And it’s also why you’re not. Data shows that there is something as important as what you eat to your overall health: how where you live is laid out.

Academic literature defines an "obesogenic environment" as "promoting gaining weight and one that is not conducive to weight loss.” But there’s a simpler way of putting it: It is a neighborhood that makes you fat.

The developed world is full of them: suburbs where the only option is driving, and where stores and recreation are too far away for walking or cycling. No wonder we have an obesity crisis, with a third of adults, and 17% of children, classified as unhealthily overweight. It’s not all about what we eat.

The good news, though, is that the opposite is also true. If people have options to shop and exercise locally, they will take them, and health can improve. A recent study from Western Australia, which surveyed 1,400 people before and after relocating to new developments, found that nearby stores increased walking by an average of 5 to 6 minutes per week, and that access to a park or beach increased physical activity by 21 minutes a week. Read More...

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Does the language we speak determine how healthy and rich we will be? New research by Keith Chen of Yale Business School suggests so. The structure of languages affects our judgments and decisions about the future and this might have dramatic long-term consequences.

There has been a lot of research into how we deal with the future. For example, the famous marshmallow studies of Walter Mischel and colleagues showed that being able to resist temptation is predictive of future success. Four-year-old kids were given a marshmallow and were told that if they do not eat that marshmallow and wait for the experimenter to come back, they will get two marshmallows instead of one. Follow-up studies showed that the kids who were able to wait for the bigger future reward became more successful young adults.

Resisting our impulses for immediate pleasure is often the only way to attain the outcomes that are important to us. We want to keep a slim figure but we also want that last slice of pizza. We want a comfortable retirement, but we also want to drive that dazzling car, go on that dream vacation, or get those gorgeous shoes. Some people are better at delaying gratification than others. Those people have a better chance of accumulating wealth and keeping a healthy life style. They are less likely to be impulse buyers or smokers, or to engage in unsafe sex. Read More...

Image Courtsey of Andrejs Pidjass

Women who take a regular dose of aspirin may get a side benefit – a reduction in their risk of melanoma, a new study suggests.

And the more years women take the over-the-counter-medication, the lower the risk, according to the study which was published online today in Cancer.

“We think our results are very exciting and that they add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that aspirin may have some real anti-tumor and anti-cancer properties,” said study co-author Jean Tang, an assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford University.

Tang and her colleagues scrutinized data from 59,806 Caucasian women who were taking part of the Women’s Health Initiative study. The women, who were between 50 and 79 years old at WHI’s outset, were followed for an average of 12 years. The researchers chose to concentrate on Caucasian women because melanoma is much more common among them.

At the beginning of the study, the women were asked which medications they were taking, what they ate and what activities they participated in. Read More...

The amount of salt in our diet could be involved in driving our own immune systems to rebel against us, leading to diseases such as multiple sclerosis, early laboratory findings suggest.

Several teams of scientists have simultaneously published data in the journal Nature suggesting a link.

Salt may activate a part of the immune system that can target the body.

Experts said the findings were very interesting and plausible, but were not a cure for people with MS.

The body's defence against infection can go horrible awry, turning on the body and leading to autoimmune diseases including Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

Genetics is thought to increase the risk of such diseases, but the world around us also has a major impact. One of the leading theories behind multiple sclerosis is a viral infection, but smoking and a lack of vitamin D may make the condition more likely.

Now researchers believe they have the first evidence that the amount of salt in our diet may also be contributing. Read More...

Image Courtsey of Dubravko Sorić

News: a fork for dieters that vibrates when you eat too much or too fast is one of the most talked-about launches at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

Created by Hong Kong-based gadget company HAPILabs, the HAPIfork helps users lose weight by reminding them to eat more slowly. The idea is that the slower you eat, the faster you feel full, so it's easier to eat less.

Sensors inside the fork count the times it travels from plate to mouth, and eating too fast causes it to gently vibrate and flash its lights. The device also works out the start and end time of the meal and the number of forkfuls eaten.

Information about food intake is transmitted via Bluetooth to a smartphone or via USB to a computer, and then collected in a personal online account so users can track their progress.

The HAPIfork mobile app allows users to comment and add pictures, while there are also plans for an online game that lets users follow their friends' progress too. Read More...

Image Courtsey of HAPILabs

LAS VEGAS — What happens if you're sick and need a doctor, and there's no medical personnel close enough to you? Or if you just need a quick check of your ear or throat for possible infection, but don't want to miss a whole morning of work to get to the doctor?

We all know a trip to a doctor's office is usually not short and convenient, but
HealthSpot is trying to change that, bringing access to doctors through the use of medical device kiosks.

Using digital technology and partnerships with doctors and hospitals, it's bringing virtual doctors to patients anytime, anywhere.

The walk-in kiosk was on display at the International CES, and I got a chance to get a tour, as well as a video conference with a board-certified medical doctor.

"HealthSpot has built a solution that merges technology with convenience in patient care. Our innovation utilizes today’s technology combined with modern medicine to diagnose and treat patients in ways that are affordable, convenient and effective," HealthSpot CEO and founder Steve Cashman said. Read More...

Image Courtsey of Mashable.com

U.S. cancer death rates in 2009 were down 20% from their peak in 1991, primarily because of large decreases in death rates from lung and prostate cancer in men and in breast cancer in women, according to the American Cancer Society.

In its annual statistical review of cancer incidence and mortality, the ACS estimated that more than 1 million Americans were saved from cancer deaths since 1991 -- the difference between the actual cancer mortality and a projection of continued increases in cancer deaths at the 1975-1991 average.

The ACS researchers also estimated that the U.S. would see 1,660,290 new cancer cases diagnosed in 2013 and 580,350 cancer deaths.

Their report appeared online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

In preparing the report, the research team, led by Rebecca Siegel, MPH, relied on mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and incidence data from a variety of government sources including the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

In 2009, the last year for which hard data on cancer incidence and mortality were available, the national incidence rate stood at 473.4 per 100,000 for all cancers combined.

The death rate from all types of cancer in 2009 was 173.1 per 100,000, down from 215.1 per 100,000 in 1991.

From 1975 to 1991, overall annual deaths from cancer in men had risen from 200,000 to 280,000. In women, the figure rose from about 170,000 in 1975 to 260,000 in 1992.

Had those trends continued through 2009, the annual death toll from cancer would have reached 400,000 in men and 320,000 in women. Thus, the nearly 20-year decline in mortality averted a total of 1.18 million deaths, Siegel and colleagues calculated. Read More...

Image Courtsey of American Cancer Society

Doctors often talk about disease in terms of cities: Cancer cells are rogue factories, while parasites are invaders. Likewise, urban planners and architects have long talked about design in relationship to medicine and disease. The two professions share uncanny similarities, and their relationship is the basis for Imperfect Health, a fascinating exhibition curated by the Canadian Center for Architecture and on view at Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery this winter.

Throughout history, the city was seen as a major hazard to human health. In fact, that belief (often correct!) is what gave rise to some of the very first modern architecture, designed to be safer and more hygienic. Yet as the curators of Imperfect Health are quick to note, architects are not doctors. “On the contrary,” write curators Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, “[Imperfect Health] highlights uncertainties and contradictions present in the ideas of health that are emerging in Western countries today, particularly in Europe and North America.” Read More...

Amidst all the bad news about climate change and emerging diseases it is easy to overlook one of the most successful public health initiatives in recent memory. We are on the verge of exterminating an ancient scourge, the Guinea worm. Dracunculus medinensis, (literally the little dragon from Medina), is a large nematode, which can reach up to 80cm in length. Humans acquire it by drinking unfiltered water that contains water fleas (copepods of the genus Cyclops) infected with larval nematodes. As the copepods are digested, the worm larvae burrow through the human gut and mature in the body cavity. Male worms die after fertilizing females and gravid females move to subcutaneous areas typically on the lower limb. After about a year of maturation, the female releases compounds that cause the skin to blister and the host goes to water to seek relief from the painful lesion, which then ruptures, releasing the nematode larve into the water where they are ingested by copepods to complete the life cycle.

This worm is the fiery serpent of the Old Testament. Its treatment in ancient times (and even today), slowly winding the worm around a stick to extract it from the skin lesion, gave rise to symbols for medicine we use today: The single snake on a club (the Asklepian) and the two snakes on a winged staff (the caduceus). Read More...

The Golden Age of cancer research is here. The Human Genome program provided rapid sequencing tools and large databases to be mined, computers are larger and faster than ever, advances in equipment and robotics make high-throughput experiments possible, the info web permits quick literature searches.... and so on. Cancer patients are out there, digitally connected and eager to participate in clinical trials. An increasing amount of private and public monies are going into the research effort. We are poised to make great discoveries at a rapid pace, and bring them rapidly to the clinics.

So then, why are these anticipated advances in cancer treatment so slow in coming? What is wrong with cancer research today? Well, pretty much everything.

Cancer research has two sides to it: the basic science laboratory at the university, where ideas are generated and potential new treatments are designed, and the clinical research program, where these new drugs are tested on patients and developed into bona fide treatments which are then brought to the FDA and eventually the marketplace and clinic. There are inefficiencies and major barriers to productivity in both the basic and clinical arenas. Read More...