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| New food pyramid promises better weight loss |
| 11.27.06 (12:45 am) [edit] |
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One size doesn’t fit all. That’s the conclusion of nutrition specialists nationwide who are now stressing the use of a new food pyramid.
The new triangle — unveiled in April by USDA Secretary Mike Johanns — looks totally different for a reason, said Jennifer Newberry, director of the Beckley-ARH Home Health Agency.
“This is a new interactive approach that balances the amount of food an individual can eat with the amount of exercise they get,” she said.
Believing health care professionals should serve as role models, Newberry is asking her staff to abide by the new guidelines so they can educate the public they serve.
“I’ll be asking my staff to plug into this employee-wellness thing and keep food diaries and find the best food and exercise plan that suits them,” Newberry said. “This is all about lifestyle changes. Even small ones will add up over time.
”There are 12 different pyramids to accommodate different ages and dietary and health needs. They can be accessed at www. MyPyramid.gov.
However, to get a sense of the new pyramid, imagine the old one turned on its side with a set of stairs up the left side. A stick figure is ascending the stairs. Colored bars representing the different food groups run from top to bottom. By reading horizontally from the step that would represent one’s exercise level, the individual can see the appropriate portion sizes from each food group.
“This is a plan that allows people to personalize their weight management goals and take steps toward a healthier lifestyle,” Newberry said.
Crash diets and quick fixes are out. Long-term changes in eating and exercise habits have proved to have greater benefits, Newberry said.“Even the healthy weight loss programs out there aren’t one-size-fits-all,” she said. “The people who get the best results are those who find the right balance of eating and exercise for them.”
The color bars represent the following food group recommendations:
-Orange — grains — half the daily intake should be whole grains.
- Green — veggies — lots of dark green vegetables are recommended.
- Red — fruits.
- Yellow — oils (this is the thinnest line on the chart).
- Blue — dairy.
- Purple — meats and beans.
This program is called “Steps to a Healthier You” because it allows for gradual improvements, Newberry said.
“The name suggests that individuals can benefit from taking small steps to improve their diet and lifestyle habits each day,” she said.
— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com
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| Cancer hurts caregivers, too |
| 11.20.06 (1:42 am) [edit] |
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Frances Hornback rushed her husband to the emergency room in June after he began coughing up blood. It was only then, 18 months after her husband first began having respiratory problems, that he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
About a week later, the couple was back in the ER. But this time, it was Frances who was ill.
Frances, from Carson, Calif., had been overwhelmed with fear, crying uncontrollably and unable to function. Desperate for relief, she swallowed half an anti-anxiety pill that had been prescribed for her husband. She immediately developed a dangerous reaction to the drug and became dizzy and began hyperventilating.
Experts say that Hornback's distress is all too common. Although the caregivers of cancer patients bear a heavy burden, they often suffer in silence, says Jimmie Holland, a psychiatrist at New York's Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
In a new USA TODAY/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll of cancer survivors and their families, one-third of respondents said cancer caused someone in the household to have emotional or psychological problems.
New research suggests caring for patients with cancer is as stressful as looking after someone with Alzheimer's. In an unpublished study of more than 1,200 caregivers presented at a meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in March, Youngmee Kim of the American Cancer Society found severe psychological stress in 67% of those caring for cancer patients and 64% of the caregivers of Alzheimer's patients.
Few people appreciate how much the workload of cancer caregivers has increased in recent years, Holland says.
Hospitals today discharge cancer patients "sicker and quicker," often sending them home when they are in great pain or before their wounds have healed, Holland says. That can leave untrained caregivers to provide services once handled by experienced nurses, such as giving pain medication and hooking up intravenous antibiotics.
Melvina McCree of Conway, S.C., became infected with a flesh-eating bacteria after having a mastectomy in 2002. Doctors operated seven times to cut away dead tissue. McCree, 62, finally left the hospital after seven months — still with painful open wounds — and moved in with her daughter, a single mother of three.
Although a nurse visited regularly, she was reluctant to return in the middle of the night, when McCree often suffered the most. A machine designed to suction fluid from her wounds often malfunctioned, setting off an alarm that unnerved everyone in the house, says McCree's daughter, Sharon Funnye.
"I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown," says Funnye, 42. "I love my mother and I would do anything I had to do. ... But you are unwell, and you get angry at times, and you feel guilty."
Even Funnye's youngest child, Shantell, started to worry. The girl, then 5, didn't want to go to day care for fear of leaving her grandmother home alone.
Cancer also took a financial toll.
Funnye often missed work to care for her mother. Medical bills added up. Funnye and her mother fell behind on their mortgage payments, and both lost their houses.
Caregivers such as Funnye clearly need help, says Laurel Northouse, director of the socio-behavioral program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Her research shows that cancer patients and caregivers who have therapy sessions with trained nurses tend to cope better than those who receive their usual care. Patients feel less hopeless and more optimistic about their disease; families also have more positive attitudes about taking care of their sick relative.
Programs like these can be costly. Northouse received $2 million to develop and test the programs. Her current study will measure whether counseling can save money by keeping patients and caregivers healthy, and by encouraging them to seek help before problems become more advanced.
Betty Townsend of Warren, Mich., says she fell into a deep depression after her husband was diagnosed with lung cancer. She credits Northouse's free counseling program for her recovery.
"I didn't even want to get up in the morning," says Townsend, 65. "After I got involved with this, I wanted to learn everything I could about cancer.
"This program gave me something to live for, to fight for, to be there for my husband."
Hornback found help, too.
She now sees a therapist and takes medication for her anxiety. She and her husband also attend support groups and meditation classes at The Wellness Community, which serves cancer patients and families around the USA.
Although Funnye has largely managed on her own, with some help from her brothers and children, she wishes she could join a counseling program like Northouse's. After living together in a rented house for the past year, Funnye has just moved into her own place. Funnye's oldest daughter, 19, will continue living with her grandmother.
"It's not like she will be totally without anyone here," Funnye says. "I will still come every day. I just need some 'me' time."
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| Trans Passions Offers Free Online Dating & Social Networking for the Transgender Community |
| 11.13.06 (12:47 am) [edit] |
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(OPENPRESS) November 10, 2006 -- Imagine how difficult it is to develop a romantic relationship, or even just to make a new friend, when gender confusion, and the fear of bigotry and hate, is added into the equation. Trans Passions offers members a welcoming environment, where they can meet others dealing with the same gender issues, as well as those seeking relationships with the Transgendered.
Rather than swim in the ocean of conformity that is typical of larger mainstream dating sites, Trans Passion members swim in an ocean of diversity. And in an effort to help people find others dealing with the same issues, Trans Passions has created a large number of 'Transsexual or Transgender Interest Groups'. The groups in place range from one gender to the next and cover various stages of the transitioning process, as well as giving members various ways to identify themselves, based on what they feel most comfortable with. Examples include FTM Pre-Transition (Female to Male), FTM Transitioning, FTM Full-time Male, FTM Admirer, MTF Pre-op (Male to Female), MTF Post-op, MTF Admirer, On Hormone Treatment and Transsexual. Recognizing a separate segment of the Trans community, there are also groups for members who identify themselves as Crossdresser, Female Impersonator and Transvestite.
Whether someone has questions, and is seeking a new friend to help them deal with what they are going through, or they are looking for a serious relationship, Trans Passions encourages members to interact openly and honestly with others, who, like themselves, share a unique position in society. Offering all the features of mainstream online dating sites, Trans Passions connects members via photo personals, email, instant messaging, transgender chat, blogs, Trans forums & more.
Basically, the idea behind the site is that it should be easier to relax and make new friends when surrounded by people who share an understanding of the what it means to be part of the Trans community.
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| Apple pushes Oricon to quit PC music downloads |
| 11.01.06 (2:07 am) [edit] |
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Oricon on Wednesday announced its exit from Japan's PC music download market, becoming the first victim among local players to the surging popularity of Apple Computer's iTunes music store.
Oricon, best known as a publisher of music hit charts, will instead post links from its Web site to online music stores and concentrate on music downloads for mobile phones, which are far more popular than PC-based downloads in Japan.
"The iPod has outrun us all," said Oricon spokesman Teruaki Hidaka. "If iPod users could download music from our site, we may have waited to see if the tide turns from mobile phones to online downloads."
Oricon's online download store for PCs has been losing about $213,900 a month since its launch in March 2005. Raising its monthly download volume of 90,000 tunes and turning a profit would be impossible in the near term, Hidaka said.
But even the market-leading iTunes store holds only about 5 percent of the online song distribution market in Japan, where music lovers opt to download tunes to mobile phones from phone operators like Japan's KDDI.
Apple doesn't disclose its market share or download statistics in Japan.
The online music market is forecast to grow 26 percent to $249 million in 2006 from the previous year, according to the Digital Contents Association of Japan. That's still a fraction of the $1.9 billion market estimated for mobile phone downloads.
Music distribution and copyright practices in Japan also make it difficult to get a good line-up of Japanese pop music, Hidaka said.
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| Apple settlement to give bigger boost to Creative |
| 10.31.06 (3:49 am) [edit] |
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Singapore's Creative Technology did not record a US$100 million patent settlement from Apple as anticipated for the first quarter of its 2007 fiscal year. Creative will book the payment in the current quarter, noting that lower-than-expected taxes on the payment will boost its revenue, the company said Tuesday.
Creative, which makes MP3 players and other products, settled a patent dispute with Apple in August. Under the terms of that deal, Apple agreed to pay Creative a one-off payment of $100 million. Initially, Creative expected this payment would contribute $0.85 per share to the company's results during the first quarter, which ended on September 30.
Instead, Creative received the payment from Apple on October 6 and will account for the results during the current quarter. Creative did not explain why the payment was not received as expected during the first fiscal quarter. However, a lower tax rate on the payment means Creative will record an after-tax profit of $82 million, or $0.98 per share, on the settlement during the current period, it said.
The company needs the boost. Creative recorded loss of $21 million for the first fiscal quarter, compared to a loss of $700,000 during the same period last year. In addition, the company's revenue during the period fell to $241.5 million from $280.2 million one year ago.
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| Sirius launches Internet Radio Service |
| 09.27.06 (10:35 pm) [edit] |
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Not quite a month after we received word that Sirius was planning their its pimped-out internet radio option, the site has officially gone live and is now accepting subscriptions. While Sirius indeed offers free internet listening to its current subscribers (albeit at 32kbps), the company is hoping the "CD quality" stream offered in the pay version -- dubbed SIR -- will tempt users to write a slightly larger check each month for the enhanced online content.
It promises "75 channels of 100% commercial free music and talk radio," but still doesn't include all the selections (namely sports-related) that you can fetch on your home / vehicle receiver. The cost? 'Tis a bit on the pricey side -- especially considering XM's 64kbps online alternative -- with monthly fees clocking in at $12.95 for new subscribers, $2.99 for current radio subscribers, or $6.99 for a separate account (for family members) above and beyond your regular subscription.
SIRIUS Internet Radio (or SIR) has officially launched today, and the pricing learned unofficially has turned out to be true. $12.95/month gets you an online-only account for non-subscribers. If you are a SIRIUS subscriber, you get two options:
An additional SIRIUS Internet Radio subscription for $6.99 a month. This includes a separate username/password plus the high-bandwidth streaming.
Upgrade your current free SIR account to high-bandwidth (CD-quality) streaming for $2.99/month. This uses your current username/password.
So what do you get? Improved sound quality plus and 75+ music & talk channels. View the sign-up page here.
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