Want to prevent cancer? ... eat better and exercise more, study says.

A QUARTER of cancers could be prevented by 2025 through diet and exercise, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the cost of treatment, a report in the Medical Journal of Australia has found.

Taking data on projected illness, and coupling it with published findings on the association between food, nutrition and physical activity in the prevention of cancer, the journal study found the incidence of cancer in Australia would rise to 170,000 in the next 13 years, an increase of 60 per cent since 2007. Intervention to improve health and environmental factors could reduce that by 43,000 or 25 per cent, it said in a report to be published today.

Contributing factors in the nation's poor health include an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, the prevalence of overweight and obese adults, climbing rates of harmful alcohol consumption, and an unbalanced diet.

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Pip Youl, one of the authors and the head of research at Cancer Council Queensland, said that fewer than 10 per cent of Australians ate the recommended five serves of vegetables a day and only 6 per cent ate two or more serves of fruit a day.

''Ways to encourage better eating are things like improving the number of whole-grain cereals and bread, choosing foods that are low in salt, choosing a low-fat diet, particularly diets that are low in saturated fats.

''One of the key things is teaching children to eat healthily. So getting them interested in cooking and eating healthy foods, and that will give them a really good start in life.''

Poor health had become an economic and geographic issue. The study suggested that ''inequities in cancer outcomes varied with remoteness or area disadvantage'' and that ''increasingly the poor are becoming obese faster than the rich''.

With healthy food costing more than high-sugar, fat-soaked, nutritionally poor alternatives, Australians on lower incomes are more likely to make unhealthy food choices. Programs needed to be designed to accommodate different needs in different regions, Ms Youl said.

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Better diet, exercise can cut cancer by one quarter

Healthy diets and exercise could dramatically cut cancer rates by 2025, according to a new study.

A QUARTER of cancers could be prevented by 2025 through diet and exercise alone, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the cost of treatment, the Medical Journal of Australia has found.

Taking data on projected illness, and coupling it with published findings on the association between food, nutrition and physical activity in the prevention of cancer, the journal's study found that the incidence of cancer in Australia will rise to 170,000 in the next 13 years, an increase of 60 per cent since 2007.

Intervention to improve health and environmental factors could reduce that by 43,000, or 25 per cent, it says in a report to be published today.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Contributing factors in the nation's poor health include an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, the increasing prevalence of overweight and obese adults, climbing rates of harmful alcohol consumption, and an unbalanced diet.

Pip Youl, one of the report's authors and head of research at Cancer Council Queensland, said that less than 10 per cent of Australians ate the recommended five serves of vegetables a day and only 6 per cent ate two or more serves of fruit a day.

''Ways to encourage better eating are things like improving the number of wholegrain cereals and bread, choosing foods that are low in salt, choosing a low-fat diet, particularly diets that are low in saturated fats,'' she said. ''One of the key things is teaching children to eat healthily. So, getting them interested in cooking and eating healthy foods will give them a really good start in life and enjoying a healthy life.''

Poor health has become an economic and geographic issue, the study suggesting that ''inequities in cancer outcomes vary with remoteness or area disadvantage'' and that ''increasingly the poor are becoming obese faster than the rich''.

With the cost of healthy food higher than that of high-sugar, fat-soaked, nutritionally poor alternatives, Australians on lower incomes are less likely to make healthy food choices.

Read more:
Diet or die: lifestyle changes could hit cancer

Healthy diets and exercise could dramatically cut cancer rates by 2025, according to a new study.

A QUARTER of cancers could be prevented by 2025 through diet and exercise alone, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the cost of treatment, the Medical Journal of Australia has found.

Taking data on projected illness, and coupling it with published findings on the association between food, nutrition and physical activity in the prevention of cancer, the journal's study found that the incidence of cancer in Australia will rise to 170,000 in the next 13 years, an increase of 60 per cent since 2007.

Intervention to improve health and environmental factors could reduce that by 43,000, or 25 per cent, it says in a report to be published today.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Contributing factors in the nation's poor health include an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, the increasing prevalence of overweight and obese adults, climbing rates of harmful alcohol consumption, and an unbalanced diet.

Pip Youl, one of the report's authors and head of research at Cancer Council Queensland, said that less than 10 per cent of Australians ate the recommended five serves of vegetables a day and only 6 per cent ate two or more serves of fruit a day.

''Ways to encourage better eating are things like improving the number of wholegrain cereals and bread, choosing foods that are low in salt, choosing a low-fat diet, particularly diets that are low in saturated fats,'' she said. ''One of the key things is teaching children to eat healthily. So, getting them interested in cooking and eating healthy foods will give them a really good start in life and enjoying a healthy life.''

Poor health has become an economic and geographic issue, the study suggesting that ''inequities in cancer outcomes vary with remoteness or area disadvantage'' and that ''increasingly the poor are becoming obese faster than the rich''.

With the cost of healthy food higher than that of high-sugar, fat-soaked, nutritionally poor alternatives, Australians on lower incomes are less likely to make healthy food choices.

Read more:
Diet or die: many cancers preventable

If traditional weight-loss diets have failed you, you might just try hitting the sack.

Growing evidence has linked healthy weight with getting adequate sleep, and in a new report presented at the American Heart Associations annual Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference, researchers found that sleep deprivation is associated with overeating. In the study, people who were sleep deprived ate more than 500 additional calories daily.

Thats a lot of calories. It doesnt take a mathematician to figure out that over time, the excess consumption can translate into unwanted pounds though the current study was small and short-term and did not measure participants long-term changes in weight.

The studys lead author, Virend Somers, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, studied 17 healthy but sedentary men and women in a lab clinic for 11 days and nights. The participants agreed to spend the entire study period at the facility, where researchers recorded their every movement, through a special monitor the participants wore, and tallied everything they ate, either from a cupboard in their room or food they ordered. That way, Somers and his team could make relatively accurate calculations of how much energy the participants were taking in in the form of calories and how much they were burning off through activities like walking.

MORE: Sleeping Pills Linked with Early Death

After a three-day baseline period, one group was randomly assigned to sleep and wake whenever they wanted for eight days, while another was intentionally woken up after only two-thirds of their usual sleep time that amounted to about 80 minutes less sleep per night on average. The group that experienced such restricted sleep tended to eat more the following day, adding 549 extra calories to their usual diet, while those who slept as much as they wanted ate about the same on each of the eight experiment days as they did during the three-day baseline period.

The poorly sleeping group was likely to be vulnerable to weight gain over the long term, if their sleep was continually restricted, says Somers, since they did not burn any more calories than their better sleeping counterparts. That may help explain why previous studies have found that shift workers who work at night and sleep during the day tend to gain more weight than day workers: their disturbed sleep pattern may prompt them to eat more while they dont expend any more energy to work off the added calories.

But what links poor sleep to an increased appetite? From a physiologic perspective, we know that sleep is a very important time for the release of many physiologic hormones, says Somers. Its a time when the body repairs itself, the brain consolidates memories, and growth hormone is released. All of these important functions are impacted by less sleep time. And that includes levels of hormones involved in appetite.

But although a reduction in the hormone leptin might seem like the most obvious culprit leptin is the appetite-suppressing hormone that is released by fat cells at night in the study, leptin levels in the sleep-restricted didnt go down. They went up instead. Why that was so wasnt clear, but Somers theorizes that it was because the participants were gaining weight, and therefore fat, during the study. The added fat cells may have contributed to a spike in leptin production. But Somers did not measure fat changes during the trial, so additional studies will need to be done to confirm his theory.

MORE: A History of Kids and Sleep: Why They Never Get Enough

Excerpt from:
Why Sleep Deprivation May Lead to Overeating

PARIS - Health researchers said on Thursday they had found a troubling link between higher consumption ofriceand Type 2 diabetes, a disease that in some countries is becoming an epidemic.

Further work is need to probe the apparent association and diets that are notoriously high in sugar and fats should remain on the no-go list, they cautioned.

"What we've found iswhitericeis likely to increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, especially at high consumption levels such as in Asian populations," Qi Sun of the Harvard School of Public Health told AFP.

"But at the same time people should pay close attention to the other things they eat.

"It's very important to address not just a single food but the whole pattern of consumption."

In the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Sun's team said the link emerged from an analysis of four previously published studies, carried out in China, Japan, Australia and the United States.

These studies followed 350,000 people over a timescale from four to 22 years. More than 13,000 people developed Type 2 diabetes.

In the studies carried out in China and Japan, those who ate mostricewere 55 percent likelier to develop the disease than those who ate least. In the United States and Australia, where consumption ofriceis far lower, the difference was 12 percent.

Participants in the two Asian countries ate three or four servings ofricea day on average, compared to just one or two servings a week in the Western countries.

Originally posted here:
Study links white rice consumption to diabetes