NYT: Multivitamin Use Linked to Lowered Cancer Risk

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October 17, 2012

By RONI CARYN RABIN

After a series of conflicting reports about whether vitamin pills can stave off chronic disease, researchers announced on Wednesday that a large clinical trial of nearly 15,000 older male doctors followed for more than a decade found that those taking a daily multivitamin experienced 8 percent fewer cancers than the subjects taking dummy pills.

While many studies have focused on the effects of high doses of particular vitamins or minerals, like calcium and vitamin D, this clinical trial examined whether a common daily multivitamin had an effect on overall cancer risk. A randomized, double-blinded clinical trial, the kind considered the most rigorous type of study, it was one of the largest and longest efforts to address questions about vitamin use.

The findings were to be presented Wednesday at an American Association for Cancer Research conference on cancer prevention in Anaheim, Calif., and the paper was published online in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The reduction in total cancers was small but statistically significant, said the study’s lead author, Dr. J. Michael Gaziano, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System. While the main reason to take a multivitamin is to prevent nutritional deficiencies, Dr. Gaziano said, “it certainly appears there is a modest reduction in the risk of cancer from a typical multivitamin.”

He noted that other measures are likely to protect against cancer more effectively than the daily use of multivitamins.

“It would be a big mistake for people to go out and take a multivitamin instead of quitting smoking or doing other things that we have a higher suspicion play a bigger role, like eating a good diet and getting exercise,” Dr. Gaziano said. “You’ve got to keep wearing your sunscreen.”

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and a grant, initiated by the investigators, from the chemical company BASF. Pfizer provided the multivitamins. The sponsors did not influence the study design, data analysis or manuscript preparation, the authors said.

About half of all Americans take some form of a vitamin supplement, and at least one-third take a multivitamin. But many recent vitamin studies have been disappointing, finding not only a lack of benefit but even some harm associated with large doses of certain supplements. The 2010 dietary guidelines for Americans state that there is no evidence to support taking a multivitamin or mineral supplement to prevent chronic disease.

The American Cancer Society recommends that people eat a balanced diet, but that those who take supplements choose a balanced multivitamin that contains no more than 100 percent of the daily value of most nutrients.

Though several researchers said they were somewhat surprised by the findings, others called the results encouraging.

“It is a small overall effect, but from a public health standpoint, it could be of great importance,” said Dr. E. Robert Greenberg, an affiliate at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “Other than quitting smoking, there’s not much else out there that has shown it will reduce your cancer risk by nearly 10 percent.”

Multivitamin use had no effect on the incidence of prostate cancer, which was the most common cancer diagnosed in the study participants. When researchers looked at the effect of vitamin use on all other cancers, they found a 12 percent reduction in occurrence. Overall cancer deaths were reduced among vitamin users, but the difference was not statistically significant.

A major limitation of the study is that it included only male doctors, who were particularly healthy, with extremely low smoking rates, said Marji McCullough, a nutritional epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society. “We still need to find out whether these findings can be applied to others in the population,” she said.

The research effort might have benefited from the fact that the doctors who participated were diligent about taking their pills, and the researchers suggested that the effect of multivitamin use might have been muted because the participants were health-conscious to begin with.

Dr. David Chapin, 73, a gynecologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who participated in the trial, said that although he had “never believed” in vitamins, he might start taking a daily multivitamin now, despite the modest benefit.

“A lot of studies make big news, but when you look at the nitty-gritty, they don’t show all that much,” Dr. Chapin said, adding that he recently discovered he had been taking a placebo pill. “This was a very reliable study, it was very well designed and administered, and it went on and on and on.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/health/daily-multivitamin-may-reduce-cancer-risk-clinical-trial-finds.html?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&_r=0

Eight Purchases You're Wasting Money On

Published October 01, 2012

| LearnVest

We all have our bad spending habits: a $3 latte in the morning, an expensive taxi fare now and then, a cheap piece of jewelry when we're down in the dumps.
We're all for splurging, especially if you do it right. In other words, go ahead and buy the things that make you happy, as long as those small purchases motivate you, and you plan them out for maximum enjoyment ... rather than simply throwing your money away.
For example: You buy yourself a bouquet of fresh flowers at the end of the month as a reward for staying on budget. Let's say that costs you $20 a month, which adds up to $240 a year. That might sound like a lot, but if it motivates you to stay on track with your budget, you're probably saving yourself way more than $20 each month. So we call that a good splurge.
But $20 a month could also go toward a lot of stupid stuff that won't make you happier, won't improve your life and won't motivate you to achieve your financial goals. We just call that silly.

 

Pointless ATM Fees

You should never have to pay money to access your money. But around the end of last year, the average ATM fee was about $2.40, and the fees seem to be only going up.

These fees also add up, but they're totally avoidable if you withdraw at your own bank, though that may mean going an extra few blocks to your bank branch, or switching to a bank with more convenient locations. Alternately, you could consider an online-only bank like Ally or ING, which lets their customers use any out-of-network ATMs they want and reimburses them for the fees. Find out if you should switch banks with our quiz.
Savings: $125 a year (if you avoid a weekly ATM fee)

 

The Same Dress You Already Own 10 Of

Okay, okay, it's a different shade of red and the neckline is a little bit different, but you don't really need another dress like that. Or top, or pair of shoes, or purse. We're not saying you should totally abstain from fashion trends or shopping, but take a cue from this woman who follows the one-in-one-out rule: For every new pair of shoes or shirt or whatever she buys, she gives away an older version. You can also use our Purchase Appraiser to find out when an expense is really worth it.

Not only does this reduce the clutter in your house, it also ensures that you're buying something that fills a need, rather than boredom or "why not." (Bonus points—and extra income—if you sell the clothing you no longer want on eBay or Amazon Prime.)

Savings: $500 a year (if you skip one "why not" wardrobe purchase a month). More if your old stuff offsets the cost of your new expenditures.

 

Lottery Tickets

One out of every three people in the U.S. thinks that winning the lotto is their only shot at becoming financially secure, but the odds of winning a state lotto are roughly 18 million to 1. Meanwhile, the odds of getting struck by lightning are about 2.65 million to 1--significantly better.

Buying lottery tickets is a fun exercise in wishful thinking, but you’re essentially throwing your money away. The $5 you might spend on one big-number ticket could turn into more than $100 over time, if you invested it for retirement*. When you "invest" it in the lotto, it just turns into $0.

Savings: $260 a year (if you save on a weekly $5 ticket); $5,650 if you invested that amount for retirement*

*If you're 25 now and will retire at 65, with an 8% rate of return on your investments, calculated here.

 

Actual, Physical DVDs

Buying DVDs is so 2000. Nowadays, everything is online. Why do you need to own a DVD that you’ll watch once before it collects dust on a shelf?

If you're an avid movie watcher, consider subscribing to a service like Netflix or Hulu Plus instead, so you can stream as many movies as you want for as little as $8 a month. If you're only an occasional watcher, you can rent movies online from services like Amazon and iTunes for around $2-$5.

Not sure where you fall? Take our quiz for a personalized recommendation based on how much you really use your media.

Savings: $180 a year (if you buy a $15 DVD once a month)

 

Takeout Lunch

We know, it can be a hassle getting to work on time, let alone preparing lunch before you leave. We understand it's only human to buy lunch at work now and again, but doing it regularly will take a toll on your wallet.

Some better ideas? You can repurpose your leftovers so you don’t have to make a new meal every day. You can also assemble your lunch at the office, if it's appropriate where you work. For example, you can bring in raw salad components and do the slicing at lunchtime. And, if you're really crunched for time and need something easy, even buying prepackaged meals at the drug store or supermarket will be cheaper than going to a restaurant or deli.

Savings: $1,092 a year (if you buy a $10 lunch three days a week, compared to $3 if you bring your own)

 

Regular Movies, Just in 3-D

3-D movies are often a way for movie companies to make extra dough, because it allows them to charge more per ticket to the same movie. Before shelling out more, ask yourself, what else could you do with the $3 or $4 extra you spent on the fancier ticket? You just want to go in with your eyes open (literally).

Bottom line: Seeing "Avatar" in 3-D? Probably worth it. Paying to see the re-release of "Finding Nemo" in theaters just to see it in 3-D? Probably not.

Savings: $96 a year (if you opt for a 2-D movie instead of 3-D twice a month)

 

Hardcover of a Book You Won't Reread

We love reading. A lot. We even made a summer reading list, and some of you are reading through our selections one by one.

But, in this digital age--and given the gift that is the public library--you shouldn't be spending the big bucks on a hardcover book unless it's your all-time favorite and you know you're going to want it as a headliner on your bookshelf for years to come.

Hardcover books are, on average, more than $32, whereas paperbacks are more like $16. So you could save half the price of your next book (even more than that, if you're really not going to reread it and you sell it). And that's not even counting getting books for free at the library.

Savings: $384 a year (if you buy one hardcover book a month for $32 each)

 

Eco-Unfriendly Bottled Water

Sure, some people prefer the taste of filtered water, but, according to the EPA, drinking your daily recommended eight glasses of water from the tap costs 50 cents a year, while drinking that same amount from bottles could cost you as much as $1,400. Not to mention, ditching disposable bottles helps the environment.

If you don't like the taste of plain old tap water, filtration systems are pretty inexpensive, like this $26 one from InstaPure (replacement filters cost under $20). For a system you don't have to install in any way, you could get a basic Brita pitcher for as little as $12.

Savings: up to $1,400 per year

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/10/01/eight-purchases-youre-wasting-money-on/print#ixzz28v81AaFS

Men's Health: Home Food and Your Health The Worst Chemicals in Your Food

What's lurking in that list of ingredients can affect your health

By Julie Stewart, Illustrations by Studio TBC

That jug of 100 percent orange juice in your fridge—natural as can be, right? Just the luscious juice and pulp squeezed from fresh fruit. Or not: Many brands spike their juices with "flavor packs," essences and oils formulated to simulate the taste of, well, fresh-squeezed oranges. These "packs" contain chemicals such as ethyl butyrate, but you'd never know it from the juice's label. "Industry insiders say the formula for fresh orange flavor is as elusive as the formula for Coke," says Alissa Hamilton, Ph.D., J.D., the author of Squeezed: What You Don't Know about Orange Juice.
It's all perfectly legal. Ethyl butyrate is just one of nearly 4,000 additives that the FDA has approved for use in our nation's food supply. Without them, processed foods wouldn't look as appetizing, taste as fresh, or last as long in your pantry. But these "enhancements" also mean you don't always know what you're eating. In the case of OJ, pending class-action lawsuits have accused juice makers of misleading consumers. But you don't have to wait—we have our own verdict on additives and your health. (Want more must-have nutrition info and breaking health studies delivered to your inbox every day? Sign up for the Men's Health Daily Dose newsletter. It's FREE!)

THE CHARGE: Artificial food coloring is dangerous

THE VERDICT: Yes, for some people

Food coloring is all about merchandising, says Bruce Bradley, a former food marketer. "Manufacturers are trying to make something beautiful out of shelf-stable ingredients," he says. But that may be a costly strategy: A study review in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry estimates that 8 percent of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder may have symptoms linked to consuming synthetic food dyes.

These dyes and other artificial ingredients may also influence attention and behavior in adults, especially if they're genetically susceptible, says study author Joel Nigg, PhD, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University. In 2011, the FDA's Food Advisory Committee determined that artificial dyes should be evaluated further.


YOUR MOVE: See if a dye-free diet helps you focus, says Kathleen Holton, Ph.D., M.P.H., a nutrition researcher at Oregon Health and Science University. For a month, replace processed foods with additive-free, whole-food versions. Read ingredient lists carefully: Juice, dietary supplements, and gum can contain artificial coloring. Log what you eat and any symptoms you notice.

THE CHARGE: MSG makes you feel lousy and sluggish

THE VERDICT: Correct, it can

If digging into a Chinese buffet leaves your head pounding, you may be reacting to monosodium glutamate, or MSG. In a Danish study, men who consumed a drink laced with MSG were more likely to report headaches and muscle tenderness than those who quaffed a beverage flavored with salt. MSG may alter receptors on your nerve cells to trigger the aches, the researchers say.

MSG might also have lasting effects on your appetite. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that adults who consumed the most MSG were most likely to be overweight. The researchers suspect that MSG may interfere with the activity of the hormone leptin, which regulates satiety. "Chronic MSG consumption may cause leptin resistance," says Ka He, Sc.D., an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the University of North Carolina.

YOUR MOVE: Limit portions at restaurants. At your supermarket, check product labels; MSG can be found in many processed foods. If MSG isn't on the ingredient list, similar forms of glutamate may be present in the product under another name, such as hydrolyzed vegetable, plant, or soy protein, or autolyzed yeast extract. (Hungry for Asian food tonight? Skip the takeout and make fast, fresh, DIY versions of delivery classics.)

THE CHARGE: Sugar substitutes will mess up your appetite

THE VERDICT: That's true

Sugar substitutes slash calories from your diet, but they might alter your appetite. "Our taste for sweetness evolved to detect calories in food," says Dana Small, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University. For millennia, sensing sweetness meant that calories would soon be available to fuel metabolism.

This association has been so reliable, Small says, that simply seeing a sweet food can cause you to salivate to prepare for digestion. But as artificial sweeteners have infiltrated our diet, this association has weakened, she says. "The sweet taste no longer predicts the rewarding physiological effects of calories."

In a new study, Small's team found that when people who regularly used artificial sweeteners ate sugar, their brains showed reduced activation in the amygdala, which signals the reward value of food. If you desensitize your brain's response to sweetness, you can't depend on taste to guide how much you eat, and you may load up on extra sugar just to feel satisfied.

YOUR MOVE: If you drink more than an occasional diet soda, switch to plain water or to beverages that contain only a small amount of a natural sweetener, Small says. We like honey.

THE CHARGE: The U.S. government does not ban all unsafe additives

THE VERDICT: Guilty as charged

Even when a compound's safety is called into question by government agencies, it can still land on store shelves. Take butylated hydroxyanisole, or BHA, an additive that helps keep oily foods from going rancid. The government's National Toxicology Program says BHA is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen," but the FDA says the small amounts it permits for use in food are safe.

Although the FDA collaborates with international food safety agencies, some additives that other countries won't allow in food are permissible in the United States. Take potassium bromate, an additive used by commercial bakeries to make bread dough. In 1999, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified potassium bromate as "possibly carcinogenic to humans." Both the European Union and Brazil have prohibited its use in flour. The EU also prohibits manufacturers from bleaching flour with benzoyl peroxide, which research shows can cause liver damage in lab mice.

YOUR MOVE: Check for BHA on the ingredient lists of foods that have oils, such as commercially made sweets and salty snacks. Avoid flour additives by eating organic bread; try Rudi's Organic Bakery (rudisbakery.com). (Do you know what's really in your food? Learn the shocking truth, then make smart, healthy swaps to your diet with the newly expanded 2012 edition of Eat This, Not That!)

http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/food-ingredients-health

The Myth of Male Decline

September 29, 2012,By STEPHANIE COONTZ

SCROLL through the titles and subtitles of recent books, and you will read that women have become “The Richer Sex,” that “The Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys,” and that we may even be seeing “The End of Men.” Several of the authors of these books posit that we are on the verge of a “new majority of female breadwinners,” where middle-class wives lord over their husbands while demoralized single men take refuge in perpetual adolescence.

How is it, then, that men still control the most important industries, especially technology, occupy most of the positions on the lists of the richest Americans, and continue to make more money than women who have similar skills and education? And why do women make up only 17 percent of Congress?

These books and the cultural anxiety they represent reflect, but exaggerate, a transformation in the distribution of power over the past half-century. Fifty years ago, every male American was entitled to what the sociologist R. W. Connell called a “patriarchal dividend” — a lifelong affirmative-action program for men.

The size of that dividend varied according to race and class, but all men could count on women’s being excluded from the most desirable jobs and promotions in their line of work, so the average male high school graduate earned more than the average female college graduate working the same hours. At home, the patriarchal dividend gave husbands the right to decide where the family would live and to make unilateral financial decisions. Male privilege even trumped female consent to sex, so marital rape was not a crime.

The curtailment of such male entitlements and the expansion of women’s legal and economic rights have transformed American life, but they have hardly produced a matriarchy. Indeed, in many arenas the progress of women has actually stalled over the past 15 years.

Let’s begin by determining which is “the richer sex.”

Women’s real wages have been rising for decades, while the real wages of most men have stagnated or fallen. But women’s wages started from a much lower base, artificially held down by discrimination. Despite their relative improvement, women’s average earnings are still lower than men’s and women remain more likely to be poor.

Today women make up almost 40 percent of full-time workers in management. But the median wages of female managers are just 73 percent of what male managers earn. And although women have significantly increased their representation among high earners in America over the past half-century, only 4 percent of the C.E.O.’s in Fortune’s top 1,000 companies are female.

What we are seeing is a convergence in economic fortunes, not female ascendance. Between 2010 and 2011, men and women working full time year-round both experienced a 2.5 percent decline in income. Men suffered roughly 80 percent of the job losses at the beginning of the 2007 recession. But the ripple effect of the recession then led to cutbacks in government jobs that hit women disproportionately. As of June 2012, men had regained 46.2 percent of the jobs they lost in the recession, while women had regained 38.7 percent of their lost jobs.

The 1970s and 1980s brought an impressive reduction in job segregation by gender, especially in middle-class occupations. But the sociologists David Cotter, Joan Hermsen and Reeve Vanneman report that progress slowed in the 1990s and has all but stopped since 2000. For example, the percentage of female electrical engineers doubled in each decade in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But in the two decades since 1990 it has increased by only a single percentage point, leaving women at just 10 percent of the total.

Some fields have become even more gender-segregated. In 1980, 75 percent of primary school teachers and 64 percent of social workers were women. Today women make up 80 and 81 percent of those fields. Studies show that as occupations gain a higher percentage of female workers, the pay for those jobs goes down relative to wages in similarly skilled jobs that remain bastions of male employment.

Proponents of the “women as the richer sex” scenario often note that in several metropolitan areas, never-married childless women in their 20s now earn more, on average, than their male age-mates.

But this is because of the demographic anomaly that such areas have exceptionally large percentages of highly educated single white women and young, poorly educated, low-wage Latino men. Earning more than a man with less education is not the same as earning as much as an equally educated man.

Among never-married, childless 22- to 30-year-old metropolitan-area workers with the same educational credentials, males out-earn females in every category, according to a reanalysis of census data to be presented next month at Boston University by Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. Similarly, a 2010 Catalyst survey found that female M.B.A.’s were paid an average of $4,600 less than men in starting salaries and continue to be outpaced by men in rank and salary growth throughout their careers, even if they remain childless.

Among married couples when both partners are employed, wives earned an average of 38.5 percent of family income in 2010. In that year nearly 30 percent of working wives out-earned their working husbands, a huge increase from just 4 percent in 1970. But when we include all married-couple families, not just dual-earner ones, the economic clout of wives looks a lot weaker.

In only 20 percent of all married-couple families does the wife earn half or more of all family income, according to Professor Cohen, and in 35 percent of marriages, the wife earns less than 10 percent.

Once they have children, wives usually fall further behind their husbands in earnings, partly because they are more likely to temporarily quit work or cut back when workplace policies make it hard for both parents to work full time and still meet family obligations.

But this also reflects prejudice against working mothers. A few years ago, researchers at Cornell constructed fake résumés, identical in all respects except parental status. They asked college students to evaluate the fitness of candidates for employment or promotion. Mothers were much less likely to be hired. If hired, they were offered, on average, $11,000 less in starting salary and were much less likely to be deemed deserving of promotion.

The researchers also submitted similar résumés in response to more than 600 actual job advertisements. Applicants identified as childless received twice as many callbacks as the supposed mothers.

Much has been made of the gender gap in educational achievement. Girls have long done better in school than boys, and women have now pulled ahead of men in completing college. Today women earn almost 60 percent of college degrees, up from one-third in 1960.

The largest educational gender gap is among families in the top 25 percent of the earnings distribution, where women lead men by 13 percent in graduation rates, compared to just a 2 percent advantage for women from the lowest income families.

But at all income levels, women are still concentrated in traditionally female areas of study. Gender integration of college majors has stalled since the mid-1990s, and in some fields, women have even lost ground. Between 1970 and 1985, women’s share of computer and information sciences degrees rose from 14 percent to 37 percent. But by 2008 women had fallen back to 18 percent.

According to the N.Y.U. sociologist Paula England, a senior fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families, most women, despite earning higher grades, seem to be educating themselves for occupations that systematically pay less.

Even women’s greater educational achievement stems partly from continuing gender inequities. Women get a smaller payoff than men for earning a high school degree, but a bigger payoff for completing college. This is not because of their higher grade point averages, the economist Christopher Dougherty concludes, but because women seem to need more education simply to counteract the impact of traditional job discrimination and traditional female career choices.

If the ascent of women has been much exaggerated, so has the descent of men. Men’s irresponsibility and bad behavior is now a stock theme in popular culture. But there has always been a subset of men who engage in crude, coercive and exploitative behavior. What’s different today is that it’s harder for men to get away with such behavior in long-term relationships. Women no longer feel compelled to put up with it and the legal system no longer condones it. The result is that many guys who would have been obnoxious husbands, behaving badly behind closed doors, are now obnoxious singles, trumpeting their bad behavior on YouTube.

Their boorishness may be pathetic, but it’s much less destructive than the masculine misbehavior of yore. Most men are in fact behaving better than ever. Domestic violence rates have been halved since 1993, while rapes and sexual assaults against women have fallen by 70 percent in that time. In recent decades, husbands have doubled their share of housework and tripled their share of child care. And this change is not confined to highly educated men.

Among dual-earner couples, husbands with the least education do as much or more housework than their more educated counterparts. Men who have made these adjustments report happier marriages — and better sex lives.

ONE thing standing in the way of further progress for many men is the same obstacle that held women back for so long: overinvestment in their gender identity instead of their individual personhood. Men are now experiencing a set of limits — externally enforced as well as self-imposed — strikingly similar to the ones Betty Friedan set out to combat in 1963, when she identified a “feminine mystique” that constrained women’s self-image and options.

Although men don’t face the same discriminatory laws as women did 50 years ago, they do face an equally restrictive gender mystique.

Just as the feminine mystique discouraged women in the 1950s and 1960s from improving their education or job prospects, on the assumption that a man would always provide for them, the masculine mystique encourages men to neglect their own self-improvement on the assumption that sooner or later their “manliness” will be rewarded.

According to a 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of Americans now believe that a college education is necessary for a woman to get ahead in life today, but only 68 percent think that is true for men. And just as the feminine mystique exposed girls to ridicule and harassment if they excelled at “unladylike” activities like math or sports, the masculine mystique leads to bullying and ostracism of boys who engage in “girlie” activities like studying hard and behaving well in school. One result is that men account for only 2 percent of kindergarten and preschool teachers, 3 percent of dental assistants and 9 percent of registered nurses.

The masculine mystique is institutionalized in work structures, according to three new studies forthcoming in the Journal of Social Issues. Just as women who display “masculine” ambitions or behaviors on the job are often penalized, so are men who engage in traditionally female behaviors, like prioritizing family involvement. Men who take an active role in child care and housework at home are more likely than other men to be harassed at work.

Men who request family leave are often viewed as weak or uncompetitive and face a greater risk of being demoted or downsized. And men who have ever quit work for family reasons end up earning significantly less than other male employees, even when controlling for the effects of age, race, education, occupation, seniority and work hours. Now men need to liberate themselves from the pressure to prove their masculinity. Contrary to the fears of some pundits, the ascent of women does not portend the end of men. It offers a new beginning for both. But women’s progress by itself is not a panacea for America’s inequities. The closer we get to achieving equality of opportunity between the sexes, the more clearly we can see that the next major obstacle to improving the well-being of most men and women is the growing socioeconomic inequality within each sex.

Stephanie Coontz teaches family history at Evergreen State College and is the author of “A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-male-decline.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Easiest Way To Live Longer

The Easiest Way To Live Longer

By Lisa Collier Cool
Sep 11, 2012

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Day in Health

by Lisa Collier Cool

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Did you know that every minute you walk can extend your life by 1.5 to 2 minutes? In addition, many studies show that people who walk regularly live longer, weigh less, have lower blood pressure, and enjoy better overall health than non-walkers.
Ready to lace on your shoes? If you want to add to the amount of walking you do, just clip on a pedometer. That simple action actually increases your physical activity by over 2100 steps per day, a review that pooled data from 26 studies found.
Here’s a look at ten benefits of walking.

Walking Increases Your Lifespan

Walking more than an hour a day improves life expectancy significantly, a 2011 study showed. The researchers looked at 27,738 participants between the ages of 40 and 79 over a 13-year period. Surprisingly, their lifetime medical costs did not increase—even though they lived longer.
“An increase in walking time at the population level would bring about a tremendous change in people’s health and medical cost,” the study authors wrote.

Walking Wards Off Diabetes

Just thirty minutes of walking a day can prevent diseases such as type 2 diabetes, a 2002 study looking at both overweight and average weight men and women in a population at high risk for the disease showed.
If you already have diabetes, walking is helpful for you, too. A mile or more daily cuts your risk of death from all causes in half, according to a 2007 study.

Walking Keeps Your Mind Sharp

Walking 72 blocks a week (around six to nine miles) helps increase grey matter, which in turn lowers the risk of suffering from cognitive impairment—or trouble with concentration, memory and thought, according to a study which looked at 299 seniors over a nine-year period.
Furthermore, walking five miles per week can provide some protection to the memory and learning areas of the brains of those already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment, and lead to a slower decline in memory loss.
Common Symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease

Walking Helps Lower Blood Pressure

Walking just 30 minutes a day, three to five days a week—even when the 30 minutes are broken into three ten-minute increments—has been found to significantly lower blood pressure.

Walking is Great for Bone Health

Putting one foot in front of the other for about a mile a day led to improved bone density in post-menopausal women, and slowed the rate of bone loss from the legs, according to a 1994 study. “It takes walkers four to seven years longer to reach the point of very low bone density, study leader Dr. Krall told the New York Times.

Walking Cuts the Risk of Stroke

Walking about 12.5 miles a week or more cut the risk of stroke in half, according to a study looking at over 11,000 Harvard University alumni with an average age of 58.

Walking Improves Your Mood

If you’re feeling down in the dumps, walking is a quick and easy solution. Just thirty minutes on a treadmill reduces feelings of tension and depression, according to research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. In fact, the study found that walking lifted moods more quickly than anti-depressants did (and with fewer side effects).
And the more people walk, the better their mood and energy, says California State University Long Beach professor Robert Thayer, based on a study looking at 37 study participants over a 20-day period.

Walking Torches Calories

Just 20 minutes of walking a day will burn 7 pounds a year. The effects are even more dramatic when you add in some dietary changes as well.
23 Diet Plans Reviewed: Do They Work?

Walking Improves Insomnia

Having trouble sleeping at night? Try taking a brisk 45-minute walk in the morning five days a week, and your sleep may improve significantly, according to research from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which looked at women from the age of 50-74. (Walking in the evening, however, sometimes has the opposite effect—so keep an eye on when you’re exercising and what your sleep patterns are.)

Walking is Good for the Heart

Women who took brisk walks for three or more hours per week reduced their risk of heart disease by 30-40 percent, according to an analysis of over 72,000 women aged 40-65, who were enrolled in the prospective Nurses’ Health Study. As I reported recently, heart attacks kill more US women than men annually. However, the benefits of walking aren’t limited to one gender. A different study showed that walking can cut the risk of coronary heart disease in half for men between the ages of 71 and 93.
Exercise and Fitness in the First Trimester
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Get the information you need to improve your health and wellness on Healthline.com.

NYT: More Choice, and More Confusion, in Quest for Healthy Eating

September 8, 2012

By KIM SEVERSON

ATLANTA — Lisa Todd’s grocery cart reflects the ambivalence of many American shoppers.

Ms. Todd, 31, prowled the aisles of a busy Kroger store here last week. Her cart was a tumble of contradictions: organic cabbage and jar of Skippy peanut butter. A bag of kale and a four-pack of inexpensive white wine. Pineapples for juicing and processed deli meat. 

The chicken, perhaps, summed it up best. A package of fryer parts from Tyson, the world’s largest poultry producer, sat next to a foam tray of organic chicken legs. 

The conventional food was for her boyfriend, the more natural ingredients for her.

“We’re not 100 percent organic, obviously, but I try to be,” she said. “He doesn’t care, so I’m trying to maintain happiness in the relationship.” 

Like many people who are seeking better-tasting, healthier food, Ms. Todd had heard about a recent study on organic food from Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy.

Based on data from 237 previously conducted studies, the Stanford report concluded that when it comes to certain nutrients, there is not much difference between organic and conventionally grown food. 

But it also found that organic foods have 31 percent lower levels of pesticides, fewer food-borne pathogens and more phenols, a substance believed to help fight cancer.

For Ms. Todd and countless other shoppers, the study just added to the stress of figuring out what to eat. And it underscored the deep divisions at the nation’s dinner table, along with concerns among even food purists about the importance of federal organic standards.

“There’s complete confusion,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior food analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm. “Most people have a randomly arranged set of diet principles. They buy organics sometimes. They buy based on price sometimes. Very few people are completely committed to any one cause.” 

For some, the report gave credence to what many already believe: that organic food is not worth the price. Only 26 percent of Americans regularly buy organic food, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center poll. Price is usually why they do not. But it is a difficult choice for people who are trying to eat better. 

JoAnne Grossman, 66, lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she spent a day last week working to turn a bumper crop of garden squash into zucchini bread. She and her husband, Steven, have been eating more organic food over the last year. 

Her son has something to do with it. He is a high school teacher in the Washington area who also runs an organic farm. Still, the Stanford study made Ms. Grossman feel a bit better about not always going organic. 

“It’s not cheap,” she said. “But the big thing for me is that I don’t like the pesticides and the chemicals they use to grow things like those monster red peppers. They’re too perfect.”

For the crowd that spends weekends at the farmers’ market and knows that Humboldt Fog is a type of cheese, the study was, at best, misunderstood and misinterpreted and, at worst, an indication of a conspiracy driven by large-scale, conventional agriculture.

“I was like, ‘Are you absolutely joking?’ ” asked Jeremy Bethel, 30, an owner of the Capra Gia Cheese Company. A constant at more than a dozen farmers’ markets in the Atlanta area, his company sells milk and cheese from 350 goats raised in Carrollton, Ga., and eggs from 400 chickens in Rome, Ga. 

“They want to make organics sound bad because they see such a movement of people moving away from big agriculture,” Mr. Bethel said.

Yet among some farmers who reject conventional growing methods and customers who seek out their products, organic food — at least as it is defined by federal legislation signed in 2002 — is losing its luster even as the interest in healthier, more natural food continues to rise.

“You’re just paying $3,000 to the government to use the name organic,” said Mr. Bethel, citing what it might cost to certify an operation of his scale. 

People have moved beyond organics, those on the forefront of the local food movement say. Over the last couple of decades, food has become a platform for social issues and environmental causes, a rallying point for improving schools and a marker of cultural status. Farmers’ markets are seen as an indicator of community revitalization, and visiting them is a regular weekend activity for families. The Department of Agriculture has counted 7,864 of them this year, an increase of 174 percent from 2000. 

But organic food, especially products processed by large corporations, has become less a player in the front lines of the movement. 

Though organic food has long been a rising star in the food industry, growing by almost 8 percent from 2009 to 2010, certified organic food still makes up less than 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales, according to the Organic Trade Association. 

Farmland certified organic under the federal guidelines makes up less than 1 percent of all land used for crops and livestock, according to the Agriculture Department.

And increasingly, small-scale farmers like Greg Brown, who for six years has been growing okra, green beans and other vegetables on a few acres in Barnesville, Ga., are opting not to apply for federal organic certification. 

He thought about going for an organic label, but the packet of requirements was more than an inch thick and the cost to get certified too high in proportion to his profit. Instead he farms under the less expensive certified naturally grown label, a national program that has sprung up as an alternative to the federal organic program and that has nearly 800 farms as members.

The program, which relies on farmers to inspect one another’s farms, does not certify processed foods like cereal. It requires that farmers use most of the same techniques as the federal organic program, but without the paperwork. 

Customers seeking out Mr. Brown’s Greenleaf Farms okra and green beans are not really looking for a label, anyway, he said.

“They want food from healthy soil, and they want a direct line between the grower and their food,” he said. “Taste is up there, too.” 

That, in many ways, was the idea behind the organic movement, which began as a postwar response to the effects of chemical fertilizer and the rise of industrial-scale farming. In the 1970s, Alice Waters and some other West Coast cooks started looking for produce that tasted better than what most restaurant supply companies were offering.

They found a small community of environmentally minded organic farmers who were picking their fruits and vegetables when they were ripe and were growing varieties designed for flavor, not shipping and storage. 

From that relationship came California’s organic laws, which in turn became the basis for the national organic standards.

“I didn’t intend to seek out organic local food, said Ms. Waters said in an interview. “I was looking for taste.”

Like others, she thought the Stanford study was too narrowly focused on nutrients and had been largely misinterpreted. 

“Taste is what’s going to get us to eat seven portions of fruits and vegetables a day,” she said. “To not consider taste and quality in this whole discussion is to completely miss the point about food.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us/would-be-healthy-eaters-face-confusion-of-choices.html?_r=1&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065

NYT: Postponing Retirement Indefinitely

August 29, 2012, 11:07 am48 Comments

Postponing Retirement Indefinitely

By ANN CARRNS

More than a third of adults near retirement age — 35 percent — said last year that they simply don’t expect to retire. That was up from just 29 percent two years earlier.
More than four in 10 of these “pre-retirees” who don’t expect to retire say it is because they are financially unable to do so. They cite the need for extra income and the maintenance of employer benefits as the main reasons for continuing to work.
That was among the findings in the “2011 Risks and Process of Retirement Survey Report” from the Society of Actuaries.

“There is a core group of people earning a paycheck who feel, for whatever reason, they aren’t going to be able to support themselves in their retirement years,” said Carol Bogosian, an actuary and retirement expert.



The survey was conducted for the society by Mathew Greenwald and Associates and the Employee Benefit Research Institute in July 2011, using telephone interviews of 1,600 adults ages 45 to 80. Half were retirees and half were pre-retirees, who were still working. The margin of sampling error for the survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The findings suggest that Americans need to recalibrate their expectations about how long they can actually work, she said. While many pre-retirees say they expect to continue to work well past traditional retirement age, that may be “wishful thinking” — or an excuse for not saving and preparing, the report says. The reality is that many people actually retire earlier than they expect, whether because they lose their jobs and can’t find new ones, or because of failing health.


Half of retirees (51 percent) report that they retired before age 60. But just one in 10 pre-retirees (12 percent) think they will retire that early. Instead, half of pre-retirees who expect to retire say they will wait at least until age 65.


That gap, combined with the failure of many people to plan for a long enough retirement period, may indicate significant future financial problems for many, Ms. Bogosian notes.
A more realistic plan might be to work two or three years longer than you may originally have expected, to earn additional income and maximize your Social Security income, she said. And workers in their 50s need to think strategically about what skills they need to acquire to keep working longer, whether in their current career or a new line of work.


Are you planning on working longer in retirement? What sort of work do you expect to be doing?

A version of this article appeared in print on 09/01/2012, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Not Retiring, Not by Choice.

 

Source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/postponing-retirement-indefinitely/?nl=your-money&emc=edit_my_20120904