Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, August 27th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Fatty Food Pictures?
Looking at images of high-calorie foods stimulates the brain's appetite control center, which leads to an elevated desire for food. This stimulation of the brain's reward areas may contribute to overeating and obesity. This is a striking finding because the current environment is inundated with advertisements showing images of high-calorie foods.
Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting, June 2012

Health Alert: GlaxoSmithKline Pleads Guilty!
GlaxoSmithKline, the world's 4th largest company, pled guilty to fraud and agreed to pay $3 billion dollars to resolve criminal and civil charges against the company. The matter relates to failure to report the safety data of certain prescription drugs, as well as false price reporting. It is the largest payout by a drug company over fraud, and the largest healthcare fraud case to date. James M. Cole, Deputy Attorney General said, "Today's multi-billion dollar settlement is unprecedented in both size and scope. We are determined to stop practices that jeopardize patients' health, harm taxpayers, and violate the public trust and this historic action is a clear warning to any company that chooses to break the law."
Medical News Today, June 2012

Diet: Muscle Power and Caffeine.
As we age, our muscles naturally change and weaken. A study found caffeine boosts power in older muscles, suggesting the stimulant could aid elderly people to both maintain their strength and reduce their risk for falls and injuries. With the importance of maintaining a physically active lifestyle to preserve health and functional capacity, caffeine could prove beneficial to the aging population.
Society for Experimental Biology, June 2012

Exercise: Good Reasons.
Exercise increases your stroke volume (the amount of blood the heart pumps with each beat), improves your self-esteem, and reduces your susceptibility for coronary thrombosis (a clot in an artery that supplies the heart with blood).
Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, 1996
Chiropractic: A Recommendation By A Prominent Physician.
 
"[The] best people to manage back pain are osteopathic and chiropractic physicians. Why? Because they are specially trained in the mechanical abnormalities which cause 95% of back pain and they know how to correct these defects manually."
~ Paul Hemenway Altrocchi, MD, MPH - former Professor of Neurology at Stanford Medical School

Wellness/Prevention: Leave Your Car At Home?
People who walked 150 minutes per week had lower health care costs and mortality rates.
European Journal of Public Health, June 2012