Sprints may be best for diabetes prevention

If one of your goals in working out is to reduce your risk of developing diabetes, experts say just a few minutes of intense exercise may do the trick. Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh found that working out hard for as little as 7.5 minutes a week significantly improved the health of previously sedentary people. Men who were asked to use a stationary bike for 15 minutes over the course of two weeks substantially improved their ability to metabolize glucose and reduced their blood-sugar levels, a benefit not normally seen in the half hour a day crowd. Researchers recommend that people should try to get four to six 30-secound bouts of intense exercise twice a week to see the blood sugar benefits.

Less than one percent of teens need cholesterol drugs

When a study came out last year suggesting that kids as young as eight be given cholesterol-lowering drugs, people rightly wondered how many kids might potentially need to be on the drugs. A study looking at kids ages 12 to 17 found 5 to 7 percent had high LDL cholesterol, but given the guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics, just 0.8 percent of those kids would actually need medication. The study, published in the journal Circulation, says the number of kids in the study indicates that about 200,000 teens nationwide would be good candidates for cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Do artificial sweeteners help or hurt weight loss?

Jane Brody wraps up her series on sweeteners with a look at the use of artificial sweeteners, potential health problems caused by overindulging in them and the argument about whether diet sodas and other artificially sweetened goodies help or hinder weight loss. The jury is still out on that one, because it depends on how you use the calorie-free sweeteners. If you don’t replace the calories you’re skipping with something else, the switch could save you about 100 calories a day or 10 pounds a year. But if you use them as an excuse to indulge in more calorie-filled foods later, you’re not doing yourself or your waistline any good.

Call for better food safety gets louder

From the editorial page of the New York Times to an online poll of industry experts, more and more people are calling for big changes in the food safety system in the United States following the recent salmonella outbreak. The paper says food safety must be a priority in the Obama administration, while the poll, conducted by meat industry website Meating Place, found that 58 percent of respondents favored a merger between the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety duties. But half said they didn’t think such a change would improve food safety, and 30 percent thought safety might actually decline with changes. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has recently come out in favor of creating a single food safety agency.

Are multivitamins worth anything?

Finally, many studies over the past few months have shown that taking vitamin supplements, whether in multivitamin or single vitamin or mineral formats, doesn’t do much to prevent diseases like cancer or to prolong life. All this news has left a lot of people wondering if it’s worth it to take vitamins. Experts in the field say getting nutrients from food is much better than getting them from vitamins, because it’s not known what compounds in healthy foods might be protective that aren’t found in vitamins. Sometimes big doses of vitamins can cause harm, and antioxidants can act like pro-oxidants in mice with cancer, leading to less cancer cell death than in mice starved of the vitamins. Right now many doctors are saying more large-scale clinical trials are needed to support any benefit to taking vitamin supplements.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 and is filed under Diabetes, Exercise and fitness, Food safety, Foreign stories (non-U.S.), Kids and families, Nibbles: diet news shorts, Public policy, Soda pop, HFCS, and beverages. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.