As if obesity doesn’t come with enough collateral health damage – heart disease, diabetes, cancer, to name a few – now the obese may be more susceptible to the H1N1 swine flu virus.

Researchers in the U.S., including Dr. Lena Napolitano of the University of Michigan Medical Center, studied 10 patients admitted to the university’s intensive care unit with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by infection with H1N1.

“Of the 10 patients, nine were obese (body mass index more than 30), including seven who were extremely obese (BMI more than 40),” the experts wrote in the report published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report on death and disease.
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While worries over the economy and the wars we are conducting around the world dominate our consciousness, we continue to lose a battle on a different front. American waistlines are continuing the dangerous trend of expansion.

Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, and there’s no end in sight to this dangerous trend. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2007 25.6 percent of Americans were obese. But in 2008, it crept up to 26.1 percent.
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Once in a while there emerges health news that makes everyone scratch their heads. Here comes one of those moments…

If you are overweight – but only a little bit – congratulations, you are probably going to live the longest of any of us. That’s right, according to a new study people who were overweight, but not obese, were in prime position to outlive everyone else.

In the study, published in the journal Obesity, experts followed people 25 and older for 12 years. What they found was that people in the body mass index range of 25-29.9 were 17 percent less likely to die than those who were normal weight (a BMI of 18.5-24.9). Those who were underweight, a BMI less than 18.5, were 73 percent more likely to die than those who were normal weight.
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Take a stroll through your grocery store and do a quick survey of how many choices you have for a variety of different items. Mayonnaise- low-fat, full-fat, fat-free, wasabi, lemon, olive oil. Pretzels – rods, sticks, braids, twists, nuggets, cheddar, sour cream and onion, honey mustard. Frozen waffles – egg, multi-grain, low-fat, high fiber, strawberry, flax, blueberry, wheat-free. The array of foods is just as dizzyingly endless as their varieties and flavors.

Maybe this is part of our problem: The sheer abundance of choices provided at any given grocery store in any given town in the country. From pretzels to yogurt and from frozen pizzas to waffles, perhaps it is no wonder why our enormous selection of foods has also bestowed upon us enormous bums.
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Everyone should have a steady diet of fruits, vegetables, and music. That’s right, music is good for the soul, and the rest of your body. Authors of the latest study on music’s health benefits claim that the best type is opera, which may help particularly with stroke rehabilitation.

Researchers tested various combinations of music with silence on volunteers and found that songs that emphasized alternating between fast and slow tempos were most effective in improving circulation and heart health.

“We have seen enormous benefits in people who have had strokes or heart attacks. The power of music is just incredible,” says Diana Greenman, chief executive of Music in Hospitals, a UK-based charity that provides live music to hospital patients.
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