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Jan. 3, 2003 -- Houston is the couch potato capital of the U.S. and Honolulu is the fittest city, say the editors of Men's Fitness magazine.

The "America's Fattest City" award goes to Houston for the third year, uh, running. The ratings are based on a major city's score in several categories such as fruit/vegetable consumption, sports participation, smoking, drinking, air quality, and percentage of overweight/sedentary residents.

"Given the region's climate (hot and humid), air quality (abysmal), and relative lack of outdoor recreation, staying active presents a Texas-sized challenge," the magazine states. "And with its love of junk food, Houston is a vastrodome of bad nutrition."

If you don't live in Houston, don't let out your belt just yet. The annual ratings are meant as a wake-up call to stop what the CDC calls a national epidemic of obesity. Two in every three Americans have a serious weight problem.

Here's the magazine's list of America's 10 fattest cities:

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Philadelphia
5. St. Louis
6. Cleveland
7. Atlanta
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Dallas
10. Charlotte, N.C.

And its list of the 10 fittest cities:

1. Honolulu
2. Seattle
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado Springs, Col.
5. San Diego
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Denver
8. Virginia Beach, Va.
9. Tucson, Ariz.
10. Sacramento, Calif.

May 28, 2002 -- Here's more good news about fruits and veggies. "Five a day" can lower your blood pressure, greatly reducing risk of heart disease.

In a six-month study involving nearly 700 people, half were asked to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; half served as controls and didn't change their diet.

The results: Those who ate the good stuff had higher levels of numerous healthy antioxidants than those who didn't.

Also: "significant decreases" in blood pressure were seen in the fruit-and-veggie group, reports Andrew Neil, PhD, a public health researcher at the University of Oxford, England. His study appears in this week's issue of The Lancet.

"The falls in blood pressure in our study ... would substantially reduce cardiovascular disease," he writes. His results match those of a larger study, which showed lower rates of high blood pressure in people who followed a similar five-a-day plan.

Most of the people participating in his study were women about 46 years old, and in the upper socioeconomic classes; 16% of the study participants were smokers, he reports. Neither group was advised to reduce fat intake; and the researchers saw no change in total cholesterol levels and only a small increase in body weight, he says.

"Therefore, the fall in blood pressure achieved in our study is unlikely to be attributable to reduced fat intake or changes in physical activity," writes Neil. "The reduction in blood pressure probably resulted from increased potassium intake, and possibly from some reduction in sodium, although participants were not advised specifically to reduce salt intake."

Here are some tips adapted from the 5 A Day For Better Health program -- a national nutrition effort to encourage Americans to eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day for better health:

• Wake up to fruit. Drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or incorporate a helping of fruit into your breakfast every day.
• Think "fruit" or "vegetable" when snacking. Munch on a handful of carrots or a piece of fruit when you get the urge to snack.
• Keep the pantry packed with easy-to-prepare dried, canned, or frozen fruits and vegetables.
• Make them visible. You're more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they are easily accessible. Wash some carrots or celery sticks and keep them close at hand in the refrigerator. Put clean fruit out for the family to snack on.
• Use the microwave to your advantage. It's a great (and convenient) way to quickly prepare vegetables for meals.

Visit the 5 A Day site at http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/5aday/ for a wide variety of simple, easy-to-make recipes.

If you've got diabetesdiabetes, the right meal plan can help you keep blood sugar under control. Fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products -- even sweets now and then -- all have a place in your plan.

"A meal plan provides a specific approach to controlling blood sugar," says Dianne Davis, RD, LDN, CDE, a dietitian with the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Center in Nashville, Tenn. "If you have diabetes, a meal plan is necessary."

That's because a meal plan helps ensure you eat a balanced diet high in fiber and low in fats. It can also "help you lose weight, by controlling portion sizes and calories," Davis says.

Which Diabetes Meal Plan Is Right for You?

Your lifestyle and the type of diabetes treatment you're getting -- whether you're taking premeal insulin or not -- will determine the type of meal plan best for you, says Davis.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are all factored into a plan. But carbs are an especially important component since they have the biggest impact on blood sugar.

"Your meal plan can also include your favorite foods," Davis adds. "No food is off-limits -- it's a matter of how much you eat, when you eat it, and what it will do to your blood sugar."

With that in mind -- and understanding you should talk with your doctor before making big changes in your diabetes diet -- here are four meal-planning systems.

The Diabetes Food Pyramid

The diabetes food pyramid is similar to the USDA food pyramid you see on food labels. It is a pyramid in which a healthy diet means eating more grains, fruits, and vegetables, and less meat, sweets, and fats.

The diabetes food pyramid's general recommendations are:

• Grains, beans, and starchy vegetables: 6 or more servings/day. One serving: 1 slice bread; 1/2 small bagel; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, pasta, rice; 3/4 cup ready-to-eat cereal; 1/2 cup cooked beans, corn, peas.
• Fruits: 2-4 servings daily. One serving: 1 medium-size fresh fruit; 1/2 cup canned fruit; 1/2 cup fruit juice.
• Vegetables: 3-5 servings a day. One serving: 1 cup raw vegetable; 1/2 cup vegetable juice.
• Meat, Fish, Cheese: 2-3 servings/day. One serving: 2-3 ounces cooked lean meat, skinless poultry, or fish; I egg; 2 tablespoons peanut butter; 2-3 ounces cheese.
• Milk and Yogurt: 2-3 servings daily. One serving: 1 cup (8 ounces) milk or yogurt.
• Fats, Sweets, and Alcohol: eat these in small amounts. One serving: 1 teaspoon butter, margarine, or mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon cream cheese or salad dressing; 1/2 cup ice cream.

Combined foods, like eggplant lasagna, for example, will include servings from several food groups (1 vegetable, 1 meat, 1 fat).

This meal system has limitations, says Davis. "When you follow the diabetes food pyramid, you are not controlling specific grams of carbs and might not be able to achieve very tight blood sugar control," she tells WebMD. "However, the pyramid helps you see which foods are carbohydrates -- to get you acquainted with them."

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

Indeed, the year 2000 was a very good year for wine makers -- and not just because it brought a bumper crop of cabernets, zinfandels, and chardonnays. Evidence of the far-reaching health benefits of wine continued to pour in from researchers around the world.

Here's a review of the good news for wine makers -- and wine lovers:

A Healthier Heart

Several reports in 2000 confirmed the glad tidings that wine -- in moderation, of course -- reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. In the September issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute reported that, compared to teetotalers, light drinkers who consumed wine cut their risk of dying prematurely by almost one third, and wine drinkers as a group had significantly lower mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Actually, drinking any kind of alcoholic beverage helped, the scientists found. But by far the biggest benefit accrued to wine drinkers.

What's more, scientists are beginning to understand how wine may bestow its salutary benefits. For starters, according to findings published in the January 2000 issue of European Heart Journal, this most ancient of beverages appears to dilate arteries and increase blood flow, thus lowering the risk of the kind of clots that cut off blood supply and damage heart muscles.

In addition, the fruit of the vine appears to boost levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol, and helps prevent LDL, or bad cholesterol, from causing damage to the lining of arteries. In a study published in the May 2000 issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, scientists at the Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine in Amsterdam tested 275 men and women around the age of 32. Those who imbibed the equivalent of a glass or two of wine each day had significantly higher levels of "good" cholesterol because they remove the "bad" artery-clogging LDLs before they have a chance to choke blood vessels. Indeed, wine seems to facilitate that process, making it easier for HDLs to hustle their dangerous counterparts out of the bloodstream.

Yet even when LDLs remain behind in the arteries, substances in wine called phenols appear to help prevent the bad cholesterol from causing injury. In the November 2000 Journal of Nutrition and Biochemistry, Italian researchers from the National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research reported that phenols seem to limit the oxidation of LDLs, making them less capable of damaging the linings of arteries and, therefore, less able to set the stage for cardiovascular disease, like heart disease and stroke.

A Shield Against Cancer

Wine also may protect against several forms of another common killer: cancer. It turns out that the same phenolic compounds that lower heart disease risk also may slow the growth of breast cancer cells, according to findings reported by scientists at the University of Crete in Greece in the June 2000 issue of Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. Phenols also were shown to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells. And French scientists found evidence that an antioxidant in wine called resveratrol can put the brakes on the growth of liver cancer cells, according to a report in the July-August 2000 issue of Oncology Reports.

There also was a report that wine -- particularly red wine -- might help ward off oral cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Dentistry discovered that resveratrol and another antioxidant called quercetin may inhibit the growth of oral cancer cells. Their findings, published in the June 2000 Journal of the American Dental Association, note that red wine is loaded with a slew of other antioxidants that seem to boost its cancer-fighting abilities.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."

Feb. 6, 2004 -- It may be hard for pessimists to admit, but a new study shows pessimism has its benefits.

Researchers found that a healthy dose of pessimism may come in handy in many real-life situations where optimists may be overly hopeful.

For example, the study showed that pessimists tend to fare better as gamblers and know when to cut their losses rather than let it roll. Researchers say that kind of attitude may also pay off in other situations, such as playing the stock market.

Pessimism's Plus-Side

In the study, published in this month's issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers looked at the effects of a person's disposition on their gambling behavior.

Three groups of college students were given a list of questions to determine whether they were pessimistic or optimistic as well as assess their attitudes about gambling. In a series of different tests, researchers then had the students play several hands of blackjack and play a simulated slot machine game.

Throughout the tests, researchers found that optimists were more likely to believe that they expected to win at gambling. This relationship was even stronger in individuals who experienced gambling losses. This finding was consistent with the researchers theory that the optimist would reframe a negative event (gambling losses) into a positive -- the belief that they could win.

When asked about their experiences later, optimists were also more likely to remember more wins than the pessimists.

Researchers found the greatest differences between the groups emerged after losing.

"Our data show no difference in betting between optimists and pessimists after winning. But optimists are more likely to persist in the face of losses," says researcher Bryan Gibson, a social psychologist at Central Michigan University, in a news release. "They're less ready to give up hope."

The study showed that pessimists were more likely to reduce their bets if their past performance had been poor, but the optimists seemed relatively unfazed by their losses.

Researchers say this study only looked at the effects of optimism and pessimism on gambling, but their findings may apply to other situations. For example, pessimists may have the advantage in situations where resources and opportunities are limited, such as a down stock market, while optimists may fare better in situations where persistence is rewarded in the face of adversity.

March 19, 2003 -- The scent of a good man may be music to a woman's nose. Researchers say the odorless pheromones found in male perspiration can have a dramatic effect on both a woman's mind and body. A new study found exposure to male pheromones can boost a woman's mood and stimulate the release of a hormone that regulates the menstrual cycle.

In the study, researchers applied extracts of underarm secretions from male volunteers to the upper lips of 18 women between the ages of 25 and 45. None of the women knew that male sweat had been applied to their lips, and some thought they were involved in a study of alcohol or perfume or even lemon floor wax. The women then rated their moods over six hours of exposure; they consistently reported feeling less tension and more relaxed.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," says researcher Charles J. Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

Each of the women received three applications of the underarm extract during the six-hour evaluation period, followed by three doses of exposure to ethanol (alcohol) over another six-hour period.

Researchers also found that exposure to the male pheromones also prompted a shift in blood levels of a reproductive hormone called luteinizing hormone. Levels of this hormone typically surge before ovulation, but women also experience small surges during other times in the menstrual cycle.

The study found that the male pheromone extract hastened the onset of these smaller surges and shortened the pauses between surges by 20%.

Researchers are now looking at individual compound that are found in male perspiration in hopes of identifying the elements responsible for these psychological and hormonal changes.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," says Wysocki. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

SOURCE: Biology of Reproduction, June 2003. News release, University of Pennsylvania.

July 26, 2006 -- Multitasking may make you more productive, but it also makes it harder for your brain to learn, according to a new study.

Researchers found people had a harder time learning new things when their brains were distracted by something else, like talking or listening to music.

"When distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don't learn as well as if you had paid full attention," says researcher Russell Poldrack, PhD, and UCLA associate professor of psychology, in a news release. "Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized so you cannot retrieve the information as easily."

Poldrack says distractions appear to affect the brain's learning processes, and tasks that require more attention -- like learning calculus or reading Shakespeare -- are particularly hampered.

Multitasking Disrupts Learning

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain function and activity while adults (average age, 26) learned a new task.

The 14 participants were asked to make predictions after seeing a series of clues about cards with various shapes. With one set of cards, they learned the classification task without any distractions. In the second set, they learned while listening and keeping track of a series of high and low beeps.

The results showed that multitasking didn't reduce the accuracy of the predictions immediately, but it did hurt participants' ability to remember knowledge about the task later.

Researchers found that when participants were asked questions about the cards at a follow-up session, they did much better on the task they learned without any distractions.

When asked about the task they learned with the distraction, they couldn't extrapolate, or their knowledge was less flexible about the task.

Distraction Affects Memory

The fMRIs showed that when the participants learned without distraction, an area of the brain known as the hippocampus was involved. This part of the brain is critical to the processing and storing of information.

But when they learned the task while multitasking, the hippocampus was not engaged. Instead, an area called the striatum was activated. The striatum is involved in learning new skills like riding a bicycle.

Researchers say the results show that learning while distracted or multitasking alters the brain's learning processes and changes the way people learn.

Multitasking when performing certain tasks -- like listening to music while exercising -- may be helpful. But Poldrack says tasks that distract you while you try to learn something new are likely to negatively affect your learning.

"The best thing you can do to improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember," says Poldrack.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

Oct. 18, 2004 -- Premature babies may be less likely to need blood transfusions if their umbilical cords are cut a bit later than normal.

Waiting 30 seconds to 2 minutes before cutting the umbilical cord could make the difference, say researchers including Heike Rabe, MD, PhD, of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals in Brighton, England.

The umbilical cord connects the baby to the mother's placenta, delivering oxygen-rich blood to the infant.

After the baby is born and before the placenta is delivered, the umbilical cord is clamped in two places and cut between the clamps.

There are no official standards about exactly when the umbilical cord should be clamped and cut.

Rabe and colleagues recently reviewed seven studies on the clamping and cutting of umbilical cords. The data are based on almost 300 babies, all of whom were born early (before the end of 37 weeks of pregnancy). Their study appears in the October issue of the journal The Cochrane Collaboration.

When to Separate Baby From Umbilical Cord

Delaying umbilical cord clamping by 30 to 120 seconds, rather than early clamping, seems to be associated with less need for transfusion and less bleeding in the infant's brain, according to the researchers.

Early clamping was defined as clamping in less than 30 seconds.

The extra time lets the baby get a little more blood from the placenta, which could reduce the need for a blood transfusion.

However, the strategy could have risks.

For instance, many premature babies need resuscitation, which is typically performed away from the mother. In those cases, the umbilical cord must be cut quickly to save the baby's life.

Waiting too long could also allow an excess of red blood cells to thicken a baby's blood, possibly stressing the newborn's heart and breathing or even prompting jaundice or brain damage, according to news reports.

The study did not address the practice of "milking" the umbilical cord before cutting it, a method used by some practitioners to coax placental blood in the umbilical cord into the baby.

The researchers also did not weigh in on whether it helps to hold the baby below the placenta, as some believe.

A longer-term study of umbilical cord clamping times in premature babies is under way.

May 4, 2004 -- Increasing numbers of teens and children have developed high blood pressure during the past decade, new research shows.

The trend is largely due to the obesity problem, writes lead researcher Paul Muntner, PhD, an epidemiologist with Tulane University in New Orleans.

His report appears in this week's issue of TheJournal of the American Medical Association.

It's serious business since high blood pressure and heart disease are typically diseases of middle age. Studies show that blood pressure problems in childhood lead to high blood pressure in young adulthood, he writes.

Muntner's nationwide study looked at children's and adolescents' blood pressure readings taken in 1999 to 2000, comparing them with data on readings performed between 1988 and 1994.

He found that between the two time periods, systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) increased an overall average of 1.4 points; diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) increased 3.3 points.

The two blood pressure numbers reflect pressure against artery walls when blood is pumped through the body.

Muntner also found the most significant blood pressure increases occurred in all ethnic groups - non-Hispanic blacks and Mexican-Americans from 8 to 12 years old - but not in white children:

• Non-Hispanic blacks had a 1.9-point increase in systolic blood pressure and a 4.1-point increase in diastolic readings.

• Mexican-Americans had a 2.3-point increase in systolic blood pressure and a 4.4-point increase in diastolic readings.

• Obesity caused 29% of the systolic and 12% of diastolic blood pressure increases.

"The strong association between [obesity] and systolic blood pressure among children and adolescents is worrisome," writes Muntner. His analysis "suggests that environmental factors other than increases in [obesity] are responsible for at least part of the increases in blood pressure among children and adults."

Diet and physical activity need attention in addressing this problem, he writes.

Muntner notes a problem with his study: His data are based on blood pressure readings taken at a single visit. More precise estimates would have been obtained during several visits. However, his study provides a credible snapshot of the high blood pressure problem in kids today, he writes.

School's out, the long days of summer are upon us, and your kids are restless. Short of shipping them off to summer camp, how can you keep them happy and busy, and without letting them catch on, make sure they're learning along the way?

Here are tips on what to keep in mind when you're planning summer activities, as well as some easy ideas for little tykes, preschoolers, and school kids that will keep them entertained all the way through August.

Let Summer Begin

When the thermometer starts to creep upward, the first thing you should consider when planning playtime is safety.

"I think with all age groups, parents should consider safety first," says Barbara Roth, specialty consultant for child care for the YMCA of the USA.

With safety in mind, ask yourself, what activities are appropriate for your child's age? What safety equipment should you have on hand, such as a lifejacket if you have a pool, or training wheels and a helmet if your child wants to learn to ride a bike? Will you be home with the child, or working? If you're working, is an adult present?

"Kids should never be home alone, so make sure they're under adult supervision if you will be working," says Roth.

Second, what are your goals for your kids during the summer?

"Beyond simply keeping them busy, you want to keep their development in mind and realize how much learning goes on in play," says Roth.

Learning doesn't stop the moment the school bell sounds for the last time in June. Kids keep on learning all summer long.

"Kids also need to work on social-emotional skills, which is ongoing for all age groups," says Roth. "Make sure the activities your kids are involved in include kids their own age as well as kids other ages."

And last, remember that there is only so much time in the day -- don't overbook yourself and your kids so that summer vacation doesn't include a moment's rest.

"Eliminate stress," says Michele Borba, EdD, author of 19 books on parenting and childhood. "A big, huge calendar on your fridge that can help you keep track of everyone's schedule is a gold mine and really helps avoid overbooking. And make sure there are fun active things going on and also some laid-back activities. It's OK to have nothing to do, to spend some time in the sandbox."

Dec. 19, 2005 -- Eating a small amount of dark chocolate improves smokers' artery function in hours, and a few squares a day may reduce the risk of hardening of the arteries.

That's the finding of a small study by Swiss researchers published in the journal Heart.

The researchers gave 20 male smokers approximately 1.4 ounces of either dark or white chocolate. In just two hours, dark chocolate significantly improved the function of endothelial cells, which line the artery walls, and reduced the activity of platelets, which help form blood clots. Smoking is known to disrupt the function of both types of cells, often leading to hardening of the arteries and heart disease.

The protective effects of dark chocolate lasted about eight hours. White chocolate had no effect on the arteries or platelets. The study did not examine the effects of chocolate in nonsmokers.

'A Small Daily Treat'

The researchers note that too much chocolate could increase the risk of heart disease by raising blood sugar levels, body fat, and body weight. But their findings suggest just a couple ounces of dark chocolate a day may reduce the risk of coronary artery disease.

How could such a small amount have such a powerful effect? The authors say it's probably because dark chocolate is so rich in antioxidants. "Dark chocolate has a much higher [antioxidant] content per gram than do other antioxidant-rich foods such as wine, tea, or berries," they write. "Therefore, only a small daily treat of dark chocolate may substantially increase the amount of antioxidant intake" and improve cardiovascular health.

March 15, 2005 -- Vitamin E harms more than it helps, a large study shows.

Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant, thought to clear the body of harmful oxygen compounds called free radicals. By soaking up free radicals, researchers hoped that vitamin E would prevent cancer and heart disease.

That doesn't happen, finds Eva Lonn, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues. Lonn led a seven-year-long, international study that enrolled thousands of people at high risk of heart disease. The findings added to suspicions raised by prior studies: Vitamin E isn't worth it.

"We saw definitely no benefit, and at least the potential for harm," Lonn tells WebMD. "Now the overwhelming evidence from many studies is that vitamin E provides no protection against heart disease, stroke, or cancer."

Lott and colleagues report their findings in the March 16 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Vitamin E Harm: Slight but Significant Risk

Lonn's study enrolled nearly 10,000 people with heart disease, peripheral artery disease (also commonly called poor circulation, a disease of blood flow through the arteries) or diabetes. This put them at very high risk of heart attack and stroke. All were over age 55. Half got high-dose vitamin E -- 400 IU every day (about 400 milligrams) -- and half got fake pills that looked the just the same.

After four years, those who took vitamin E had no fewer heart attacks, strokes, cancers, or cancer deaths.

But many experts wondered whether that was long enough for vitamin E to help. So Lonn and colleagues extended the study for another three years.

"But we saw no benefit at all on cancer and no benefits for heart outcomes -- a composite measure of heart attack, stroke, and heart death," Lonn says.

Unexpectedly, they did see one difference. Patients taking vitamin E had significantly more heart failure.

Vitamin E was linked to a 13% higher risk of heart failure and a 21% increased risk of hospitalization for heart failure. That's a pretty small risk. But since the vitamin did no good at all, it's a risk not worth taking.

"If there is no benefit from taking something, you shouldn't take even a small risk of harm," Lonn says.

There is no need to worry if you take a multivitamin that contains recommended amounts of vitamin E. But Lonn advises people not to take pills containing high amounts (400 IU or more) of vitamin E.

Is Vitamin E Dead?

B. Greg Brown, MD, PhD, head of the atherosclerosis research lab at the University of Washington School of Medicine, was one of the first scientists to suggest that vitamin E and other antioxidant vitamins may not work the way they were supposed to.

"Vitamin E has been very clearly shown to be of no benefit to the general problem of cancer or heart disease," Brown says. "Studies are still looking at whether vitamin E can help prostate cancer, [mouth and throat] cancer, and severe macular degeneration. But all in all, there is relatively little hope for a major effect. There's not a lot of hope for vitamin E. It's proven to be without benefit."

Brown's editorial accompanies the Lott study in the March 16 issue of JAMA.

The Real Vitamin E Harm

What worries Lonn and Brown isn't heart failure caused by vitamin E.

"The scary thing is not that vitamin E will cause harm. It's that people will take something that does no good instead of something we know will help," Lonn says. "Often people think, 'Well, I am going to be fine because I am taking a bunch of vitamins.' We see that even in people who have had two or three heart attacks already. They won't take their medications, but a bunch of vitamins they will take. That is where the damage lies rather than in the small risk from the vitamin E pill itself."

Brown, a cardiologist, says he far too often sees the same thing.

"The one thing that is really of concern is that a person will say, 'I am taking a vitamin, so I don't have to exercise or quit smoking or take a cholesterol-lowering drug," he says. "So that can be harmful in turning people away from proven therapies toward those with no benefit. Maintaining that position of zealotry can be more harmful than simply taking the vitamin itself."

Thanksgiving Day is a time-honored American tradition, a time for family gatherings and a holiday meal that encourages over-the-top decadence. And for many (some 97% of us), the thought of a Thanksgiving without turkey is heresy. We gobble up roughly 45 million turkeys to celebrate the annual holiday.

To help make sure your Thanksgiving dinner is safe, nutritious, and delicious, we asked the experts for some timely turkey tips.

A Little Background

The tom turkey, the larger male bird decorated with colorful plumage, has a long wattle -- a fleshy, wrinkled fold of skin hanging down from the throat -- and is known for his trademark "gobble." The hens are smaller and less colorful than the males, and make only a clicking sound.

Both males and females are raised extensively for their excellent meat (and for eggs). The most common breeds in the United States are the Bronze, Narragansett, White Holland, and Bourbon Red.

We've all heard the legend about the first Thanksgiving: After a tough first year in America in 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated a successful fall harvest of fruits, corn, and other vegetables. They had beaten the odds, and for that, they were mighty thankful. The Pilgrims' Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day to give thanks that was shared by the new colonists and their Native American neighbors.

The tradition continued each year after the harvest, and in the late 1770s, the Continental Congress suggested a national Thanksgiving day. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt later declared that the holiday would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.)

Turkey Prep 101

For most of us, there's no doubt that a turkey will be the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving feast. The only question: Should we buy it fresh or frozen?

Frozen birds tend to be less expensive, but they require more time to defrost properly.

"If you have the room to defrost a frozen turkey in your refrigerator, plan on one day to thaw [each] 4-5 pounds," recommends culinary nutritionist Jackie Newgent. Place the wrapped bird on a tray on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator so the juices won't contaminate other foods.

Another safe method of defrosting is to submerge the bird, breast side down, in cold water, and change the water every 30 minutes. With this method, thawing takes approximately 30 minutes per pound.

"Defrosting in the sink is time-consuming, and if you don't change the water to keep it cold, you risk the chance of bacterial contamination," advises Newgent.

For purists, nothing can compare with the mouth-watering aromas of slowly roasting a turkey to golden perfection in the oven. Deep-frying is a popular alternative cooking method, though it requires the right equipment and lots of oil.

If you prefer the crispy fried version, don't worry about the extra fat calories, says registered dietitian Newgent: "Thanksgiving only happens once a year, so just go for it and enjoy!"

Newgent also shares a few basic turkey-cooking tips:

• Buy 1 pound of turkey per person. That will allow plenty for the feast and leftovers, too.
• Make sure the bird is completely thawed before cooking; otherwise, it will not cook uniformly.
• Cook the turkey to the proper temperature. A meat thermometer is the only way to ensure proper cooking to 180 degrees. Place the thermometer deep into the thigh, without touching the bone.
• Slowly cooking the turkey at 325 degrees will result in the most moist and delicious meat. Higher temperatures can overcook or dry out the bird.
• Rub the bird with olive oil and season lightly with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powders, and a little sage. The rest of the meal is so flavorful that you shouldn't overpower the bird with heavy seasonings, Newgent says.
• Baste oven-baked birds with their juices and a little butter for added moistness and rich color.
• Cover the drumsticks and breast with foil when the bird is two-thirds done to prevent drying and scorching.
• Plan to take advantage of all cooking surfaces when you prepare the meal. Use shallow baking dishes that fit on an oven shelf under the turkey. Prepare other dishes on the stovetop and in the microwave.

This oil's got history going for it, that's for sure. One of the oldest known cultivated trees in the world, the olive tree is native to Asia Minor. It is thought to have spread to the Mediterranean region -- now well-known for its use of olive oil -- about 6,000 years ago.

You can buy domestic olive oil (using mostly Californian grown olives) or imported oils from France, Greece, Spain, and Italy.

This uniquely green and flavorful oil can be less green and less flavorful, depending on the type you buy. If you want to use it at high temperatures or in baking, try one of the "light" olive oils. This type goes through a fine filtration process, producing lighter-colored oil that lacks the classic olive flavor.

What if you want a fragrant and flavorful oil, for salad dressings or for adding to a dish after cooking? Olive oil that's extra-virgin and cold-pressed (a chemical-free process that involves only pressure, producing an oil with low acidity) is considered the fruitiest and finest type, according to The Food Network's online encyclopedia.

More and more people are cooking with olive oil, perhaps because Mediterranean cuisine is in vogue, or because of the oil's distinctive flavor, or its potential health benefits. How about all of the above?

April 14, 2005 -- The yips -- a condition that makes some golfers unable to appropriately complete a golf stroke -- might be a movement disorder, according to a new study.

If so, it seems to be a task-specific problem seen with putting, says neurologist Charles Adler, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Adler and colleagues studied 20 right-handed, middle-aged male golfers; half had the yips. The researchers used electromyography (EMG) to monitor nerve impulses in the men's muscles while putting, holding a putter, writing by hand, sitting, and extending their arms.

The men also rated their own golf strokes, trying 75 putts at 3, 6, and 8 feet on an artificial putting surface.

Problem Only Seen During Putting

The yips only occurred during putting. Half of the men with the yips had EMG-documented contractions in their wrist muscles right before the putter hit the ball, say researchers.

Those men tended to be older, have higher current and best previous golf handicaps, and have had the yips for fewer years than those who had the yips but did not have the contractions.

The men with the yips and contractions also tended to make fewer putts and had a greater degree of error in missing the putts.

Related Conditions?

The contractions were similar to those seen in writers' cramp or musicians' cramp, says Adler in a news release. Only two men in the yip group said they'd felt the yips in the experiment, but five of them showed EMG signs of the contractions, the researchers say.

Adler's team presented their results in Miami Beach, Fla., at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. They called for larger studies of the yips.

"It's my metabolism!"

Sound familiar? If you're carrying some extra pounds (and having a hard time losing them), it's tempting to put the blame on a sluggish metabolism.

But is your metabolism really the reason it's often so hard to lose weight? And, more important, is there anything you can do about it?

WebMD asked experts to explore facts and myths about metabolism -- and the good news is, there are things you can do to help boost your body's calorie-burning power.

What Is Metabolism?

Your metabolism, experts say, involves a complex network of hormones and enzymes that not only convert food into fuel but also affect how efficiently you burn that fuel.

"The process of metabolism establishes the rate at which we burn our calories and, ultimately, how quickly we gain weight or how easily we lose it," says Robert Yanagisawa, MD, director of the Medically Supervised Weight Management Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

Of course, not everyone burns calories at the same rate.

Your metabolism is influenced by your age (metabolism naturally slows about 5% per decade after age 40); your sex (men generally burn more calories at rest than women); and proportion of lean body mass (the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate tends to be).

And yes, heredity makes a difference.

"Some people just burn calories at a slower rate than others," says Barrie Wolfe-Radbill, RD, a nutritionist specializing in weight loss at New York University Medical Center.

Occasionally, Yanagisawa says, a defect in the thyroid gland can slow metabolism, though this problem is relatively rare.

And here's a fact that may surprise you: the more weight you carry, the faster your metabolism is likely running.

"The simple fact is that the extra weight causes your body to work harder just to sustain itself at rest, so in most instances, the metabolism is always running a bit faster," says Molly Kimball, RD, sports and lifestyle nutritionist at the Oscher's Clinic's Elmwood Fitness Center.

That's one reason it's almost always easiest to lose weight at the start of a diet, and harder later on, Kimball says: "When you are very overweight your metabolism is already running so high that any small cut in calories will result in an immediate loss."

Then, when you lose significant amounts of body fat and muscle, your body needs fewer calories to sustain itself, she says. That helps explain why it's so easy to regain weight after you've worked to lose it.

"If two people both weigh 250 pounds, and one got there by dieting down from 350 and the other one was always at 250, the one who got there by cutting calories is going to have a slower metabolism," says Yanagisawa. "That means they will require fewer calories to maintain their weight than the person who never went beyond 250 pounds."

Whether it's pounding the pavement, logging miles on the bike, or climbing those stairs that seem to go nowhere, it's all about cardio exercise. But other than a sweaty t-shirt, what do you have to show for your workout? A slimmer stomach? Killer quads? Are you exercising for the right amount of time to reap the full health benefits of cardiovascular fitness, or often enough?

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Exercise experts, including fitness maven Denise Austin, answer cardio questions for WebMD, so you can make the most of your muscle burn.

Cardio Exercise: The Heart of the Matter

"Cardiovascular exercise is any type of exercise that increases the work of the heart and lungs," says Tommy Boone, PhD, a founding member of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists. "Walking, jogging, and running are common forms of cardiovascular, or aerobic, exercise."

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From running and walking, to swimming, elliptical cross-training, biking, Stairmaster, and rowing -- to name a few -- the physical benefits of cardio exercise abound, explains says Len Kravitz, PhD, senior exercise physiologist for IDEA Health and Fitness Association. They include:

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• Reduced risk of heart disease
• Improved blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• Improved heart function
• Reduced risk of osteoporosis
• Improved muscle mass

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"The American College of Sports Medicine and the CDC recommend, for health, that adults should accumulate 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days of the week," says Kravitz, who is also a coordinator of exercise science at the University of New Mexico. "And to improve cardiovascular endurance, they recommend 20 to 60 minutes on three to five days per week."

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Now that you know the benefits of cardio exercise, where should your heart-pumping fitness plan begin?

Getting Into the Zone

To help you make the most of your cardio exercise workout -- help your heart, increase muscle, and lose fat -- Denise Austin, fitness expert, author of seven books, including Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, and star of 50 fitness videos, gives WebMD some tips.

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"To reap all the benefits of a cardio workout, you should sustain your workout for 20 minutes or more -- I do 30 minutes myself -- on a schedule of about three to four times per week," says Austin.

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Not only that, but you need to get in the zone, which calculates into burning calories and fat.

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"The best way to find out if you are burning fat is to take your pulse halfway into your cardio workout for six seconds, then add a zero to that number," Austin tells WebMD.

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This number is your heart rate per minute.

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Next, calculate your zone.

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"Take the number 220, then minus your age, then calculate 70% of that number for your target beats per minute," says Austin, and that's your zone. "If your heart rate halfway through your workout is over that 70% mark take it down a level, and if under, pick up the pace."

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Not a math wiz? There are easier ways to figure it out.

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"Another great way to find out your zone is to get a pulse monitor, which takes the math out of it," says Austin. "Or very simply, take the talk test: while you are doing aerobics, talk a sentence. If you are too winded to finish the sentence, you are overdoing it, or if it's too easy to say, kick it up a notch!"

Oct. 2, 2006 -- Obese people's desire to eat triggers the same brain action as addicts' desire for drugs, say researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The finding is based on seven morbidly obese people treated for up to two years with a gastric stimulator. The implanted device makes the stomach expand by giving tiny electric jolts to the vagus nerve. This, say Gene-Jack Wang, MD, and colleagues, signals the brain to make a person feel less hungry.

The seven study participants lost an average 11.6% of their original body weight. At the time of the study, six of the seven still weighed at least 5% less than they used to.

When the device is turned on, Wang and colleagues now report, it stimulates a part of the brain linked to emotional eating -- that is, eating to soothe emotional distress. The participants reported less desire for emotional eating when the device was turned on.

"The brain regions activated by gastric stimulation overlap with those reported during craving responses in addicted subjects, supporting the commonalities in the [brain circuits] that underlie compulsive food intake and compulsive drug intake," Wang and colleagues conclude.

The findings appear in the Oct. 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

May 2, 2006 -- Obesity may be more common that previously thought in the U.S.

In the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, researchers note that national obesity statistics typically rely on self-reported weight and height, which are often wrong.

Those inaccuracies often make people sound lighter or taller than they actually are, write Majid Ezzati, PhD, and colleagues. Ezzati works at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Self-reported weight and height don't always match reality, so U.S. obesity statistics are too low, Ezzati's team argues.

The researchers recalculated America's obesity statistics, adjusting for those errors. The result: The nation's obesity estimates went up.

Corrected Obesity Statistics

Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) over 30, according to the CDC.

In 2002, 28.7% of men and 34.5% of women in the U.S. were obese, Ezzati and colleagues estimate.

The uncorrected estimate for that year indicated that 16% of men and 21.5% of women were obese.

Ezzati's team based their corrections on data from two large, national surveys of U.S. adults:

• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS): Given by telephone
• National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES): given in person, with some participants measured and weighed afterwards

Ezzati and colleagues compared BRFSS and NHANES data for similar years. They found that people tended to report their height and weight more accurately in person than over the phone, but that all self-reports generally missed the mark.

Weight, Height, and Reality

Women tended to underreport their weight, the study shows. Men didn't do that, but men aged 20-44 tended to overestimate their height more than women, especially in telephone interviews.

After age 44, men and women overestimated height to a similar extent. Height often dips with age. Middle-aged or older adults who haven't measured their height lately may mistakenly think they're still as tall as in their youth, the researchers note.

Such errors stack the deck in favor of a lighter BMI (body mass index). BMI is calculated based on height and weight. A BMI of more than 25 but less than 30 is considered overweight, while a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

There are other ways to calculate size and shape, such as comparing waist size to hip size. But researchers often use BMI to track obesity.

If height and weight aren't right, neither are BMI and obesity statistics. It's like looking in a circus mirror that makes us look taller and leaner than we really are.

Where Obesity Lives

Ezzati and colleagues identified the states (and Washington, D.C.) where obesity was most common in 2000, based on the new calculations. Here are those findings, along with the percentage of obese men or women in those areas.

Highest prevalence of obese men:

• Texas (31%)
• Mississippi (30%)

Highest prevalence of obese women:

• Alabama (37%)
• Washington, D.C. (37%)
• Louisiana (37%)
• Mississippi (37%)
• Texas (37%)
• South Carolina (36%)

Lowest prevalence of obese men:

• Colorado (18%)
• Washington, D.C. (21%)
• Montana (21%)

Lowest prevalence of obese women:

• Montana (16%)
• Colorado (24%)
• Massachusetts (27%)

Oct. 18, 2005 -- How much exercise does it take to lose extra weight?

Provided you're not consuming too many calories, any amount of exercise may help. About five hours of weekly exercise may bring the biggest weight loss for obese adults who are also watching their intake of fat and calories.

So say researchers including John Jakicic, PhD. Jakicic leads the University of Pittsburgh's health and physical activity department.

Jakicic and colleagues studied nearly 200 obese women for two years. Their results were presented in Vancouver, Canada, at the North American Association for the Study of Obesity's annual scientific meeting.

Exercise Plans

The women in Jakicic's study were about 37 years old. Their average body mass index (BMI) was 32. A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese.

The women all agreed to exercise. They were randomly assigned by the researchers to one of four workout plans:

• Moderate amount of moderate-intensity exercise
• Moderate amount of vigorous exercise
• A lot of moderate-intensity exercise
• A lot of vigorous exercise

Moderate amounts of exercise were designed to burn 1,000 calories per week. The plans requiring lots of exercise were designed to burn 2,000 calories weekly.

Rules for Eating

The golden rule of weight loss is that calories burned must exceed calories consumed. The study tackled both ends of that equation.

Besides exercising, the women also limited their intake of calories and fat.

They were told to consume 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day. Fat was to account for 20% to 30% of those calories.

Remember, the study lasted for two years. It wasn't a short exercise blitz or crash diet. Most women completed the study (172 women, or 90%).

Who Lost Weight?

All of the women who finished the study lost a significant amount of weight.

Those who lost the most weight reported logging 270 to 300 minutes of exercise per week. That's 4.5 to 5 hours weekly.

Here are the average percentages of body weight lost by each group:

• Moderate amount of moderate-intensity exercise: 4.9%
• Moderate amount of vigorous exercise: 3.7%
• A lot of moderate-intensity exercise: 6.5%
• A lot of vigorous exercise: 7.2%

Higher Bar for the Obese

The CDC recommends that all adults get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week. That adds up to 150 minutes per week.

That amount wasn't designed with weight loss in mind. "More intense or longer periods of physical activity may be needed to control body weight," states the CDC's web site.

Jakicic agrees. "Clearly, overweight individuals have different exercise needs than the general public when it comes to increasing their energy expenditure," he says in a news release.

"Energy expenditure" means calories burned.

"To maximize weight loss and minimize weight regain, it appears that overweight individuals should supplement dietary changes with approximately 300 minutes of exercise each week, which is twice the amount recommended for health in the general public," Jakicic continues.

Next Steps

If Jakicic's results are on track, what do they mean in the real world?

Should someone exercise 45 minutes a day, six days a week, for a total of 270 minutes per week? Or would five, one-hour workouts do? Can each day's minutes be split into several shorter sessions?

Jakicic and colleagues call for more work to sort out the details.

Consult a doctor before starting a weight loss or exercise plan.

April 1, 2005 -- It sounds too good to be true but an increasing number of Americans are buying into the notion that a dietary supplement called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, can help them both lose weight and increase muscle mass.

A new study funded by the leading manufacturer of CLA suggests just that. But experts tell WebMD that the claims about the supplement far outweigh the science. The researcher who discovered CLA says that while it can help people replace fat with muscle, it is no miracle weight loss aid.

"I have been telling people for years that this is not a weight loss product," Michael W. Pariza, PhD, tells WebMD. "If someone takes CLA to lose weight but doesn't change their diet or exercise patterns they are going to be disappointed."

The Research

CLA is a natural occurring fatty acid found in meats and dairy products, with claims of helping people lose fat, maintain weight loss, retain lean muscle mass, and control type 2 diabetes -- the type of diabetes that is often associated with obesity.

Early animal studies following its identification by Pariza and colleagues in the late 1970s raised hopes that it could be used to fight human cancer.

The popular dietary supplement is now sold in health food stores and on the Internet.

In a study published last Maystudy published last May involving 180 people who were overweight, those who took CLA for a year lost between 7% and 9% of their body fat even though they did not change their lifestyles or eating habits.

But CLA users lost only a modest amount of weight -- 4 pounds during the yearlong study. And the investigation did little to silence concerns about the long-term safety of the supplement. The volunteers taking CLA had changes in certain heart disease risk factors.

CLA users had slightly higher LDL "bad" cholesterol and slightly lower HDL "good" cholesterol than nonusers. And the CLA group had higher white blood cell counts and lipoprotein (a) levels -- also known as lipoprotein little (a). Both are markers of inflammation linked to heart disease.

In this follow-up study, 134 of the overweight participants either continued taking CLA for another year or could start taking the supplement if they had been in the placebo group. Both groups took 3.4 grams of CLA a day and continued their normal lifestyle habits. They ate what they wanted without restricting calories and continued their usual amounts of physical activity.

The study was funded by the company that markets Tonalin CLA, the largest selling brand of the supplement. The findings are reported in the April 1 issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

The group that had already been taking CLA lost no more weight or body fat, but they maintained the body fat losses seen in the previous year. People who began taking the supplement during year two of the study lost an average of 3.5 pounds and also saw reductions in overall body fat.

The safety picture for those who took the supplement for two years was somewhat reassuring. Total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol were reduced slightly, while HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and fasting blood glucose levels remained unchanged.

But there were consistent increases in lipoprotein levels associated with CLA use. Lipoprotein levels are believed to be independent predictors of heart disease risk.

CLA use was also associated with increases in white blood cells and blood platelet counts, which suggested an inflammatory response to use of the supplement. Inflammatory responses like these are believed to lead to blood vessel damage seen in atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

Researcher Jean-Michel Gaullier and colleagues concluded that the role of CLA in cardiovascular risk is still "equivocal."

"Further studies are needed to determine if there is an effect of CLA on cardiovascular risk and inflammation in humans," they wrote.

Others Agree

In a review of the CLA research, published last year, California nutritionists Lisa Rainer, MS, RD, and Cynthia J. Heiss, PhD, concluded that while the animal studies on CLA are promising, the research in humans remains inconclusive.

"The existing studies of CLA supplementation in human beings are difficult to interpret because of the different parameters measured and the variances in dosage, duration of administration, and subject characteristics," they write.

In an interview with WebMD, Rainer said she would not recommend CLA supplementation for weight control on the basis of the studies she has seen.

"More trials need to be done in human beings before we really know the long-term benefits and safety," she says.

But Pariza, who began taking CLA when it became available in supplement form almost a decade ago, believes strongly that long-term use by healthy people is not only safe but beneficial.

He says CLA may have merit as a weight loss supplement when combined with another weight-reducing treatment or may singularly promote loss of body fat and maintenance of muscle. He says the supplement also can subsequently reduce the risk of weight regain.

Nov. 11, 2004 -- Going to church may do more than bring out your spiritual side; it could make you a healthier eater, according to a new study.

Researchers found that people who regularly attend church eat 25% more of the fruits and vegetables that pack the biggest nutritional punch. These nutritional powerhouses include citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, dark leafy greens, carrots, and cantaloupe.

"The body is your temple, and we should treat it that way," says researcher Deidre Griffith of the Saint Louis University, in a news release. "Church can be a big part of your support system for changing your diet."

Griffith presented the results of the study this week at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C.

Church May Foster Healthy Eating Habits

In the study, researchers surveyed 315 people about their church attendance and eating habits. Most of the participants were black, 78% were female, and 32% had incomes below the federal poverty level.

The results showed that people who attended church ate 25% more of the most nutritious fruits and vegetables than those who did not go to church.

All of the participants ate the most popular fruits and vegetables, including corn, iceberg lettuce, and bananas. But the study showed that people who went to church frequently, such as choir members, participants in bible study groups, and others, ate more of the fruits and vegetables that contain the most vitamins and minerals.

Researchers say going to church may foster healthy eating habits, and the results suggest that churches should take an active role in encouraging these types of healthy behaviors.

"We're saying church membership or having that church community is one of the key links in the long chain of social support structures that help people eat better," says Griffith.

Aug. 13, 2004 -- James Bond may prefer his martinis, but a new study shows red wine beats gin, shaken or stirred, when it comes to heart health.

Researchers found drinking moderate amounts of both alcoholic beverages had beneficial effects in reducing inflammation in the blood, which has been linked to artery-clogging plaque buildup and heart disease. But red wine had a significantly greater effect on fighting inflammation in the blood.

"It's clear from these results that while drinking some form of alcohol lowers inflammatory markers, red wine has a much greater effect than gin," says Emanuel Rubin, MD, a pathology professor at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, in a news release.

Researchers say that many studies have linked drinking alcohol, especially red wine, to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. But few studies have compared the effects of different types of alcoholic beverages in reducing risk factors for heart attack and stroke, such as inflammatory markers in the blood.

High levels of C-reactive protein and other markers of inflammation in the blood are risk factors that have been implicated in heart disease and stroke, says Rubin.

Red Wine Fights Clogged Arteries

In the study, 40 healthy men consumed 30 grams of ethanol either in the form of two glasses (about 10 ounces) of red wine (Merlot) or 3.3 ounces of gin with dinner each day for 28 days. All of the participants also followed relatively the same diet and exercise program during the study.

Researchers analyzed blood samples before and after the study, and found both wine and gin had anti-inflammatory effects.

Both groups had lower levels of fibrinogen, which clots blood and is a risk factor for heart attack. They also had lower levels of the inflammatory marker IL-1.

But those who drunk red wine also had lower levels of C-reactive protein and two other inflammatory markers.

Researchers say the antioxidant effects of the polyphenols found in red wine, but not in gin, are likely responsible for the additional heart-healthy effects. Beer and whisky also have high levels of polyphenols.

Rubin says one or two glasses of red wine a day is probably beneficial, but these results provide only indirect evidence of a protective effect against heart disease.

May 24, 2004 -- Obese and overweight women are at increased risk of getting suspicious results from screening mammograms, research shows.

Mammograms don't miss any more cancers in heavy women than in thin women. But the more a woman weighs, the greater the risk that her mammogram will have false positive results. That means more tests - and more anxiety.

Joann G. Elmore, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues analyzed more than 100,000 mammograms from nearly 70,000 women. The report their findings in the May 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Compared with underweight or normal weight women, overweight and obese women were more likely to be recalled for additional tests," Elmore and co-workers write. "Obese women had more than a 20% increased risk of having a false positive mammogram result."

At the personal level, it's not a huge increase in risk. Overall, a woman faces about one in 10 chance of getting a false positive result on a screening mammogram. Obesity increases that risk from 10% to 12%.

But those extra tests add up fast. For an estimated 10 million obese women in the U.S., this means some 200,000 false positives. At $600 per retest, that adds up to an extra $120 million in U.S. health-care costs. And that doesn't even begin to measure the personal costs.

"We cannot put a quantitative value on the resultant anxiety these 200,000 women would additionally experience," Elmore and colleagues note.

Even so, obese women need mammograms more than skinny women. That's because a breast examination is more likely to miss small tumors in women with very large breasts.

The researchers suggest that larger mammography plates may help get better images of women with large breasts. They also suggest that weight loss may lower the likelihood of an unnecessarily traumatic experience when it's time for a routine mammogram.

Nov. 26, 2003 -- Before you get too comfortable at the buffet table this holiday season, you may want to take a second look at the scale. A new poll shows many Americans may be deluding themselves about their weight.

The Gallup survey found that although more than half of those surveyed were overweight according to their BMI (body mass index, a measurement of weight in relationship to height), only about 40% think of themselves that way.

The delusion doesn't stop there. The poll found that 37% of Americans would still be classified as overweight according to standard BMI charts even if they did lose weight and reach what they think would be their "ideal" weight, including 4% who would still be considered obese at their "ideal" weight.

Americans Kidding Themselves About Their Weight

The survey, based on telephone interviews with 1,007 adults across the U.S., was conducted November 3-5. Researchers used the heights and weights that the respondents reported to calculate their BMI. They found 55% of all Americans would be classified as either overweight (35%) or obese (20%).

According to standards, BMI scores of:

• Less than 18.5 are considered underweight
• 18.5 to 24.9 are considered normal
• 25 to 29.9 suggest the person is overweight
• 30 or higher suggest the person is obese

Researchers found that men were more likely than women to be classified as overweight and obese based on their BMI -- 68% of men compared with 43% of women.

Despite those numbers, just 41% of Americans overall said they were either "somewhat" (37%) or "very" (4%) overweight.

Good Intentions Not Enough to Lose Weight

Even though fewer women were overweight than men, the poll shows women were much more motivated to lose weight than men. Despite the fact that two-thirds of men were considered overweight, only about half (51%) said they wanted to lose weight versus 68% of women who said they wanted to lose weight.

But good intentions aren't enough. Among the obese, who are most likely to suffer serious medical complications as a result of their weight, more than nine in 10 said they wanted to lose weight but only 45% were seriously trying to do so.

The same held true for overweight adults; only about half of those who said they wanted to lose weight actually were trying to do so.

With so many people wanting to lose weight, researchers say it's not surprising that about two-thirds of Americans said their ideal weight is below their actual weight. On average, men reported an ideal weight that was 14 pounds lower than their actual weight, and women reported an ideal weight almost 19 pounds lower then their current weight.

However, according to the BMI charts, researchers found that 54% of those who are overweight, but not obese, would still be overweight if they reached their ideal weight, and three-quarters of currently obese people would still be overweight if they reached their ideal weight.

Although those numbers are discouraging, researchers warn that BMI isn't everything when it comes to measuring a healthy weight. BMI is a more accurate indicator of overweight and obesity than relying on weight alone, but the National Institutes of Health cautions that BMI does not directly measure body fat.

For example, some very muscular people may fall into the overweight category when they are actually healthy and fit. In addition, some people who have lost muscle mass, such as the elderly, may be in the healthy weight category when they are actually underweight with reduced nutritional reserves.

SOURCES: Gallup Survey, conducted Nov. 3-5, 2003. News release, Gallup Organization.

July 9, 2003 -- Finding out how much of a little-known but artery-clogging fat your favorite snack and processed foods contain is about to get a lot easier. The FDA today announced that manufacturers will soon be required to list on the Nutrition Facts label the amount of trans fatty acids, or trans fat, in foods.

The new rule will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, but manufacturers will start phasing in the new labels well before that deadline. It's the first major change in the Nutrition Facts label since it was established in 1993.

"We are empowering Americans to make healthier choices about the foods they eat," says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in a news release. "By putting trans fat information on food labels, we are making it possible for consumers to make better educated choices to lower their intake of these unhealthy fats and cholesterol."

Trans fats are frequently found in the same foods that contain other types of fat, such as cookies, crackers, fried foods such as french fries and chicken fried in shortening, donuts, and margarine sticks.

When a Good Fat Goes Bad

Trans fatty acids are the result of a process called hydrogenation that converts a relatively healthy, unsaturated liquid fat, such as vegetable oil, into a solid one, to make the product shelf stable and stay fresh longer. When the fat becomes solid, the body treats it more like a saturated fat, like butter or animal fat. But it is not classified as saturated fat on food labels

"Trans fat, like saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, raises LDL 'bad' cholesterol levels in the blood, which increases the risk for heart disease," says Claude Lenfant, MD, director of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in the release. "It is therefore desirable to have food labels display all the information that can help consumers choose foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol as part of a healthy diet."

The new regulations will require food makers to list the number of trans fat grams a food contains in addition to the saturated and unsaturated fat content and cholesterol level.

Jan. 3, 2003 -- Houston is the couch potato capital of the U.S. and Honolulu is the fittest city, say the editors of Men's Fitness magazine.

The "America's Fattest City" award goes to Houston for the third year, uh, running. The ratings are based on a major city's score in several categories such as fruit/vegetable consumption, sports participation, smoking, drinking, air quality, and percentage of overweight/sedentary residents.

"Given the region's climate (hot and humid), air quality (abysmal), and relative lack of outdoor recreation, staying active presents a Texas-sized challenge," the magazine states. "And with its love of junk food, Houston is a vastrodome of bad nutrition."

If you don't live in Houston, don't let out your belt just yet. The annual ratings are meant as a wake-up call to stop what the CDC calls a national epidemic of obesity. Two in every three Americans have a serious weight problem.

Here's the magazine's list of America's 10 fattest cities:

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Philadelphia
5. St. Louis
6. Cleveland
7. Atlanta
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Dallas
10. Charlotte, N.C.

And its list of the 10 fittest cities:

1. Honolulu
2. Seattle
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado Springs, Col.
5. San Diego
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Denver
8. Virginia Beach, Va.
9. Tucson, Ariz.
10. Sacramento, Calif.

May 28, 2002 -- Here's more good news about fruits and veggies. "Five a day" can lower your blood pressure, greatly reducing risk of heart disease.

In a six-month study involving nearly 700 people, half were asked to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; half served as controls and didn't change their diet.

The results: Those who ate the good stuff had higher levels of numerous healthy antioxidants than those who didn't.

Also: "significant decreases" in blood pressure were seen in the fruit-and-veggie group, reports Andrew Neil, PhD, a public health researcher at the University of Oxford, England. His study appears in this week's issue of The Lancet.

"The falls in blood pressure in our study ... would substantially reduce cardiovascular disease," he writes. His results match those of a larger study, which showed lower rates of high blood pressure in people who followed a similar five-a-day plan.

Most of the people participating in his study were women about 46 years old, and in the upper socioeconomic classes; 16% of the study participants were smokers, he reports. Neither group was advised to reduce fat intake; and the researchers saw no change in total cholesterol levels and only a small increase in body weight, he says.

"Therefore, the fall in blood pressure achieved in our study is unlikely to be attributable to reduced fat intake or changes in physical activity," writes Neil. "The reduction in blood pressure probably resulted from increased potassium intake, and possibly from some reduction in sodium, although participants were not advised specifically to reduce salt intake."

Here are some tips adapted from the 5 A Day For Better Health program -- a national nutrition effort to encourage Americans to eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day for better health:

• Wake up to fruit. Drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or incorporate a helping of fruit into your breakfast every day.
• Think "fruit" or "vegetable" when snacking. Munch on a handful of carrots or a piece of fruit when you get the urge to snack.
• Keep the pantry packed with easy-to-prepare dried, canned, or frozen fruits and vegetables.
• Make them visible. You're more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they are easily accessible. Wash some carrots or celery sticks and keep them close at hand in the refrigerator. Put clean fruit out for the family to snack on.
• Use the microwave to your advantage. It's a great (and convenient) way to quickly prepare vegetables for meals.

Visit the 5 A Day site at http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/5aday/ for a wide variety of simple, easy-to-make recipes.

If you've got diabetesdiabetes, the right meal plan can help you keep blood sugar under control. Fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products -- even sweets now and then -- all have a place in your plan.

"A meal plan provides a specific approach to controlling blood sugar," says Dianne Davis, RD, LDN, CDE, a dietitian with the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Center in Nashville, Tenn. "If you have diabetes, a meal plan is necessary."

That's because a meal plan helps ensure you eat a balanced diet high in fiber and low in fats. It can also "help you lose weight, by controlling portion sizes and calories," Davis says.

Which Diabetes Meal Plan Is Right for You?

Your lifestyle and the type of diabetes treatment you're getting -- whether you're taking premeal insulin or not -- will determine the type of meal plan best for you, says Davis.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are all factored into a plan. But carbs are an especially important component since they have the biggest impact on blood sugar.

"Your meal plan can also include your favorite foods," Davis adds. "No food is off-limits -- it's a matter of how much you eat, when you eat it, and what it will do to your blood sugar."

With that in mind -- and understanding you should talk with your doctor before making big changes in your diabetes diet -- here are four meal-planning systems.

The Diabetes Food Pyramid

The diabetes food pyramid is similar to the USDA food pyramid you see on food labels. It is a pyramid in which a healthy diet means eating more grains, fruits, and vegetables, and less meat, sweets, and fats.

The diabetes food pyramid's general recommendations are:

• Grains, beans, and starchy vegetables: 6 or more servings/day. One serving: 1 slice bread; 1/2 small bagel; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, pasta, rice; 3/4 cup ready-to-eat cereal; 1/2 cup cooked beans, corn, peas.
• Fruits: 2-4 servings daily. One serving: 1 medium-size fresh fruit; 1/2 cup canned fruit; 1/2 cup fruit juice.
• Vegetables: 3-5 servings a day. One serving: 1 cup raw vegetable; 1/2 cup vegetable juice.
• Meat, Fish, Cheese: 2-3 servings/day. One serving: 2-3 ounces cooked lean meat, skinless poultry, or fish; I egg; 2 tablespoons peanut butter; 2-3 ounces cheese.
• Milk and Yogurt: 2-3 servings daily. One serving: 1 cup (8 ounces) milk or yogurt.
• Fats, Sweets, and Alcohol: eat these in small amounts. One serving: 1 teaspoon butter, margarine, or mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon cream cheese or salad dressing; 1/2 cup ice cream.

Combined foods, like eggplant lasagna, for example, will include servings from several food groups (1 vegetable, 1 meat, 1 fat).

This meal system has limitations, says Davis. "When you follow the diabetes food pyramid, you are not controlling specific grams of carbs and might not be able to achieve very tight blood sugar control," she tells WebMD. "However, the pyramid helps you see which foods are carbohydrates -- to get you acquainted with them."

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

Indeed, the year 2000 was a very good year for wine makers -- and not just because it brought a bumper crop of cabernets, zinfandels, and chardonnays. Evidence of the far-reaching health benefits of wine continued to pour in from researchers around the world.

Here's a review of the good news for wine makers -- and wine lovers:

A Healthier Heart

Several reports in 2000 confirmed the glad tidings that wine -- in moderation, of course -- reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. In the September issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute reported that, compared to teetotalers, light drinkers who consumed wine cut their risk of dying prematurely by almost one third, and wine drinkers as a group had significantly lower mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Actually, drinking any kind of alcoholic beverage helped, the scientists found. But by far the biggest benefit accrued to wine drinkers.

What's more, scientists are beginning to understand how wine may bestow its salutary benefits. For starters, according to findings published in the January 2000 issue of European Heart Journal, this most ancient of beverages appears to dilate arteries and increase blood flow, thus lowering the risk of the kind of clots that cut off blood supply and damage heart muscles.

In addition, the fruit of the vine appears to boost levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol, and helps prevent LDL, or bad cholesterol, from causing damage to the lining of arteries. In a study published in the May 2000 issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, scientists at the Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine in Amsterdam tested 275 men and women around the age of 32. Those who imbibed the equivalent of a glass or two of wine each day had significantly higher levels of "good" cholesterol because they remove the "bad" artery-clogging LDLs before they have a chance to choke blood vessels. Indeed, wine seems to facilitate that process, making it easier for HDLs to hustle their dangerous counterparts out of the bloodstream.

Yet even when LDLs remain behind in the arteries, substances in wine called phenols appear to help prevent the bad cholesterol from causing injury. In the November 2000 Journal of Nutrition and Biochemistry, Italian researchers from the National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research reported that phenols seem to limit the oxidation of LDLs, making them less capable of damaging the linings of arteries and, therefore, less able to set the stage for cardiovascular disease, like heart disease and stroke.

A Shield Against Cancer

Wine also may protect against several forms of another common killer: cancer. It turns out that the same phenolic compounds that lower heart disease risk also may slow the growth of breast cancer cells, according to findings reported by scientists at the University of Crete in Greece in the June 2000 issue of Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. Phenols also were shown to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells. And French scientists found evidence that an antioxidant in wine called resveratrol can put the brakes on the growth of liver cancer cells, according to a report in the July-August 2000 issue of Oncology Reports.

There also was a report that wine -- particularly red wine -- might help ward off oral cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Dentistry discovered that resveratrol and another antioxidant called quercetin may inhibit the growth of oral cancer cells. Their findings, published in the June 2000 Journal of the American Dental Association, note that red wine is loaded with a slew of other antioxidants that seem to boost its cancer-fighting abilities.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

July 2, 2001 -- After Deborah Taylor-Hough's first child was born prematurely, she and her husband found themselves traveling to the intensive care nursery twice a day. "Probably what helped me most at that time is that the ladies from my church brought us two weeks' worth of frozen meals, and I didn't have to worry about what we were eating," she says.

A few years later, when her husband was working a swing shift, Taylor-Hough wanted to serve the main meal at noon, before he left. "The morning was our family time, but I also had to cook dinner then, and I felt like getting dinner ready was taking away my life," she recalls. A friend suggested she try cooking a month's food at once and storing it in the freezer.

From those small beginnings has grown a big passion. In 1998, Taylor-Hough published Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month, and today she has more than 2,000 people involved in her email list and online discussion group.

Bulk Cooking

Here's how it works: Once a month, she spends an hour on a Thursday night writing a shopping list. The next day, she shops. ("Never shop and cook on the same day," she advises.)

On Friday night she does the prep work, like chopping onions, grating cheese, making spaghetti sauce, and browning ground beef. On Saturday she spends a solid 6 to 8 hours cooking. By the end of the day she has a month's worth of meals in the freezer.

A big surprise for Taylor-Hough was how much money she saves. Because she was buying in bulk and eating out much less, her monthly budget for food dropped from $700 to $300 for a family of five.

Her web site is loaded with recipe ideas, cooking tips, and sample meal plans. Typical dishes include soups, meat loaf, stews, casseroles, and meat items to serve over rice.

While Taylor-Hough's first book on bulk cooking gets top marks for efficiency and price-consciousness, many recipes tend toward red meat and white flour. Her newly released sequel, Frozen Assets Lite & Easy, has more healthy, low-fat recipes, she says.

In addition, the bulk cooking system is designed chiefly for main dishes, the most time-consuming part of a meal. Of course, they should be combined with fresh fruit and salad.

Once you've grasped the basic idea of bulk cooking, you adjust it to fit your own circumstances, Taylor-Hough says. And you don't have to have a large freezer for it to work. For years, she had only a small freezer on top of the refrigerator.

"Use freezer bags, freeze them flat, and then stand them on end to make better use of your space," she says. "You can easily fit two weeks of main dishes in that space. Actually, I can do a full month."

"This is a wonderful, wonderful idea," says Lauren Groveman, who hosts a radio program on food, family, and the home. "You can plan ahead when you see a crazy week coming. When you're busiest, and feeling most tired and needy, that's the most important time to go to your own freezer and benefit from healthy, home-cooked food, instead of the drive-through line at the local fast-food place."

Many foods freeze perfectly, says Groveman, whose TV show, Cooking with Lauren Groveman, premiers this fall, especially soups, stews, and chili. "Brisket is such a tough meat it's improved by slow cooking followed by freezing. Make a big batch of stock, chill it first to skim off extra fat, and divide it into containers. When you want soups or stews you don't need to start with that powdered stuff!"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."

Feb. 6, 2004 -- It may be hard for pessimists to admit, but a new study shows pessimism has its benefits.

Researchers found that a healthy dose of pessimism may come in handy in many real-life situations where optimists may be overly hopeful.

For example, the study showed that pessimists tend to fare better as gamblers and know when to cut their losses rather than let it roll. Researchers say that kind of attitude may also pay off in other situations, such as playing the stock market.

Pessimism's Plus-Side

In the study, published in this month's issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers looked at the effects of a person's disposition on their gambling behavior.

Three groups of college students were given a list of questions to determine whether they were pessimistic or optimistic as well as assess their attitudes about gambling. In a series of different tests, researchers then had the students play several hands of blackjack and play a simulated slot machine game.

Throughout the tests, researchers found that optimists were more likely to believe that they expected to win at gambling. This relationship was even stronger in individuals who experienced gambling losses. This finding was consistent with the researchers theory that the optimist would reframe a negative event (gambling losses) into a positive -- the belief that they could win.

When asked about their experiences later, optimists were also more likely to remember more wins than the pessimists.

Researchers found the greatest differences between the groups emerged after losing.

"Our data show no difference in betting between optimists and pessimists after winning. But optimists are more likely to persist in the face of losses," says researcher Bryan Gibson, a social psychologist at Central Michigan University, in a news release. "They're less ready to give up hope."

The study showed that pessimists were more likely to reduce their bets if their past performance had been poor, but the optimists seemed relatively unfazed by their losses.

Researchers say this study only looked at the effects of optimism and pessimism on gambling, but their findings may apply to other situations. For example, pessimists may have the advantage in situations where resources and opportunities are limited, such as a down stock market, while optimists may fare better in situations where persistence is rewarded in the face of adversity.

March 19, 2003 -- The scent of a good man may be music to a woman's nose. Researchers say the odorless pheromones found in male perspiration can have a dramatic effect on both a woman's mind and body. A new study found exposure to male pheromones can boost a woman's mood and stimulate the release of a hormone that regulates the menstrual cycle.

In the study, researchers applied extracts of underarm secretions from male volunteers to the upper lips of 18 women between the ages of 25 and 45. None of the women knew that male sweat had been applied to their lips, and some thought they were involved in a study of alcohol or perfume or even lemon floor wax. The women then rated their moods over six hours of exposure; they consistently reported feeling less tension and more relaxed.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," says researcher Charles J. Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

Each of the women received three applications of the underarm extract during the six-hour evaluation period, followed by three doses of exposure to ethanol (alcohol) over another six-hour period.

Researchers also found that exposure to the male pheromones also prompted a shift in blood levels of a reproductive hormone called luteinizing hormone. Levels of this hormone typically surge before ovulation, but women also experience small surges during other times in the menstrual cycle.

The study found that the male pheromone extract hastened the onset of these smaller surges and shortened the pauses between surges by 20%.

Researchers are now looking at individual compound that are found in male perspiration in hopes of identifying the elements responsible for these psychological and hormonal changes.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," says Wysocki. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

SOURCE: Biology of Reproduction, June 2003. News release, University of Pennsylvania.

July 26, 2006 -- Multitasking may make you more productive, but it also makes it harder for your brain to learn, according to a new study.

Researchers found people had a harder time learning new things when their brains were distracted by something else, like talking or listening to music.

"When distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don't learn as well as if you had paid full attention," says researcher Russell Poldrack, PhD, and UCLA associate professor of psychology, in a news release. "Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized so you cannot retrieve the information as easily."

Poldrack says distractions appear to affect the brain's learning processes, and tasks that require more attention -- like learning calculus or reading Shakespeare -- are particularly hampered.

Multitasking Disrupts Learning

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain function and activity while adults (average age, 26) learned a new task.

The 14 participants were asked to make predictions after seeing a series of clues about cards with various shapes. With one set of cards, they learned the classification task without any distractions. In the second set, they learned while listening and keeping track of a series of high and low beeps.

The results showed that multitasking didn't reduce the accuracy of the predictions immediately, but it did hurt participants' ability to remember knowledge about the task later.

Researchers found that when participants were asked questions about the cards at a follow-up session, they did much better on the task they learned without any distractions.

When asked about the task they learned with the distraction, they couldn't extrapolate, or their knowledge was less flexible about the task.

Distraction Affects Memory

The fMRIs showed that when the participants learned without distraction, an area of the brain known as the hippocampus was involved. This part of the brain is critical to the processing and storing of information.

But when they learned the task while multitasking, the hippocampus was not engaged. Instead, an area called the striatum was activated. The striatum is involved in learning new skills like riding a bicycle.

Researchers say the results show that learning while distracted or multitasking alters the brain's learning processes and changes the way people learn.

Multitasking when performing certain tasks -- like listening to music while exercising -- may be helpful. But Poldrack says tasks that distract you while you try to learn something new are likely to negatively affect your learning.

"The best thing you can do to improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember," says Poldrack.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

July 6, 2001 -- For some moms-to-be, pregnancy just doesn't seem to faze them. They continue their day-to-day activities uninterrupted. They work full-time until the day they deliver. Some even maintain vigorous exercise routines. Still, other expectant moms need to stop work and limit their activities during their pregnancy.

But exactly who should? For what reasons? And, most important of all, does it help mother and/or child? A new study in a recent issue of American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology addresses these questions.

"We thought it was important to look at how commonly [stop-work recommendations] come up during pregnancy," study author Linda Frazier, MD, MPH, tells WebMD. Frazier, who has worked in occupational medicine, is an associate professor in the department of preventive medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, in Wichita.

Using pregnancy data gathered for 1996-1997, Frazier and her colleagues reviewed all employment information and birth results. Of more than 1,600 women who worked at least 10 hours each week, more than 27% had been advised by a doctor or nurse to stop working.

The number surprised Frazier and her colleagues. "We thought it would be about 5%," she says. "And that is for a very significant work restriction. The numbers who have a smaller ... work restriction -- like no heavy lifting, shorter shifts, day shifts, and no handling toxic chemicals -- is probably greater."

Women most likely to be prescribed bed rest had been hospitalized during an earlier pregnancy and had delivered a premature baby previously, reports Frazier. Almost 60% of those told to stop working had high blood pressure, vaginal bleeding, or were at risk for premature labor. The other 40% were given that advice because of stress, swelling, or fatigue.

The good news? Of those told to stop working before or at the seventh month of pregnancy, almost 92% delivered a full-term infant. On the other hand, twice as many expectant moms instructed to stop working delivered a small baby, weighing roughly less than five pounds, compared to moms who stayed at work.

This, says Frazier, suggests that women advised to stop working already were at higher risk for pregnancy complications. But another explanation, suggests Atlanta obstetrician Michael Randell, MD, is that the women prescribed bed rest actually stayed busier at home.

"We always have to be concerned about the patient that we put on bed-rest or take out of work because we never know what their home life is like," he tells WebMD. "They could now be stuck chasing around three children, which may be more strenuous than what their day activity was at work." Randell, in private practice and on staff at Atlanta's Northside Hospital, was not involved in the study.

"The second thing we looked at was the last month of pregnancy that a woman worked," says Frazier. "It turned out that 50% stopped in the seventh month or before." That is significant because the Family and Medical Leave Act only covers 12 weeks of unpaid leave in connection with the birth of a child.

"This might be of interest to policy makers," says Frazier, adding that many women aren't even covered under the FMLA act. "What happens to those women and their jobs? We need to study how it really happens in corporate America."

So what is the bottom line?

"Most women are healthy and sail through their pregnancies; there's no reason why pregnancy should be exclusion from employment," she says. "But there is a significant minority of women who appear to have some kind of pregnancy complication and, as a society, we need to think about what supports are in place to promote healthy pregnancy outcomes."

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Florence Leon first went to overnight camp when she was 12. Through umpteen leathercraft wallets and throat-numbing singalongs until she was a college-aged bunk counselor, she logged only great summer memories and experiences. "Two of my best friends today I met at camp," she says. "And that was 35 years ago."

But what's on her mind as this summer unfolds is how her son, at 12, will sail through his maiden journey into that cherished family tradition. Frankly, admits the Philadelphia social worker, she's worried about Stefan. Not so much about pillow-soaked bouts of homesickness, the probable chance of lost or unwashed underwear, or even the one-in-a-zillion chance that his counselor is a pedophile.

She's concerned about his skin. "What if he gets an infected mosquito bite? Who will make sure he wears sunscreen? When he's at camp, who will do the things I do for him, like make sure his skin is protected? Some teenager I don't know from Adam who has to look after a dozen other kids?"

Anxiety-Ridden

It will continue through the summer: Some 6 million American youths heading to the nation's 10,000 summer camps, many carrying extra socks, self-addressed postcards, and angst. While fleeting homesickness affects as many as 95% of campers, about one in 11 will likely develop real anxiety disorders caused by these vacations -- along with their parents.

"Separation anxiety is the most common camp-related problem, for both kids and their parents," says psychologist Anne Marie Albano, PhD, of the New York University Child Study Center.

"But many also have social anxiety -- an extreme fear in worrying that people won't like them -- or generalized anxiety in which they worry about catastrophic events. And these problems often come in packages.

"Since we know that anxiety tends to run in families, and children model their behavior in what they see their parents do, when you see kids anxious about attending camp, that often translates to anxious parents of those campers. Sometimes, the parents have it worse. And unfortunately, they show this to their kids."

At Camp Shane, an overnight weight-loss camp in the Catskill Mountains, the staff is prepared to deal with these self-induced or family-fueled camper problems in its 500 attendees.

"Because our campers are overweight, they have a lot of emotional issues -- low self-esteem, lack of friends at home, so there's often a lot riding on their coming here," says camp owner and director David Ettenberg, CCD.

"Our counselors are trained, and we have a guidance staff made up of school counselors, psychologists or social workers to deal with any camper problems, along with a grandmotherly type 'Camp Mom' who goes bunk-to-bunk.

"But in truth, the vast majority of kids are fine. Yes, they miss their parents, but they adjust, make friends, have fun, and can't help but lose weight," he tells WebMD. "It's their parents who I sometimes worry about. Just yesterday, I had one mother who couldn't stop crying as she dropped off her child. And then I got a call from another who already did, worried about homesickness and wanting to come to take him home."

April 3, 2006 - The flood of kids with autism pouring into special education classes doesn't mean we're in the middle of an autism epidemic, a new study suggests.

Experts hotly debate the issue of whether there really are more autistic kidsmore autistic kids than there used to be. Many parents worry that there may be something out there that's causing autism. Fueling their fears is a huge explosion in the number of autism cases pouring into state-funded programs.

This explosion in the need for special autism education might be because there's more autism than ever before. Or it might be because we're getting better at diagnosing autism -- and because treatment is getting better, drawing more kids into special-education classes at earlier ages.

Advocates of the autism-epidemic theory point to a recent California study. Those researchers found little evidence that changes in autism diagnosis affected how many kids have autism. And while they defend their findings, the study has come under fire from other autism experts.

Changing Standards

Now a new report in the April issue of Pediatrics looks at data from across the U.S. It shows that what's true for California and a handful of other states isn't true for the nation as a whole. The increase in autism is offset by a decrease in mental retardation and learning disabilities, finds University of Wisconsin, Madison, researcher Paul T. Shattuck, PhD.

"Many of the children now being counted in the autism category would probably have been counted in the mental retardation or learning disabilities categories if they were being labeled 10 years ago instead of today," Shattuck says in a news release.

And that's not the only reason why special-education statistics are misleading.

"Schools didn't start counting kids with autism until the early 1990s," Shattuck tells WebMD. "Current counts [of autistic kids in special-ed classes] are still below what the true [autism] prevalence is. And if you take into consideration that counts of special kids in other categories declined at a rate corresponding to the increase in the autism rate, then all of a sudden those special-ed trend lines don't look so worrisome."

Despite the explosion in the enrollment of autistic kids in special-education classes, Shattuck says there are still a lot of autistic kids who aren't getting these services.

"We should expect special-education trends in most states to continue going up in the foreseeable future because most state special-ed counts are significantly underestimating the number of kids who actually have autism," he says.

Autism's Shifting Shape

Why is it so hard to tell whether there is an autism epidemic? There are several reasons. One is that autism isn't one thing. It's a spectrum of disorders, with different (unknown) causes, different (unknown) risk factors, and different (unknown) genetic predispositions.

And what one state special-ed program calls autism differs from the definition used by another state. Shattuck says these different definitions make it a "hopeless" task to try to use special education enrollment to measure autism.

"I think parents and advocates have every right to be angry at our collective inability to answer such consequential questions as, 'Do more of our children have autism than in the past? If yes, then why?'" he says.

Alternate View

An accompanying editorial takes issue with one of Shattuck's main conclusions. It's written by Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD, director of the Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In a 2005 study, Newschaffer and colleagues concluded that shifting diagnostic categories can't account for the increase in autism cases. Newschaffer's data suggested some increase in autism cases.

"There are two major hypotheses about this," Newschaffer tells WebMD. "One is that something is going on that increases children's risk of autism. The other is that the increased number of cases is due to changes in the autism diagnosis and an increased tendency to diagnose autism instead of something else."

In his editorial, Newschaffer notes that we don't know the cause of autism. That means autism diagnosis has to be made on the basis of a child's behavior, not a child's biology. And look-back studies simply aren't a sharp enough tool to unearth, once and for all, whether autism was as common in the past as it is now.

"There strong beliefs on both sides of the issue," Newschaffer says. "But if you try to get objective and sit back -- if you try to be honest -- I don't think the data are valid, precise, or good enough to tease these things out."

A new CDC study is trying to unravel the issue. But Newschaffer thinks this isn't likely to provide definitive answers.

"We are not likely to develop a conclusive body of evidence to either fully support or fully refute the notion that there has been some real increase in autism risk over the past two decades," he writes.

Oct. 18, 2004 -- Premature babies may be less likely to need blood transfusions if their umbilical cords are cut a bit later than normal.

Waiting 30 seconds to 2 minutes before cutting the umbilical cord could make the difference, say researchers including Heike Rabe, MD, PhD, of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals in Brighton, England.

The umbilical cord connects the baby to the mother's placenta, delivering oxygen-rich blood to the infant.

After the baby is born and before the placenta is delivered, the umbilical cord is clamped in two places and cut between the clamps.

There are no official standards about exactly when the umbilical cord should be clamped and cut.

Rabe and colleagues recently reviewed seven studies on the clamping and cutting of umbilical cords. The data are based on almost 300 babies, all of whom were born early (before the end of 37 weeks of pregnancy). Their study appears in the October issue of the journal The Cochrane Collaboration.

When to Separate Baby From Umbilical Cord

Delaying umbilical cord clamping by 30 to 120 seconds, rather than early clamping, seems to be associated with less need for transfusion and less bleeding in the infant's brain, according to the researchers.

Early clamping was defined as clamping in less than 30 seconds.

The extra time lets the baby get a little more blood from the placenta, which could reduce the need for a blood transfusion.

However, the strategy could have risks.

For instance, many premature babies need resuscitation, which is typically performed away from the mother. In those cases, the umbilical cord must be cut quickly to save the baby's life.

Waiting too long could also allow an excess of red blood cells to thicken a baby's blood, possibly stressing the newborn's heart and breathing or even prompting jaundice or brain damage, according to news reports.

The study did not address the practice of "milking" the umbilical cord before cutting it, a method used by some practitioners to coax placental blood in the umbilical cord into the baby.

The researchers also did not weigh in on whether it helps to hold the baby below the placenta, as some believe.

A longer-term study of umbilical cord clamping times in premature babies is under way.

May 4, 2004 -- Increasing numbers of teens and children have developed high blood pressure during the past decade, new research shows.

The trend is largely due to the obesity problem, writes lead researcher Paul Muntner, PhD, an epidemiologist with Tulane University in New Orleans.

His report appears in this week's issue of TheJournal of the American Medical Association.

It's serious business since high blood pressure and heart disease are typically diseases of middle age. Studies show that blood pressure problems in childhood lead to high blood pressure in young adulthood, he writes.

Muntner's nationwide study looked at children's and adolescents' blood pressure readings taken in 1999 to 2000, comparing them with data on readings performed between 1988 and 1994.

He found that between the two time periods, systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) increased an overall average of 1.4 points; diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) increased 3.3 points.

The two blood pressure numbers reflect pressure against artery walls when blood is pumped through the body.

Muntner also found the most significant blood pressure increases occurred in all ethnic groups - non-Hispanic blacks and Mexican-Americans from 8 to 12 years old - but not in white children:

• Non-Hispanic blacks had a 1.9-point increase in systolic blood pressure and a 4.1-point increase in diastolic readings.

• Mexican-Americans had a 2.3-point increase in systolic blood pressure and a 4.4-point increase in diastolic readings.

• Obesity caused 29% of the systolic and 12% of diastolic blood pressure increases.

"The strong association between [obesity] and systolic blood pressure among children and adolescents is worrisome," writes Muntner. His analysis "suggests that environmental factors other than increases in [obesity] are responsible for at least part of the increases in blood pressure among children and adults."

Diet and physical activity need attention in addressing this problem, he writes.

Muntner notes a problem with his study: His data are based on blood pressure readings taken at a single visit. More precise estimates would have been obtained during several visits. However, his study provides a credible snapshot of the high blood pressure problem in kids today, he writes.

School's out, the long days of summer are upon us, and your kids are restless. Short of shipping them off to summer camp, how can you keep them happy and busy, and without letting them catch on, make sure they're learning along the way?

Here are tips on what to keep in mind when you're planning summer activities, as well as some easy ideas for little tykes, preschoolers, and school kids that will keep them entertained all the way through August.

Let Summer Begin

When the thermometer starts to creep upward, the first thing you should consider when planning playtime is safety.

"I think with all age groups, parents should consider safety first," says Barbara Roth, specialty consultant for child care for the YMCA of the USA.

With safety in mind, ask yourself, what activities are appropriate for your child's age? What safety equipment should you have on hand, such as a lifejacket if you have a pool, or training wheels and a helmet if your child wants to learn to ride a bike? Will you be home with the child, or working? If you're working, is an adult present?

"Kids should never be home alone, so make sure they're under adult supervision if you will be working," says Roth.

Second, what are your goals for your kids during the summer?

"Beyond simply keeping them busy, you want to keep their development in mind and realize how much learning goes on in play," says Roth.

Learning doesn't stop the moment the school bell sounds for the last time in June. Kids keep on learning all summer long.

"Kids also need to work on social-emotional skills, which is ongoing for all age groups," says Roth. "Make sure the activities your kids are involved in include kids their own age as well as kids other ages."

And last, remember that there is only so much time in the day -- don't overbook yourself and your kids so that summer vacation doesn't include a moment's rest.

"Eliminate stress," says Michele Borba, EdD, author of 19 books on parenting and childhood. "A big, huge calendar on your fridge that can help you keep track of everyone's schedule is a gold mine and really helps avoid overbooking. And make sure there are fun active things going on and also some laid-back activities. It's OK to have nothing to do, to spend some time in the sandbox."

Dec. 19, 2005 -- Eating a small amount of dark chocolate improves smokers' artery function in hours, and a few squares a day may reduce the risk of hardening of the arteries.

That's the finding of a small study by Swiss researchers published in the journal Heart.

The researchers gave 20 male smokers approximately 1.4 ounces of either dark or white chocolate. In just two hours, dark chocolate significantly improved the function of endothelial cells, which line the artery walls, and reduced the activity of platelets, which help form blood clots. Smoking is known to disrupt the function of both types of cells, often leading to hardening of the arteries and heart disease.

The protective effects of dark chocolate lasted about eight hours. White chocolate had no effect on the arteries or platelets. The study did not examine the effects of chocolate in nonsmokers.

'A Small Daily Treat'

The researchers note that too much chocolate could increase the risk of heart disease by raising blood sugar levels, body fat, and body weight. But their findings suggest just a couple ounces of dark chocolate a day may reduce the risk of coronary artery disease.

How could such a small amount have such a powerful effect? The authors say it's probably because dark chocolate is so rich in antioxidants. "Dark chocolate has a much higher [antioxidant] content per gram than do other antioxidant-rich foods such as wine, tea, or berries," they write. "Therefore, only a small daily treat of dark chocolate may substantially increase the amount of antioxidant intake" and improve cardiovascular health.

March 15, 2005 -- Vitamin E harms more than it helps, a large study shows.

Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant, thought to clear the body of harmful oxygen compounds called free radicals. By soaking up free radicals, researchers hoped that vitamin E would prevent cancer and heart disease.

That doesn't happen, finds Eva Lonn, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues. Lonn led a seven-year-long, international study that enrolled thousands of people at high risk of heart disease. The findings added to suspicions raised by prior studies: Vitamin E isn't worth it.

"We saw definitely no benefit, and at least the potential for harm," Lonn tells WebMD. "Now the overwhelming evidence from many studies is that vitamin E provides no protection against heart disease, stroke, or cancer."

Lott and colleagues report their findings in the March 16 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Vitamin E Harm: Slight but Significant Risk

Lonn's study enrolled nearly 10,000 people with heart disease, peripheral artery disease (also commonly called poor circulation, a disease of blood flow through the arteries) or diabetes. This put them at very high risk of heart attack and stroke. All were over age 55. Half got high-dose vitamin E -- 400 IU every day (about 400 milligrams) -- and half got fake pills that looked the just the same.

After four years, those who took vitamin E had no fewer heart attacks, strokes, cancers, or cancer deaths.

But many experts wondered whether that was long enough for vitamin E to help. So Lonn and colleagues extended the study for another three years.

"But we saw no benefit at all on cancer and no benefits for heart outcomes -- a composite measure of heart attack, stroke, and heart death," Lonn says.

Unexpectedly, they did see one difference. Patients taking vitamin E had significantly more heart failure.

Vitamin E was linked to a 13% higher risk of heart failure and a 21% increased risk of hospitalization for heart failure. That's a pretty small risk. But since the vitamin did no good at all, it's a risk not worth taking.

"If there is no benefit from taking something, you shouldn't take even a small risk of harm," Lonn says.

There is no need to worry if you take a multivitamin that contains recommended amounts of vitamin E. But Lonn advises people not to take pills containing high amounts (400 IU or more) of vitamin E.

Is Vitamin E Dead?

B. Greg Brown, MD, PhD, head of the atherosclerosis research lab at the University of Washington School of Medicine, was one of the first scientists to suggest that vitamin E and other antioxidant vitamins may not work the way they were supposed to.

"Vitamin E has been very clearly shown to be of no benefit to the general problem of cancer or heart disease," Brown says. "Studies are still looking at whether vitamin E can help prostate cancer, [mouth and throat] cancer, and severe macular degeneration. But all in all, there is relatively little hope for a major effect. There's not a lot of hope for vitamin E. It's proven to be without benefit."

Brown's editorial accompanies the Lott study in the March 16 issue of JAMA.

The Real Vitamin E Harm

What worries Lonn and Brown isn't heart failure caused by vitamin E.

"The scary thing is not that vitamin E will cause harm. It's that people will take something that does no good instead of something we know will help," Lonn says. "Often people think, 'Well, I am going to be fine because I am taking a bunch of vitamins.' We see that even in people who have had two or three heart attacks already. They won't take their medications, but a bunch of vitamins they will take. That is where the damage lies rather than in the small risk from the vitamin E pill itself."

Brown, a cardiologist, says he far too often sees the same thing.

"The one thing that is really of concern is that a person will say, 'I am taking a vitamin, so I don't have to exercise or quit smoking or take a cholesterol-lowering drug," he says. "So that can be harmful in turning people away from proven therapies toward those with no benefit. Maintaining that position of zealotry can be more harmful than simply taking the vitamin itself."

Thanksgiving Day is a time-honored American tradition, a time for family gatherings and a holiday meal that encourages over-the-top decadence. And for many (some 97% of us), the thought of a Thanksgiving without turkey is heresy. We gobble up roughly 45 million turkeys to celebrate the annual holiday.

To help make sure your Thanksgiving dinner is safe, nutritious, and delicious, we asked the experts for some timely turkey tips.

A Little Background

The tom turkey, the larger male bird decorated with colorful plumage, has a long wattle -- a fleshy, wrinkled fold of skin hanging down from the throat -- and is known for his trademark "gobble." The hens are smaller and less colorful than the males, and make only a clicking sound.

Both males and females are raised extensively for their excellent meat (and for eggs). The most common breeds in the United States are the Bronze, Narragansett, White Holland, and Bourbon Red.

We've all heard the legend about the first Thanksgiving: After a tough first year in America in 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated a successful fall harvest of fruits, corn, and other vegetables. They had beaten the odds, and for that, they were mighty thankful. The Pilgrims' Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day to give thanks that was shared by the new colonists and their Native American neighbors.

The tradition continued each year after the harvest, and in the late 1770s, the Continental Congress suggested a national Thanksgiving day. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt later declared that the holiday would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.)

Turkey Prep 101

For most of us, there's no doubt that a turkey will be the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving feast. The only question: Should we buy it fresh or frozen?

Frozen birds tend to be less expensive, but they require more time to defrost properly.

"If you have the room to defrost a frozen turkey in your refrigerator, plan on one day to thaw [each] 4-5 pounds," recommends culinary nutritionist Jackie Newgent. Place the wrapped bird on a tray on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator so the juices won't contaminate other foods.

Another safe method of defrosting is to submerge the bird, breast side down, in cold water, and change the water every 30 minutes. With this method, thawing takes approximately 30 minutes per pound.

"Defrosting in the sink is time-consuming, and if you don't change the water to keep it cold, you risk the chance of bacterial contamination," advises Newgent.

For purists, nothing can compare with the mouth-watering aromas of slowly roasting a turkey to golden perfection in the oven. Deep-frying is a popular alternative cooking method, though it requires the right equipment and lots of oil.

If you prefer the crispy fried version, don't worry about the extra fat calories, says registered dietitian Newgent: "Thanksgiving only happens once a year, so just go for it and enjoy!"

Newgent also shares a few basic turkey-cooking tips:

• Buy 1 pound of turkey per person. That will allow plenty for the feast and leftovers, too.
• Make sure the bird is completely thawed before cooking; otherwise, it will not cook uniformly.
• Cook the turkey to the proper temperature. A meat thermometer is the only way to ensure proper cooking to 180 degrees. Place the thermometer deep into the thigh, without touching the bone.
• Slowly cooking the turkey at 325 degrees will result in the most moist and delicious meat. Higher temperatures can overcook or dry out the bird.
• Rub the bird with olive oil and season lightly with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powders, and a little sage. The rest of the meal is so flavorful that you shouldn't overpower the bird with heavy seasonings, Newgent says.
• Baste oven-baked birds with their juices and a little butter for added moistness and rich color.
• Cover the drumsticks and breast with foil when the bird is two-thirds done to prevent drying and scorching.
• Plan to take advantage of all cooking surfaces when you prepare the meal. Use shallow baking dishes that fit on an oven shelf under the turkey. Prepare other dishes on the stovetop and in the microwave.

This oil's got history going for it, that's for sure. One of the oldest known cultivated trees in the world, the olive tree is native to Asia Minor. It is thought to have spread to the Mediterranean region -- now well-known for its use of olive oil -- about 6,000 years ago.

You can buy domestic olive oil (using mostly Californian grown olives) or imported oils from France, Greece, Spain, and Italy.

This uniquely green and flavorful oil can be less green and less flavorful, depending on the type you buy. If you want to use it at high temperatures or in baking, try one of the "light" olive oils. This type goes through a fine filtration process, producing lighter-colored oil that lacks the classic olive flavor.

What if you want a fragrant and flavorful oil, for salad dressings or for adding to a dish after cooking? Olive oil that's extra-virgin and cold-pressed (a chemical-free process that involves only pressure, producing an oil with low acidity) is considered the fruitiest and finest type, according to The Food Network's online encyclopedia.

More and more people are cooking with olive oil, perhaps because Mediterranean cuisine is in vogue, or because of the oil's distinctive flavor, or its potential health benefits. How about all of the above?

April 14, 2005 -- The yips -- a condition that makes some golfers unable to appropriately complete a golf stroke -- might be a movement disorder, according to a new study.

If so, it seems to be a task-specific problem seen with putting, says neurologist Charles Adler, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Adler and colleagues studied 20 right-handed, middle-aged male golfers; half had the yips. The researchers used electromyography (EMG) to monitor nerve impulses in the men's muscles while putting, holding a putter, writing by hand, sitting, and extending their arms.

The men also rated their own golf strokes, trying 75 putts at 3, 6, and 8 feet on an artificial putting surface.

Problem Only Seen During Putting

The yips only occurred during putting. Half of the men with the yips had EMG-documented contractions in their wrist muscles right before the putter hit the ball, say researchers.

Those men tended to be older, have higher current and best previous golf handicaps, and have had the yips for fewer years than those who had the yips but did not have the contractions.

The men with the yips and contractions also tended to make fewer putts and had a greater degree of error in missing the putts.

Related Conditions?

The contractions were similar to those seen in writers' cramp or musicians' cramp, says Adler in a news release. Only two men in the yip group said they'd felt the yips in the experiment, but five of them showed EMG signs of the contractions, the researchers say.

Adler's team presented their results in Miami Beach, Fla., at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. They called for larger studies of the yips.

"It's my metabolism!"

Sound familiar? If you're carrying some extra pounds (and having a hard time losing them), it's tempting to put the blame on a sluggish metabolism.

But is your metabolism really the reason it's often so hard to lose weight? And, more important, is there anything you can do about it?

WebMD asked experts to explore facts and myths about metabolism -- and the good news is, there are things you can do to help boost your body's calorie-burning power.

What Is Metabolism?

Your metabolism, experts say, involves a complex network of hormones and enzymes that not only convert food into fuel but also affect how efficiently you burn that fuel.

"The process of metabolism establishes the rate at which we burn our calories and, ultimately, how quickly we gain weight or how easily we lose it," says Robert Yanagisawa, MD, director of the Medically Supervised Weight Management Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

Of course, not everyone burns calories at the same rate.

Your metabolism is influenced by your age (metabolism naturally slows about 5% per decade after age 40); your sex (men generally burn more calories at rest than women); and proportion of lean body mass (the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate tends to be).

And yes, heredity makes a difference.

"Some people just burn calories at a slower rate than others," says Barrie Wolfe-Radbill, RD, a nutritionist specializing in weight loss at New York University Medical Center.

Occasionally, Yanagisawa says, a defect in the thyroid gland can slow metabolism, though this problem is relatively rare.

And here's a fact that may surprise you: the more weight you carry, the faster your metabolism is likely running.

"The simple fact is that the extra weight causes your body to work harder just to sustain itself at rest, so in most instances, the metabolism is always running a bit faster," says Molly Kimball, RD, sports and lifestyle nutritionist at the Oscher's Clinic's Elmwood Fitness Center.

That's one reason it's almost always easiest to lose weight at the start of a diet, and harder later on, Kimball says: "When you are very overweight your metabolism is already running so high that any small cut in calories will result in an immediate loss."

Then, when you lose significant amounts of body fat and muscle, your body needs fewer calories to sustain itself, she says. That helps explain why it's so easy to regain weight after you've worked to lose it.

"If two people both weigh 250 pounds, and one got there by dieting down from 350 and the other one was always at 250, the one who got there by cutting calories is going to have a slower metabolism," says Yanagisawa. "That means they will require fewer calories to maintain their weight than the person who never went beyond 250 pounds."

Whether it's pounding the pavement, logging miles on the bike, or climbing those stairs that seem to go nowhere, it's all about cardio exercise. But other than a sweaty t-shirt, what do you have to show for your workout? A slimmer stomach? Killer quads? Are you exercising for the right amount of time to reap the full health benefits of cardiovascular fitness, or often enough?

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Exercise experts, including fitness maven Denise Austin, answer cardio questions for WebMD, so you can make the most of your muscle burn.

Cardio Exercise: The Heart of the Matter

"Cardiovascular exercise is any type of exercise that increases the work of the heart and lungs," says Tommy Boone, PhD, a founding member of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists. "Walking, jogging, and running are common forms of cardiovascular, or aerobic, exercise."

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From running and walking, to swimming, elliptical cross-training, biking, Stairmaster, and rowing -- to name a few -- the physical benefits of cardio exercise abound, explains says Len Kravitz, PhD, senior exercise physiologist for IDEA Health and Fitness Association. They include:

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• Reduced risk of heart disease
• Improved blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• Improved heart function
• Reduced risk of osteoporosis
• Improved muscle mass

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"The American College of Sports Medicine and the CDC recommend, for health, that adults should accumulate 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days of the week," says Kravitz, who is also a coordinator of exercise science at the University of New Mexico. "And to improve cardiovascular endurance, they recommend 20 to 60 minutes on three to five days per week."

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Now that you know the benefits of cardio exercise, where should your heart-pumping fitness plan begin?

Getting Into the Zone

To help you make the most of your cardio exercise workout -- help your heart, increase muscle, and lose fat -- Denise Austin, fitness expert, author of seven books, including Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, and star of 50 fitness videos, gives WebMD some tips.

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"To reap all the benefits of a cardio workout, you should sustain your workout for 20 minutes or more -- I do 30 minutes myself -- on a schedule of about three to four times per week," says Austin.

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Not only that, but you need to get in the zone, which calculates into burning calories and fat.

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"The best way to find out if you are burning fat is to take your pulse halfway into your cardio workout for six seconds, then add a zero to that number," Austin tells WebMD.

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This number is your heart rate per minute.

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Next, calculate your zone.

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"Take the number 220, then minus your age, then calculate 70% of that number for your target beats per minute," says Austin, and that's your zone. "If your heart rate halfway through your workout is over that 70% mark take it down a level, and if under, pick up the pace."

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Not a math wiz? There are easier ways to figure it out.

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"Another great way to find out your zone is to get a pulse monitor, which takes the math out of it," says Austin. "Or very simply, take the talk test: while you are doing aerobics, talk a sentence. If you are too winded to finish the sentence, you are overdoing it, or if it's too easy to say, kick it up a notch!"

Oct. 2, 2006 -- Obese people's desire to eat triggers the same brain action as addicts' desire for drugs, say researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The finding is based on seven morbidly obese people treated for up to two years with a gastric stimulator. The implanted device makes the stomach expand by giving tiny electric jolts to the vagus nerve. This, say Gene-Jack Wang, MD, and colleagues, signals the brain to make a person feel less hungry.

The seven study participants lost an average 11.6% of their original body weight. At the time of the study, six of the seven still weighed at least 5% less than they used to.

When the device is turned on, Wang and colleagues now report, it stimulates a part of the brain linked to emotional eating -- that is, eating to soothe emotional distress. The participants reported less desire for emotional eating when the device was turned on.

"The brain regions activated by gastric stimulation overlap with those reported during craving responses in addicted subjects, supporting the commonalities in the [brain circuits] that underlie compulsive food intake and compulsive drug intake," Wang and colleagues conclude.

The findings appear in the Oct. 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

May 2, 2006 -- Obesity may be more common that previously thought in the U.S.

In the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, researchers note that national obesity statistics typically rely on self-reported weight and height, which are often wrong.

Those inaccuracies often make people sound lighter or taller than they actually are, write Majid Ezzati, PhD, and colleagues. Ezzati works at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Self-reported weight and height don't always match reality, so U.S. obesity statistics are too low, Ezzati's team argues.

The researchers recalculated America's obesity statistics, adjusting for those errors. The result: The nation's obesity estimates went up.

Corrected Obesity Statistics

Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) over 30, according to the CDC.

In 2002, 28.7% of men and 34.5% of women in the U.S. were obese, Ezzati and colleagues estimate.

The uncorrected estimate for that year indicated that 16% of men and 21.5% of women were obese.

Ezzati's team based their corrections on data from two large, national surveys of U.S. adults:

• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS): Given by telephone
• National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES): given in person, with some participants measured and weighed afterwards

Ezzati and colleagues compared BRFSS and NHANES data for similar years. They found that people tended to report their height and weight more accurately in person than over the phone, but that all self-reports generally missed the mark.

Weight, Height, and Reality

Women tended to underreport their weight, the study shows. Men didn't do that, but men aged 20-44 tended to overestimate their height more than women, especially in telephone interviews.

After age 44, men and women overestimated height to a similar extent. Height often dips with age. Middle-aged or older adults who haven't measured their height lately may mistakenly think they're still as tall as in their youth, the researchers note.

Such errors stack the deck in favor of a lighter BMI (body mass index). BMI is calculated based on height and weight. A BMI of more than 25 but less than 30 is considered overweight, while a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

There are other ways to calculate size and shape, such as comparing waist size to hip size. But researchers often use BMI to track obesity.

If height and weight aren't right, neither are BMI and obesity statistics. It's like looking in a circus mirror that makes us look taller and leaner than we really are.

Where Obesity Lives

Ezzati and colleagues identified the states (and Washington, D.C.) where obesity was most common in 2000, based on the new calculations. Here are those findings, along with the percentage of obese men or women in those areas.

Highest prevalence of obese men:

• Texas (31%)
• Mississippi (30%)

Highest prevalence of obese women:

• Alabama (37%)
• Washington, D.C. (37%)
• Louisiana (37%)
• Mississippi (37%)
• Texas (37%)
• South Carolina (36%)

Lowest prevalence of obese men:

• Colorado (18%)
• Washington, D.C. (21%)
• Montana (21%)

Lowest prevalence of obese women:

• Montana (16%)
• Colorado (24%)
• Massachusetts (27%)

Oct. 18, 2005 -- How much exercise does it take to lose extra weight?

Provided you're not consuming too many calories, any amount of exercise may help. About five hours of weekly exercise may bring the biggest weight loss for obese adults who are also watching their intake of fat and calories.

So say researchers including John Jakicic, PhD. Jakicic leads the University of Pittsburgh's health and physical activity department.

Jakicic and colleagues studied nearly 200 obese women for two years. Their results were presented in Vancouver, Canada, at the North American Association for the Study of Obesity's annual scientific meeting.

Exercise Plans

The women in Jakicic's study were about 37 years old. Their average body mass index (BMI) was 32. A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese.

The women all agreed to exercise. They were randomly assigned by the researchers to one of four workout plans:

• Moderate amount of moderate-intensity exercise
• Moderate amount of vigorous exercise
• A lot of moderate-intensity exercise
• A lot of vigorous exercise

Moderate amounts of exercise were designed to burn 1,000 calories per week. The plans requiring lots of exercise were designed to burn 2,000 calories weekly.

Rules for Eating

The golden rule of weight loss is that calories burned must exceed calories consumed. The study tackled both ends of that equation.

Besides exercising, the women also limited their intake of calories and fat.

They were told to consume 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day. Fat was to account for 20% to 30% of those calories.

Remember, the study lasted for two years. It wasn't a short exercise blitz or crash diet. Most women completed the study (172 women, or 90%).

Who Lost Weight?

All of the women who finished the study lost a significant amount of weight.

Those who lost the most weight reported logging 270 to 300 minutes of exercise per week. That's 4.5 to 5 hours weekly.

Here are the average percentages of body weight lost by each group:

• Moderate amount of moderate-intensity exercise: 4.9%
• Moderate amount of vigorous exercise: 3.7%
• A lot of moderate-intensity exercise: 6.5%
• A lot of vigorous exercise: 7.2%

Higher Bar for the Obese

The CDC recommends that all adults get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week. That adds up to 150 minutes per week.

That amount wasn't designed with weight loss in mind. "More intense or longer periods of physical activity may be needed to control body weight," states the CDC's web site.

Jakicic agrees. "Clearly, overweight individuals have different exercise needs than the general public when it comes to increasing their energy expenditure," he says in a news release.

"Energy expenditure" means calories burned.

"To maximize weight loss and minimize weight regain, it appears that overweight individuals should supplement dietary changes with approximately 300 minutes of exercise each week, which is twice the amount recommended for health in the general public," Jakicic continues.

Next Steps

If Jakicic's results are on track, what do they mean in the real world?

Should someone exercise 45 minutes a day, six days a week, for a total of 270 minutes per week? Or would five, one-hour workouts do? Can each day's minutes be split into several shorter sessions?

Jakicic and colleagues call for more work to sort out the details.

Consult a doctor before starting a weight loss or exercise plan.

April 1, 2005 -- It sounds too good to be true but an increasing number of Americans are buying into the notion that a dietary supplement called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, can help them both lose weight and increase muscle mass.

A new study funded by the leading manufacturer of CLA suggests just that. But experts tell WebMD that the claims about the supplement far outweigh the science. The researcher who discovered CLA says that while it can help people replace fat with muscle, it is no miracle weight loss aid.

"I have been telling people for years that this is not a weight loss product," Michael W. Pariza, PhD, tells WebMD. "If someone takes CLA to lose weight but doesn't change their diet or exercise patterns they are going to be disappointed."

The Research

CLA is a natural occurring fatty acid found in meats and dairy products, with claims of helping people lose fat, maintain weight loss, retain lean muscle mass, and control type 2 diabetes -- the type of diabetes that is often associated with obesity.

Early animal studies following its identification by Pariza and colleagues in the late 1970s raised hopes that it could be used to fight human cancer.

The popular dietary supplement is now sold in health food stores and on the Internet.

In a study published last Maystudy published last May involving 180 people who were overweight, those who took CLA for a year lost between 7% and 9% of their body fat even though they did not change their lifestyles or eating habits.

But CLA users lost only a modest amount of weight -- 4 pounds during the yearlong study. And the investigation did little to silence concerns about the long-term safety of the supplement. The volunteers taking CLA had changes in certain heart disease risk factors.

CLA users had slightly higher LDL "bad" cholesterol and slightly lower HDL "good" cholesterol than nonusers. And the CLA group had higher white blood cell counts and lipoprotein (a) levels -- also known as lipoprotein little (a). Both are markers of inflammation linked to heart disease.

In this follow-up study, 134 of the overweight participants either continued taking CLA for another year or could start taking the supplement if they had been in the placebo group. Both groups took 3.4 grams of CLA a day and continued their normal lifestyle habits. They ate what they wanted without restricting calories and continued their usual amounts of physical activity.

The study was funded by the company that markets Tonalin CLA, the largest selling brand of the supplement. The findings are reported in the April 1 issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

The group that had already been taking CLA lost no more weight or body fat, but they maintained the body fat losses seen in the previous year. People who began taking the supplement during year two of the study lost an average of 3.5 pounds and also saw reductions in overall body fat.

The safety picture for those who took the supplement for two years was somewhat reassuring. Total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol were reduced slightly, while HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and fasting blood glucose levels remained unchanged.

But there were consistent increases in lipoprotein levels associated with CLA use. Lipoprotein levels are believed to be independent predictors of heart disease risk.

CLA use was also associated with increases in white blood cells and blood platelet counts, which suggested an inflammatory response to use of the supplement. Inflammatory responses like these are believed to lead to blood vessel damage seen in atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

Researcher Jean-Michel Gaullier and colleagues concluded that the role of CLA in cardiovascular risk is still "equivocal."

"Further studies are needed to determine if there is an effect of CLA on cardiovascular risk and inflammation in humans," they wrote.

Others Agree

In a review of the CLA research, published last year, California nutritionists Lisa Rainer, MS, RD, and Cynthia J. Heiss, PhD, concluded that while the animal studies on CLA are promising, the research in humans remains inconclusive.

"The existing studies of CLA supplementation in human beings are difficult to interpret because of the different parameters measured and the variances in dosage, duration of administration, and subject characteristics," they write.

In an interview with WebMD, Rainer said she would not recommend CLA supplementation for weight control on the basis of the studies she has seen.

"More trials need to be done in human beings before we really know the long-term benefits and safety," she says.

But Pariza, who began taking CLA when it became available in supplement form almost a decade ago, believes strongly that long-term use by healthy people is not only safe but beneficial.

He says CLA may have merit as a weight loss supplement when combined with another weight-reducing treatment or may singularly promote loss of body fat and maintenance of muscle. He says the supplement also can subsequently reduce the risk of weight regain.

Nov. 11, 2004 -- Going to church may do more than bring out your spiritual side; it could make you a healthier eater, according to a new study.

Researchers found that people who regularly attend church eat 25% more of the fruits and vegetables that pack the biggest nutritional punch. These nutritional powerhouses include citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, dark leafy greens, carrots, and cantaloupe.

"The body is your temple, and we should treat it that way," says researcher Deidre Griffith of the Saint Louis University, in a news release. "Church can be a big part of your support system for changing your diet."

Griffith presented the results of the study this week at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C.

Church May Foster Healthy Eating Habits

In the study, researchers surveyed 315 people about their church attendance and eating habits. Most of the participants were black, 78% were female, and 32% had incomes below the federal poverty level.

The results showed that people who attended church ate 25% more of the most nutritious fruits and vegetables than those who did not go to church.

All of the participants ate the most popular fruits and vegetables, including corn, iceberg lettuce, and bananas. But the study showed that people who went to church frequently, such as choir members, participants in bible study groups, and others, ate more of the fruits and vegetables that contain the most vitamins and minerals.

Researchers say going to church may foster healthy eating habits, and the results suggest that churches should take an active role in encouraging these types of healthy behaviors.

"We're saying church membership or having that church community is one of the key links in the long chain of social support structures that help people eat better," says Griffith.

Aug. 13, 2004 -- James Bond may prefer his martinis, but a new study shows red wine beats gin, shaken or stirred, when it comes to heart health.

Researchers found drinking moderate amounts of both alcoholic beverages had beneficial effects in reducing inflammation in the blood, which has been linked to artery-clogging plaque buildup and heart disease. But red wine had a significantly greater effect on fighting inflammation in the blood.

"It's clear from these results that while drinking some form of alcohol lowers inflammatory markers, red wine has a much greater effect than gin," says Emanuel Rubin, MD, a pathology professor at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, in a news release.

Researchers say that many studies have linked drinking alcohol, especially red wine, to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. But few studies have compared the effects of different types of alcoholic beverages in reducing risk factors for heart attack and stroke, such as inflammatory markers in the blood.

High levels of C-reactive protein and other markers of inflammation in the blood are risk factors that have been implicated in heart disease and stroke, says Rubin.

Red Wine Fights Clogged Arteries

In the study, 40 healthy men consumed 30 grams of ethanol either in the form of two glasses (about 10 ounces) of red wine (Merlot) or 3.3 ounces of gin with dinner each day for 28 days. All of the participants also followed relatively the same diet and exercise program during the study.

Researchers analyzed blood samples before and after the study, and found both wine and gin had anti-inflammatory effects.

Both groups had lower levels of fibrinogen, which clots blood and is a risk factor for heart attack. They also had lower levels of the inflammatory marker IL-1.

But those who drunk red wine also had lower levels of C-reactive protein and two other inflammatory markers.

Researchers say the antioxidant effects of the polyphenols found in red wine, but not in gin, are likely responsible for the additional heart-healthy effects. Beer and whisky also have high levels of polyphenols.

Rubin says one or two glasses of red wine a day is probably beneficial, but these results provide only indirect evidence of a protective effect against heart disease.

May 24, 2004 -- Obese and overweight women are at increased risk of getting suspicious results from screening mammograms, research shows.

Mammograms don't miss any more cancers in heavy women than in thin women. But the more a woman weighs, the greater the risk that her mammogram will have false positive results. That means more tests - and more anxiety.

Joann G. Elmore, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues analyzed more than 100,000 mammograms from nearly 70,000 women. The report their findings in the May 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Compared with underweight or normal weight women, overweight and obese women were more likely to be recalled for additional tests," Elmore and co-workers write. "Obese women had more than a 20% increased risk of having a false positive mammogram result."

At the personal level, it's not a huge increase in risk. Overall, a woman faces about one in 10 chance of getting a false positive result on a screening mammogram. Obesity increases that risk from 10% to 12%.

But those extra tests add up fast. For an estimated 10 million obese women in the U.S., this means some 200,000 false positives. At $600 per retest, that adds up to an extra $120 million in U.S. health-care costs. And that doesn't even begin to measure the personal costs.

"We cannot put a quantitative value on the resultant anxiety these 200,000 women would additionally experience," Elmore and colleagues note.

Even so, obese women need mammograms more than skinny women. That's because a breast examination is more likely to miss small tumors in women with very large breasts.

The researchers suggest that larger mammography plates may help get better images of women with large breasts. They also suggest that weight loss may lower the likelihood of an unnecessarily traumatic experience when it's time for a routine mammogram.

Nov. 26, 2003 -- Before you get too comfortable at the buffet table this holiday season, you may want to take a second look at the scale. A new poll shows many Americans may be deluding themselves about their weight.

The Gallup survey found that although more than half of those surveyed were overweight according to their BMI (body mass index, a measurement of weight in relationship to height), only about 40% think of themselves that way.

The delusion doesn't stop there. The poll found that 37% of Americans would still be classified as overweight according to standard BMI charts even if they did lose weight and reach what they think would be their "ideal" weight, including 4% who would still be considered obese at their "ideal" weight.

Americans Kidding Themselves About Their Weight

The survey, based on telephone interviews with 1,007 adults across the U.S., was conducted November 3-5. Researchers used the heights and weights that the respondents reported to calculate their BMI. They found 55% of all Americans would be classified as either overweight (35%) or obese (20%).

According to standards, BMI scores of:

• Less than 18.5 are considered underweight
• 18.5 to 24.9 are considered normal
• 25 to 29.9 suggest the person is overweight
• 30 or higher suggest the person is obese

Researchers found that men were more likely than women to be classified as overweight and obese based on their BMI -- 68% of men compared with 43% of women.

Despite those numbers, just 41% of Americans overall said they were either "somewhat" (37%) or "very" (4%) overweight.

Good Intentions Not Enough to Lose Weight

Even though fewer women were overweight than men, the poll shows women were much more motivated to lose weight than men. Despite the fact that two-thirds of men were considered overweight, only about half (51%) said they wanted to lose weight versus 68% of women who said they wanted to lose weight.

But good intentions aren't enough. Among the obese, who are most likely to suffer serious medical complications as a result of their weight, more than nine in 10 said they wanted to lose weight but only 45% were seriously trying to do so.

The same held true for overweight adults; only about half of those who said they wanted to lose weight actually were trying to do so.

With so many people wanting to lose weight, researchers say it's not surprising that about two-thirds of Americans said their ideal weight is below their actual weight. On average, men reported an ideal weight that was 14 pounds lower than their actual weight, and women reported an ideal weight almost 19 pounds lower then their current weight.

However, according to the BMI charts, researchers found that 54% of those who are overweight, but not obese, would still be overweight if they reached their ideal weight, and three-quarters of currently obese people would still be overweight if they reached their ideal weight.

Although those numbers are discouraging, researchers warn that BMI isn't everything when it comes to measuring a healthy weight. BMI is a more accurate indicator of overweight and obesity than relying on weight alone, but the National Institutes of Health cautions that BMI does not directly measure body fat.

For example, some very muscular people may fall into the overweight category when they are actually healthy and fit. In addition, some people who have lost muscle mass, such as the elderly, may be in the healthy weight category when they are actually underweight with reduced nutritional reserves.

SOURCES: Gallup Survey, conducted Nov. 3-5, 2003. News release, Gallup Organization.

July 9, 2003 -- Finding out how much of a little-known but artery-clogging fat your favorite snack and processed foods contain is about to get a lot easier. The FDA today announced that manufacturers will soon be required to list on the Nutrition Facts label the amount of trans fatty acids, or trans fat, in foods.

The new rule will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, but manufacturers will start phasing in the new labels well before that deadline. It's the first major change in the Nutrition Facts label since it was established in 1993.

"We are empowering Americans to make healthier choices about the foods they eat," says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in a news release. "By putting trans fat information on food labels, we are making it possible for consumers to make better educated choices to lower their intake of these unhealthy fats and cholesterol."

Trans fats are frequently found in the same foods that contain other types of fat, such as cookies, crackers, fried foods such as french fries and chicken fried in shortening, donuts, and margarine sticks.

When a Good Fat Goes Bad

Trans fatty acids are the result of a process called hydrogenation that converts a relatively healthy, unsaturated liquid fat, such as vegetable oil, into a solid one, to make the product shelf stable and stay fresh longer. When the fat becomes solid, the body treats it more like a saturated fat, like butter or animal fat. But it is not classified as saturated fat on food labels

"Trans fat, like saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, raises LDL 'bad' cholesterol levels in the blood, which increases the risk for heart disease," says Claude Lenfant, MD, director of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in the release. "It is therefore desirable to have food labels display all the information that can help consumers choose foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol as part of a healthy diet."

The new regulations will require food makers to list the number of trans fat grams a food contains in addition to the saturated and unsaturated fat content and cholesterol level.

Jan. 3, 2003 -- Houston is the couch potato capital of the U.S. and Honolulu is the fittest city, say the editors of Men's Fitness magazine.

The "America's Fattest City" award goes to Houston for the third year, uh, running. The ratings are based on a major city's score in several categories such as fruit/vegetable consumption, sports participation, smoking, drinking, air quality, and percentage of overweight/sedentary residents.

"Given the region's climate (hot and humid), air quality (abysmal), and relative lack of outdoor recreation, staying active presents a Texas-sized challenge," the magazine states. "And with its love of junk food, Houston is a vastrodome of bad nutrition."

If you don't live in Houston, don't let out your belt just yet. The annual ratings are meant as a wake-up call to stop what the CDC calls a national epidemic of obesity. Two in every three Americans have a serious weight problem.

Here's the magazine's list of America's 10 fattest cities:

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Philadelphia
5. St. Louis
6. Cleveland
7. Atlanta
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Dallas
10. Charlotte, N.C.

And its list of the 10 fittest cities:

1. Honolulu
2. Seattle
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado Springs, Col.
5. San Diego
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Denver
8. Virginia Beach, Va.
9. Tucson, Ariz.
10. Sacramento, Calif.

May 28, 2002 -- Here's more good news about fruits and veggies. "Five a day" can lower your blood pressure, greatly reducing risk of heart disease.

In a six-month study involving nearly 700 people, half were asked to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; half served as controls and didn't change their diet.

The results: Those who ate the good stuff had higher levels of numerous healthy antioxidants than those who didn't.

Also: "significant decreases" in blood pressure were seen in the fruit-and-veggie group, reports Andrew Neil, PhD, a public health researcher at the University of Oxford, England. His study appears in this week's issue of The Lancet.

"The falls in blood pressure in our study ... would substantially reduce cardiovascular disease," he writes. His results match those of a larger study, which showed lower rates of high blood pressure in people who followed a similar five-a-day plan.

Most of the people participating in his study were women about 46 years old, and in the upper socioeconomic classes; 16% of the study participants were smokers, he reports. Neither group was advised to reduce fat intake; and the researchers saw no change in total cholesterol levels and only a small increase in body weight, he says.

"Therefore, the fall in blood pressure achieved in our study is unlikely to be attributable to reduced fat intake or changes in physical activity," writes Neil. "The reduction in blood pressure probably resulted from increased potassium intake, and possibly from some reduction in sodium, although participants were not advised specifically to reduce salt intake."

Here are some tips adapted from the 5 A Day For Better Health program -- a national nutrition effort to encourage Americans to eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day for better health:

• Wake up to fruit. Drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or incorporate a helping of fruit into your breakfast every day.
• Think "fruit" or "vegetable" when snacking. Munch on a handful of carrots or a piece of fruit when you get the urge to snack.
• Keep the pantry packed with easy-to-prepare dried, canned, or frozen fruits and vegetables.
• Make them visible. You're more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they are easily accessible. Wash some carrots or celery sticks and keep them close at hand in the refrigerator. Put clean fruit out for the family to snack on.
• Use the microwave to your advantage. It's a great (and convenient) way to quickly prepare vegetables for meals.

Visit the 5 A Day site at http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/5aday/ for a wide variety of simple, easy-to-make recipes.

If you've got diabetesdiabetes, the right meal plan can help you keep blood sugar under control. Fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products -- even sweets now and then -- all have a place in your plan.

"A meal plan provides a specific approach to controlling blood sugar," says Dianne Davis, RD, LDN, CDE, a dietitian with the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Center in Nashville, Tenn. "If you have diabetes, a meal plan is necessary."

That's because a meal plan helps ensure you eat a balanced diet high in fiber and low in fats. It can also "help you lose weight, by controlling portion sizes and calories," Davis says.

Which Diabetes Meal Plan Is Right for You?

Your lifestyle and the type of diabetes treatment you're getting -- whether you're taking premeal insulin or not -- will determine the type of meal plan best for you, says Davis.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are all factored into a plan. But carbs are an especially important component since they have the biggest impact on blood sugar.

"Your meal plan can also include your favorite foods," Davis adds. "No food is off-limits -- it's a matter of how much you eat, when you eat it, and what it will do to your blood sugar."

With that in mind -- and understanding you should talk with your doctor before making big changes in your diabetes diet -- here are four meal-planning systems.

The Diabetes Food Pyramid

The diabetes food pyramid is similar to the USDA food pyramid you see on food labels. It is a pyramid in which a healthy diet means eating more grains, fruits, and vegetables, and less meat, sweets, and fats.

The diabetes food pyramid's general recommendations are:

• Grains, beans, and starchy vegetables: 6 or more servings/day. One serving: 1 slice bread; 1/2 small bagel; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, pasta, rice; 3/4 cup ready-to-eat cereal; 1/2 cup cooked beans, corn, peas.
• Fruits: 2-4 servings daily. One serving: 1 medium-size fresh fruit; 1/2 cup canned fruit; 1/2 cup fruit juice.
• Vegetables: 3-5 servings a day. One serving: 1 cup raw vegetable; 1/2 cup vegetable juice.
• Meat, Fish, Cheese: 2-3 servings/day. One serving: 2-3 ounces cooked lean meat, skinless poultry, or fish; I egg; 2 tablespoons peanut butter; 2-3 ounces cheese.
• Milk and Yogurt: 2-3 servings daily. One serving: 1 cup (8 ounces) milk or yogurt.
• Fats, Sweets, and Alcohol: eat these in small amounts. One serving: 1 teaspoon butter, margarine, or mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon cream cheese or salad dressing; 1/2 cup ice cream.

Combined foods, like eggplant lasagna, for example, will include servings from several food groups (1 vegetable, 1 meat, 1 fat).

This meal system has limitations, says Davis. "When you follow the diabetes food pyramid, you are not controlling specific grams of carbs and might not be able to achieve very tight blood sugar control," she tells WebMD. "However, the pyramid helps you see which foods are carbohydrates -- to get you acquainted with them."

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

Indeed, the year 2000 was a very good year for wine makers -- and not just because it brought a bumper crop of cabernets, zinfandels, and chardonnays. Evidence of the far-reaching health benefits of wine continued to pour in from researchers around the world.

Here's a review of the good news for wine makers -- and wine lovers:

A Healthier Heart

Several reports in 2000 confirmed the glad tidings that wine -- in moderation, of course -- reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. In the September issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute reported that, compared to teetotalers, light drinkers who consumed wine cut their risk of dying prematurely by almost one third, and wine drinkers as a group had significantly lower mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Actually, drinking any kind of alcoholic beverage helped, the scientists found. But by far the biggest benefit accrued to wine drinkers.

What's more, scientists are beginning to understand how wine may bestow its salutary benefits. For starters, according to findings published in the January 2000 issue of European Heart Journal, this most ancient of beverages appears to dilate arteries and increase blood flow, thus lowering the risk of the kind of clots that cut off blood supply and damage heart muscles.

In addition, the fruit of the vine appears to boost levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol, and helps prevent LDL, or bad cholesterol, from causing damage to the lining of arteries. In a study published in the May 2000 issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, scientists at the Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine in Amsterdam tested 275 men and women around the age of 32. Those who imbibed the equivalent of a glass or two of wine each day had significantly higher levels of "good" cholesterol because they remove the "bad" artery-clogging LDLs before they have a chance to choke blood vessels. Indeed, wine seems to facilitate that process, making it easier for HDLs to hustle their dangerous counterparts out of the bloodstream.

Yet even when LDLs remain behind in the arteries, substances in wine called phenols appear to help prevent the bad cholesterol from causing injury. In the November 2000 Journal of Nutrition and Biochemistry, Italian researchers from the National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research reported that phenols seem to limit the oxidation of LDLs, making them less capable of damaging the linings of arteries and, therefore, less able to set the stage for cardiovascular disease, like heart disease and stroke.

A Shield Against Cancer

Wine also may protect against several forms of another common killer: cancer. It turns out that the same phenolic compounds that lower heart disease risk also may slow the growth of breast cancer cells, according to findings reported by scientists at the University of Crete in Greece in the June 2000 issue of Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. Phenols also were shown to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells. And French scientists found evidence that an antioxidant in wine called resveratrol can put the brakes on the growth of liver cancer cells, according to a report in the July-August 2000 issue of Oncology Reports.

There also was a report that wine -- particularly red wine -- might help ward off oral cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Dentistry discovered that resveratrol and another antioxidant called quercetin may inhibit the growth of oral cancer cells. Their findings, published in the June 2000 Journal of the American Dental Association, note that red wine is loaded with a slew of other antioxidants that seem to boost its cancer-fighting abilities.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

July 2, 2001 -- After Deborah Taylor-Hough's first child was born prematurely, she and her husband found themselves traveling to the intensive care nursery twice a day. "Probably what helped me most at that time is that the ladies from my church brought us two weeks' worth of frozen meals, and I didn't have to worry about what we were eating," she says.

A few years later, when her husband was working a swing shift, Taylor-Hough wanted to serve the main meal at noon, before he left. "The morning was our family time, but I also had to cook dinner then, and I felt like getting dinner ready was taking away my life," she recalls. A friend suggested she try cooking a month's food at once and storing it in the freezer.

From those small beginnings has grown a big passion. In 1998, Taylor-Hough published Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month, and today she has more than 2,000 people involved in her email list and online discussion group.

Bulk Cooking

Here's how it works: Once a month, she spends an hour on a Thursday night writing a shopping list. The next day, she shops. ("Never shop and cook on the same day," she advises.)

On Friday night she does the prep work, like chopping onions, grating cheese, making spaghetti sauce, and browning ground beef. On Saturday she spends a solid 6 to 8 hours cooking. By the end of the day she has a month's worth of meals in the freezer.

A big surprise for Taylor-Hough was how much money she saves. Because she was buying in bulk and eating out much less, her monthly budget for food dropped from $700 to $300 for a family of five.

Her web site is loaded with recipe ideas, cooking tips, and sample meal plans. Typical dishes include soups, meat loaf, stews, casseroles, and meat items to serve over rice.

While Taylor-Hough's first book on bulk cooking gets top marks for efficiency and price-consciousness, many recipes tend toward red meat and white flour. Her newly released sequel, Frozen Assets Lite & Easy, has more healthy, low-fat recipes, she says.

In addition, the bulk cooking system is designed chiefly for main dishes, the most time-consuming part of a meal. Of course, they should be combined with fresh fruit and salad.

Once you've grasped the basic idea of bulk cooking, you adjust it to fit your own circumstances, Taylor-Hough says. And you don't have to have a large freezer for it to work. For years, she had only a small freezer on top of the refrigerator.

"Use freezer bags, freeze them flat, and then stand them on end to make better use of your space," she says. "You can easily fit two weeks of main dishes in that space. Actually, I can do a full month."

"This is a wonderful, wonderful idea," says Lauren Groveman, who hosts a radio program on food, family, and the home. "You can plan ahead when you see a crazy week coming. When you're busiest, and feeling most tired and needy, that's the most important time to go to your own freezer and benefit from healthy, home-cooked food, instead of the drive-through line at the local fast-food place."

Many foods freeze perfectly, says Groveman, whose TV show, Cooking with Lauren Groveman, premiers this fall, especially soups, stews, and chili. "Brisket is such a tough meat it's improved by slow cooking followed by freezing. Make a big batch of stock, chill it first to skim off extra fat, and divide it into containers. When you want soups or stews you don't need to start with that powdered stuff!"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."

Feb. 6, 2004 -- It may be hard for pessimists to admit, but a new study shows pessimism has its benefits.

Researchers found that a healthy dose of pessimism may come in handy in many real-life situations where optimists may be overly hopeful.

For example, the study showed that pessimists tend to fare better as gamblers and know when to cut their losses rather than let it roll. Researchers say that kind of attitude may also pay off in other situations, such as playing the stock market.

Pessimism's Plus-Side

In the study, published in this month's issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers looked at the effects of a person's disposition on their gambling behavior.

Three groups of college students were given a list of questions to determine whether they were pessimistic or optimistic as well as assess their attitudes about gambling. In a series of different tests, researchers then had the students play several hands of blackjack and play a simulated slot machine game.

Throughout the tests, researchers found that optimists were more likely to believe that they expected to win at gambling. This relationship was even stronger in individuals who experienced gambling losses. This finding was consistent with the researchers theory that the optimist would reframe a negative event (gambling losses) into a positive -- the belief that they could win.

When asked about their experiences later, optimists were also more likely to remember more wins than the pessimists.

Researchers found the greatest differences between the groups emerged after losing.

"Our data show no difference in betting between optimists and pessimists after winning. But optimists are more likely to persist in the face of losses," says researcher Bryan Gibson, a social psychologist at Central Michigan University, in a news release. "They're less ready to give up hope."

The study showed that pessimists were more likely to reduce their bets if their past performance had been poor, but the optimists seemed relatively unfazed by their losses.

Researchers say this study only looked at the effects of optimism and pessimism on gambling, but their findings may apply to other situations. For example, pessimists may have the advantage in situations where resources and opportunities are limited, such as a down stock market, while optimists may fare better in situations where persistence is rewarded in the face of adversity.

March 19, 2003 -- The scent of a good man may be music to a woman's nose. Researchers say the odorless pheromones found in male perspiration can have a dramatic effect on both a woman's mind and body. A new study found exposure to male pheromones can boost a woman's mood and stimulate the release of a hormone that regulates the menstrual cycle.

In the study, researchers applied extracts of underarm secretions from male volunteers to the upper lips of 18 women between the ages of 25 and 45. None of the women knew that male sweat had been applied to their lips, and some thought they were involved in a study of alcohol or perfume or even lemon floor wax. The women then rated their moods over six hours of exposure; they consistently reported feeling less tension and more relaxed.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," says researcher Charles J. Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

Each of the women received three applications of the underarm extract during the six-hour evaluation period, followed by three doses of exposure to ethanol (alcohol) over another six-hour period.

Researchers also found that exposure to the male pheromones also prompted a shift in blood levels of a reproductive hormone called luteinizing hormone. Levels of this hormone typically surge before ovulation, but women also experience small surges during other times in the menstrual cycle.

The study found that the male pheromone extract hastened the onset of these smaller surges and shortened the pauses between surges by 20%.

Researchers are now looking at individual compound that are found in male perspiration in hopes of identifying the elements responsible for these psychological and hormonal changes.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," says Wysocki. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

SOURCE: Biology of Reproduction, June 2003. News release, University of Pennsylvania.

July 26, 2006 -- Multitasking may make you more productive, but it also makes it harder for your brain to learn, according to a new study.

Researchers found people had a harder time learning new things when their brains were distracted by something else, like talking or listening to music.

"When distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don't learn as well as if you had paid full attention," says researcher Russell Poldrack, PhD, and UCLA associate professor of psychology, in a news release. "Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized so you cannot retrieve the information as easily."

Poldrack says distractions appear to affect the brain's learning processes, and tasks that require more attention -- like learning calculus or reading Shakespeare -- are particularly hampered.

Multitasking Disrupts Learning

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain function and activity while adults (average age, 26) learned a new task.

The 14 participants were asked to make predictions after seeing a series of clues about cards with various shapes. With one set of cards, they learned the classification task without any distractions. In the second set, they learned while listening and keeping track of a series of high and low beeps.

The results showed that multitasking didn't reduce the accuracy of the predictions immediately, but it did hurt participants' ability to remember knowledge about the task later.

Researchers found that when participants were asked questions about the cards at a follow-up session, they did much better on the task they learned without any distractions.

When asked about the task they learned with the distraction, they couldn't extrapolate, or their knowledge was less flexible about the task.

Distraction Affects Memory

The fMRIs showed that when the participants learned without distraction, an area of the brain known as the hippocampus was involved. This part of the brain is critical to the processing and storing of information.

But when they learned the task while multitasking, the hippocampus was not engaged. Instead, an area called the striatum was activated. The striatum is involved in learning new skills like riding a bicycle.

Researchers say the results show that learning while distracted or multitasking alters the brain's learning processes and changes the way people learn.

Multitasking when performing certain tasks -- like listening to music while exercising -- may be helpful. But Poldrack says tasks that distract you while you try to learn something new are likely to negatively affect your learning.

"The best thing you can do to improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember," says Poldrack.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

May 28, 2002 -- Here's more good news about fruits and veggies. "Five a day" can lower your blood pressure, greatly reducing risk of heart disease.

In a six-month study involving nearly 700 people, half were asked to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; half served as controls and didn't change their diet.

The results: Those who ate the good stuff had higher levels of numerous healthy antioxidants than those who didn't.

Also: "significant decreases" in blood pressure were seen in the fruit-and-veggie group, reports Andrew Neil, PhD, a public health researcher at the University of Oxford, England. His study appears in this week's issue of The Lancet.

"The falls in blood pressure in our study ... would substantially reduce cardiovascular disease," he writes. His results match those of a larger study, which showed lower rates of high blood pressure in people who followed a similar five-a-day plan.

Most of the people participating in his study were women about 46 years old, and in the upper socioeconomic classes; 16% of the study participants were smokers, he reports. Neither group was advised to reduce fat intake; and the researchers saw no change in total cholesterol levels and only a small increase in body weight, he says.

"Therefore, the fall in blood pressure achieved in our study is unlikely to be attributable to reduced fat intake or changes in physical activity," writes Neil. "The reduction in blood pressure probably resulted from increased potassium intake, and possibly from some reduction in sodium, although participants were not advised specifically to reduce salt intake."

Here are some tips adapted from the 5 A Day For Better Health program -- a national nutrition effort to encourage Americans to eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day for better health:

• Wake up to fruit. Drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or incorporate a helping of fruit into your breakfast every day.
• Think "fruit" or "vegetable" when snacking. Munch on a handful of carrots or a piece of fruit when you get the urge to snack.
• Keep the pantry packed with easy-to-prepare dried, canned, or frozen fruits and vegetables.
• Make them visible. You're more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they are easily accessible. Wash some carrots or celery sticks and keep them close at hand in the refrigerator. Put clean fruit out for the family to snack on.
• Use the microwave to your advantage. It's a great (and convenient) way to quickly prepare vegetables for meals.

Visit the 5 A Day site at http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/5aday/ for a wide variety of simple, easy-to-make recipes.

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."

March 19, 2003 -- The scent of a good man may be music to a woman's nose. Researchers say the odorless pheromones found in male perspiration can have a dramatic effect on both a woman's mind and body. A new study found exposure to male pheromones can boost a woman's mood and stimulate the release of a hormone that regulates the menstrual cycle.

In the study, researchers applied extracts of underarm secretions from male volunteers to the upper lips of 18 women between the ages of 25 and 45. None of the women knew that male sweat had been applied to their lips, and some thought they were involved in a study of alcohol or perfume or even lemon floor wax. The women then rated their moods over six hours of exposure; they consistently reported feeling less tension and more relaxed.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," says researcher Charles J. Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

Each of the women received three applications of the underarm extract during the six-hour evaluation period, followed by three doses of exposure to ethanol (alcohol) over another six-hour period.

Researchers also found that exposure to the male pheromones also prompted a shift in blood levels of a reproductive hormone called luteinizing hormone. Levels of this hormone typically surge before ovulation, but women also experience small surges during other times in the menstrual cycle.

The study found that the male pheromone extract hastened the onset of these smaller surges and shortened the pauses between surges by 20%.

Researchers are now looking at individual compound that are found in male perspiration in hopes of identifying the elements responsible for these psychological and hormonal changes.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," says Wysocki. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

SOURCE: Biology of Reproduction, June 2003. News release, University of Pennsylvania.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

April 1, 2005 -- It sounds too good to be true but an increasing number of Americans are buying into the notion that a dietary supplement called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, can help them both lose weight and increase muscle mass.

A new study funded by the leading manufacturer of CLA suggests just that. But experts tell WebMD that the claims about the supplement far outweigh the science. The researcher who discovered CLA says that while it can help people replace fat with muscle, it is no miracle weight loss aid.

"I have been telling people for years that this is not a weight loss product," Michael W. Pariza, PhD, tells WebMD. "If someone takes CLA to lose weight but doesn't change their diet or exercise patterns they are going to be disappointed."

The Research

CLA is a natural occurring fatty acid found in meats and dairy products, with claims of helping people lose fat, maintain weight loss, retain lean muscle mass, and control type 2 diabetes -- the type of diabetes that is often associated with obesity.

Early animal studies following its identification by Pariza and colleagues in the late 1970s raised hopes that it could be used to fight human cancer.

The popular dietary supplement is now sold in health food stores and on the Internet.

In a study published last Maystudy published last May involving 180 people who were overweight, those who took CLA for a year lost between 7% and 9% of their body fat even though they did not change their lifestyles or eating habits.

But CLA users lost only a modest amount of weight -- 4 pounds during the yearlong study. And the investigation did little to silence concerns about the long-term safety of the supplement. The volunteers taking CLA had changes in certain heart disease risk factors.

CLA users had slightly higher LDL "bad" cholesterol and slightly lower HDL "good" cholesterol than nonusers. And the CLA group had higher white blood cell counts and lipoprotein (a) levels -- also known as lipoprotein little (a). Both are markers of inflammation linked to heart disease.

In this follow-up study, 134 of the overweight participants either continued taking CLA for another year or could start taking the supplement if they had been in the placebo group. Both groups took 3.4 grams of CLA a day and continued their normal lifestyle habits. They ate what they wanted without restricting calories and continued their usual amounts of physical activity.

The study was funded by the company that markets Tonalin CLA, the largest selling brand of the supplement. The findings are reported in the April 1 issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

The group that had already been taking CLA lost no more weight or body fat, but they maintained the body fat losses seen in the previous year. People who began taking the supplement during year two of the study lost an average of 3.5 pounds and also saw reductions in overall body fat.

The safety picture for those who took the supplement for two years was somewhat reassuring. Total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol were reduced slightly, while HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and fasting blood glucose levels remained unchanged.

But there were consistent increases in lipoprotein levels associated with CLA use. Lipoprotein levels are believed to be independent predictors of heart disease risk.

CLA use was also associated with increases in white blood cells and blood platelet counts, which suggested an inflammatory response to use of the supplement. Inflammatory responses like these are believed to lead to blood vessel damage seen in atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

Researcher Jean-Michel Gaullier and colleagues concluded that the role of CLA in cardiovascular risk is still "equivocal."

"Further studies are needed to determine if there is an effect of CLA on cardiovascular risk and inflammation in humans," they wrote.

Others Agree

In a review of the CLA research, published last year, California nutritionists Lisa Rainer, MS, RD, and Cynthia J. Heiss, PhD, concluded that while the animal studies on CLA are promising, the research in humans remains inconclusive.

"The existing studies of CLA supplementation in human beings are difficult to interpret because of the different parameters measured and the variances in dosage, duration of administration, and subject characteristics," they write.

In an interview with WebMD, Rainer said she would not recommend CLA supplementation for weight control on the basis of the studies she has seen.

"More trials need to be done in human beings before we really know the long-term benefits and safety," she says.

But Pariza, who began taking CLA when it became available in supplement form almost a decade ago, believes strongly that long-term use by healthy people is not only safe but beneficial.

He says CLA may have merit as a weight loss supplement when combined with another weight-reducing treatment or may singularly promote loss of body fat and maintenance of muscle. He says the supplement also can subsequently reduce the risk of weight regain.

Nov. 11, 2004 -- Going to church may do more than bring out your spiritual side; it could make you a healthier eater, according to a new study.

Researchers found that people who regularly attend church eat 25% more of the fruits and vegetables that pack the biggest nutritional punch. These nutritional powerhouses include citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, dark leafy greens, carrots, and cantaloupe.

"The body is your temple, and we should treat it that way," says researcher Deidre Griffith of the Saint Louis University, in a news release. "Church can be a big part of your support system for changing your diet."

Griffith presented the results of the study this week at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C.

Church May Foster Healthy Eating Habits

In the study, researchers surveyed 315 people about their church attendance and eating habits. Most of the participants were black, 78% were female, and 32% had incomes below the federal poverty level.

The results showed that people who attended church ate 25% more of the most nutritious fruits and vegetables than those who did not go to church.

All of the participants ate the most popular fruits and vegetables, including corn, iceberg lettuce, and bananas. But the study showed that people who went to church frequently, such as choir members, participants in bible study groups, and others, ate more of the fruits and vegetables that contain the most vitamins and minerals.

Researchers say going to church may foster healthy eating habits, and the results suggest that churches should take an active role in encouraging these types of healthy behaviors.

"We're saying church membership or having that church community is one of the key links in the long chain of social support structures that help people eat better," says Griffith.

Aug. 13, 2004 -- James Bond may prefer his martinis, but a new study shows red wine beats gin, shaken or stirred, when it comes to heart health.

Researchers found drinking moderate amounts of both alcoholic beverages had beneficial effects in reducing inflammation in the blood, which has been linked to artery-clogging plaque buildup and heart disease. But red wine had a significantly greater effect on fighting inflammation in the blood.

"It's clear from these results that while drinking some form of alcohol lowers inflammatory markers, red wine has a much greater effect than gin," says Emanuel Rubin, MD, a pathology professor at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, in a news release.

Researchers say that many studies have linked drinking alcohol, especially red wine, to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. But few studies have compared the effects of different types of alcoholic beverages in reducing risk factors for heart attack and stroke, such as inflammatory markers in the blood.

High levels of C-reactive protein and other markers of inflammation in the blood are risk factors that have been implicated in heart disease and stroke, says Rubin.

Red Wine Fights Clogged Arteries

In the study, 40 healthy men consumed 30 grams of ethanol either in the form of two glasses (about 10 ounces) of red wine (Merlot) or 3.3 ounces of gin with dinner each day for 28 days. All of the participants also followed relatively the same diet and exercise program during the study.

Researchers analyzed blood samples before and after the study, and found both wine and gin had anti-inflammatory effects.

Both groups had lower levels of fibrinogen, which clots blood and is a risk factor for heart attack. They also had lower levels of the inflammatory marker IL-1.

But those who drunk red wine also had lower levels of C-reactive protein and two other inflammatory markers.

Researchers say the antioxidant effects of the polyphenols found in red wine, but not in gin, are likely responsible for the additional heart-healthy effects. Beer and whisky also have high levels of polyphenols.

Rubin says one or two glasses of red wine a day is probably beneficial, but these results provide only indirect evidence of a protective effect against heart disease.

May 24, 2004 -- Obese and overweight women are at increased risk of getting suspicious results from screening mammograms, research shows.

Mammograms don't miss any more cancers in heavy women than in thin women. But the more a woman weighs, the greater the risk that her mammogram will have false positive results. That means more tests - and more anxiety.

Joann G. Elmore, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues analyzed more than 100,000 mammograms from nearly 70,000 women. The report their findings in the May 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Compared with underweight or normal weight women, overweight and obese women were more likely to be recalled for additional tests," Elmore and co-workers write. "Obese women had more than a 20% increased risk of having a false positive mammogram result."

At the personal level, it's not a huge increase in risk. Overall, a woman faces about one in 10 chance of getting a false positive result on a screening mammogram. Obesity increases that risk from 10% to 12%.

But those extra tests add up fast. For an estimated 10 million obese women in the U.S., this means some 200,000 false positives. At $600 per retest, that adds up to an extra $120 million in U.S. health-care costs. And that doesn't even begin to measure the personal costs.

"We cannot put a quantitative value on the resultant anxiety these 200,000 women would additionally experience," Elmore and colleagues note.

Even so, obese women need mammograms more than skinny women. That's because a breast examination is more likely to miss small tumors in women with very large breasts.

The researchers suggest that larger mammography plates may help get better images of women with large breasts. They also suggest that weight loss may lower the likelihood of an unnecessarily traumatic experience when it's time for a routine mammogram.

Nov. 26, 2003 -- Before you get too comfortable at the buffet table this holiday season, you may want to take a second look at the scale. A new poll shows many Americans may be deluding themselves about their weight.

The Gallup survey found that although more than half of those surveyed were overweight according to their BMI (body mass index, a measurement of weight in relationship to height), only about 40% think of themselves that way.

The delusion doesn't stop there. The poll found that 37% of Americans would still be classified as overweight according to standard BMI charts even if they did lose weight and reach what they think would be their "ideal" weight, including 4% who would still be considered obese at their "ideal" weight.

Americans Kidding Themselves About Their Weight

The survey, based on telephone interviews with 1,007 adults across the U.S., was conducted November 3-5. Researchers used the heights and weights that the respondents reported to calculate their BMI. They found 55% of all Americans would be classified as either overweight (35%) or obese (20%).

According to standards, BMI scores of:

• Less than 18.5 are considered underweight
• 18.5 to 24.9 are considered normal
• 25 to 29.9 suggest the person is overweight
• 30 or higher suggest the person is obese

Researchers found that men were more likely than women to be classified as overweight and obese based on their BMI -- 68% of men compared with 43% of women.

Despite those numbers, just 41% of Americans overall said they were either "somewhat" (37%) or "very" (4%) overweight.

Good Intentions Not Enough to Lose Weight

Even though fewer women were overweight than men, the poll shows women were much more motivated to lose weight than men. Despite the fact that two-thirds of men were considered overweight, only about half (51%) said they wanted to lose weight versus 68% of women who said they wanted to lose weight.

But good intentions aren't enough. Among the obese, who are most likely to suffer serious medical complications as a result of their weight, more than nine in 10 said they wanted to lose weight but only 45% were seriously trying to do so.

The same held true for overweight adults; only about half of those who said they wanted to lose weight actually were trying to do so.

With so many people wanting to lose weight, researchers say it's not surprising that about two-thirds of Americans said their ideal weight is below their actual weight. On average, men reported an ideal weight that was 14 pounds lower than their actual weight, and women reported an ideal weight almost 19 pounds lower then their current weight.

However, according to the BMI charts, researchers found that 54% of those who are overweight, but not obese, would still be overweight if they reached their ideal weight, and three-quarters of currently obese people would still be overweight if they reached their ideal weight.

Although those numbers are discouraging, researchers warn that BMI isn't everything when it comes to measuring a healthy weight. BMI is a more accurate indicator of overweight and obesity than relying on weight alone, but the National Institutes of Health cautions that BMI does not directly measure body fat.

For example, some very muscular people may fall into the overweight category when they are actually healthy and fit. In addition, some people who have lost muscle mass, such as the elderly, may be in the healthy weight category when they are actually underweight with reduced nutritional reserves.

SOURCES: Gallup Survey, conducted Nov. 3-5, 2003. News release, Gallup Organization.

July 9, 2003 -- Finding out how much of a little-known but artery-clogging fat your favorite snack and processed foods contain is about to get a lot easier. The FDA today announced that manufacturers will soon be required to list on the Nutrition Facts label the amount of trans fatty acids, or trans fat, in foods.

The new rule will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, but manufacturers will start phasing in the new labels well before that deadline. It's the first major change in the Nutrition Facts label since it was established in 1993.

"We are empowering Americans to make healthier choices about the foods they eat," says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in a news release. "By putting trans fat information on food labels, we are making it possible for consumers to make better educated choices to lower their intake of these unhealthy fats and cholesterol."

Trans fats are frequently found in the same foods that contain other types of fat, such as cookies, crackers, fried foods such as french fries and chicken fried in shortening, donuts, and margarine sticks.

When a Good Fat Goes Bad

Trans fatty acids are the result of a process called hydrogenation that converts a relatively healthy, unsaturated liquid fat, such as vegetable oil, into a solid one, to make the product shelf stable and stay fresh longer. When the fat becomes solid, the body treats it more like a saturated fat, like butter or animal fat. But it is not classified as saturated fat on food labels

"Trans fat, like saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, raises LDL 'bad' cholesterol levels in the blood, which increases the risk for heart disease," says Claude Lenfant, MD, director of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in the release. "It is therefore desirable to have food labels display all the information that can help consumers choose foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol as part of a healthy diet."

The new regulations will require food makers to list the number of trans fat grams a food contains in addition to the saturated and unsaturated fat content and cholesterol level.

Jan. 3, 2003 -- Houston is the couch potato capital of the U.S. and Honolulu is the fittest city, say the editors of Men's Fitness magazine.

The "America's Fattest City" award goes to Houston for the third year, uh, running. The ratings are based on a major city's score in several categories such as fruit/vegetable consumption, sports participation, smoking, drinking, air quality, and percentage of overweight/sedentary residents.

"Given the region's climate (hot and humid), air quality (abysmal), and relative lack of outdoor recreation, staying active presents a Texas-sized challenge," the magazine states. "And with its love of junk food, Houston is a vastrodome of bad nutrition."

If you don't live in Houston, don't let out your belt just yet. The annual ratings are meant as a wake-up call to stop what the CDC calls a national epidemic of obesity. Two in every three Americans have a serious weight problem.

Here's the magazine's list of America's 10 fattest cities:

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Philadelphia
5. St. Louis
6. Cleveland
7. Atlanta
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Dallas
10. Charlotte, N.C.

And its list of the 10 fittest cities:

1. Honolulu
2. Seattle
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado Springs, Col.
5. San Diego
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Denver
8. Virginia Beach, Va.
9. Tucson, Ariz.
10. Sacramento, Calif.

May 28, 2002 -- Here's more good news about fruits and veggies. "Five a day" can lower your blood pressure, greatly reducing risk of heart disease.

In a six-month study involving nearly 700 people, half were asked to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; half served as controls and didn't change their diet.

The results: Those who ate the good stuff had higher levels of numerous healthy antioxidants than those who didn't.

Also: "significant decreases" in blood pressure were seen in the fruit-and-veggie group, reports Andrew Neil, PhD, a public health researcher at the University of Oxford, England. His study appears in this week's issue of The Lancet.

"The falls in blood pressure in our study ... would substantially reduce cardiovascular disease," he writes. His results match those of a larger study, which showed lower rates of high blood pressure in people who followed a similar five-a-day plan.

Most of the people participating in his study were women about 46 years old, and in the upper socioeconomic classes; 16% of the study participants were smokers, he reports. Neither group was advised to reduce fat intake; and the researchers saw no change in total cholesterol levels and only a small increase in body weight, he says.

"Therefore, the fall in blood pressure achieved in our study is unlikely to be attributable to reduced fat intake or changes in physical activity," writes Neil. "The reduction in blood pressure probably resulted from increased potassium intake, and possibly from some reduction in sodium, although participants were not advised specifically to reduce salt intake."

Here are some tips adapted from the 5 A Day For Better Health program -- a national nutrition effort to encourage Americans to eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day for better health:

• Wake up to fruit. Drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or incorporate a helping of fruit into your breakfast every day.
• Think "fruit" or "vegetable" when snacking. Munch on a handful of carrots or a piece of fruit when you get the urge to snack.
• Keep the pantry packed with easy-to-prepare dried, canned, or frozen fruits and vegetables.
• Make them visible. You're more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they are easily accessible. Wash some carrots or celery sticks and keep them close at hand in the refrigerator. Put clean fruit out for the family to snack on.
• Use the microwave to your advantage. It's a great (and convenient) way to quickly prepare vegetables for meals.

Visit the 5 A Day site at http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/5aday/ for a wide variety of simple, easy-to-make recipes.

If you've got diabetesdiabetes, the right meal plan can help you keep blood sugar under control. Fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products -- even sweets now and then -- all have a place in your plan.

"A meal plan provides a specific approach to controlling blood sugar," says Dianne Davis, RD, LDN, CDE, a dietitian with the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Center in Nashville, Tenn. "If you have diabetes, a meal plan is necessary."

That's because a meal plan helps ensure you eat a balanced diet high in fiber and low in fats. It can also "help you lose weight, by controlling portion sizes and calories," Davis says.

Which Diabetes Meal Plan Is Right for You?

Your lifestyle and the type of diabetes treatment you're getting -- whether you're taking premeal insulin or not -- will determine the type of meal plan best for you, says Davis.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are all factored into a plan. But carbs are an especially important component since they have the biggest impact on blood sugar.

"Your meal plan can also include your favorite foods," Davis adds. "No food is off-limits -- it's a matter of how much you eat, when you eat it, and what it will do to your blood sugar."

With that in mind -- and understanding you should talk with your doctor before making big changes in your diabetes diet -- here are four meal-planning systems.

The Diabetes Food Pyramid

The diabetes food pyramid is similar to the USDA food pyramid you see on food labels. It is a pyramid in which a healthy diet means eating more grains, fruits, and vegetables, and less meat, sweets, and fats.

The diabetes food pyramid's general recommendations are:

• Grains, beans, and starchy vegetables: 6 or more servings/day. One serving: 1 slice bread; 1/2 small bagel; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, pasta, rice; 3/4 cup ready-to-eat cereal; 1/2 cup cooked beans, corn, peas.
• Fruits: 2-4 servings daily. One serving: 1 medium-size fresh fruit; 1/2 cup canned fruit; 1/2 cup fruit juice.
• Vegetables: 3-5 servings a day. One serving: 1 cup raw vegetable; 1/2 cup vegetable juice.
• Meat, Fish, Cheese: 2-3 servings/day. One serving: 2-3 ounces cooked lean meat, skinless poultry, or fish; I egg; 2 tablespoons peanut butter; 2-3 ounces cheese.
• Milk and Yogurt: 2-3 servings daily. One serving: 1 cup (8 ounces) milk or yogurt.
• Fats, Sweets, and Alcohol: eat these in small amounts. One serving: 1 teaspoon butter, margarine, or mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon cream cheese or salad dressing; 1/2 cup ice cream.

Combined foods, like eggplant lasagna, for example, will include servings from several food groups (1 vegetable, 1 meat, 1 fat).

This meal system has limitations, says Davis. "When you follow the diabetes food pyramid, you are not controlling specific grams of carbs and might not be able to achieve very tight blood sugar control," she tells WebMD. "However, the pyramid helps you see which foods are carbohydrates -- to get you acquainted with them."

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

Indeed, the year 2000 was a very good year for wine makers -- and not just because it brought a bumper crop of cabernets, zinfandels, and chardonnays. Evidence of the far-reaching health benefits of wine continued to pour in from researchers around the world.

Here's a review of the good news for wine makers -- and wine lovers:

A Healthier Heart

Several reports in 2000 confirmed the glad tidings that wine -- in moderation, of course -- reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. In the September issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute reported that, compared to teetotalers, light drinkers who consumed wine cut their risk of dying prematurely by almost one third, and wine drinkers as a group had significantly lower mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Actually, drinking any kind of alcoholic beverage helped, the scientists found. But by far the biggest benefit accrued to wine drinkers.

What's more, scientists are beginning to understand how wine may bestow its salutary benefits. For starters, according to findings published in the January 2000 issue of European Heart Journal, this most ancient of beverages appears to dilate arteries and increase blood flow, thus lowering the risk of the kind of clots that cut off blood supply and damage heart muscles.

In addition, the fruit of the vine appears to boost levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol, and helps prevent LDL, or bad cholesterol, from causing damage to the lining of arteries. In a study published in the May 2000 issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, scientists at the Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine in Amsterdam tested 275 men and women around the age of 32. Those who imbibed the equivalent of a glass or two of wine each day had significantly higher levels of "good" cholesterol because they remove the "bad" artery-clogging LDLs before they have a chance to choke blood vessels. Indeed, wine seems to facilitate that process, making it easier for HDLs to hustle their dangerous counterparts out of the bloodstream.

Yet even when LDLs remain behind in the arteries, substances in wine called phenols appear to help prevent the bad cholesterol from causing injury. In the November 2000 Journal of Nutrition and Biochemistry, Italian researchers from the National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research reported that phenols seem to limit the oxidation of LDLs, making them less capable of damaging the linings of arteries and, therefore, less able to set the stage for cardiovascular disease, like heart disease and stroke.

A Shield Against Cancer

Wine also may protect against several forms of another common killer: cancer. It turns out that the same phenolic compounds that lower heart disease risk also may slow the growth of breast cancer cells, according to findings reported by scientists at the University of Crete in Greece in the June 2000 issue of Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. Phenols also were shown to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells. And French scientists found evidence that an antioxidant in wine called resveratrol can put the brakes on the growth of liver cancer cells, according to a report in the July-August 2000 issue of Oncology Reports.

There also was a report that wine -- particularly red wine -- might help ward off oral cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Dentistry discovered that resveratrol and another antioxidant called quercetin may inhibit the growth of oral cancer cells. Their findings, published in the June 2000 Journal of the American Dental Association, note that red wine is loaded with a slew of other antioxidants that seem to boost its cancer-fighting abilities.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

July 2, 2001 -- After Deborah Taylor-Hough's first child was born prematurely, she and her husband found themselves traveling to the intensive care nursery twice a day. "Probably what helped me most at that time is that the ladies from my church brought us two weeks' worth of frozen meals, and I didn't have to worry about what we were eating," she says.

A few years later, when her husband was working a swing shift, Taylor-Hough wanted to serve the main meal at noon, before he left. "The morning was our family time, but I also had to cook dinner then, and I felt like getting dinner ready was taking away my life," she recalls. A friend suggested she try cooking a month's food at once and storing it in the freezer.

From those small beginnings has grown a big passion. In 1998, Taylor-Hough published Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month, and today she has more than 2,000 people involved in her email list and online discussion group.

Bulk Cooking

Here's how it works: Once a month, she spends an hour on a Thursday night writing a shopping list. The next day, she shops. ("Never shop and cook on the same day," she advises.)

On Friday night she does the prep work, like chopping onions, grating cheese, making spaghetti sauce, and browning ground beef. On Saturday she spends a solid 6 to 8 hours cooking. By the end of the day she has a month's worth of meals in the freezer.

A big surprise for Taylor-Hough was how much money she saves. Because she was buying in bulk and eating out much less, her monthly budget for food dropped from $700 to $300 for a family of five.

Her web site is loaded with recipe ideas, cooking tips, and sample meal plans. Typical dishes include soups, meat loaf, stews, casseroles, and meat items to serve over rice.

While Taylor-Hough's first book on bulk cooking gets top marks for efficiency and price-consciousness, many recipes tend toward red meat and white flour. Her newly released sequel, Frozen Assets Lite & Easy, has more healthy, low-fat recipes, she says.

In addition, the bulk cooking system is designed chiefly for main dishes, the most time-consuming part of a meal. Of course, they should be combined with fresh fruit and salad.

Once you've grasped the basic idea of bulk cooking, you adjust it to fit your own circumstances, Taylor-Hough says. And you don't have to have a large freezer for it to work. For years, she had only a small freezer on top of the refrigerator.

"Use freezer bags, freeze them flat, and then stand them on end to make better use of your space," she says. "You can easily fit two weeks of main dishes in that space. Actually, I can do a full month."

"This is a wonderful, wonderful idea," says Lauren Groveman, who hosts a radio program on food, family, and the home. "You can plan ahead when you see a crazy week coming. When you're busiest, and feeling most tired and needy, that's the most important time to go to your own freezer and benefit from healthy, home-cooked food, instead of the drive-through line at the local fast-food place."

Many foods freeze perfectly, says Groveman, whose TV show, Cooking with Lauren Groveman, premiers this fall, especially soups, stews, and chili. "Brisket is such a tough meat it's improved by slow cooking followed by freezing. Make a big batch of stock, chill it first to skim off extra fat, and divide it into containers. When you want soups or stews you don't need to start with that powdered stuff!"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."

Feb. 6, 2004 -- It may be hard for pessimists to admit, but a new study shows pessimism has its benefits.

Researchers found that a healthy dose of pessimism may come in handy in many real-life situations where optimists may be overly hopeful.

For example, the study showed that pessimists tend to fare better as gamblers and know when to cut their losses rather than let it roll. Researchers say that kind of attitude may also pay off in other situations, such as playing the stock market.

Pessimism's Plus-Side

In the study, published in this month's issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers looked at the effects of a person's disposition on their gambling behavior.

Three groups of college students were given a list of questions to determine whether they were pessimistic or optimistic as well as assess their attitudes about gambling. In a series of different tests, researchers then had the students play several hands of blackjack and play a simulated slot machine game.

Throughout the tests, researchers found that optimists were more likely to believe that they expected to win at gambling. This relationship was even stronger in individuals who experienced gambling losses. This finding was consistent with the researchers theory that the optimist would reframe a negative event (gambling losses) into a positive -- the belief that they could win.

When asked about their experiences later, optimists were also more likely to remember more wins than the pessimists.

Researchers found the greatest differences between the groups emerged after losing.

"Our data show no difference in betting between optimists and pessimists after winning. But optimists are more likely to persist in the face of losses," says researcher Bryan Gibson, a social psychologist at Central Michigan University, in a news release. "They're less ready to give up hope."

The study showed that pessimists were more likely to reduce their bets if their past performance had been poor, but the optimists seemed relatively unfazed by their losses.

Researchers say this study only looked at the effects of optimism and pessimism on gambling, but their findings may apply to other situations. For example, pessimists may have the advantage in situations where resources and opportunities are limited, such as a down stock market, while optimists may fare better in situations where persistence is rewarded in the face of adversity.

March 19, 2003 -- The scent of a good man may be music to a woman's nose. Researchers say the odorless pheromones found in male perspiration can have a dramatic effect on both a woman's mind and body. A new study found exposure to male pheromones can boost a woman's mood and stimulate the release of a hormone that regulates the menstrual cycle.

In the study, researchers applied extracts of underarm secretions from male volunteers to the upper lips of 18 women between the ages of 25 and 45. None of the women knew that male sweat had been applied to their lips, and some thought they were involved in a study of alcohol or perfume or even lemon floor wax. The women then rated their moods over six hours of exposure; they consistently reported feeling less tension and more relaxed.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," says researcher Charles J. Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

Each of the women received three applications of the underarm extract during the six-hour evaluation period, followed by three doses of exposure to ethanol (alcohol) over another six-hour period.

Researchers also found that exposure to the male pheromones also prompted a shift in blood levels of a reproductive hormone called luteinizing hormone. Levels of this hormone typically surge before ovulation, but women also experience small surges during other times in the menstrual cycle.

The study found that the male pheromone extract hastened the onset of these smaller surges and shortened the pauses between surges by 20%.

Researchers are now looking at individual compound that are found in male perspiration in hopes of identifying the elements responsible for these psychological and hormonal changes.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," says Wysocki. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

SOURCE: Biology of Reproduction, June 2003. News release, University of Pennsylvania.

July 26, 2006 -- Multitasking may make you more productive, but it also makes it harder for your brain to learn, according to a new study.

Researchers found people had a harder time learning new things when their brains were distracted by something else, like talking or listening to music.

"When distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don't learn as well as if you had paid full attention," says researcher Russell Poldrack, PhD, and UCLA associate professor of psychology, in a news release. "Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized so you cannot retrieve the information as easily."

Poldrack says distractions appear to affect the brain's learning processes, and tasks that require more attention -- like learning calculus or reading Shakespeare -- are particularly hampered.

Multitasking Disrupts Learning

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain function and activity while adults (average age, 26) learned a new task.

The 14 participants were asked to make predictions after seeing a series of clues about cards with various shapes. With one set of cards, they learned the classification task without any distractions. In the second set, they learned while listening and keeping track of a series of high and low beeps.

The results showed that multitasking didn't reduce the accuracy of the predictions immediately, but it did hurt participants' ability to remember knowledge about the task later.

Researchers found that when participants were asked questions about the cards at a follow-up session, they did much better on the task they learned without any distractions.

When asked about the task they learned with the distraction, they couldn't extrapolate, or their knowledge was less flexible about the task.

Distraction Affects Memory

The fMRIs showed that when the participants learned without distraction, an area of the brain known as the hippocampus was involved. This part of the brain is critical to the processing and storing of information.

But when they learned the task while multitasking, the hippocampus was not engaged. Instead, an area called the striatum was activated. The striatum is involved in learning new skills like riding a bicycle.

Researchers say the results show that learning while distracted or multitasking alters the brain's learning processes and changes the way people learn.

Multitasking when performing certain tasks -- like listening to music while exercising -- may be helpful. But Poldrack says tasks that distract you while you try to learn something new are likely to negatively affect your learning.

"The best thing you can do to improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember," says Poldrack.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

March 19, 2003 -- The scent of a good man may be music to a woman's nose. Researchers say the odorless pheromones found in male perspiration can have a dramatic effect on both a woman's mind and body. A new study found exposure to male pheromones can boost a woman's mood and stimulate the release of a hormone that regulates the menstrual cycle.

In the study, researchers applied extracts of underarm secretions from male volunteers to the upper lips of 18 women between the ages of 25 and 45. None of the women knew that male sweat had been applied to their lips, and some thought they were involved in a study of alcohol or perfume or even lemon floor wax. The women then rated their moods over six hours of exposure; they consistently reported feeling less tension and more relaxed.

"Much to our surprise, the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed during exposure to the male extract," says researcher Charles J. Wysocki of the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. "This suggests that there may be much more going on in social settings like singles bars than meets the eye."

Each of the women received three applications of the underarm extract during the six-hour evaluation period, followed by three doses of exposure to ethanol (alcohol) over another six-hour period.

Researchers also found that exposure to the male pheromones also prompted a shift in blood levels of a reproductive hormone called luteinizing hormone. Levels of this hormone typically surge before ovulation, but women also experience small surges during other times in the menstrual cycle.

The study found that the male pheromone extract hastened the onset of these smaller surges and shortened the pauses between surges by 20%.

Researchers are now looking at individual compound that are found in male perspiration in hopes of identifying the elements responsible for these psychological and hormonal changes.

"This may open the door to pharmacological approaches to manage onset of ovulation or the effects of premenstrual syndrome or even natural products to aid relaxation," says Wysocki. "By determining how pheromones impact mood and endocrine response, we might be able to build a better male odor: molecules that more effectively manipulate the effects we observed."

SOURCE: Biology of Reproduction, June 2003. News release, University of Pennsylvania.

When Judith Orloff was a child, her doctor parents became so frustrated with her vivid premonitions -- on everything from illnesses to deaths to earthquakes -- they finally told her not to mention them again.

"I grew up believing something was wrong with me," says Orloff, now a board-certified psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and author of Second Sight and Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness. As a result, Orloff says she strayed far from her intuition (without much difficulty) as she pursued her medical studies. It wasn't until she was in private practice that she once again learned to trust her intuitive skills. Orloff recalls that she had been treating a woman for major depression who was responding well to antidepressants and conventional therapy. Seemingly out of the blue, though, Orloff had an image of the patient committing suicide.

"I didn't say anything because I had learned not to listen to myself," says Orloff. "Several weeks later the woman overdosed and was in a coma for weeks."

Fortunately, the patient recovered, and Orloff says she learned to pay attention to her own intuitive abilities.

Orloff says she believes that we all have an intuitive sense, although not everyone realizes it can be accessed. "Intuition is that still, small voice inside of you," she says. "It's your inner wisdom that can help you deal with anything from health issues to relationships to death and dying."

Orloff prefers to call herself an intuitive, rather than a psychic or clairvoyant, because she believes those terms have been too "tarnished" in our society and evoke images of sideshow acts.

In her practice -- which has a waiting list of 6,000 patients -- and in her workshops for healthcare professionals around the country, Orloff teaches people to develop their own intuition.

July 9, 2003 -- Finding out how much of a little-known but artery-clogging fat your favorite snack and processed foods contain is about to get a lot easier. The FDA today announced that manufacturers will soon be required to list on the Nutrition Facts label the amount of trans fatty acids, or trans fat, in foods.

The new rule will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, but manufacturers will start phasing in the new labels well before that deadline. It's the first major change in the Nutrition Facts label since it was established in 1993.

"We are empowering Americans to make healthier choices about the foods they eat," says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in a news release. "By putting trans fat information on food labels, we are making it possible for consumers to make better educated choices to lower their intake of these unhealthy fats and cholesterol."

Trans fats are frequently found in the same foods that contain other types of fat, such as cookies, crackers, fried foods such as french fries and chicken fried in shortening, donuts, and margarine sticks.

When a Good Fat Goes Bad

Trans fatty acids are the result of a process called hydrogenation that converts a relatively healthy, unsaturated liquid fat, such as vegetable oil, into a solid one, to make the product shelf stable and stay fresh longer. When the fat becomes solid, the body treats it more like a saturated fat, like butter or animal fat. But it is not classified as saturated fat on food labels

"Trans fat, like saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, raises LDL 'bad' cholesterol levels in the blood, which increases the risk for heart disease," says Claude Lenfant, MD, director of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in the release. "It is therefore desirable to have food labels display all the information that can help consumers choose foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol as part of a healthy diet."

The new regulations will require food makers to list the number of trans fat grams a food contains in addition to the saturated and unsaturated fat content and cholesterol level.