Health | 100 Tips

High intensity interval training (HIIT) workout

Incorporate high intensity interval training into your workouts to increase fat loss and maximise your results. Exercise scientist Johann Ruys shares his favourite HIIT workout.

3 x 1km runs with 2-minute rest in between each (work-to-rest ratio = 2:1)

2-minute rest

4 x 500m runs with 2-minute rest between each (work-to-rest ratio = 1:1)

2-minute rest

4 x 150m runs with 1-minute rest in between each (work-to-rest ratio = 1:2)

6 x 30m sprints with 10-second rest between each (finisher)

Join the movement on Instagram and hashtag #myWHF so we can see what you're up to!

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Childhood Vaccinations Rarely Spur Seizures, Study Finds

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Certain vaccines can trigger fever-related seizures in young children, but the risk is so low that pediatricians might see one case every five to 10 years, a new study estimates.

It has long been known that some vaccines carry a small seizure risk. But the researchers said the new report offers some hard numbers.

And it suggests that even when babies and toddlers get three vaccines at once, they only develop fever-related seizures at a rate of 30 per 100,000 — at most.

The findings should be “reassuring” to parents, said lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Duffy, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Looking at the big picture, the benefits of vaccination are much greater than the risk of febrile [fever-related] seizures,” Duffy said.

Up to 5 percent of young children will have a fever-related seizure at some point, according to the CDC. It usually happens when they have the flu, a cold or other infection, the agency said.

But while the seizures are scary for parents, Duffy said, they do not cause lasting harm.

According to Dr. Mark Sawyer, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, “This study is an important contribution to our understanding of how common — or how rare — this vaccine side effect is.”

Sawyer wrote an editorial accompanying the study, which was published online June 6 in the journal Pediatrics.

He said it’s common for parents to worry about the safety of giving multiple vaccines on the same day.

The new findings do suggest that the risk of fever-related seizure is higher when certain vaccines are given together. “But it’s still quite small,” Sawyer said.

For the study, Duffy’s team combed through a health care database with information on nearly 10 million Americans. The investigators focused on 333 cases of fever-related seizures among babies and toddlers aged 6 months to 23 months.

Overall, the study found, a child’s risk of fever-related seizure was no greater than normal after the flu shot or the DTaP vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

There was, however, a small excess risk linked to the pneumococcal vaccine, the findings showed. The risk increased further when the flu shot was given with the pneumococcal vaccine or DTaP — or both.

When all three are given, the CDC estimated, seizures may happen at a rate of up to 30 per 100,000 children.

Sawyer put it another way: Over five to 10 years, the average pediatrician would see one case of fever-related seizure connected to the vaccine trio.

“The total risk is still very small,” Duffy agreed.

The CDC recommends that the DTaP and pneumococcal vaccines be given on the same day. The flu shot is seasonal, so it may be given alone, Sawyer pointed out. But if the timing is right, he said, it is given on a day when a child is getting other routine vaccinations.

Sawyer acknowledged that if there is no extra risk of seizure when the flu shot is given alone, some parents may want the vaccine on a separate day.

“But we know that if we don’t give simultaneous vaccinations, some kids always fall through the cracks,” Sawyer said.

Parents get busy, children get sick and appointments get canceled or delayed, he noted. That’s a problem even if a child eventually catches up on the recommended vaccinations, according to Sawyer.

“When you space out vaccinations,” he said, “your child is at risk of infection during that time.”

Those infections can come with complications, including fever-induced seizure. “So if you want to avoid febrile [fever-related] seizure,” Sawyer said, “delaying vaccinations is not the way to do it.”

More information

The CDC has more on vaccines and febrile seizures.

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U.S. Pays Highest Prices for Cancer Meds: Study

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The United States pays the highest prices in the world for generic and brand-name cancer drugs, a new study has found.

However, as the world’s wealthiest nation, the United States is better able to pay for those pricey drugs than poorer countries with somewhat lower medication prices, added study lead author Dr. Daniel Goldstein.

People in China and India are much less able to afford cancer drugs than Americans, he said, even though U.S. monthly drug prices are about three to six times higher in the United States.

That doesn’t mean America came out on top in overall drug affordability, however. Developed nations such as Australia, England and Israel had the “best deal” in the world on cancer drugs, thanks to government programs that regulate drug pricing, the study found.

“America is the wealthiest nation, but its drug prices are significantly higher — so much so that cancer medications are less affordable in the U.S. than developed countries like England or Australia,” said Goldstein, who’s a senior medical oncologist at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tkvah, Israel.

Goldstein was scheduled to present the findings Monday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology annual meeting, in Chicago. Research presented at medical meetings is typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

For the study, Goldstein’s group compared the prices for 23 cancer drugs in seven countries: Australia, China, England, India, Israel, South Africa and the United States.

The analysis included 15 generic and eight brand-name cancer drugs used to treat a wide range of different cancers.

Drugs included in the analysis included the leukemia drug Sprycel (dasatinib), which can cost around $12,000 a month in the United States; the lung and pancreatic cancer drug Tarceva (erlotinib), which costs around $7,700 a month; and the breast cancer drug Herceptin (trastuzumab), which costs more than $5,300 a month, the researchers said.

On average, the study found that Americans pay the most per month for both brand-name drugs ($8,694) and generics ($654).

India had the lowest average brand-name cost per month ($1,515), while South Africa had the lowest average generic price per month ($120).

However, drug prices are only one factor in determining affordability, the study authors noted. Some countries have distinct economic advantages, which make their citizens better able to pay for medications, Goldstein explained.

So, to do a more “apples-to-apples” comparison of drug affordability, the researchers employed a global economic measurement called “GDP per capita based on purchasing power parity,” or GDPcapPPP.

The International Monetary Fund supplied each country’s GDPcapPPP — a measure of national wealth that factors in citizens’ cost of living.

Under that statistical filter, the average monthly price of brand-name drugs amounted to 192 percent of the United States’ GDPcapPPP.

By comparison, India’s brand-name drug prices were 313 percent of GDPcapPPP, while China’s prices were 288 percent of GDPcapPPP — meaning people in those countries have to stretch much farther to pay their drug costs.

“Even though the prices are lower, the GDP per capita is a lot lower in those poorer countries,” Goldstein said.

Meanwhile, average monthly brand-name drug prices in England were 78 percent of that nation’s GCPcapPPP, and 71 percent of the GDPcapPPP in Australia.

In some developed nations — like Australia and England — the government has stepped in to regulate drug prices, resulting in a better value for their citizens, Goldstein said.

“In the United States, the system is lacking any assessment of value,” he said. “The FDA approves a drug based on safety and efficacy, but there’s no consideration for cost or value.”

Cancer expert Dr. Sharon Giordano reviewed the new findings. She said she’s worried that “we may eventually hit some kind of breaking point” when it comes to cancer drug prices in the United States.

“The cost of drugs for cancer care has been increasing substantially faster than the cost of the rest of medical care in the United States,” said Giordano, a breast medical oncologist and chair of health services and health disparities research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

“While right now we are able to sustain ourselves, there’s a lot of concern that in future years we won’t be able to,” Giordano continued. “Then the U.S. will be forced to confront really difficult questions about how we’re going to afford to pay for cancer care.”

Countries like England and Australia have been able to control drug prices without significantly affecting cancer treatment, Giordano said.

“You may not have access in those countries to every single drug that the United States has access to, but I think they’ve reached more of a compromise,” she said.

More information

For more on cancer drug prices, visit the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

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Pop Stars Often Hawk Unhealthy Foods to Kids: Study

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5: Some of America’s biggest pop stars are making millions from ad campaigns for sugar-laden, low-nutrition foods, a new study says.

“Given current obesity rates among teens, it’s incredibly problematic that the majority of music celebrities’ drink endorsements — 71 percent — were for sugary beverages like soda,” said study lead author Marie Bragg.

“Most food endorsements — 81 percent — were for unhealthy products like fast food, candy, and nutritionally poor snacks,” she added.

Bragg’s team at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City said that about $2 billion is spent every year on food and drink advertising aimed at the young. Each year, the average American preteen sees about 4,700 such ads, while the average teenager views about 5,900, Bragg’s group noted.

Many of the ads feature a (paid) pitch from one of a number of pop music personalities. To track which celebrities are endorsing which products, Bragg’s team focused on ads featuring hit-makers from Billboard magazine’s “Hot 100” listings in 2013 and 2014, adding in “Teen Choice Award” winners, and artists with popular videos featured on YouTube.

The investigators then compiled a list of all celebrity food/drink endorsements across all media between 2000 and 2014.

The result: 163 pop stars endorsed a total of 590 products during that 14-year period. About one-fifth (107 endorsements) were for food and non-alcoholic drinks, the study found.

Some of the biggest music stars were involved in these pitches. Katy Perry lent her fame to Pepsi and PopChips; Maroon 5 appeared in ads for Coca-Cola and Snapple; One Direction hyped Nabisco and Pepsi; and Justin Timberlake helped advertise Chili’s, McDonald’s and Pepsi.

Country music stars played their part, too: Carrie Underwood was featured in ads for Vitamin Water and Hershey’s chocolate, while Blake Shelton appeared in ads for Pepsi and Pizza Hut.

The study authors said that four-fifths of the endorsed foods could be classified as unhealthy (or “nutrient poor”), while nearly three-quarters of the endorsed drinks were sugar-sweetened.

Full-calorie sodas were the most frequently hawked beverage, Bragg’s team reported.

“Companies like Coca-Cola have been using celebrities, especially professional athletes, to promote products since the early 1900s, so it’s not a new phenomenon,” said Bragg, who is assistant professor of population health at the NYU College of Global Public Health.

“Our study didn’t assess whether music celebrity endorsements of foods and beverages has been gaining steam over time,” she said. “But it’s estimated that many of these contracts are worth millions of dollars — suggesting companies think celebrity endorsements are an incredibly valuable tool for promoting their products.”

No pop star endorsed fruits, vegetables or whole grains, the nutritionists noted.

That’s no surprise, according to Bragg, since “industries that sell fruits and vegetables can’t afford to hire celebrities.”

Still, inroads on behalf of healthier foods are being made.

“Partnership for a Healthier America recently teamed up with some celebrities — mostly professional athletes — to promote fruits and vegetables through an advertising campaign called FNV,” Bragg said. Their goal is “to make produce cool and edgy,” she explained.

Lona Sandon is program director and assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. She agreed with Bragg that getting kids to eat better is always an uphill battle, even with advertisers on your side.

“The ‘Got Milk’ campaign by the dairy industry was fairly successful with getting celebrity athletes and pop stars on board to promote milk,” Sandon said. “It likely had some influence on milk drinking among kids.”

However, “there is more money to be made promoting less healthy food choices,” she added, and parents simply don’t hold all the cards when it comes to nutritional messaging.

“Teens want to make their own decisions and be independent, and start looking to others such as pop stars as role models,” Sandon said. “They want to try things that they see their role models doing, things that maybe their parents do not approve of, like drinking a soda or energy drink.”

And, Sandon pointed out, “Eating an apple or bowl of broccoli is just not rebellious.”

Parents aren’t powerless, however. They should “set limits on how often unhealthful foods and beverages are served” at home, she suggested. A child’s age matters, too.

“Parents are likely to have the most influence as role models of healthy eating up to about the age of 12 to 13,” Sandon said. That means that “it is important to instill healthy eating choices early on in life.”

The study was published online June 6 in the journal Pediatrics.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on nutrition and teens.

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Immune-Based Drug May Help Some With Advanced Bladder Cancer

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

SUNDAY, June 5, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Patients with advanced bladder cancer can sometimes be too old or unhealthy to withstand standard chemotherapy. However, some may gain hope from a new drug that unleashes the immune system to attack tumor cells, researchers reported Sunday.

Patients who responded to the drug Tecentriq (atezolizumab) had an average survival of nearly 15 months, about 5 to 6 months longer than people usually gain from platinum-based chemotherapy, said lead researcher Dr. Arjun Balar.

The treatment didn’t help everyone, however: Only about a quarter of patients responded to the drug.

Still, any advance for this patient population is sorely needed, experts say. That’s because about half of advanced bladder cancer patients cannot receive chemotherapy because they’re too old to withstand chemo’s toxic effects, explained Balar, who is assistant professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

He noted that the average patient age for this disease is 70.

Other patients can’t receive chemotherapy because they’re suffering from kidney failure or other health problems, said Dr. Elizabeth Plimack, who reviewed the study findings. She directs genitourinary clinical research at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

This means that chemo is currently the only approved first-line treatment for bladder cancer.

“After that, there are no other standard therapies,” Balar said. “These patients are really out of other options.”

But, the new results suggest Tecentriq may serve as a significant advance for at least some of those patients, he said.

The drug’s maker, Genentech, helped fund the study, which was presented Sunday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago.

As the researchers explained, cancers evade the immune system by switching off the ability of immune system cells to recognize tumor cells as a harmful intruder. Immunotherapy drugs like Tecentriq essentially remove cancer’s “cloaking device” — allowing the immune system to identify, target and destroy malignant cells.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Tecentriq last month for use in treating bladder cancer for patients who’ve already gone through chemotherapy. It’s the first new medication approved in more than three decades for bladder cancer, Balar said.

His team wanted to see whether the drug might also help patients who’ve never had chemotherapy due to frail health.

Almost 77,000 Americans will be diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2016, the researchers said in background notes. Fewer than 15 percent survive past five years if the disease — which is closely tied to smoking — is in its advanced stages when diagnosed.

The new clinical trial involved 119 bladder cancer patients averaging 73 years of age. None had been deemed eligible for chemotherapy.

About 24 percent of patients — 28 out of 119 — responded to Tecentriq, which shrank their tumors by at least 30 percent and in some cases caused their cancer to disappear. Their average overall survival was just under 15 months.

Tecentriq had a lower response rate than platinum-based chemotherapy, which typically helps about 40 percent of patients, Balar said. However, people who respond to chemo have an average overall survival of about 9 to 10 months, lower than that achieved with Tecentriq.

Most patients taking Tecentriq also appeared to remain in remission. Of the 28 for whom the drug worked, 21 are still in remission, the researchers reported. The longest duration of response so far is more than 18 months.

Seven of the patients who initially saw their cancer respond to the drug experienced tumor recurrence, the study found.

Also, about 10 to 15 percent of patients experienced severe side effects from Tecentriq, which could include hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), liver function problems, rash or diarrhea. Despite this, only 6 percent of patients dropped out of the trial due to side effects, the researchers reported.

For her part, Plimack believes further clinical trials are needed to better understand Tecentriq, given that the response rate was lower than chemotherapy but overall survival appeared to be increased.

“The overall survival numbers do exceed what we’ve seen in the past, but overall survival can be affected by many factors other than the study agents,” Plimack said.

A larger follow-up trial already is planned, as Genentech hopes to develop the drug as a first-line new standard of care for people unable to receive chemotherapy, Balar said.

Experts note that research presented at medical meetings is typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

For more on bladder cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

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