medicalcondition:diabetes

  • Egypt’s Former President Morsi Dies in Court : State TV | News | teleSUR English
    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Egypts-Former-PresidentMorsiDies-in-Court-State-TV-20190617-0010.htm

    Egypt’s former President Mohamed Morsi died after fainting during a court hearing.

    Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has died in court, state television reported Monday.

    It said Morsi had fainted after a court session and died afterward. He was pronounced dead at 4:50 pm local time according to the country’s public prosecutor.

    “He was speaking before the judge for 20 minutes then became very animated and fainted. He was quickly rushed to the hospital where he later died,” a judicial source said.

    “In front of Allah, my father and we shall unite,” wrote Ahmed, Morsi’s son on Facebook.

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan paid tribute to Morsi saying, "May Allah rest our Morsi brother, our martyr’s soul in peace.”

    According to medical reports, there were no apparent injuries on his body.

    Morsi, who was democratically elected after the popular ouster of Hosni Mubarak, was toppled by the military led by coup leader and current President Abdul-Fattah el-Sissi in 2013 after protests against his rule.

    “We received with great sorrow the news of the sudden death of former president Dr. Mohamed Morsi. I offer my deepest condolences to his family and Egyptian people. We belong to God and to him we shall return,” Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani wrote on Twitter.

    The United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric offered condolences to his supporters and relatives.

    State television said Morsi, who was 67, was in court for a hearing on charges of espionage emanating from suspected contacts with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip that is under blockade by the current Egyptian government and Israel.

    He was facing at least six trials for politically motivated charges according to his supporters. The former president was also serving a 20-years prison sentence for allegedly killing protesters in 2012.

    Morsi was suffering from various health issues including diabetes and liver and kidney disease. During his imprisonment, he suffered from medical neglect worsened by poor prison conditions.

    Mohammed Sudan, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said that Morsi’s death was "premeditated murder” by not allowing him adequate health care.

    "He has been placed behind [a] glass cage [during trials]. No one can hear him or know what is happening to him. He hasn’t received any visits for months or nearly a year. He complained before that he doesn’t get his medicine. This is premeditated murder. This is a slow death,” Sudan said.

    Morsi was allowed 3 short visits in 6 years. One in November 2013 after being forcibly disappeared for 4 months, and another in June 2017 when only his wife and daughter were allowed, and the third in September 2018 with security official recording the whole conversation.
    — Abdelrahman Ayyash (@3yyash) June 17, 2019

    #Égypte #islamisme #prison

  • Diabetes complications soar in the US, but not #Canada, as teenagers become young adults
    https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-diabetes-complications-soar-canada-teenagers.html

    Hospitalizations for a feared complication of diabetes, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), rise sharply as adolescents transition to adulthood in the U.S, but not in Canada, according to a new study published May 8 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. DKA can generally be prevented with regular use of insulin. The increased DKA rate in the U.S. occurs around age 18, a time when many adolescents change or lose insurance coverage, a disruption that places them at risk for skipping medical visits or being unable to afford insulin.

    #diabète_sucré #santé #etats-unis #insécurité_sociale

  • The Simplest Way to Drastically Improve Your Life: More Sleep - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/smarter-living/how-to-get-better-sleep.html


    Bonne nuit.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called sleep deprivation a public health crisis, saying that one-third of adults don’t get enough sleep. Some 80 percent of people report sleep problems at least once per week, and according to a 2016 study, sleep deprivation “causes more than $400 billion in economic losses annually in the United States and results in 1.23 million lost days of work each year.”

    If that’s not enough, here is a non-comprehensive list of the ways your sleep deprivation is personally harming you:

    Your overall cognitive performance — particularly your visual attention and ability to form memories — deteriorates. (More colloquially, this is that “brain fog” we all experience after a late night.)

    Your ability to learn new information is impaired, both by sleep deprivation before you learn new information and afterward.

    You’re less likely to correctly read facial expressions, even interpreting some expressions — even neutral ones — as threatening.

    You’re likely to be more cranky and react worse when presented with obstacles.

    Beyond your severely impaired mental abilities, your body is affected, too: A lack of adequate sleep can contribute to weight gain, puts you at a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, and makes you far less resistant to the common cold.

    That is insane! All of this from just not getting enough sleep!

    So what are we to do?
    ...
    First, learn how much sleep you need. Generally, if you’re waking up tired, you’re not getting enough.

    #wtf #sommeil

  • How is Technology Transforming #healthcare at Home
    https://hackernoon.com/how-is-technology-transforming-healthcare-at-home-1ce827b355b9?source=rs

    The potential for Transforming Healthcare at Home is growing tremendouslyhttps://medium.com/media/24aafa5d9039edf21952f173b4f78fad/hrefThe world today;Is experiencing a dramatic change in age demographics. Considering America as a prime example, it is estimated — In the year 2019, the group of people of age older than 65 will outnumber the group of those younger than five. As life expectancy increases, the number of people living with different chronic conditions and functional impairments, for instance, dementia, diabetes and the inability to manage household chores with growing age are further increasing.People belonging to the “old age” group are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases and require more care and attention. In such times, the need of the hour is to discover and (...)

    #telehealth #home-healthcare #remote-patient-monitoring #healthcare-technology

  • World Diabetes Day: The Food System and Human Health – Food Tank
    https://foodtank.com/news/2018/11/world-diabetes-day-the-food-system-and-human-health

    The World Health Organization estimates the direct costs of diabetes at more than US$827 billion per year, globally. Sugary foods are aggressively marketed throughout the world, especially to children. And multiple studies find that these marketing efforts are especially likely to reach children of color and low-income kids. Food policies impact global sugar consumption, as well, particularly in the younger generation.

    “If we start with global dietary patterns, we know they are shifting towards the U.S. model of high meat and high calorie consumption, coupled with low fruit and vegetable consumption. With this shift, we are seeing increasing obesity and chronic diseases on the human side, and increased land and water degradation on the natural systems side,” says Dr. Michael Hamm, Founding Director of the Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems.

    #modèle #etats-unis #sucre #graisses_animale #diabete_sucré #maladies #sols #eau #santé

  • What the Numbers Really Tell Us About Living Longer in Retirement
    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/903969

    [...] overall, the study [1] found that Americans are faring worse in a wide range of measures, including infant mortality and low birth weight, injuries and homicides, drug-related deaths, obesity and diabetes, heart disease and chronic lung disease. Many of the conditions sharply reduce the odds of reaching age 50 - and for those who do, the conditions contribute to poorer health and greater illness later in life, the report found.

    “If health were an Olympic event, we have been getting beat by lots of other nations,” said Stephen Bezruchka, a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Washington in Seattle.

    The poor performance does not stem only from problems with access to healthcare, he notes. “We tend to confuse health and healthcare,” he said, adding that research shows that medical care accounts for no more than 15 percent of the mortality gap between the United States and other rich countries.

    Epidemiologists have documented that societies with less economic equality have worse than average health. Some of this stems from the inability of lower-income households to meet basic needs such as adequate nutrition and shelter. But at the high end of wealth, Bezruchka notes, there is a diminishing-return effect - money can purchase only so much health.

    “Those with more income do have lower mortality, but you get a greater return on average health by taking a little from the rich and giving it to the poorer person.

    #santé #inégalités #états-unis

    [1] rapport annuel de la Society of Actuaries (SOA): "mortality improvement scale”

  • Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study...
    https://diasp.eu/p/7891268

    Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

    Being unfit should be treated as a disease that has a prescription, called exercise, the study’s author said. Article word count: 764

    HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18264436 Posted by nikolasavic (karma: 503) Post stats: Points: 97 - Comments: 48 - 2018-10-20T17:45:05Z

    #HackerNews #and #diabetes #disease #exercising #finds #heart #not #smoking #study #than #worse

    Article content:

    [1]High intensity workouts can help you live to 100

     Fitness leads to longer life, researchers found, with no limit to the benefit of aerobic exercise  Comparing those with a sedentary lifestyle to the top exercise performers, the risk of premature death was 500% higher.

    Atlanta, Georgia (CNN)Weʼve (...)

  • Linguistic red flags from Facebook posts can predict future depression diagnoses — ScienceDaily
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181015150643.htm

    Research finds that the language people use in their Facebook posts can predict a future diagnosis of depression as accurately as the tools clinicians use in medical settings to screen for the disease.

    In any given year, depression affects more than 6 percent of the adult population in the United States — some 16 million people — but fewer than half receive the treatment they need. What if an algorithm could scan social media and point to linguistic red flags of the disease before a formal medical diagnosis had been made?

    Ah oui, ce serait fantastique pour les Big Pharma : la dépression est une maladie complexe, dont les symptômes graves sont souvent confondus avec la déprime qui est un état sychologique que nous connaissons tous. Notre Facebook, couplé avec notre assistant vocal Amazon nous gorgerait de Valium, et tout irait pour le mieux dans le Meilleur des mondes.

    Considering conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD , for example, you find more signals in the way people express themselves digitally."

    For six years, the WWBP, based in Penn’s Positive Psychology Center and Stony Brook’s Human Language Analysis Lab, has been studying how the words people use reflect inner feelings and contentedness. In 2014, Johannes Eichstaedt, WWBP founding research scientist, started to wonder whether it was possible for social media to predict mental health outcomes, particularly for depression.

    “Social media data contain markers akin to the genome,” Eichstaedt explains. “With surprisingly similar methods to those used in genomics, we can comb social media data to find these markers. Depression appears to be something quite detectable in this way; it really changes people’s use of social media in a way that something like skin disease or diabetes doesn’t.”

    Il y a au moins une bonne nouvelle sur la déontologie scientifique :

    Rather than do what previous studies had done — recruit participants who self-reported depression — the researchers identified data from people consenting to share Facebook statuses and electronic medical-record information, and then analyzed the statuses using machine-learning techniques to distinguish those with a formal depression diagnosis.

    Les marqueurs considérés sont aussi des marqueurs sociaux et économiques, qu’il faudrait traiter autrement qu’avec des médicaments.

    They learned that these markers comprised emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal processes such as hostility and loneliness, sadness and rumination, and that they could predict future depression as early as three months before first documentation of the illness in a medical record.

    La conclusion est fantastique : il faut rendre le balayage obligatoire !!!

    Eichstaedt sees long-term potential in using these data as a form of unobtrusive screening. “The hope is that one day, these screening systems can be integrated into systems of care,” he says. “This tool raises yellow flags; eventually the hope is that you could directly funnel people it identifies into scalable treatment modalities.”

    Despite some limitations to the study, including its strictly urban sample, and limitations in the field itself — not every depression diagnosis in a medical record meets the gold standard that structured clinical interviews provide, for example — the findings offer a potential new way to uncover and get help for those suffering from depression.

    #Dépression #Facebook #Foutaises #Hubris_scientifique #Big_pharma #Psychologie

    • Merck Is Lowering Drug Prices. There’s a Catch. - The New York Times
      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/health/merck-trump-drug-prices.html

      The drugmaker Merck said Thursday that it would lower prices on several drugs by 10 percent or more, but its rollback affects minor products and would not lower the cost of its top-selling, expensive cancer and diabetes products.

      The move follows recent announcements by Pfizer and Novartis that they would freeze price increases for the rest of the year, as the industry confronts sustained criticism from President Trump, lawmakers and the public over the rising cost of prescriptions.

      Merck’s action shows just how cautiously the industry is shifting strategies: It did not cut the prices of any blockbusters like the cancer treatment Keytruda or the diabetes drug Januvia. Instead, it said it would reduce by 60 percent the list price of Zepatier, a hepatitis C drug whose recent sales have dipped so low that, after paying after-the-fact rebates to insurers, the company recorded no sales in the United States for the product in the first quarter of this year.

      The six other products that Merck said it was discounting were drugs that had lost their patent protection and are available from other manufacturers as low-cost generics.

  • U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html

    American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

    When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

    The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

    #Etats-Unis #corrompu #corruption #lobbying #gangsters #mafia #sans_vergogne

    • Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

    • Breastfeeding: achieving the new normal - The Lancet
      https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00210-5/abstract

      The deaths of 823 000 children and 20 000 mothers each year could be averted through universal breastfeeding, along with economic savings of US$300 billion. The Series confirms the benefits of breastfeeding in fewer infections, increased intelligence, probable protection against overweight and diabetes, and cancer prevention for mothers.

      Via @AndrewAlbertson sur twitter.

    • The Baby-Formula #Crime Ring - The New York Times
      https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/02/magazine/money-issue-baby-formula-crime-ring.html

      SOME $4.3 BILLION worth of infant formula was sold in the United States last year, a vast majority of it in powdered form. Between factory and baby aisle, its cheap ingredients (dehydrated milk and vitamins) become steeply, even mysteriously expensive. Basic types run about $15 for a 12.5-ounce can, amounting to perhaps $150 a month for a fully formula-fed infant. Specialty recipes like EleCare can cost two or three times as much. Strict Food and Drug Administration regulations govern formula production, and three companies dominate. Abbott Laboratories, which makes Similac, and Mead Johnson, which makes Enfamil, each control about 40 percent of the market. The Nestlé-owned brand Gerber holds a roughly 15-percent share.

      A market with so little competition is bound to have generous margins, and formula makers have grown richer still because a single buyer accounts for roughly half of all domestic sales: the United States government. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC, provides needy mothers with cash assistance for certain foods, including powdered formula. When it began, in 1972, WIC represented a fresh, lush source of inelastic demand, by effectively eliminating from the formula market those customers most sensitive to price. During the ’80s, formula prices rose by more than 150 percent, vastly outpacing increases in milk costs. By the middle of that decade, formula was absorbing 40 percent of WIC’s food budget, prompting shortfalls that shunted many eligible families to a waiting list.

    • Allaitement maternel : Trump défend le lait en poudre | États-Unis
      http://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/201807/09/01-5188885-allaitement-maternel-trump-defend-le-lait-en-poudre.php

      Attitude criminelle des Etats-Unis : ils défendent les intérêts des fabricants du lait en poudre au détriment de la santé des enfants,

      L’article, paru dans le New York Times, affirme que les délégués américains à une réunion annuelle de l’OMS à Genève en mai ont cherché à supprimer un passage d’une résolution sur l’alimentation du nourrisson et du jeune enfant qui invitait les États membres à « protéger, promouvoir et soutenir » l’allaitement maternel.

      Les Américains auraient fait pression sur l’Équateur afin que le pays renonce à proposer la résolution, et c’est la Russie qui aurait pris le relais. La phrase a finalement été approuvée et figure dans le document disponible aujourd’hui en ligne.

      « L’article du New York Times sur l’allaitement doit être dénoncé. Les États-Unis soutiennent fortement l’allaitement, mais nous pensons que les femmes ne doivent pas se voir interdire l’accès au lait en poudre. De nombreuses femmes ont besoin de cette option à cause de la malnutrition et de la pauvreté », a tweeté Donald Trump.

  • Why New Antibiotics Are So Hard to Find - Issue 60: Searches
    http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/why-new-antibiotics-are-so-hard-to-find

    An 86-year-old patient arrives with a grisly foot injury.1 It’s badly infected—not a surprise, given his chronic untreated Type 2 diabetes. What is surprising is that meropenem, a broad spectrum antibiotic, and vancomycin, known as the antibiotic of last resort, have absolutely no effect. The doctors know something bad is going on. But, even expecting the worst, the test results surprise them. The man’s foot is infected with not one, but three different bacteria: Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Acinetobacter lwoffii. Each is multi-drug resistant. The hospital, located in Brazil, simply doesn’t have the resources to deal with the situation. The patient is transferred to a larger hospital, but enough damage has already been done to his foot to require amputation. ACTION (...)

  • Diabetic Retinopathy Detection
    https://hackernoon.com/diabetic-retinopathy-detection-9bdceac75752?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3--

    Among individuals with diabetes, the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy is approximately 28.5% in the United 12 States and 18% in India. Globally, the number of people with DR will grow from 126.6 million in 2010 to 191.0 million by 2030. This disease is one of the most frequent causes of visual impairment in developed countries and is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in the working age population.Altogether, nearly 75 people go blind every day as a consequence of DR even though treatment is available.Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes, caused by high blood sugar levels damaging the back of the eye (retina). It can cause blindness if left undiagnosed and untreated. When left untreated, diabetic retinopathy damages your retina. This is the lining at the back (...)

    #data #machine-learning #data-science #diabetic-retinopathy #retinopathy-detection

  • The silent cancer refugees crisis – Cancerworld
    http://cancerworld.net/featured/the-silent-cancer-refugees-crisis

    Rather than the easier to treat communicable diseases that aid workers were dealing with, they now face non-communicable diseases such as diabetes or cancer, which are much more expensive to treat and require a very different skill set and expertise.

    “The problem is not with the doctors, but with the healthcare system. In Lebanon, there are limited hospitals that offer treatment for children with cancer. The hospitals are well equipped, but the patients have no financial coverage most of the time”

    #cancer #réfugiés

  • Diabetes is actually five separate diseases, research suggests - BBC News
    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43246261

    Diabetes - or uncontrolled blood sugar levels - is normally split into type 1 and type 2.

    But researchers in Sweden and Finland think the more complicated picture they have uncovered will usher in an era of personalised medicine for diabetes.

    Experts said the study was a herald of the future of diabetes care but changes to treatment would not be immediate.

    #Diabète_sucré #santé

  • #Exercise Alters Our #Microbiome. Is That One Reason It’s So Good for Us? - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/well/move/exercise-microbiome-health-weight-gut-bacteria.html

    Most of these changes were not shared from one person to the next. Everyone’s gut responded uniquely to exercise.

    But there were some similarities, the researchers found. In particular, they noted widespread increases in certain microbes that can help to produce substances called short-chain fatty acids. These fatty acids are believed to aid in reducing inflammation in the gut and the rest of the body. They also work to fight insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, and otherwise bolster our metabolisms.

    Most of the volunteers had larger concentrations of these short-chain fatty acids in their intestines after exercise, along with the #microbes that produce them.

    These increases were greatest, though, among the volunteers who had begun the experiment lean compared to those who were obese, the scientists found.

    And perhaps not surprisingly, almost all of the changes in people’s guts dissipated after six weeks of not exercising. By and large, their microbiomes reverted to what they had been at the study’s start.

    #microbiote

  • U.S. Black Mothers Die In Childbirth At Three Times The Rate Of White Mothers : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why

    Black women are more likely to be uninsured outside of pregnancy, when Medicaid kicks in, and thus more likely to start prenatal care later and to lose coverage in the postpartum period. They are more likely to have chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension that make having a baby more dangerous. The hospitals where they give birth are often the products of historical #segregation, lower in quality than those where white mothers deliver, with significantly higher rates of life-threatening complications.

    Those problems are amplified by unconscious #biases that are embedded in the medical system, affecting quality of care in stark and subtle ways. In the more than 200 stories of #African-American mothers that ProPublica and NPR have collected over the past year, the feeling of being devalued and disrespected by medical providers was a constant theme.

    There was the new mother in Nebraska with a history of hypertension who couldn’t get her doctors to believe she was having a heart attack until she had another one. The young Florida mother-to-be whose breathing problems were blamed on obesity when in fact her lungs were filling with fluid and her heart was failing. The Arizona mother whose anesthesiologist assumed she smoked marijuana because of the way she did her hair. The Chicago-area businesswoman with a high-risk pregnancy who was so upset at her doctor’s attitude that she changed OB/GYNs in her seventh month, only to suffer a fatal postpartum stroke.
    Over and over, black women told of medical providers who equated being African-American with being poor, uneducated, noncompliant and unworthy. “Sometimes you just know in your bones when someone feels contempt for you based on your #race,” said one Brooklyn, N.Y., woman who took to bringing her white husband or in-laws to every prenatal visit. Hakima Payne, a mother of nine in Kansas City, Mo., who used to be a labor and delivery nurse and still attends births as a midwife-doula, has seen this cultural divide as both patient and caregiver. “The nursing culture is white, middle-class and female, so is largely built around that identity. Anything that doesn’t fit that #identity is suspect,” she said. Payne, who lectures on unconscious bias for professional organizations, recalled “the conversations that took place behind the nurse’s station that just made assumptions; a lot of victim-blaming — ’If those people would only do blah, blah, blah, things would be different.’”
    ...
    But it’s the discrimination that black women experience in the rest of their lives — the double whammy of race and gender — that may ultimately be the most significant factor in poor maternal outcomes.

    “It’s chronic stress that just happens all the time — there is never a period where there’s rest from it. It’s everywhere; it’s in the air; it’s just affecting everything,” said Fleda Mask Jackson, an Atlanta researcher who focuses on birth outcomes for middle-class black women.

    It’s a type of stress for which education and class provide no protection. “When you interview these doctors and lawyers and business executives, when you interview African-American college graduates, it’s not like their lives have been a walk in the park,” said Michael Lu, a longtime disparities researcher and former head of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Health Resources and Services Administration, the main federal agency funding programs for mothers and infants. “It’s the experience of having to work harder than anybody else just to get equal pay and equal respect. It’s being followed around when you’re shopping at a nice store, or being stopped by the police when you’re driving in a nice neighborhood.”

    #racisme #États_Unis #maternité

  • She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/health/colombia-soda-tax-obesity.html

    “If you don’t keep your mouth shut,” one man shouted, she recalled in a recent interview, “you know what the consequences will be.”

    The episode, which Dr. Cerón reported to federal investigators, was reminiscent of the intimidation often used against those who challenged the drug cartels that once dominated Colombia. But the narcotics trade was not the target of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues. Their work had upset a different multibillion-dollar industry: the makers of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

    Their organization, Educar Consumidores, was the most visible proponent of a proposed 20 percent tax on sugary drinks that was heading for a vote that month in Colombia’s Legislature. The group had raised money, rallied allies to the cause and produced a provocative television ad that warned consumers how sugar-laden beverages can lead to obesity and diet-related illnesses like diabetes.

    “The industry sees sugary-drink taxes as an existential threat,” said Dr. James Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America, which tracks beverage tax initiatives. In the United States, the industry has spent at least $107 million at the state and local levels since 2009 to beat back soda taxes and beverage warning labels, a new study found. Compared to the domestic tactics, Dr. Krieger said, overseas, “it’s much dirtier, much more bare-knuckled.”

    The beverage industry asserts that soda taxes unfairly burden the poor, cause higher unemployment by squeezing industry sales, and fail to achieve their policy goal: reducing obesity. Studies of soda taxes have shown they lead to a drop in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages — a 10 percent sales decline, for example, over the first two years of Mexico’s tax — however, such measures are so new that there is not yet evidence of their impact on health.

    “Slapping a tax on our products and walking away won’t do anything about obesity in this country or globally,” said William Dermody, spokesman for the American Beverage Association, an industry trade group.

    But public health organizations, including the W.H.O., cite soda taxes as one of the most effective policy tools for cutting consumption of what nutritionists call a “liquid candy” that has contributed to an epidemic of obesity and related health conditions around the world. Dr. Kathryn Backholer, an expert on the issue at Deakin University in Australia, said taxes on soda were “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against obesity, diabetes and other weight-related diseases because such drinks are easily categorized to tax and sensible to target because they “have little or no nutritional value.”

    “In Colombia, the sugar industry and the main media companies belong to the same economic conglomerates,” Mr. Gaviria, the health minister, said. “They have an intimidating power. And they used it.”

    That fall, at least 90 lobbyists worked to sway legislators, according to a tally of visitor logs obtained by Educar Consumidores. During committee hearings on the measure, lobbyists often sat next to lawmakers, a flagrant violation of congressional rules, said Óscar Ospina Quintero, a legislator from the Green Alliance party. Mr. Ospina said he protested the lobbyists’ presence in the chamber but was rebuffed by congressional leaders.

    “The response was fierce,” Mr. Gaviria said. “I remember that, during one of the debates, a senator said to me: ‘In all my years in Congress I’ve never seen a lobbying effort like this.’”

    Toute la suite est effrayante : intimidation, virus informatiques, pression, lobbies. Le sucre n’est pas doux.

    #Sucre #Obésité #Soda #Colombie #Médias

  • Global cost of obesity-related illness to hit $1.2tn a year from 2025 | Society | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/10/treating-obesity-related-illness-will-cost-12tn-a-year-from-2025-expert

    The cost of treating ill health caused by obesity around the world will top $1.2tn every year from 2025 unless more is done to check the rapidly worsening epidemic, according to new expert estimates.

    Obesity and smoking are the two main drivers behind the soaring numbers of cancers, heart attacks, strokes and diabetes worldwide, grouped together officially as non-communicable diseases. They are the biggest killers of the modern world.
    Supersize us: upselling is fuelling the obesity epidemic, warns report
    Read more

    #santé #obésité

  • 6 million adults do not do a monthly brisk 10 minute walk - GOV.UK
    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/6-million-adults-do-not-do-a-monthly-brisk-10-minute-walk

    Over 6.3 million adults aged 40 to 60 do not achieve 10 minutes of continuous brisk walking over the course of a month and are missing out on important health benefits, according to the Public Health England (PHE) 10 minutes brisk walking recommendations: evidence summary.

    The findings also reveal how lifestyles have changed over time, showing that people in the UK are 20% less active now than they were in the 1960s and on average walk 15 miles less a year than 2 decades ago. The sedentary nature of modern, busy lives makes it difficult for many to find the time for enough exercise to benefit their health.
    […]
    Taking at least 1 brisk 10 minute walk a day has been shown to reduce the risk of early death by 15%. A 10 minute walk can contribute to meeting the CMO’s physical activity guidance of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each week. This can lead to health benefits including a lowered risk of type 2 diabetes (by 40%), cardiovascular disease (by 35%), dementia (by 30%) and some cancers (by 20%).

    The severity of the current physical inactivity epidemic amongst adults contributes to 1 in 6 deaths in the UK and is costing the NHS over £0.9 billion per year.

    Repris en français avec le titre

    Les Anglais confrontés à une #épidémie_de_sédentarité chez les adultes
    https://www.pourquoidocteur.fr/Articles/Question-d-actu/22632-Les-Anglais-confrontes-epidemie-sedentarite-adultes

  • Édulcorants artificiels : leurs dangers enfin prouvés ?
    http://www.futura-sciences.com/sante/actualites/nutrition-edulcorants-artificiels-leurs-dangers-enfin-prouves-68032/#xtor=RSS-8
    Une nouvelle étude a découvert un lien entre les édulcorants artificiels et plusieurs problèmes de santé, parmi lesquels la prise de poids à long terme, le risque accru d’obésité, le diabète, l’hypertension et les maladies cardiaques.

    « Il convient de rester prudent tant que les effets des édulcorants artificiels à long terme sur la santé ne sont pas complètement connus », explique Meghan Azad, auteure principale de l’étude, dont l’équipe au Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba est également en train d’étudier les effets de la consommation d’édulcorants artificiels pendant la grossesse sur la prise de poids, le métabolisme et la flore intestinale de l’enfant.

    Artificial sweeteners linked with weight gain, little health benefit
    http://www.wsaw.com/content/news/Artificial-sweeteners-linked-with-weight-gain-little-health-benefit-435409873.

    Two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and those who diet sometimes turn to alternative sweeteners — including aspartame, sucralose and stevioside — to cut calories.

    Now, a new review of many studies suggests that doing so might not be the best idea.

    The scientists took a comprehensive look at more than 11,000 studies and found that, for overweight individuals or those with high blood pressure (hypertension) or diabetes, the benefits of consuming zero-calorie, “non-nutritive sweeteners” were modest to nil. For other people, there was an increased risk of weight gain, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and heart disease. [7 Biggest Diet Myths]

    “Overall, the evidence does not support the intended purpose of weight loss and suggests that there might be adverse effects in the long term,” said Meghan Azad, lead author of the review and an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba.

    Previous research had suggested that non-nutritive sweeteners were not the healthiest choice, but those studies were smaller in scope than the new review, and tended to focus on one outcome at a time, said Azad, who researches the development of chronic diseases.

    Regular Consumption of Artificial Sweeteners Linked to Increased Risk of Obesity, Diabetes, Other Health Issues
    A literature review of 37 studies has found that regular consumption of artificial sweeteners is associated with long-term weight gain and an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
    http://www.sci-news.com/medicine/regular-consumption-artificial-sweeteners-linked-risk-obesity-diabetes-050

    dossier #edulcorants (nb : je suit hyper intolerante aux edulcorants de synthèse, qui sont parfois cachés dans certains produits d’où le suivi de ce sujet.) #alimentation #bombe_a_retardement

  • Scientists plan to trick Zika-carrying mosquitoes into breeding themselves out of existence - The Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/07/19/scientists-plan-to-trick-zika-carrying-mosquitoes-into-breeding-them

    This summer, a Silicon Valley tech company will have millions of machine-raised, bacteria-infected mosquitoes packed into windowless white vans, driven inland and released into the wild — or, at least, the streets of Fresno, Calif.

    And, yes, Fresno County officials are encouraging this.

    It’s all part of the “#Debug_Fresno” project, which aims to cut down on the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, an unwelcome invasive species that arrived in California’s Central Valley in 2013. In addition to being potential carriers of the #Zika, dengue fever and chikungunya viruses, the Aedes aegypti also adapted rapidly to the area’s residential neighborhoods, to the chagrin of residents and officials alike.

    “It’s a terrible nuisance, a terrible biting nuisance. It’s changed the way people can enjoy their back yard and it’s a threat for disease transmission,” said Steve Mulligan, district manager for the region’s Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District. “So we’re looking for new ways to eliminate it.”

    To do so, district officials have partnered with tech companies to use an approach that has gained traction in recent years. Inside a lab, millions of the mosquitoes will be infected with Wolbachia bacteria, which changes the reproductive ability of males. Afterward, only those male mosquitoes — which don’t bite — will be released to mate with unsuspecting female Aedes aegypti.

    Even if the females lay eggs, those eggs will never hatch. Eventually, officials hope to reduce the population of Aedes aegypti, generation by generation, until they are eliminated from the area.
    […]
    This year’s mosquitoes are being bred and distributed by #Verily, a subsidiary of #Alphabet that was formerly known as #Google_Life_Sciences. Verily officials estimate that this year, they will release 1 million mosquitoes per week in Fresno County, more than 25 times last summer’s numbers. That is possible because they’ve developed ways to breed and separate male and female mosquitoes on a larger scale.

    • Cette activité ne figure pas dans la liste des projets de Verily sur WP tant [fr] qu’[en]

      Verily — Wikipédia
      https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily

      Projets
      • Lentilles de contact permettant de contrôler le niveau de glucose chez les personnes diabétiques
      • Cuillère pour les personnes ayant des tremblements, par exemple atteintes de la maladie de Parkinson (projet Liftware)
      • Baseline Study, projet pour collecter l’information génétique et moléculaire sur un échantillon suffisamment grand de personnes afin de créer une cartographie représentative d’un humain en bonne santé
      • Une plateforme permettant la détection de maladie par nanoparticule
      • Un bracelet de suivi de santé.

      Verily Life Sciences - Wikipedia
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily_Life_Sciences

      Projects
      • Contact lenses that allow people with diabetes to continually check their glucose levels using a non-intrusive method.
      • A spoon for people with tremors.
      • The Baseline Study, a project to collect genetic, molecular, and wearable device information from enough people to create a picture of what a healthy human should be.
      • A health-tracking wristband.
      • A disease-detecting nanoparticle platform. working with the wristband, a project called Tricorder
      • Advancements in surgical robotics, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson.
      • Development and commercialization of bioelectronic medicines, in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline
      • Development of miniaturized continuous glucose monitors (CGM) in partnership with Dexcom

  • Trump’s New CDC Chief Championed Partnership with Coca-Cola to Solve Childhood Obesity
    https://theintercept.com/2017/07/08/trumps-new-cdc-chief-championed-partnership-with-coca-cola-to-solve-ch

    The new chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which monitors significant public health concerns, including the impact of sugary beverages on obesity and heart disease, will be led by Brenda Fitzgerald, a Georgia physician whose signature childhood obesity project was underwritten by Coca-Cola.

    Coca-Cola was so fond of Fitzgerald’s approach to obesity issues that an opinion column authored by Fitzgerald is featured prominently on Coca-Cola’s website.

    Public health officials around the country have made obesity a top issue of concern. The United States has the distinction of having the highest rate of childhood obesity in the world, according to a recent report from the New England Journal of Medicine. And multiple reports have found that regular consumption of sugary beverages is a leading driver of obesity, which is linked to heart disease, diabetes, kidney diseases, cancers and hypertension.

    More exercise, of course, is a good thing, but the Georgia SHAPE program notably eschewed another well-known step toward healthier living: curbing sugary beverage consumption

    The CDC in particular has also been targeted by Coca-Cola, which has long disclosed attempts to lobby the agency to influence public health policy.

    Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know revealed that executives from Coca-Cola and the International Life Sciences Institute — an organization founded with support from Coca-Cola — had pressured the agency to partner with the soda giant and allow it to weigh in on debates over sugary soft drinks. In one particular email chain with a CDC official, a former Coca-Cola executive discussed strategies for influencing the World Health Organization’s call for greater regulation of soft drinks. The former Coca-Cola executive called the WHO’s efforts a “threat to our business,” and invited the CDC official out for dinner to further discuss ways to sway decisions at the international body. Clyde Tuggle, the former Coca-Cola executive, was included in the email chain.

    #alimentation #conflits_intérêt #boissons_sucrées #obésité