American Fitness Professionals & Associates

 Whether or not you reach your goals in life depends entirely on how well you prepare for them and how badly you want them. Ronald McNair 1950-1986 Astronaut

The great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.
Mencius

Table of Contents:Prominent Scientists Form Group to Counter GM Food
New Studies Show High-Protein Diets Fail to Live Up to Their Hype
Overweight and Cancer
Why Are so Many Toddlers Obese?
Belated Mother’s Day Story
U.S. Cholesterol Levels Remain Unchanged
Folic Acid Also Helpful for Down’s Syndrome Prevention

Dozens of well-known scientists have formed a group to counteract GM food, which is reportedly being promoted by the government and the scientific community in the UK as being scientifically sound.  The group, named the Independent Science Panel (ISP) on GM, has released a report, The Case for A GM Free Sustainable World, which puts together a wealth of evidence to support their recommendation of a ban on GM crops and a widespread adoption of organic sustainable agriculture.

The report comes after many of the scientists have felt frustrated by the lack of open public debate on a variety of scientific and other issues. According to the group, meetings organized by the government to discuss the topic are stacked with GM-supporting scientists who promote the potential benefits of GM and say there has been no evidence of harm.

The scientists hope to spur the GM debate with their report, which has already attracted considerable attention internationally.
To view the entire report please visit: http://www.i-sis.org.uk

Washington, D.C.-Two new studies in the May 22 New England Journal of Medicine on the controversial high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets show that the diets fail to live up to their hype, says the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Both studies, which compared a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet to a more conventional low-fat diet, demonstrated minimal weight loss and a high drop-out rate. Despite these findings and cautions by the researchers that more studies are needed to assess possible long-term health risks, PCRM nutrition experts are concerned that these messages will be lost in the low-carb publicity machine. To counteract the Atkins hype and inform the public about the diets’ risks, PCRM is launching a summer ad campaign; a print ad is scheduled to run in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” issue and a TV ad will run on CNN’s AccentHealth network. The ads are viewable at www.safediets.org/ads.html.

“The new studies support what many of us have been saying all along,” says Amy Joy Lanou, Ph.D., PCRM’s nutrition director. “High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets are extremely hard to stick with and don’t work any better over the long run than a conventional ‘reduce-the-fat’ diet-which doesn’t work very well itself.” A review of 107 studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 2003 showed that reduced carbohydrate intake did not impact weight loss-only longer diet duration and fewer calories did.

“If researchers really want to test the effectiveness of the Atkins Diet, they should compare it with the kind of largely vegetarian, lifestyle-changing approach Dr. Dean Ornish recommends: no animal fat, plenty of complex carbohydrates such as beans and legumes, and lots of fruits and vegetables. That’s a diet that not only helps people lose weight, but it can help prevent and reverse heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses,” says Lanou.

“It’s scandalous how much money is being spent to promote these risky, high-protein, meaty diets,” continues Lanou. “For example, a Harvard study published earlier this year in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that high-protein diets may cause permanent loss of kidney function in anyone with reduced kidney function. The most frightening thing about that study? As many as one in four Americans may already have renal problems. Other studies have shown that meat-heavy diets significantly increase one’s risk of colon cancer and osteoporosis.” PCRM’s summer ad campaign, “Safe Diets,” focuses on the long-term health risks of the Atkins-like diets. PCRM also maintains a registry at www.AtkinsDietAlert.org for dieters who believe they may have sustained health problems due to a high-protein, low-carb diet.

Today’s New England Journal of Medicine provides strong evidence confirming the link between overweight and the risk of cancer-related death. In a study of more than 900,000 adults who were free of cancer in 1982 and were followed for 16 years, excess weight was related to a 52 percent increase in risk for men and a 62 percent increase in risk for women. Particularly noteworthy were increased risks for death from cancers of the colon, breast, and prostate, among other sites. The investigators estimated that “current patterns of overweight and obesity in the United States could account for 14 percent of all deaths from cancer in men and 20 percent of those in women.”

The study is not yet on Medline. Here is the reference:

Calle EE, Rodriguez C, Walker-Thurmond K, Thun MJ. Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality from Cancer in a Prospectively Studied Cohort of U.S. Adults. New Engl J Med 2003;348:1625-38.

For more information on nutrition and health, please visit www.PCRM.org and www.CancerProject.org

More than 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. Many U.S. toddlers are also obese and are even showing signs of diabetes and other diseases associated with obesity, according to researchers. Moreover, when obese children were sent to specialists they still did not achieve healthier weights.

Researchers examined the medical records of 385 children, most of whom were already obese, defined as being in the 85th percentile for weight. The children were seen by endocrinologists, or hormone specialists, between 1984 and 2002.

Although the parents were educated on proper diet and exercise for their children as well as advised to meet with a dietician, after two years the children weighed, on average, even more than before. According to researchers, it is clear that referral to pediatric endocrinologists and dieticians is not effective in treating childhood obesity. Instead, they suggest a weight-loss program that includes the children, parents and the school system.

The children in the study, some as young as 4 years old, also had high insulin levels, which can lead to type 2 diabetes, and 13 percent of 147 children tested had abnormal liver function tests, according to researchers. Such tests indicate a common condition with obesity known as fatty liver, which can lead to cirrhosis.

People who are obese or overweight have an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in Seattle May 4, 2003

http://www.mercola.com/2003/may/14/mothers_day.htm

Despite widespread public awareness campaigns aimed at reducing cholesterol, total U.S. cholesterol levels have shown little change in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

According to a survey conducted from 1999 to 2000, the average cholesterol level among U.S. adults was 203 milligrams per deciliter of blood (mg/dL), only two-mg/dL lower than the previous survey. The survey involved 4,000 people whose cholesterol levels were compared with data from a similar 1988-1994 survey that involved 15,000 people.

Researchers found that the age-adjusted average total cholesterol concentration decreased from 205 mg/dL in the 1988-1994 survey to 203 mg/dL in the 1999-2000 survey. However, between the 1998-1994 survey and the previous 1976-1980 surveys, cholesterol levels dropped by eight mg/dL.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), total cholesterol levels should be below 200 mg/dL, with levels from 200 mg/dL to 239 mg/dL considered borderline high. A total cholesterol of 240 mg/dL and above is considered high.

Also, only about 70 percent of those with total cholesterol of at least 200 mg/dL have had their cholesterol tested, and only 35 percent of this group knew that their cholesterol level was higher than recommended. Among this group, 12 percent were undergoing treatment to lower their cholesterol, according to researchers. High cholesterol puts people at an increased risk of heart disease, the number-one cause of death in the United States. Other risk factors of heart disease include smoking, excess weight, inactivity and type 2 diabetes.

Researchers were uncertain why there is a slowing trend among declining cholesterol levels, but named less physical activity, poor dietary habits and increasing rates of obesity as potential reasons. The slowing trend suggests that more efforts are necessary to reduce total cholesterol among the U.S. population, researchers said. Circulation May 2003;107

Women who are pregnant may be able to reduce their newborn’s risk of Down’s syndrome by taking folic acid before pregnancy, according to researchers.  Folic acid, found in supplements and foods such as broccoli, protects against neural-tube defects, and researchers have found that families with a high-risk of such defects may also be at an increased risk of Down’s syndrome, or vice versa.

There may be a link between the two conditions, so researchers suggest a dose of five micrograms of folic acid could reduce the risk of Down’s syndrome as well the risk of neural-tube defects (NTD) in newborns.  

NTDs, which are the abnormal development of the neural tube, which becomes the brain or spinal cord, in early pregnancy, can cause serious mental and physical impairment. Spina bifida and anencephaly, the partial or complete absence of the brain, are the most severe NTDs. Mothers of babies with NTDs have been found to have problems metabolizing folic acid, which may also be a risk factor for trisomy 21, the chromosomal abnormality that causes Down’s syndrome.

In a study of 493 families who had had a previous pregnancy which was affected by NTD and 516 families who had had a pregnancy affected by Down’s syndrome, there were five times the number of Down’s syndrome affected pregnancies among the NTD group as expected from women of the same age.

Further, there was an increase in NTD cases in the families at a higher risk of Down’s syndrome. Researchers recommend that women take extra folic acid before conception and in the first two months of pregnancy, saying that folate supplementation during this time has the potential to reduce the risk of Down’s syndrome. Lancet April 19, 2003;361:1331-35