One Two Three Blogs: 07/14/11

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Website helps journalists, community planners, other Kentuckians in search of county-specific health data

A treasure trove of health data about every county in Kentucky is available to journalists and community planners looking to draw a statistical picture of their area. That was the message of a webinar hosted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky Wednesday.

"We really hope the information we have on kentuckyhealthfacts.org will start a conversation," said Sarah Walsh of the foundation's "Local Data for Local Action" Initiative.

The website features a map of the state that is broken down by county. By clicking on a county, a plethora of information pops up, including information on a county's:

• demographics, such as graduation rates and per capita personal income;

• social and behavioral indicators, such as lack of physical activity and prevalence of smoking and obesity;

• health outcomes, such as infectious disease rates, motor vehicle deaths and premature death rates;

• access to care, such as flu vaccination rates, and number of available health care providers and physicians;

• maternal and child health, such as infant mortality, teen birth rates and low birthweight rates;
• senior health, such as the percentage of the senior population in a community.

The data can be compared to the rest of the state, the rest of the country or other counties, and users can create tables, bar graphs, line graphs or maps suitable for publication. "There's a lot of information here," Walsh said. (Graph created online shows obesity declining in Laurel and Pulaski counties after three years of increase, but still rising in Knox County and holding steadier in Rockcastle County. Up to six counties can be placed in one such graphic.)

The site is especially valuable to journalists, said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. "These are the hard facts that local news media need to report as they hold up a mirror to their communities and help them address community problems," Cross said. "In most Kentucky counties, one or more facets of health are a community problem. They need more attention." Kentucky Health News is a service of the institute, funded by the foundation.

Much of the data come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, a nationwide, random telephone poll that is conducted each year. Because there may not be enough survey responses from residents in some counties, much of the data on the site have been developed by looking at three or four counties that are near each other and demographically similar, which Walsh said makes the data more "stable and robust." Statisticians have reconfigured the data so that they are all based on a population of 100,000 people, enough to have confidence in the percentages.

While encouraging community planners to use the site, Walsh said the Kentucky Cancer Registry website is "one of the best in the nation" and has cancer-specific data that may not be available on kentuckyhealthfacts.org. She also pointed listeners to the Kids Count website, an Annie E. Casey Foundation-funded project that has statewide data specific to children.

What surfers won't find, however, are Kentucky numbers on the childhood obesity or childhood diabetes. "Different school districts and communities are collecting data but in different ways and at different ages," she said, adding those disparities make comparison analysis difficult. A bill to make schools collect and report body-mass-index data failed in the last session of the General Assembly.

The goal of Wednesday's webinar was to disseminate information so community planners can identify and address health needs in their area. "At the foundation we take a lot of inspiration from the words of Arthur Ashe, 'Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can'," Walsh said. "We believe communities can do a lot to change their health status." The webinar was part of the foundation's "Health for a Change: Ignite — Unite — Act" initiative and was the first in an ongoing series. The next session, July 27, will focus on how to plan a community health needs assessment. For more information about the series, click here.

Tell Bath & Body Works: No marketing toxic triclosan to teens!

Please join Beyond Pesticides, Center for Environmental Health and The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in asking Bath and Body Works to stop selling triclosan-containing products that claim to “Spread Love, Not Germs.” Consumer products, especially those that are marketed to and used by preteens and teens should not have harmful chemicals in them. This is unacceptable. Take action.

As you know, triclosan is not only a hormone disruptor found at increasing concentrations in human urine and breast milk, but also contaminates waterways and possibly even the water we drink. To add insult to injury, triclosan is not even effective against harmful bacteria, including those found in hospitals.

We need to hold companies accountable for the safety of the substances they put into their products and take action against stores that are still selling many triclosan-containing products. Bath & Body Works, the body care chain popular with teens and young children, uses the triclosan in a vast array of their body care products, even boasting that the products will help “Spread love, Not germs.”

Join us to take action to make Bath & Body Works products safer. Tell Bath an Body Works CEO Diane L. Neal: “Stop using toxic triclosan in your products.”

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Four principles accelerate fat loss

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 by: Andrew Kim

(NaturalNews) It is true that one must maintain a state of negative energy balance for a period of time in order to lose body fat. Though, there is a bit more to the story. Burning fat and losing fat are always occurring simultaneously to some degree. The underlying premise of fat loss is to create an internal environment that favors fat burning in favor of fat storing. Simply put, if the net flow of fat is into the fat cells, weight gain results. If the net flow of fat is into the muscles (to be burned), weight loss results. Fat loss requires four steps.

The mainstream stepwise, clinical treatment of overweight/obesity begins with lifestyle changes, moves onto drugs, and ends with bariatric surgery. Most patients invariably fail the lifestyle phase and ultimately move onto the drugs and surgery. The lifestyle approach is uninspired at best and does not apply the principles of fat tissue metabolism in order to accelerate fat loss and increase muscle gain.

According to the CDC, over 65% of adults and 13-14% of children are overweight or obese in the U.S. These conditions have become major health concerns, as approximately 300,000 deaths are associated with obesity every year. In fact, as one`s body mass index (BMI) increases, so does one`s risk of disease and death from all causes.

Obesity is a disorder characterized by an accumulation of excess body fat to an extent that impairs health. To be more specific, a person is classified as clinically obese once his BMI reaches 30.

It is important to understand that many hormones and enzymes - the activity of which are ultimately determined by genes interacting with the environment - fundamentally control fat regulation. Therefore, it behooves the fat loss seeker - to the extent that is possible - to control the secretion of these hormones and activity of these enzymes to maximize fat mobilization and burning.

Fat loss requires four steps:

1. Lipolysis: Triglyceride (storage form of fat) breakdown and release.

2. Partitioning of fatty acids into the muscles in favor of fat.

3. Fatty acid oxidation (fat burning). The technical term is beta-oxidation.

4. Increased basal metabolic rate (BMR).

Lipolysis (step 1) is accomplished by an intracellular enzyme called hormone sensitive lipase (HSL), which is available abundantly within fat cells. The hormones that stimulate HSL are secreted in response to fasting, under-eating, intense exercise, and stress.

The fat partitioning step (step 2) is controlled by the enzyme lipoprotein lipase (LPL). LPL - as its name suggests - acts on circulating lipoprotein particles whose role is to transport fats in the bloodstream. LPL liberates fatty acids from the lipoprotein particles so that they can be herded into the cell on which the LPL resides. LPL distribution is determined by the balance between insulin and glucagon (which is determined primarily by blood sugar levels) as well as by sex hormones.

Beta-oxidation (step 3) is regulated by all of the hormones mentioned above. The most prominent one is glucagon. Glucagon - secreted in response to high protein foods and low blood sugar - increases the shuttling of fats into the mitochondria so that they may be burned for energy.

The thyroid gland is the primary regulator of BMR and accomplishes step 4 by secreting hormones that increase the metabolic rate of every cell in the body. An underactive thyroid gland almost always leads to weight gain.

So, how does the fat loss seeker consolidate all of these factors involved in fat tissue regulation and create a plan that maximizes fat burning? That will be the topic of the article "How to Accelerate Fat Loss."

Sources:

1.The Practical Guide: Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. October 2000, NIH Pub No 00-4084.

2. Calle EE, Thun MJ, Petrelli JM, et al. Body-mass index and mortality in a prospective cohort of US adults. N Engl J Med 1999;341:1097-1105.

3. National Institutes of Health and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults - the evidence report. Obes Res 1998;6(suppl 2):1S-209S.

4. World Health Organization. Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic. Report of a WHO Consultation on Obesity. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1998.

5. Hall, John E., and Arthur C. Guyton. Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders/Elsevier, 2011.

6. Berg, Jeremy Mark, John L. Tymoczko, and Lubert Stryer. Biochemistry . 5th ed. New York: W.H. Freeman, 2002.

My vagina sometimes hurts during and after sex. Why?

Q:My vagina sometimes hurts during and after sex. Why?

A:The most common cause of pain during sex is vaginal dryness, so be sure you're fully aroused before you have intercourse and try a water-based lubricant. The condoms you're using could also be the culprit: You may have a latex allergy or be irritated by spermicide. Switch to polyurethane condoms without spermicide.

However, if you've determined that none of these is the cause of your discomfort, see your gyno. You may have an infection, such as yeast or bacterial vaginosis, or vulvodynia -- a hard-to-detect condition caused by misfiring of nerves around the vulva.