NaturalNews:

While the talking heads on TV frantically warn about the so-called swine flu pandemic that is supposedly on the verge of causing world-wide suffering and death, there’s another world-wide health problem of enormous proportions that’s here, right now – being overweight.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates more than 300 million people across the planet are obese, and another billion more are overweight.

Being too fat isn’t a cosmetic problem, it’s a condition that kills people prematurely by leading to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

And now there’s evidence that being too fat also causes brain degeneration and maybe even Alzheimer’s disease.

To define the weight categories, the scientists used the Body Mass Index (BMI), to establish that normal weight people had a BMI between 18.5 and 25, overweight people had a BMI between 25 and 30, and obese people’s BMI was more than 30.

The scientists wanted to document whether the brains of those in each of the three groups were equally normal and healthy. Surprisingly, they weren’t.
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EW:

Patrick Swayze, the dancer-turned-actor whose good looks and physical grace made him a popular lead in both romances and action films in the late 1980s and early ’90s, died today at age 57 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Swayze was one of several young stars-to-be whom Francis Ford Coppola introduced to the public in 1983’s The Outsiders.

But he became one of movie fans’ most beloved leading men with his starring role as a resort dance instructor who sweeps Jennifer Grey off her feet in 1987’s Dirty Dancing, an independent film that became an enormous hit and spawned a popular soundtrack that featured a song sung by Swayze, “She’s Like the Wind.”

He cemented his status as a romantic icon with his lead role in 1990’s smash Ghost, as the specter who tries to protect bereaved girlfriend Demi Moore from his killer. At the same time, he became a two-fisted action star in movies like Road House and Point Break.

Swayze’s career waned in the late ’90s; for a long time, his most notable screen appearance was in the 2001 cult favorite Donnie Darko.

In March 2008, he announced he had pancreatic cancer. Nonetheless, by July of that year, he was in sufficiently good health to begin working 12-hour days (while still undergoing chemotherapy) on a TV series, starring as a world-weary undercover FBI agent in the A&E crime drama The Beast, which premiered in January to 2.4 million viewers.

Most pancreatic cancer patients die in 3-9 months after diagnosis, and only 4% live five years.

This is the same cancer that took Michael Landon’s life in 1991, 3 months after he held a press conference to tell the public about his battle with the disease.

Pancreatic Cancer is the most deadly cancer in the world, you can prevent this from happening to yourself. Get a free health screening consultation with us today.

AMN:

Obesity is on a rampage, with the World Health Organization pegging the numbers at more than 300 million worldwide, with a billion more overweight.

With obesity comes the increased risk for cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, and hypertension.

Now comes more discouraging news.

In the current online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping, Paul Thompson, senior author and a UCLA professor of neurology, and lead author Cyrus A. Raji, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues compared the brains of people who were obese, overweight, and of normal weight, to see if they had differences in brain structure; that is, did their brains look equally healthy.

They found that obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue than people with normal weight, while overweight people had 4 percent less tissue.

According to Thompson, who is also a member of UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, this is the first time anyone has established a link between being overweight and having what he describes as “severe brain degeneration.”

“That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain,” said Thompson.

“But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”

The researchers used brain images from an earlier study called the Cardiovascular Health Study Cognition Study. Scans were selected of 94 elderly people in their 70s who were healthy not cognitively impaired—five years after the scan was taken.
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TheStar:

The Health Ministry has issued its staff with a warning - shape up and lose weight.

Concerned with the rising cases of obesity, the ministry wants its staff to check their weight and has warned them against the dangers of obesity.

Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said he was concerned with the escalating number of obese people in the country, referring to the condition as an “entry point to all sicknesses.”

“This is serious. Obesity among ministry staff is high, more or less the same as the rakyat (where an estimated 60% of the population is obese)” he told reporters on Sunday after visiting the section of Putrajaya Hospital which was damaged in a fire on Saturday evening.

“I have given instructions for staff who have weight problem to reduce weight. They must measure their BMI (body mass index) and come up with their own plan (to reduce weight).
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Bernama:

It is estimated that one out of eight Malaysians aged 30 years and above has diabetes, which amounts to over 1.6 million adults, based on the Third National Health and Morbidity Survey 2006.

Director-General of Health Tan Sri Dr Mohd Ismail Merican said the prevalence of diabetes also showed a drastic increase of 80 per cent over a period of just 10 years, from 8.3 per cent in 1996 to 14.9 per cent in 2006 for the same age group.

Even more worrying, he said, was that one third of those who had diabetes were undiagnosed, and were not aware of their condition.

This was very dangerous because if not detected early they would face serious complications later.
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