Here is your del.icio.us Friday, the weekly health news update. You can also stay updated with this news as it happens by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

With World Diabetes Day falling on November 14th, I have seen many news sources this week focus on this serious and often preventable disease. Diabetes is of particular concern in a country like India which is unfortunately genetically inclined to get it and so more care needs to be taken to not just increase physical activity but also ensure a wholesome diet.

The highlighted story of this diabetes-focussed week is the WebMD article (#8 below) that describes how dangerous high blood-sugar is to people even before it can convert to diabetes.

Now onto the week’s top stories:

1. Europeans OK Anti-Obesity Charter: European health ministers from 53 countries approved the world’s first charter to fight obesity on Thursday, vowing greater action against the epidemic of expanding waistlines across the continent.
2. Don’t Pop the Cork Just Yet: If the recent news that a substance in red wine may help fight obesity and lengthen life has you popping more corks, better take a closer look at the facts in today’s Lean Plate Club column.
3. Trans Fats Up Heart Disease Risk: Trans fats have jumped out of the deep fryer into a public grilling once again, with new research suggesting even small amounts can harm the heart.
4. Vegetarian Diet Chews Up Excess Flab: Researchers have found that people who stuck to a vegetarian diet for at least one year lost more weight than those on a standard low-fat diet. And they shed considerably more excess flab than those who didn’t stick with the meatless plan.
5. Fat in Fish May Help Prevent Dementia: Eating fish three times a week may cut your odds of getting dementia almost in half.
6. Mom’s Diet May Affect Generations: A mother’s diet during pregnancy may affect the genes of her future generations, according to lab tests on mice.
7. Counseling Can Help Prevent Diabetes: People at high risk for type 2 diabetes may reap long-lasting benefits from lifestyle counseling – benefits that continue years after the counseling ends.
8. High Blood Sugar a Global Killer: High blood sugar is among the world’s top five killers, a Harvard study shows. High blood sugar is one sign that a person is on the road to diabetes. But it kills many people long before they ever get diabetes, note Goodarz Danaei, MD, of Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues.
9. Too embarrassed to exercise - Smart Fitness: “My big old tree-trunk legs are [an] embarrassment,” says Holman, 28, of Lockport, Ill.
10. Any exercise can improve diabetes control: Combining resistance training, such as weight lifting, with aerobic workouts appears to be the most beneficial for type for long-term control of blood sugar control than either form of exercise alone, New Zealand researchers report. However, the outcomes according to type of exercise weren’t very significant.
11. Chocoholics rejoice! More benefits found in heart study: It turns out chocolate, like aspirin, affects the platelets that cause blood to clot, Diane Becker of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine and her colleagues discovered.
12. Junk food makers pledge to go easy on kids; plan criticized: U.S. food manufacturers and advertisers outlined new guidelines Tuesday designed to rein in the promotion of junk food to children, but the effort was immediately derided by some critics as inadequate.
13. TV’s Naked Chef urges action on fat U.S. kids: British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver wants the United States to take up his campaign against fatty snacks and school lunches to combat the country’s burgeoning child obesity problem.
14. Energy zapped? Try these tips to help you pick up the pace: Want to fight the funk and fatigue? We’ve gathered some twists on those tried-and-true ways to put pep back in your step (like exercising, eating right, and stressing less) along with some tips that might surprise you (like taking a shower or bath before bedtime for a deeper, healthier sleep).
15. Prescription: Dance for heart’s sake: Italian researchers have come up with a novel way for cardiac rehabilitation patients to exercise their damaged hearts without having to squeeze into spandex or gyrate in a gym: waltzing.
16. Average European ‘is overweight’: The Maltese and the Greeks are the heavyweights of Europe, figures from the European Commission reveal.
17. Red meat link to breast cancers: Eating large amounts of red meat may double young women’s breast cancer risk, a study suggests.
18. Diabetes ‘threat’ to indigenous: Diabetes could threaten the existence of indigenous peoples around the world, experts have warned.

Enjoy your weekend!

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, health news, fitness news, del.icio.us

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November 14th! When I was a young school goer in India this was a day we kids looked forward to all year long, because in India November 14th is celebrated every year as Childrens’ Day to mark the occasion of the birthday of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and one who genuinely loved children very much.

It used to be a day of much enjoyment for all of us children in school - no school uniforms, reduced tuition classes and an evening of entertainment programs (performed by the teachers!) with a grand dinner to end it all! No wonder we eagerly awaited Childrens’ Day.

Currently in India on a holiday trip, I eagerly opened the Times of India today to see what fun activities were planned around the country to celebrate this fun day for kids. But imagine my shock when I was confronted with headlines like “2 in every 1000 children in India have Diabetes” and “1 in every 4 diabetics worldwide is an Indian”.

Yes - today is not only Childrens’ day in India but it is also “World Diabetes Day“. Diabetes mellitus the debilitating disease that prevents people from properly processing blood sugar is today a focus of health organizations worldwide. In India, particularly, the high consumption of refined carbohydrates and sweets gives it the highly unenviable position of number one in worldwide diabetic cases.

This brought back to mind the stunning New York Times article I bookmarked just a couple of months ago: “Modern Ways Open India’s Doors to Diabetes” is today’s must-read article for Indians everyone, everywhere.

“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai (formerly Madras).

For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve. But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.

…

… there is another way to see India: through its newfound excesses and expanding middle and upper classes. In a changing India, it seems to go this way: make good money and get cars, get houses, get servants, get meals out, get diabetes.

In perverse fashion, obesity and diabetes stand almost as joint totems of success.

The only good thing about Type 2 Diabetes (adult onset type)? It can almost always be prevented with a mixture of a healthful diet and regular exercise. Not the diets you go on at the end of the year to get rid of the holiday season “excess baggage”. Not the exercise you do in January alone each year as part of your “new year resolutions”.

No, I mean the healthful diet and regular exercise that should be a way of your life.

Let us resolve today to change ourselves for the better (if we haven’t already), and, more importantly, to educate our love ones about the dangers an unhealthy lifestyle can bring with it.

Let us resolve to conquer diabetes.

Only then, maybe years from now, the only thing November 14th will bring to mind is Childrens’ Day.

Technorati Tags: World Diabetes Day, Childrens Day, diabetes

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