NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research shows "alarming levels" of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States, principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health. The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity exacts on the heart and blood vessels.

"The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on cardiovascular disease mortality (death)," Burke and colleagues warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or "MESA" study, researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one third to one half were obese.

Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese, suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not considered "inevitable."

The investigators also found that obese adults, compared with normal-weight adults, had higher rates of high blood pressure (up to more than twice as high), abnormal lipids (two- to three-fold higher), and diabetes, despite a "huge number" being on costly medications to lower blood pressure and lipid levels and control diabetes, Burke said.

"As the obesity numbers increase further, we will spend an even larger amount of health care dollars just treating risk factors," Burke said.

Obese adults also had more silent vascular disease (blood vessel disease that causes no symptoms); they had more atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and thicker heart walls, even after adjusting for "traditional" risk factors like high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

Given the higher amount of silent blood vessel disease with obesity, Burke said "one could worry that this will cause us to reverse our 50-year decline in cardiovascular disease mortality due to the obesity epidemic." This will likely be accompanied by an increase in diabetes, other heart disease risk factors, and silent disease - "on top of the aging of the baby boom generation."

"Our findings support the imperative to redouble our efforts to assist in increasing healthy behaviors and to remove…barriers to maintaining a healthy weight," Burke and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, May 12, 2008.

written by Andrew

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Jenna Bush picked “You Are So Beautiful,” the ballad made famous by Joe Cocker, for the father-daughter dance with President Bush at her wedding reception Saturday night in Texas, the band leader said.

Tyrone Smith of Nashville and his 10-piece party band, The Tyrone Smith Revue, were hired to play at the reception in Crawford.

The band was asked to do “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes” by Taj Mahal for the newlyweds’ first dance. Smith spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday about the music plans, on the condition that the reporter honor a request by the Bush family not to release the information before the wedding.

Smith, who also played at one of the 2005 Bush inaugural balls at the Washington Convention Center, normally coaxes his audience members onstage to dance. He planned to make the president a target Saturday night.

“If he’s around and the party’s going, I’ll get him up,” Smith said. “I can’t imagine him ducking out.”

Smith, who witnessed the wedding ceremony, said afterward the groom was dressed in a dark blue suit with powder-blue tie and the bride wore a “very simple and elegant” white dress, but did not wear a veil.

Smith said Jenna Bush’s paternal grandparents, President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, spoke during the wedding, though he could not hear their comments.

Smith planned to play “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang as the newlyweds arrived at the reception about 7 p.m. CDT in a tent on the 1,600-acre family ranch in Crawford. He said the band would begin to play around 10 p.m. CDT, then break while the attendees have dinner, then resume and play until around 1 a.m.

“It’ll be a ‘get down’ party,” Smith promised.

The band planned to do its usual show, which normally includes covers of “Proud Mary,” “Play That Funky Music,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Crazy in Love,” “Hey Ya!,” “Brick House,” “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and others.

“If anyone’s in sight, I’ll get them up onstage,” Smith said.

Smith and his band have played at fraternity parties, nightclubs and weddings across the South for more than 20 years. He plays an average of two weddings a month.

Jenna Bush saw him play in Texas a few years ago and invited him to perform at the White House Christmas party in 2003, when he led those attending in a conga line through the State Floor. The president had already gone to bed.

Smith, also known as Super T, said he later received a voice mail from a White House secretary who told him it was “the party of the millennium.”

Jenna Bush and her fiance, Henry Hager, got engaged in August after dating for several years. Hager has been a White House aide and worked on Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. His father is a former lieutenant governor of Virginia.

Smith, whose style onstage is a cross between James Brown and Michael Jackson, grew up in Memphis with Maurice White, who later co-founded Earth, Wind & Fire.

“It’s very exciting to play for the (Bush) family a third time. I’m overwhelmed,” Smith said

 

Source: yahoo

written by Andrew

DUJIANGYAN, China - The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened schools and homes on Tuesday in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China’s worst earthquake in three decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday’s massive, 7.9-magnitude quake.

The Sichuan Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that more than 26,000 people were injured in Mianyang.

The numbers of casualties was expected to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.

There was little prospect that many survivors would be found under the rubble. Only 58 people were extricated from demolished buildings across the quake area so far, China Seismological Bureau spokesman Zhang Hongwei told Xinhua. In one county, 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed.

Rain was impeding efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a rescue mission to the epicenter due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported.

More than two dozen British and American tourists who were thought to be panda-watching in the area also remained missing.

Officials urged the public not to abandon hope.

“Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it’s not time to give up,” Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief division director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told reporters in Beijing.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible. His visit to the disaster scene was prominently featured on state TV, a gesture meant to reassure people that the ruling party was doing all it could.

Source: yahoo

written by Flory