Childhood Obesity - Do you have an overweight child? We offer tips to help your child lose weight and get fit!

According to a new report in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, obese patients with colon cancer are at great risk for death or recurrent disease compared to patients who are within the normal weight range. The report, from researchers at the Mayo Clinic, was the topic of a March 11 ScienceDaily article.

For the study, researchers evaluated 4,381 patients with stage II or stage III colon cancer who had received adjuvant chemotherapy in clinical trials. Twenty percent of the patients were obese.

"Obesity has long been established as a risk factor for cancer, but our study in colon cancer patients shows that obesity predicts a poorer prognosis after the cancer is surgically removed," said researcher Frank A. Sinicrope, M.D., a professor of medicine and oncology at the Mayo Clinic.

The study also found that the link between obesity and a poor prognosis was more pronounced in men than in women.

"We do not know if this is due to biology or the way we measure obesity," Sinicrope said. "Body mass index is a limited measure and there is evidence that abdominal fat may be a better predictor of colon cancer risk and perhaps prognosis in men than in women. There is also the potential influence of menopausal status and hormone replacement therapy in women."

Labels: health problems, cancer

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Overweight and obese youth are at greater risk for two serious diseases -- pancreatic cancer and cardiovascular disease -- according to two new studies.

The first study compared the childhood weights of 841 pancreatic cancer patients to 754 healthy people:

• Those who were overweight from ages 14 to 39 years old were 67 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer.
• People who were overweight between ages 20 to 49 years old increased their risk by 2.5 times.
• This study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The second study was from The Nemours Children's Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

• Dr. Nelly Mauras and her colleagues found that obese children as young as seven years old were at higher risk for future cardiovascular disease and stroke.
• They compared 115 obese children to 87 lean children, all of whom had normal fasting blood sugar levels, normal blood pressure, and normal cholesterol levels.
• The obese children had elevated levels of certain proteins and other markers for cardiovascular disease

The old thinking was that cardiovascular disease is associated with a cluster of symptoms called metabolic syndrome. These symptoms include high blood pressure, high levels of bad cholesterol, low levels of good cholesterol, and high blood glucose.

Dr. Mauras and her team wanted to know if obesity could raise cardiovascular disease risk before metabolic old syndrome develops. "The results were striking because the children were entirely healthy otherwise," she said while presenting the study during the annual meeting of The Endocrine Society.

Labels: research, cancer, heart_disease, overweight children

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A Harvard Medical School study linked the consumption of above-average amounts of red meat during adolescence with an increased likelihood of developing breast cancer as an adult.

Dr. Linda Frazier and her colleagues examined reports of food consumption from 38,268 pre-menopausal women who reported how often they had eaten red meat - including beef, pork, lamb, and processed meats such as hot dogs or bacon - when they were adolescents.

Women who reported eating more than two and a half servings per day (262 grams or more) had a 34 percent greater chance of developing breast cancer than did those who ate less than one serving. The kind of red meat did not matter. The average consumption was 68 grams per day.

"This study adds considerable evidence to the established adverse effect of red meat," Dr. Frazier said.

The work appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology.

Labels: healthy_eating, cancer, girls

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An eight-year study of 26,000 Greek citizens found that eating a "Mediterranean" diet reduces cancer risks by 22 percent. This diet such includes the following habits: consuming less red meat and dairy products, using olive oil instead of butter, and eating more fruits and vegetables. The researchers found that individuals who followed this plan had lowered rates for several types of cancer, including cervix, bowel, stomach, liver, and brain.

"Of the thousands of people we studied, those who followed a Mediterranean diet were overall less likely to develop cancer," said Harvard University professor Dimitrios Trichopoulos.

Labels: diet, healthy_eating, cancer

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