes, they may also lower youth crime rates, a new study suggests.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas analyzed FBI national data from 1995 to 2011 to compare arrests of 16- and 17-year olds to young adults aged 18 and older in states with nighttime driving curfews for new drivers.

Arrests of the teens fell 4 percent to 6 percent in all states with driving curfews, and reductions were even higher — 5 percent to 8 percent — in those states with the strictest restrictions on new drivers.

The largest declines in arrests were in states that had graduated license programs in place the longest. And, the biggest drops in arrests were for crimes such as manslaughter or murder (11 percent), larceny (5 percent) and aggravated assault (4 percent), the researchers said.

Nighttime restrictions are common as part of states’ graduated licensing programs, which have been shown to reduce risky behaviors that increase the risk of crashes. This study is one of the first to examine how those programs can affect youth crime, the study authors said.

“Being able to drive or having friends who can drive is the difference between going out and staying home on a Saturday night,” said study author Monica Deza, an assistant professor of economics.

“It seemed intuitive to us that having a curfew on driving hours affected the probability that teenagers would get themselves into trouble,” she said in a university news release.

Teen driving curfews were most effective when gas prices were low, which is when teens are likely to drive the most, the researchers found.

“As policymakers become concerned with how low gasoline prices affect risky behaviors among teens, they may want to take into account the role of graduated driving licensing in keeping teenagers off the streets, even in periods in which the cost of driving is particularly low,” Deza said.

However, the study only found an association, rather than a cause-and-effect link, between teen driving curfews and crime rates.

The study was published online in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

More information

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry explains the teen brain.

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Driving Curfews May Curb Teen Crime: Study

FRIDAY, April 8, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Teen driving curfews can not only cut car crashes, they may also lower youth crime rates, a new study suggests.

“Being able to drive or having friends who can drive is the difference between going out and staying home on a Saturday night,” said study author Monica Deza, an assistant professor of economics.

“It seemed intuitive to us that having a curfew on driving hours affected the probability that teenagers would get themselves into trouble,” she said in a university news release.

Teen driving curfews were most effective when gas prices were low, which is when teens are likely to drive the most, the researchers found.

However, the study only found an association, rather than a cause-and-effect link, between teen driving curfews and crime rates.

The study was published online in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

More information

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry explains the teen brain.

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Smoking Rates Stall Among Young Blacks

FRIDAY, April 8, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Little progress has been made to reduce smoking among young black Americans over the past two decades, likely due to aggressive marketing by the tobacco industry, researchers report.

Before 1982, smoking rates were falling among black high school seniors, but progress has since stalled. The rate was 8.7 percent in 1982 and 9 percent in 2014, according to a supplement to the April issue of the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

“That the decline has stalled in the last 22 years is, to me, very sad news. I think it’s about the industry working really hard to keep this market,” supplement co-editor Gary Giovino said in a news release from the University at Buffalo. He is chairman of the department of community health and health behavior at the university.

Other reported findings show that black adult smokers are less likely than whites to quit as they age. Blacks who start smoking in their 20s are less likely to quit than those who start as teens, and blacks overall are less likely to quit than whites, according to the study.

Blacks are less likely than whites to start smoking as teens due to parental disapproval and cost, the study found, but more likely to begin using tobacco as young adults.

Among blacks, smoking-related death rates are the same for those who began smoking when they were younger and those who started later. Among whites, smoking-related deaths are higher for those who started smoking earlier.

The findings suggest more should be done to prevent blacks from starting to smoke as they get older, according to supplement co-editor Phillip Gardiner, of the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program of the University of California president’s office.

“Even though African-Americans start smoking later in life, they still die disproportionately from tobacco-related diseases compared to their white counterparts,” he said in the news release.

“This information has been known for some time, and calls upon all of us to redouble our efforts to allocate greater resources for prevention and cessation in the African-American community,” Gardiner added.

In a commentary in the supplement, Giovino and Gardiner say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should ban menthol cigarettes, which are heavily marketed in black neighborhoods.

“The predatory marketing of menthol and other candy flavored tobacco products to African-Americans over the past 50 years is a tragedy,” Gardiner said. “More than 80 percent of black smokers use these products. A major step in fighting smoking health disparities would be for the FDA to ban the use of menthol in tobacco products.”

More information

The American Cancer Society offers a guide to quitting smoking.

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This Is What Teens Do When They Don’t Sleep

Photo: Getty Images

People just aren’t at their best when they don’t get enough sleep. (Check out this week’s bummer finding that people with insomnia seem to have less white matter connectivity in their brains.) For developing brains, adequate sleep also appears to be critical, yet several studies have shown that teenagers are often sleep deprived. Now, a new report reveals some of the possible consequences of tiredness in young people and shows that high school students who get less than seven hours of sleep at night also report several injury-related risk behaviors.

In the report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), researchers looked at information from 50,370 high school students from grades nine to 12. They found that teens who said they slept less than seven hours a night were more likely to also report behaviors like frequently biking without a helmet, not wearing a seatbelt, driving with a driver who had been drinking, driving and driving, and texting and driving compared to other teens in the trial who reported sleeping for nine hours a night. It’s currently recommended that adolescents between the ages 14–17 years aim for eight to 10 hours each night.

“Although insufficient sleep directly contributes to injury risk, some of the increased risk associated with insufficient sleep might be caused by engaging in injury-related risk behaviors,” the study authors write. “Intervention efforts aimed at these behaviors might help reduce injuries resulting from sleepiness, as well as provide opportunities for increasing awareness of the importance of sleep.”

The new report can only show an association between lack of sleep and a greater propensity toward riskier behaviors, but it’s not the first to connect lack of sleep to problems among young people. In 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics made a formal recommendation that school start times be delayed so teens can sleep in, due in part to the evidence that insufficient sleep contributes to behavior and academic troubles and higher obesity risk. As TIME has previously reported, some school districts are following that advice and pushing back their school start times so that teens can get more shuteye.

The latest report also acknowledges that some teens need more sleep than others, and that a lack of sleep could also be a sign of something else, like a sleep disorder, too much cell phone use or even depression. To maximize quality rest, they recommend adopting habits like going to sleep and waking up at the same time, minimizing light exposure at night and keeping electronics out of the bedroom.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Jennifer Lawrence Has a Lot to Say About “Normal” Body Weight

Instagram Photo

Jennifer Lawrence has a message for everyone—it’s time we change our views on ‘normal’ weight. She opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about the film industry’s body standards, and just like fellow actress Melissa McCarthy, Lawrence would like to see some major changes in the way Hollywood, and society as a whole, defines normal.

“I would like us to make a new normal-body type. Everybody says, ‘We love that there is somebody with a normal body!’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t feel like I have a normal body.’ I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person. I think we’ve gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s curvy.’ Which is crazy,” Lawrence said in an interview with the mag for its May issue.

The face of Dior also sounded off on feminism and why it shouldn’t mean giving up your femininity. “If we are moving forward in a society, you are feeling stronger as a woman, and you want to be taken more seriously. You don’t have to take away the wonderful traits that come with being a woman: We are sensitive. We are pleasers. We’re empathetic,” Lawrence explained.

Preach, Jennifer!

This article originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

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Here’s How I Made an Instagram-Worthy Fruit Pizza

fruit-pizza-one

You know your fruit obsession has gotten out of hand when you decide to make a fruit pizza (aka what I did last Saturday night). But hey, it was delicious, and I highly recommend you give it a try.

Crafting a fruity rendition of this classic comfort food is super simple. There are zero culinary skills required. All you need to do is get creative with ingredients inspired by dough, cheese, and toppings.

For my “dough” I bought a petite whole watermelon and sliced two flat disks from the middle to form the base of two personal size “pizzas.” I figured the rind would serve as a handy “crust” once I sliced up the pies. Then I spread a thick layer of vanilla Greek yogurt on top of each for my “cheese.”

Next, it was time for the fun part—the eye-catching toppings. I chose to use blueberries, strawberries, a plum, a banana, an apple, and a kiwi. Each fruit added a new pop of color. (Hello, beautiful Instagram pic!)

One word of warning: Things can get finger-lickin’ messy if you’re constantly rearranging the fruit, so it’s helpful to have a mental image of your pizzas before you start decorating.

For a finishing touch, I drizzled melted peanut butter on the plates (because peanut butter is life) and garnished with leftover slices of apple, pear, and plum. And voilà! Two deliciously healthy desserts.

fruit-pizza-three

If you make your own fruit pizza, share it with us on Instagram (@healthmagazine) with #HealthCleanEating! We’ll regram our favorites.

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Doctors Weigh in on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Bee Sting Therapy

Photo: Getty Images

As if living like Gwyneth Paltrow wasn’t already hard enough. You can now add “getting stung by actual bees on purpose” to your list of ways to channel the goop founder, right below vitamin IV infusions, $700 leggings, and sex dust.

Paltrow recently spoke with the New York Times about her beauty regimen, which includes products from Drunk Elephant, Tata Harper, Shu Uemera, and her new line with Juice Beauty. Oh, and also the occasional dose of bee venom.

“I’ve been stung by bees. It’s a thousands of years old treatment called apitherapy,” Paltrow told the Times. “People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It’s actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it’s painful.”

So… what is apitherapy, exactly?

“Apitherapy, while not exactly mainstream, does have its followers, which will no doubt grow considerably after Gwyneth Paltrow said she has experienced benefits from the ancient practice,” says Christopher Hobbs, PhD, an herbal medicine expert and consultant in Oakland, California.

Although Paltrow was referring to bee venom, apitherapy includes the use of any bee product for therapeutic purposes—including honey, beeswax, bee pollen (which is pollen that’s been packed by worker bees), and a bee secretion used to feed larvae called royal jelly.

During a bee sting therapy session, the practitioner picks up honey bees with tweezers and places them on the patient’s skin, at which point the bees do exactly what you’d expect them to do. People receiving apitherapy treatment may be stung as many as 80 times(!) in one day.

Are there any risks or side effects?

The American Apitherapy Society claims that apitherapy can help ease symptoms of multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, wounds, bacterial diseases, and more. But research on the practice is limited.

While some studies have suggested that bee venom may lessen symptoms of inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, a 2015 review concluded that adverse reactions to bee venom therapy are “frequent” and warned practitioners to use caution when administering the treatment.

“I do not recommend bee stings as anti-inflammatory agents to patients,” says Gary Goldenberg, MD, a dermatologist Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. “Many patients are severely allergic to bee stings and may not know it.”

In addition to a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, other possible side effects include swelling and infection, says David Stoll, MD, a dermatologist in Beverly Hills.

“Bee stings should be avoided, not used as treatment,” as Dr. Goldenberg put it.

So yeah, no thanks, Gwyneth. We’ll pass on the venom.

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Pages

barre

Underweight or Obese Women Who Drink and Smoke May Have Higher Asthma Risk

Doctors Report on Success of Throat Reconstruction

A 6-Move TRX Workout to Strengthen Your Entire Body

Squat to squat jump

Plank pikes

Push-ups

Reverse lunges

Rows

Shoulder Flys

Driving Curfews May Curb Teen Crime: Study

Driving Curfews May Curb Teen Crime: Study

Smoking Rates Stall Among Young Blacks

This Is What Teens Do When They Don’t Sleep

Jennifer Lawrence Has a Lot to Say About “Normal” Body Weight

Here’s How I Made an Instagram-Worthy Fruit Pizza

Doctors Weigh in on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Bee Sting Therapy

So… what is apitherapy, exactly?

Are there any risks or side effects?