I’ve seen a lot of doctors lately and have some medical updates.  Unfortunately not good ones but news isn’t always good now is it?

Holy shit.  Being fat was HELPING me!  Can we say mind is blown?!

“The researchers also found that the frequency of antinuclear antibodies was lower in overweight and obese people than in those with normal weight.

“It raises the likelihood that fat tissues can secrete proteins that inhibit parts of the immune system and prevent the development of autoantibodies, but we will need to do more research to understand the role that obesity might play in the development of autoimmune diseases,” Dr. Minoru Satoh, another study author and an associate professor of rheumatology and clinical immunology at the University of Florida, said in the news release.”

More Known About Proteins That Cause Autoimmune Diseases

TUESDAY, Jan. 17 (HealthDay News) — A new study says more than 32 million people in the United States have autoantibodies, which are proteins produced in the immune system that attack the body’s tissues.

Autoantibodies can cause autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and type 1 diabetes, researchers say.

Researchers examined blood serum samples taken from almost 4,800 people who participated in the 1994-2004 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The research team was looking for the most common type of autoantibody, called antinuclear antibodies (ANA).

The overall prevalence of antinuclear antibodies was about 14 percent and was slightly higher in blacks than in whites. Frequency generally increased with age and was higher in women than in men, with the female-to-male ratio peaking at 40 to 49 years and then declining with age.

“The peak of autoimmunity in females compared to males during the 40-49 age bracket is suggestive of the effects that the hormones estrogen and progesterone might be playing on the immune system,” Linda Birnbaum, director of U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and an author on the paper, said in a news release from the NIEHS, which conducted the study.

The researchers also found that the frequency of antinuclear antibodies was lower in overweight and obese people than in those with normal weight.

“It raises the likelihood that fat tissues can secrete proteins that inhibit parts of the immune system and prevent the development of autoantibodies, but we will need to do more research to understand the role that obesity might play in the development of autoimmune diseases,” Dr. Minoru Satoh, another study author and an associate professor of rheumatology and clinical immunology at the University of Florida, said in the news release.

The study was published online Jan. 11 in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

“Previous estimates of ANA prevalence have varied widely and were conducted in small studies not representative of the general population,” Dr. Frederick Miller, a study author and acting clinical director at NIEHS, said in the release.

“Having this large data set that is representative of the general U.S. population and includes nearly 5,000 individuals provides us with an accurate estimate of ANA and may allow new insights into the [causes] of autoimmune diseases,” he noted.

The presence of autoantibodies does not necessarily mean a person will develop an autoimmune disease. Drugs, cancer, infections and other factors can also cause autoantibodies in some people.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases has more about autoimmune diseases.

Hmmmm is this why I keep falling and spraining my ankles and breaking my toes?  I tested negative for neuropathy even though I can’t feel my feet so maybe we should look into this!

Younger Adults on Multiple Meds at Risk for Falls: Study

TUESDAY, Jan. 17 (HealthDay News) — Young and middle-aged adults who take two or more prescription drugs at any one time may be at increased risk for accidental falls, a new study finds.

The effect is similar to that seen in elderly people, according to the report published online Jan. 17 in the journal Injury Prevention.

In the study, the researchers looked at data from 344 working-age people who died or required hospital admission within 48 hours of an accidental fall at home in Auckland, New Zealand, between 2005 and 2006. They were compared with 352 randomly selected age-matched people in the general population.

The investigators found that people who took two or more prescription drugs were 2.5 times more likely to suffer an injury in an accidental fall than those who took one or no medicine.

The findings held true even after accounting for personal, social and lifestyle factors such as drinking, illicit drug use and amount of sleep, said Dr. Bridget Kool of the University of Auckland and colleagues.

The study also found that taking drugs to lower blood pressure and cholesterol appeared to triple the risk of a fall. Asthma inhalers, anti-inflammatory drugs, steroids and antidepressants did not increase the risk of a fall.

Whether the increased risk of falls associated with certain drugs were a result of the drugs themselves or the underlying conditions they were being used to treat is unclear, the researchers said.

Falls are a leading cause of injury and death worldwide, but most research focuses on older adults and children.

“The findings signal a need for greater awareness of the association between prescription medications and falls in younger adults, whether this is due to the medications, underlying conditions or a combination of both related factors,” the study authors concluded in a journal news release.

More information

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons offers guidelines for preventing falls.

“Obesity is defined as a body mass index, or a formula based on height and weight, that is 30 or higher.”

Oh I am SO glad we are basing these scientific studies on a “scientific” formula of BMI.  > <

One in three US adults is obese: study

One in three American adults is obese, a national level that has stayed the same …

One in three American adults is obese, a national level that has stayed the same in recent years, said US data released on Tuesday.

About one in six children and teenagers are also obese, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association report which showed that obesity remains a significant problem in US society despite efforts to combat it.

“Obesity prevalence shows little change over the past 12 years, although the data are consistent with the possibility of slight increases,” said the article.

Obesity is defined as a body mass index, or a formula based on height and weight, that is 30 or higher.

Examples would include a six-foot tall man weighing more than 222 pounds (1.82 meters and 100 kilograms) or a five-foot-seven-inch tall woman weighing 192 pounds (1.70 meters and 87 kilograms).

According to the JAMA report, 35.7 percent of US adults are obese and so are 16.9 percent of children and teenagers age two to 19.

When overweight people are added to the adult tally, the prevalence of overweight and obese people jumps to 68.8 percent of the US population.

“The good news from the report is that rate of obesity in US adults from 2003-2008 and 2009-2010 has not increased significantly,” said Nancy Copperman, director of public health at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York.

“This is a change from previous reports where obesity rates continued to rise. Public health efforts to address obesity may be having a positive effect,” added Copperman, who was not involved in the JAMA study.

However, more needs to be done to target such efforts in minority groups who tend to have higher rates of obesity than whites, she said.

For instance, obesity rates among white men were 36.2 percent in 2009-2010 compared to 38.8 percent among black men.

The obesity prevalence in white women was 32.2 percent compared to 58.5 percent in black women.

The data came from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey which included measured height and weight for about 6,000 adult men and women and 4,000 children and teens in 2009-2010.

Um….. WTF?  Someone please go beat some sense into this man.  If you ask my opinion, which I know no one did, it sounds like his mother had an abortion before he was born.

Virginia lawmaker: Children with disabilities are God’s punishment to women who previously had abortions.

By Amanda Terkel on Feb 22, 2010 at 1:45 pm

On Thursday, Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall (R) spoke at a press conference against state funding for Planned Parenthood. He blasted the organization for supporting a women’s right to choose, saying that God punishes women who have had abortions by giving them disabled children:

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

Marshall is also fighting against health care reform, saying that “Obamacare” is trying to take “your soul.” Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been pushing back against high-profile figures and entities who have been attacking people with disabilities. Will she speak out against someone in her own party? (HT: Right Wing Watch)

I am sure we have all seen this and similar images showing up in our Facebook feed the last couple of days.  And I address this issue regularly.  Why the hell do women today (me included) feel the need to be as thin as possible?  What is driving this craze?  How about the fact that the modeling industry is calling the “plus size” model a size 6-12?  Or this whole BMI bullshit?  Why is body image so important and ingrained into the female psyche?  We are trained from birth to focus on our looks (because they don’t last forever you know).  I’m ranting……

Well duh.  It like in health class when they showed you the smokers lung and you swore you would never smoke.  BTW- I do not advocate searching for an image of a clogged artery to short-circuit craving or for any reason at all.

25% of obese women suffer from migraines.  That’s 1/4 of all obese women.  That’s A LOT.  This video has embedding disabled but here is a link to a video explaining a study between migraines and obesity.  I had terrible migraines when I was obese.  I still have really bad migraines.  I am on 150 mg of Topamax a day to try to control my migraines and I still have anywhere from 0-4 migraines a week (which is much less than I used to).  After lots of trial and error I take Maxalt for my emergency medication.  I have only been using it for a couple months so time will tell if it is going to work long term.  Sometimes my migraines are so bad I have seizure-like symptoms.  I am sure I am not the “norm” but has anyone else had this issue?  Migraines while obese?  Did they decrease or go away after losing weight?  Or are you still battling the migraines?  Or did they get worse?  What treatments are YOU using?

When I was taking a weight management class last semester we were told to take into account BMI and waist to hip ratio to determine the fit level of a person.  But just like I was mentioning in my vlog earlier, BMI isn’t the greatest tool to determine if you are fat or not.  I mean pretty much some dude just arbitrarily came up with this whole BMI system in the 1800′s and people started using it.

Body Mass Index- Wikipedia

The body mass index (BMI), or Quetelet index, is a heuristic proxy for human body fat based on an individual’s weight and height. BMI does not actually measure the percentage of body fat. It was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Queteletduring the course of developing “social physics”.

Heuristic- Wikipedia

Heuristic ( /hjʉˈrɪstɨk/; or heuristics; Greek: “Εὑρίσκω”, “find” or “discover”) refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Where an exhaustive search is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Examples of this method include using a “rule of thumb“, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense.

In more precise terms, heuristics are strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings and machines.

Still think we should be basing our decisions on obesity and health on the BMI system?!