Wearing tight belts may cause throat cancer
Wearing a belt which is too tight can increase the risk of developing throat cancer, especially in overweight people, a new study has warned. Scottish experts claim that restriction around the waist, especially if someone is overweight, can allow stomach acid to move up into the gullet which can cause damage that increases risk of oesophageal cancer. Doctors from Glasgow and Strathclyde universities and Southern General Hospital recruited 24 healthy volunteers with no history of acid reflux. Half the volunteers had normal waist sizes while the rest were overweight. Each was asked to swallow a specially designed probe, which took a range of measurements both before and after each participant had eaten a meal, ‘The Daily Record’ reported. Measurements were also taken while the volunteers were wearing a tight belt and without a belt. Researchers found that even in healthy volunteers, wearing a tight belt and being overweight caused a partial hiatus hernia and acid reflux. “Wearing a tight belt, especially if you are overweight, puts strain on the valve between the stomach and the gullet. This causes stomach acid to leak upwards into the gullet,” said lead researcher Professor Kenneth McColl, of Glasgow University’s institute of cardiovascular and medical sciences. “Unlike the stomach, which is designed to withstand this, the gullet is damaged by the acid. (PTI)
Sleeping too little or too much linked to heart disease, diabetes, obesity
A new study has associated too little sleep (6 hours or less) and too much sleep (ten or more hours) with chronic diseases – including coronary heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and obesity – in adults age 45 and older. Dr. M. Safwan Badr, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), said that it’s critical that adults aim for seven to nine hours of sleep each night to receive the health benefits of sleep, but this is especially true for those battling a chronic condition. He said that common sleep illnesses – including sleep apnea and insomnia – occur frequently in people with a chronic disease and can hinder a person’s ability to sleep soundly. Study co-author Janet B. Croft, PhD, senior chronic disease epidemiologist in CDC’s Division of Population Health, said that some of the relationships between unhealthy sleep durations and chronic diseases were partially explained by frequent mental distress and obesity. She said that this suggests that physicians should consider monitoring mental health and body weight in addition to sleep health for patients with chronic diseases. In the study, short sleepers reported a higher prevalence of coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes, in addition to obesity and frequent mental distress, compared with optimal sleepers who reported sleeping seven to nine hours on average in a 24-hour period. (ANI)
Pregnant woman’s weight gain linked to kid’s obesity
A study has suggested the women who gain excessive weight in pregnancy are more likely to have overweight and obese children. The findings, published in the US journal PLoS Medicine, suggested pregnancy may be “an especially important time” to prevent obesity in the next generation, Xinhua reported. Researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital looked at 41,133 mothers with two or more children to find out whether childhood obesity was resultant because of the conditions during pregnancy or other factors, such as diet and genes, also played a role. They linked the birth records of mothers with two or more children to school records that included the child’s body mass index (BMI) at an average age of 11.9 years, and then made statistical comparisons between siblings. The researchers feel comparing siblings minimises the conventional sources of confounding, because on average siblings have the same relative distribution of obesity genes, the same home environment and same socioeconomic and demographic influences. The study showed that for each kilogramme of weight gain during pregnancy, the body mass index of a child at age 12 increased by 0. 02 kg per square metre. (Agencies)
Genes linked with unhealthy liver function identified
Scientists have discovered genes that can help identify which obese patients are most at risk of developing severe liver diseases. The research led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in US studied nearly 2,300 extremely obese diabetes patients. It looked at how genomic factors affect the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. “These genetic factors could help us identify patients who are most at risk of developing non-alcoholic forms of fatty-liver disease (NAFLD), and which patients may be more likely to progress to severe forms of NAFLD, such as steatohepatitis (NASH),” said Dr Johanna DiStefano, the study’s principal investigator and lead author. NAFLD is the build up of extra fat in liver cells, not caused by alcohol. It is one of the most common causes of chronic liver disease. “Our results showed evidence for new genetic loci that may play a role in the biological mechanisms of NAFLD and NASH,” said Dr Glenn S Gerhard, a faculty member of the Geisinger Obesity Institute, US, and a co-investigator of the study. “We discovered genes that may help identify those patients most at risk for the types of liver disease so severe that they could require transplants,” said Gerhard, Administrative Director for the Institute for Personalised Medicine at Penn State University-Hershey. (PTI)