A new study published in journalBMC Medicine found that gaining weight increases ones risk of coronary heart disease just as much as getting older.
Researchers followed 1.2 million women for about 10 years. They found that every 5-unit increase in BMI increased incidence of CHD by 23 percent. This is equivalent to the risk incurred from aging 2.5 years. For obese women BMI = 34 risk increased to one in six.

There s bad news for bald guys losing hair at the top of your head may indicate you re at risk for heart disease, new research finds.
Researchers in Japan analyzed six previous studies involving just under 40,000 men and found that guys who had lost most of their hair were a third more likely to develop coronary artery disease than those who retained a full head of hair.

The current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine contains two commentaries examining the recent judicial rejection of New York Mayor Bloomberg's proposed partial ban on sugar-sweetened drinks larger than 16 ounces. The Bloomberg proposal was purportedly presented as a means of combating obesity among City residents.

It would be impossible to follow pharmaceutical news and miss the recent developments in India, where a court denied a patent for Novartis Gleevec (Glivec) a very important cancer drug that has been in use since 2001.
While the ruling was touted as both an unmitigated disaster for the pharmaceutical industry, as well as a model of how the US should provide drugs to poorer countries, it is really neither.

A third of all American children are overweight or obese, and this proportion is even greater among children from low-income households and minority ethnic groups. For example, 40 percent of Mexican-American children living in poverty are overweight or obese. But new research indicates that consuming ready-to-eat cereal (RTEC) can help fight this tendency.

Adding a cash incentive and a bit of peer pressure may make it easier for people to lose weight, according to a paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine which found that companies that offer employees a monetary award based on a group's -- not an individual's -- weight loss performance may be the most successful at getting people to shed pounds.

Children may already have one of the tools necessary to combat obesity technology. A Pew Internet study found that 78 percent of teens have cell phones and 47 percent of those are smartphones. Researchers around the country have started to develop programs using these resources to encourage teens to make healthier choices.

Is organic food really better than the conventional variety? Apparently many people think so at least that s what a recent study from Cornell University demonstrates.
Researchers asked 115 volunteers to taste and rate 3 pairs of foods yogurt, cookies, and chips. Each member of a pair was labeled either organic or conventional . After the tasting, the participants rated the taste and calorie content of each food, and how much they d be willing to pay for them.

Teen birth rates have been falling for two decades, but still, more than 365,000 girls aged 15 to 19 gave birth in 2010 and nearly one in five of those had previously given birth, new CDC statistics show.
There were 66,800 repeat teen births, so a little math shows that just over 18 percent of teens who gave birth in 2010 already had a child. More concerning still, for 9,600 girls it was their third child (and some had had even more).

Women who have suffered a stillbirth or have pre-existing medical conditions including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, or varicose veins are at greater risk of developing dangerous blood clots after giving birth, a new study has revealed.