Tag Archives: group

Drinking alcohol to shrink?

Alcohol and your weight have a tricky relationship. So tricky, in fact, that experts have had a tough time nailing down exactly why some women wind up with a beer gut (or butt) while others drink daily and never seem to gain a pound. Here's what we know: Your average drink—beer, wine, martini, pick your poison—is usually a combination of carbs, sugar and ethanol (pure alcohol). When it goes down the hatch, it makes a pit stop at your stomach, where some of the alcohol is absorbed through the lining and into your bloodstream, giving you that initial buzz. The carbs and sugar go the traditional digestive route, while ethanol, a toxin, is diverted to the liver. This is when that innocent little drink starts messing with your internal fat incinerator. Ethanol has no nutritional value, so your body burns it off first. That means any remaining calories in your stomach—whether they're from the margarita or the chips and guacamole you had with it—will likely be stored as fat.  And the more fattening the foods you eat, the easier the calories are to store. (Bear in mind that research published in Physiology & Behavior found that alcohol makes us focus on immediate pleasure and ignore the consequences, which often results in eating junk food.) Unlike protein and carbs, which require some energy for the body to break down and store, fat can directly deposit itself, so those chips are first in line to be plastered to your thighs. MORE: The 3 Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes Still, the situation might not be as bleak as it appears, because the real problem may not be drinking itself, but how often and how hard we hit the bottle. Drink and Shrink? A 2010 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine may be the best news for booze since the 21st Amendment. Researchers found that women who had one or two alcoholic drinks a day were actually less likely to gain weight than those who shunned the sauce. And they did it while consuming more calories overall (from food and drink) than both heavy drinkers and teetotalers. Short of striking a deal with the devil, how did they manage to pull that off? Researchers believe that the bodies of long-term moderate drinkers somehow adapt to metabolize alcohol differently than heavy or occasional drinkers. They use more energy, burning the calories in the drink—or even more than that—while digesting it, Dr. Lu Wang, the lead researcher of the study and an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said.  Researchers are still working out the specifics of how and why this happens, but they've figured out that for women who drink up to eight ounces of an alcoholic beverage a day, those calories simply don't end up as extra fat. MORE: 15 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism Of course, there's a catch. Women who bank their daily drinks for weekends or girls' nights out don't qualify for the free-calorie plan (and among the 18-to-25 crowd, this “binge” behavior is on the rise, according to a 2009 Addiction study).  “Your body adjusts metabolically to the amount you drink, and when you don't drink regularly, your body can't adjust,” Wang said.  Instead of learning to disregard those nutritionally empty calories, your body automatically stores them—as fat. It's akin to tossing old clothes you don't wear into the back of your closet, only your body doesn't have the good sense to hide the junk. It tends to store the fat front and center, in your belly. MORE: 4 Amazing Abs Exercises Booze Clues Evidence suggests that moderate drinkers also tend to practice healthier habits than teetotalers. If you're used to having three or four drinks every week as part of your diet, you're probably compensating for them with fewer calories elsewhere.  “These women know how to moderate how much they drink, so it makes sense that they'd moderate what they eat as well,” Robert Klesges, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, said. The Archives study found that these women also exercise more, which knocks off additional calories. Another thing that helped: The women in the Archives study were served no more than two four-ounce glasses of wine or two 1.5-ounce shots of liquor a day. In real life, you're likely to be handed far more than that by a bartender or waitress—20 to 45 percent more, according to a 2009 study in the journal Alcohol. And we're not much better when left to our own devices.  “Eyeballing the right amount is very difficult,” William C. Kerr, a senior scientist at the Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, Calif., said. “Most of us don't even know how much we should be shooting for, so overpouring is typical.” MORE: 20 Habits That Make You Fat It's especially easy to overdo it with vino, given that the average wineglass these days looks big enough to hold a school of fish. So a bottle of light beer may be your best bet.  “Unlike wine and mixed drinks, it's portion controlled—the bottle is right there with the calories printed on it,” says Lisa Young, R.D., author of “The Portion Teller Plan.” “It eliminates the guesswork.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/14/drinking-alcohol-to-shrink/

Normal molecular pathway affected in poor-prognosis childhood leukemia identified

Leukemia often occurs due to chromosomal translocations, which are broken chromosomes that cause blood cells to grow uncontrollably. One gene that is involved in chromosomal translocations found at high frequency in childhood leukemia is the MLL1 (Mixed Lineage Leukemia 1) gene. Conventional chemotherapy is very ineffective at curing patients with this translocation, in contrast to other types of childhood leukemia, which are relatively curable. …

Group therapy helps rape victims in poor countries

Group therapy works better than individual support for women in low-income countries who have been victims of sexual violence, according to the results of a new study done in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The method has already been shown to be effective in wealthier countries. Because measures of depression, anxiety, general functioning and post-traumatic stress disorder improved faster with group therapy, the technique may be useful in other countries were war and unrest often contribute to sexual violence, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. “We're giving them the skills to rethink the meaning they're giving to their thoughts and feelings” about their attack, lead author Judith Bass of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore told Reuters Health. The study “offers promising evidence” that a form of group therapy can help women who have been exposed to sexual violence, Charlotte Watts and her colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine wrote in a linked editorial. In the DRC, 40 percent of women have been victims of some type of sexual violence. The researchers evaluated 157 women in seven villages who were offered one individual session and 11 group sessions of so-called cognitive processing therapy. “The women were being taught to identify what thoughts are not helpful to them,” Bass explained. “Thinking 'It's my fault' is not helpful to them. And it involves how to deal with that and get over some of these thoughts that are keeping them from healing.” Those women were compared with 248 women in eight villages who received individual support that included counseling and sympathetic listening. Women in both treatment groups improved even though each village had at least one major security incident during the trial, including attacks and armed robberies. But the improvement was most pronounced with group cognitive therapy. On a combined scale of depression and anxiety, where the worst score was 3 and the best was 0, women in the cognitive therapy group went from 2.0 at the outset to 0.8 at the end of treatment. Six months after treatment their average score was 0.7. The respective scores for women receiving individual support started at 2.2, dropped to 1.7 and eventually fell to 1.5. After six months, 9 percent of group therapy participants and 42 percent of women who received individual support still likely had a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, Bass and her colleagues found. The study did not include the most severe cases - seven of the 494 women screened for the study were found to be severely suicidal and were treated immediately. “Despite illiteracy and ongoing conflict, this evidence-based treatment can be appropriately implemented and effective,” the researchers concluded. “Given the high rates of sexual violence globally, and especially in conflict-affected countries such as the DRC, this finding is very important,” the Watts team wrote in its editorial. “Rape during war is not unique to the DRC; indeed, it affects many, if not most, countries that are at war, including several African states and, more recently, countries in the Middle East.” The study was funded by the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development Victims of Torture Fund. “We do this because we see mental health as such a large cause of disability and dysfunction,” Bass said. “We want to improve people's health. But when you have such high rates of rape and violence, and such a high rate of mental health problems, it's an often-neglected piece in the bigger development picture.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/06/group-therapy-helps-rape-victims-in-poor-countries/

Komen breast cancer charity cancels walks in 7 US cities

Breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which suffered a publicity backlash last year after it sought to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, said on Tuesday it was canceling fundraising walks next year in seven cities where money goals have not been met. The organization, which says it is the largest non-government funder of breast cancer research, said it was cutting three-day walks for 2014 in Phoenix, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, San Francisco and Washington. The event will continue in seven other places. “The difficult decision to exit these markets was not made lightly, as we know this bold and empowering event has touched the lives of thousands of participants like you,” the Dallas-based group said in a message on its Facebook page. A Komen spokeswoman said in an email that participation in the three-day walks declined by 37 percent in the past four years, without specifying whether that was the number of participants or dollars raised. The group decided to remove the cities from next year's schedule that have not been meeting fundraising goals, the spokeswoman said. It was unclear what the group's fundraising targets were for the walks. Each participant is required to raise a minimum of $2,300 and walks about 60 miles over the three days. The charity sparked an outcry last year when it said it would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, a provider of birth control, abortion and other women's health services. Komen, which supports Planned Parenthood's efforts to provide access to breast-cancer screening, reversed that decision within days and said it would restore the funding. After the controversy, several of the group's leaders stepped down, and the group's founder, Nancy Brinker, stepped down as CEO, though she continued to hold a management role. Brinker founded the organization in 1982, two years after her sister, Susan G. Komen, died of breast cancer. Komen's signature event is the Race for the Cure, which includes 5 kilometers and marathon races as well as the walks. The group says the events involve more than 1.7 million participants each year. Komen will continue to hold walks in Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Michigan, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle and Minneapolis-St. Paul.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/05/komen-breast-cancer-charity-cancels-walks-in-7-us-cities/