Overweight Teens Who Are Satisfied With Their Bodies Are Less Depressed, Less Prone To Unhealthy Behaviors
A study to be published in the June 2012 issue of Journal of Adolescent Health looking at the relationships between body satisfaction and healthy psychological functioning in overweight adolescents has found that young women who are happy with the size and shape of their bodies report higher levels of self-esteem. They may also be protected against the negative behavioral and psychological factors sometimes associated with being overweight. A group of 103 overweight adolescents were surveyed between 2004 and 2006, assessing body satisfaction, weight-control behavior, importance placed on thinness, self-esteem and symptoms of anxiety and depression, among other factors.
Mexican-American Women Lose Weight With The Help Of Culturally Tailored Program
Mexican-American women who participated in a culturally tailored weight management program lost weight, reduced their fat and sugar consumption and improved their eating habits according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. At the end of the year-long De Por Vida ("For Life") program, the women had lost an average of nearly 16 pounds. "More than three-quarters of Mexican-American women in this country are overweight or obese, and they became that way after trading in their traditional Mexican diet for an American diet with larger portions and a higher fat and sugar content, " said Nangel Lindberg, PhD, lead author of the study and researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore.
Scientists Demonstrate The Promise Of Synchrotron Infrared Spectroscopy Of Living Cells For Medical Applications
Knowing how a living cell works means knowing how the chemistry inside the cell changes as the functions of the cell change. Protein phosphorylation, for example, controls everything from cell proliferation to differentiation to metabolism to signaling, and even programmed cell death (apoptosis), in cells from bacteria to humans. It's a chemical process that has long been intensively studied, not least in hopes of treating or eliminating a wide range of diseases. But until now the close-up view - watching phosphorylation work at the molecular level as individual cells change over time - has been impossible without damaging the cells or interfering with the very processes that are being examined.