Benefits of Running

Believe it or not, running is really a great way to increase your overall level of health. Research shows that running can lift your levels of good cholesterol while also helping you increase lung function and use. In addition, running can as well boost your immune system and lower your risk of developing blood clots.

For women, running can really help to lower your risk of breast cancer. It can also help reduce the risk of having a stroke. Many doctors today recommend running for people who are in the early stages of diabetes, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis, and it is proven to help reduce the risk of having a heart attack. By helping the arteries retain their elasticity and strengthening the heart, your chances of suffering a heart attack can be significantly reduced.

Running is one of the best forms of exercise for losing or maintain a consistent weight. You will find that it is a leading way to burn off extra calories and that it is the second mainly effective exercise in terms of calories burned per minute, next only after cross country skiing. Not all of the benefits of running are physical. Running can provide an noticeable boost to your self-confidence and self-esteem. By setting and achieving goals, you can help give yourself a superior sense of empowerment that will leave you feeling much happier.

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New Clues to How Gastric Bypass Surgery Combats Diabetes

Gastric bypass surgery has been known to improve blood sugar control, often sending people with type 2 diabetes into remission, but experts have long wondered exactly how that happens. Now, a new study provides some clues. Circulating amino acids linked with insulin resistance decline dramatically in those who have the bypass surgery, the researchers discovered. They compared 10 obese people with diabetes who had the surgery with 11 who lost weight through dieting. "Something happens after gastric bypass that does not happen as much after the diet-induced weight loss," said Dr. Blandine Laferrere, an associate professor of medicine at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center and Columbia University, both in New York City.

The surgery, which reduces the stomach to the size of a small pouch, also modifies the junction between the stomach and small intestine. It leads to a dramatic reduction in the level of circulating amino acids that have been linked with diabetes. "The fact that gastric bypass results in the remission of diabetes in the majority of patients is not new," said Laferrere. According to background information in the study, 50 percent to 80 percent of diabetes cases go into remission after the surgery. What doctors have been trying to figure out, she said, is why the bypass surgery is so good at making the diabetes disappear. "The diabetes improves almost immediately, before a significant amount of weight loss occurs," she said. "That points out it is something other than the weight loss."

In the new study, the researchers evaluated biochemical compounds involved in metabolic reactions in the participants. Each group had lost about 20 pounds. The investigators found that the bypass patients had much lower levels of amino acids known as branched-chain amino acids, and the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine. "Those changes in the amino acids could be implicated in the mechanism of diabetes remission after gastric bypass," Laferrere said. Experts know the amino acids are linked with insulin resistance partly due to animal studies, she said. "If you supplement the diet of rats with branched-chain amino acids, you can induce more insulin resistance," she explained.

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Do Immune System Ills Help Drive Type 2 Diabetes?

New research suggests that the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may be linked to an immune system reaction gone awry. "The main point of this study is trying to shift the emphasis in thinking of type 2 diabetes as a purely metabolic disease, and instead emphasize the role of the immune system in type 2," said study co-author Dr. Daniel Winer, an endocrine pathologist at Toronto General Hospital in Canada. When the research began, Winer was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in California. The researchers have identified immune system antibodies in people who are obese and insulin-resistant that aren't present in people who are obese without insulin resistance. They also tested a drug that modifies the immune system in mice fed a fatty diet, and found that the medication could help maintain normal blood sugar levels.

The findings were published online April 17 in the journal Nature Medicine. Funding for the study was provided by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 90 percent and 95 percent of these cases are type 2 diabetes, where the body doesn't use insulin efficiently, so the pancreas must make increasing amounts of insulin. Eventually, the pancreas stops making enough insulin to meet the increased demand. The less common form of the disease, type 1 diabetes, occurs when the immune system mistakenly destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. This type of diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease, and isn't linked to how much a person weighs.

Although the causes of type 2 haven't been clear, it's known that the disease runs in families, suggesting a genetic component. Also, while type 2 is strongly linked to increased weight, not everyone who is overweight gets type 2 diabetes. And, that's what got the researchers searching for another factor. Winer explained that excess weight has been linked to inflammation, which can cause the immune system to react. As visceral fat (abdominal fat) expands, it eventually runs out of room, explained Winer. At that point, the fat cells may become stressed and inflamed, and eventually the cells die. When that happens, immune system cells known as macrophages come to sweep up the mess.

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Stroke Hospitalizations Up in Teens, Young Adults

Older Americans are suffering fewer strokes, but new government research shows that stroke hospitalizations are sharply rising among children and younger adults, especially for men under 35. Although the study doesn't explore the reasons for the trend, experts point to the obesity epidemic, increasing rates of diabetes and high blood pressure as likely culprits. Recreational drugs may play a role as well, they added. "Young people should see their doctor for regular checkups," said Dr. Brett Kissela, a professor of neurology at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute, who has conducted previous research on strokes but was not involved with this study.

Routine check-ups can help control risk factors for stroke, such as high blood pressure, he explained. Dr. Mary George, a researcher with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is scheduled to report the findings Wednesday at the International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles. Experts note that research presented at meetings typically has not been subjected to the same scrutiny as studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals. For the study, CDC researchers examined hospitalization data for the period from 1994 to 2007 from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, identifying patients with a primary diagnosis of ischemic stroke.

Ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blood clot or clogged artery blocks the blood supply to the brain, is more common than hemorrhagic stroke, the result of a ruptured blood vessel. The increases and decreases in stroke rates varied by gender and age group, the researchers found. Among males aged 15 to 34, the rate surged by nearly 53 percent. Among females in that age group, it increased 17 percent. Strokes soared 36 percent in boys aged 5 to 14 and 31 percent in girls of the same age. Men between 35 and 44 years old had a 47 percent increase in stroke incidence. For women in that age range, stroke incidence rose 36 percent.

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Sperm-Producing Cells Coaxed to Produce Insulin

Researchers have been able to prod human cells that normally produce sperm to make insulin instead and, after transplanting them, the cells briefly cured mice with type 1 diabetes. "The goal is to coax these cells into making enough insulin to cure diabetes. These cells don't secrete enough insulin to cure diabetes in humans yet," cautioned study senior researcher G. Ian Gallicano, an associate professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology, and director of the Transgenic Core Facility at Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington D.C.

Gallicano and his colleagues will be presenting the findings Sunday at the American Society of Cell Biology annual meeting in Philadelphia. Type 1 diabetes is believed to be an autoimmune disease in which the body mistakenly attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. As a result, people with type 1 diabetes must rely on insulin injections to be able to process the foods they eat. Without this additional insulin, people with type 1 diabetes could not survive.

Doctors have had some success with pancreas transplants, and with transplants of just the pancreatic beta cells. There are several problems with these types of transplants, however. One is that as with any transplant, when the transplanted material comes from a donor, the body sees the new tissue as foreign and attempts to destroy it. So, transplants require immune-suppressing medications. The other concern is that the autoimmune attack that destroyed the original beta cells can destroy the newly transplanted cells.

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Childhood Abuse Linked to Diabetes Risk in Adult Women

Women who were victims of childhood abuse may be at increased risk of developing diabetes in adulthood, new findings suggest. Researchers surveyed 67,853 U.S. nurses and found that 54 percent reported physical abuse and 34 percent reported sexual abuse before age 18. Moderate and severe physical and sexual abuse were associated with a 26 percent to 69 percent increased risk of type 2 diabetes in adulthood. "Much, although not all, of this association is explained by the greater weight gain of girls with a history of abuse.

The weight gain seems to start in teenage years and continues into adulthood, increasing the risk of diabetes," lead author Janet Rich-Edwards, director of developmental epidemiology at Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said in a Center for Advancing Health news release. But she added that weight gain explained only 60 percent of the association, "implying that the experience of abuse gets incorporated into the body through other mechanisms, as well." Further research is needed to understand the link between childhood abuse and diabetes, the study author added.

"One theory is that abused women develop disordered eating habits as a compensatory stress behavior, leading to excess weight gain," Rich-Edwards said. "Another theory suggests that child abuse may increase levels of stress hormones that later cause weight gain and insulin resistance, characteristic of diabetes." The study appears online and in the December print issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "Child abuse can leave an enduring imprint on health in adulthood," Rich-Edwards said in the news release. "We hope to alert clinicians to the possible role of abuse in the histories of some patients that they see with pre-diabetes and diabetes. We also need to help families prevent child abuse, and we need to learn the best ways to reduce the long-term health burden that it imposes."

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Number of Uninsured American Adults Hits Record High

Nearly 50 million Americans have gone without health insurance for at least part of the past year up from 46 million people in 2008, federal health officials reported Tuesday. Those people included not only those Americans living in poverty, but an increasing number of middle-income people, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The bottom line is that uninsurance of young and middle-class adults increased by 4 million people from 2008 to the first quarter of 2010," CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said during a news conference Tuesday.

What's more, the number of people without insurance for a year or more increased from 27.5 million in 2008 to 30.4 million in the first quarter of 2010, Frieden said. "That's an increase of 3 million of chronically uninsured adults." These findings debunk two myths about health insurance, Frieden said. "The first myth is that it's only the poor who are uninsured. In fact, half of the uninsured are over the poverty level," he said. "The second myth is that it's only healthy people who are uninsured and that young healthy people make a choice not to have health insurance. In fact, more than two out of five individuals who are uninsured at some point during the past year had one or more chronic diseases," he said.

During the past 10 years, the number of U.S. adults without insurance for at least part of the year has risen an average of 1.1 million people a year, and about half are middle-income adults, according to the report. People without health insurance are more likely to skip medical care because of cost. This can lead to poorer health, higher long-term health care costs and early death, the report said. Uninsured adults with chronic medical problems are three times more likely to skip medical care, compared to those with insurance. For instance, more than 40 percent of people without insurance who suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure or asthma skipped getting care due to costs, the report found.

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Diabetes Drugs Might Lower Risk of Lung Cancer

Researchers report that drugs used to treat diabetes may indeed both prevent and contain lung cancer. The findings, being presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Vancouver, back up preliminary data that some diabetes medications might protect against tobacco-induced lung cancer. "Patients who did not develop lung cancer had a much higher chance of taking one of these medications than those who did develop lung cancer," said study author Dr. Peter Mazzone. "And those who did develop lung cancer were much less likely to have seen that cancer spread outside the chest and more likely to survive longer with one of these drugs."

Both metformin and the class of drugs known as thiazolidinediones (which includes Avandia and Actos) are used by tens of millions of Americans. A mouse study published in September found that metformin was associated with up to a 73 percent reduction in the number of tumors mice developed when they were given a common carcinogen found in tobacco. The mice had been genetically engineered to be susceptible to this kind of tumor. Epidemiological studies in humans have found similar effects. Metformin was originally marketed as Glucophage, but is now available as an inexpensive generic.

For this study, Mazzone and his colleagues reviewed and compared electronic medical records on 225 diabetics with lung cancer with a similar number of diabetic patients who did not have lung cancer, although both groups shared other risk factors such as age, smoking history and gender. "Forty-one percent of those with lung cancer had taken one of these medications at some point prior to developing the cancer, and 96 percent of all the controls had taken one of these medications in diabetic treatment," reported Mazzone, director of the lung cancer program at The Respiratory Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

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