Boulder County’s nutrition program for women, infants and children has changed the selection of food it offers to low-income mothers to include fruits, vegetables and whole grains — mirroring a broader shift in how financially strapped families shop.Not only has the nutrition program been offering its 5,000-plus clients vouchers for fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables since June, but the county’s farmers’ markets in Boulder and Longmont have been promoting their ability to take food stamps. The markets began accepting the government-subsidized form of payment a few years ago, but food-stamp purchases this season are way up, said Jeni Nagle, president of the Boulder County Farmers’ Markets board of directors.

The Longmont Farmers’ Market has seen its food-stamps sales increase 600 percent, and Boulder’s market has seen a 150-percent increase in food stamps, Nagle said.

“I do believe that part of that is due to the economy and food stamps being in more people’s hands,” she said. “But we also have made it a focus to reach out to the underserved community and bring them to the farmers’ markets.”

Nationwide, 753 farmers’ markets accepted food stamps at the end of the 2008 fiscal year, according to a New York Times report. That’s a 34 percent rise from the previous year.

Melinda Morris, public health nutritionist for Boulder County, said the farmers’ market trend represents a nationwide push to get low-income shoppers eating more healthy food. For more than 30 years, the county’s federally funded nutrition program — also known as WIC — supplemented its clients’ food purchases with vouchers for milk, cheese, eggs, beans, peanut butter, cereal and fruit juice.

Starting this summer, the program — which provides assistance to low-income mothers who are pregnant, breastfeeding or postpartum — added vouchers for fruits, vegetables, soy-based beverages and whole-grain products like bread and brown rice.

“The changes are so exciting,” Morris said. “What WIC is doing is adding the kinds of foods that Americans living in poverty are lacking in their diets.”

WIC also has enhanced its nutrition package for mothers who breastfeed — giving them vouchers for canned fish and other foods for the infants.

Timing is right for the change, Morris said, as WIC is serving more people than ever. The program has added more than 300 clients in the last nine months, which Morris links to the struggling economy. Usually, in financially trying times, low-income people trade nutrition for cost, she said.

“Because the most affordable foods are the most processed and readily available — like fast foods — that puts low-income people in a bind,” she said. “We are teaching them how to buy nutritional foods that are low-cost.”

Alma Zamora, speaking in Spanish through a translator, said she’s one of the mothers who benefits from WIC and appreciates the recent addition of fruits and vegetables.

“WIC helps me to buy nutritious foods for my girls,” Zamora said. “It helps me economically.”

Kerry Allison, 39, of Boulder, has been receiving vouchers from WIC for six years and also is thrilled to have help buying food in all the major food groups.

“I’ve always wondered why there were no vouchers for fruits and vegetables and bread,” said Allison, who has a 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old twin girls.

Allison said that although healthy food is much more expensive, she has always tried to buy nutritious products.

“But this saves me money,” she said.

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Copyright (c) 2009, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.

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Michael Gross placed a bunch of ripe bananas in 10-year-old Amani Bass’s left hand.Then, taking back one of the bananas, he explained that the bunch represented the total calories consumed, with the one he removed representing what happens when a certain amount of calories are burned through physical activity.

The banana demonstration may sound simple, but it’s effective, particularly at Auburn Montgomery’s first Youth Fitness Camp, which is designed to teach youngsters who are entering fourth through eighth grades this fall about the importance of balancing caloric intake and expenditure.

“It’s important to understand what we are eating,” said Gross, an assistant professor in AUM’s Department of Physical Education and Exercise Science.

“Alabama has about 3.2 million adults and about one-third of them are overweight or obese,” he said. “That means they are eating more than they are burning.”

During the weeklong camp, which kicked off Monday, the boys and girls are learning about how to calculate how much physical activity is required to burn calories in foods they may enjoy as well as how to make exercise more fun for themselves and their families.

The Centers for Disease Control has stated that since 1980, the number of adolescents who are overweight or obese has tripled, and the number of children who are overweight or obese has doubled, Gross said. And inactive lifestyles and poor dietary choices are the two main contributors to this growing problem.

“We need to eat. We need to watch what we eat,” Gross said, adding that it’s OK to have a treat every now and then. The key is finding the balance between what you eat and what you burn.

Even healthier options can be a problem if you eat a 4-cup bowl of Raisin Bran with skim milk as opposed to the recommended 3/4- to 1-cup serving. Calories — even those in good foods — add up, he said.

Kelly Gaston, a graduate teaching assistant in Gross’ department, agreed and said you can still enjoy pizza, French fries, ice cream and other foods, but you need to be aware of the calories you are consuming.

“A lot of parents don’t really know about calories. It’s important to start teaching about healthy lifestyles when the kids are young,” she said.

In addition to talking about making healthier food choices and nutrition, campers are participating in a variety of moderate exercise sessions.

After the morning discussion on calorie basics, campers had a fun time in AUM’s gymnasium. For one of the activities, the group was divided into two teams, and each team’s goal was to throw colorful beach balls onto the opposing team’s side of the volleyball net. What seemed like a lot of fun proved to be great exercise as youngsters were in constant motion.

Amani said her mom encouraged her to attend the camp, and she was enjoying it. Although she doesn’t eat a lot of candy, it’s always important to learn about good nutrition, she said.

Sometimes at home, she helps out in the kitchen, preparing such foods as grilled-cheese sandwiches and peach cobbler. Now, with what she’s learning at the Youth Fitness Camp, she might encourage her mom to tweak the recipes to ensure they work in a healthy lifestyle, she said.

“Maybe I can try new things with my mom,” she said.

Twelve-year-old Scott Sterling said he, too, was having a good time learning more about developing healthy lifestyle habits. Before this camp, he said he knew people have to be careful about what they eat, but he didn’t know much about the science behind it.

“It’s good for all kids to know about calories. If they knew more about it, they would know how to eat,” he said.

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Copyright (c) 2009, Montgomery Advertiser, Ala.

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When you get a flat tire, you patch it up and keep moving. But if you keep running over nails, your tire eventually gives out, no matter how many patches you apply.Congress faces a similar situation as lawmakers attempt to patch our nation’s failing health-care system. Will universal coverage, electronic records and cheaper prescriptions make Americans healthier? Or will the system eventually burst and leave us stuck with a new crisis?

Health-care reform is important. But as a dietitian, I think Congress desperately needs to focus on the biggest “nail” bedeviling Americans’ health _ rising obesity rates caused by our high-fat, meat-heavy diets. It’s time to reform federal nutrition policies that actually encourage children to eat unhealthy foods.

As a nation, we’ve been getting heavier for years _ and that trend shows no sign of stopping. Adult obesity rates increased in 23 states and did not decrease in a single state over the past year, according to a new report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The percentage of overweight and obese children is now at or above 30 percent in 30 states.

The United States currently spends more than $100 billion per year on obesity-related health care expenditures. And as today’s children _ heavier than any generation in history _ reach adulthood, these costs will rise even higher.

The obesity epidemic has a simple cause: We’re eating too much unhealthy food. A study presented recently at the European Congress on Obesity found that Americans’ weight gain over the last 30 years can be attributed almost entirely to changes in food intake.

The average American now eats 200 pounds of meat a year _ about twice the global average _ as well as about 32 pounds of cheese. Our plates are piled high with artery-clogging cheeseburgers and fried chicken even as we skimp on fruits and vegetables.

But instead of encouraging more healthful habits, federal subsidies have pushed more and more high-fat meat and dairy products into school lunches and other nutrition programs. In 2007, the government allocated the majority of child nutrition funds to meat, dairy, and eggs, and only about 20 percent to fruits and vegetables. This has to change.

We must help children develop a taste for fruits, vegetables, and other healthful foods early in life. The upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which regulates the National School Lunch Program, gives us the perfect opportunity to make a huge difference.

A few simple changes could lead to major improvements in the country’s health. As Congress prepares to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act, the legislation should be revised to ensure that foods are chosen with children’s well-being _ not industry interests _ in mind.

Lawmakers should help every school offer low-fat, vegetarian meal options. The government should also award additional funds to schools that take extra steps to serve nutritious meals. This would cost a little more up front but would pay off in a big way when the next generation has lower rates of obesity and diabetes.

The alternative is grim. According to current estimates, one in three children born in 2000 will develop diabetes at some point in life. Because of diabetes and other obesity-related medical problems, today’s children may live shorter lives on average than their parents. They will certainly require more visits to doctors and more expensive medicines.

We need to go back to the drawing table and decide what we really want out of health reform. Do we want more people in the doctor’s office because they’re sick? Or do we want people living healthier lives and avoiding medical care simply because they don’t need it?

___

ABOUT THE WRITER

Susan Levin is nutrition director for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a vegan organization in Washington. Readers may reach her in care of PCRM at 5100 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20016. Web site: www.pcrm.org.

This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.

___

(c) 2009, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

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When if comes to pain, doctors and patients may not be speaking the same language, and a U.S. researcher says he wants to change that.David Cella of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago says he is on mission to revolutionize the language of pain, as well as fatigue, depression and anxiety.

These symptoms are used by researchers to measure whether a medical treatment improves the quality of life for a patient with a chronic disease, Cella says.

The glitch is that each researcher asks patients different questions to measure their symptoms — one group’s measurement of severe pain or fatigue or depression may be different than another’s.

Cella is leading a national project to establish a common scientific vocabulary with colleagues from six other institutions and the National Institute of Health. They will use a set of computerized tests for researchers to measure pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and physical and social functioning, Cella says.

There will be a pain measurement numbering system that will mean the same thing to every doctor and scientist, Cella says.

Reducing salt can result in lower blood pressure, but it’s unclear if this helps those with sustained high blood pressure long-term, German researchers say.The findings are published in a form of a rapid report in Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.

The study involved an assessment of seven reviews from a total of 62 randomized controlled trials.

The study found that no conclusions on late complications could be drawn from the available data. None of the studies had the primary goal of investigating the effects of a low-salt diet on cardiovascular disease or all-cause mortality, the researchers said.

The investigations consistently show that a reduction in salt intake can assist in lowering blood pressure: over a period of up to one year, there was a mean drop of 3.6 to 8 millimetres of mercury in systolic values and a mean drop of about 2 to 3 mmHg in diastolic values. This applied primarily to patients who did not take any additional anti-hypertensive drugs.

The sustainability of this effect, however, remains unclear, the review said.

Seven years ago, doctors told Joe Crump he had diabetes.He figured the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes meant he’d have to take a pill and lay off sweets. After all, he felt fine.

“It’s hard to respect something that doesn’t hurt you,” says Crump, 61. “I didn’t need to go to the emergency room.”

That was until he suffered a minor heart attack in 2007, his second. And simple cuts morphed into wounds that took weeks to heal. And he was diagnosed with cataracts. And his feet and ankles went numb.

That’s when he got scared and started listening to a certified diabetes educator who gave him a road map to navigating a disease that affects more than 23 million Americans.

“I’m not ready to check out yet,” says Crump, who has since lost 55 pounds and curtailed some of the problems connected to his diabetes.

Crump and millions of other people with Type 2 diabetes fail to control complications of the progressive disease because they don’t know where to begin, says Carol Singleton, a registered nurse and owner of Single Source Diabetes of Brandon. Diabetes — a chronic condition in which the body fails to produce insulin and break blood sugar or glucose into energy — has no cure.

“Many diseases run their course. … Diabetes is not one of them,” she says.

Controlling diabetes involves understanding the need to balance healthy eating, physical activity, medications and blood-sugar monitoring, Singleton says. Otherwise, the thick, sugary glucose will wreak havoc on blood vessels and associated organs.

Nutrition, specifically understanding the effect of carbohydrates on glucose levels, is one of the more important issues facing diabetics. Carbohydrates are foods that help raise blood glucose, and they come in three forms: starch or complex, sugar and dietary fiber.

Reading nutrition labels helps many people get a grip on carb counts, and most calorie-counting books break down carbohydrate levels in foods. Planning meals in advance and knowing how slow or fast the foods are processed through the body also can help balance blood glucose levels.

The American Diabetes Association suggests in general that a person aim to include in each meal about 45 to 60 grams of carbohydrates mixed with lean protein and fats. Carbohydrate foods are bountiful: bread, cereal, rice and crackers, fruit and juice, milk and yogurt, beans, potatoes, corn, and even sweets and snack foods.

Choosing whole grains, fiber-rich foods and more natural carbs will affect your body differently than processed junk foods.

“A good rule of thumb, especially for grains, is that the further away a food is from its natural state, the less nutritious,” the ADA advises.

Singleton warns that eating a healthy diabetic diet is not as simple as cutting out sweets or using weight-loss plans such as the protein-centered Atkins Diet. The foods you choose for every meal combine with medication to affect the up-and-down flow of blood sugars in your body.

“With diabetes management, there are so many risk factors and complications … it’s not just diet and exercise,” she says.

Brandon resident Rose Tucker lost more than 60 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes two years ago. She did it on her own but worries she isn’t making the best food choices for herself and her husband, Jim, who doctors say has pre-diabetes. Now, she’s attending nutrition and diabetes support groups regularly.

“I’ve learned you can’t learn enough,” says Tucker, 68.

Singleton says it’s the little things — such as understanding portion control — that can make a difference in controlling diabetes. Crump, who serves breakfast at his Masonic Lodge every Saturday, says he wishes his diabetic friends there would listen to this kind of advice. Instead, he watches them load up on too many biscuits, gravy and bacon. They don’t realize the effect those meal choices will have, he says.

“People aren’t scared enough of diabetes.”

Upcoming support:

A free monthly diabetes support group led by Single Source Diabetes Education will meet Aug. 31 at the Bloomingdale Public Library, 1906 Bloomingdale Ave. For information, call (813) 766-1746 or e-mail csingle5@verizon.net.

The Tampa Diabetes Expo will be held Oct. 24 at the Florida State Fairgrounds. An estimated 5,000 people attend the annual free event, which features tips and demonstrations for healthier eating and health management. For details, call (813) 885-5007 or e-mail jspoto@diabetes.org.

Diabetes:

– is a chronic, lifelong disease where a person’s blood sugar — or glucose — levels are too high

– happens when your body fails to produce or cannot make enough insulin — a hormone that gives your body cells energy

– affects an estimated 23.6 million people, or 7.8 percent of the population of the United States

– More than 72,000 people died as a result of diabetes in 2006

– when untreated, glucose remains in the blood, triggering complications and other illnesses

– complications can include heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney disease and amputation

– is the leading cause of more than 60 percent of non-traumatic lower-limb amputations

Type 1 diabetes:

– is diagnosed when a person’s body cannot produce its own insulin

– affects an estimated 3 million people nationwide

– is also called juvenile diabetes because it’s often diagnosed in children

– requires patients to use injections or insulin pumps to control condition

Type 2 diabetes:

–accounts for 90 percent to 95 percent of all diabetes in the United States

– is associated with adults, obesity, race and ethnicity, physical inactivity and family history

– is often treated with oral medication and changes to eating habits

– onset can be delayed or prevented through weight loss, diet changes and physical activity

Keep Track Of Carbs

Knowing the amount of carbohydrates in food is critical for diabetics trying to control their condition.

The American Diabetes Association recommends adults eat between 45 and 60 grams of carbohydrates in a meal. For context, look at these examples of foods that contain about 15 grams of carbs per serving:

1 small piece of fresh fruit (4 ounces)

1/2 cup of fruit, canned or frozen

1 slice of bread (1 ounce) or 1 (6-inch) tortilla

1/2 cup of oatmeal

1/3 cup of pasta or rice

4-6 crackers

1/2 English muffin or hamburger bun

1/2 cup black beans or starchy vegetable

1/4 large baked potato (3 ounces)

2/3 cup of plain fat-free yogurt

2 small cookies

2-inch square cake, no frosting

1/2 cup ice cream

1 tablespoon syrup, jam, jelly, sugar or honey

6 chicken nuggets

1/2 cup of casserole

1 cup of soup

1/4 serving of medium french fries

Source: American Diabetes Association

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Copyright (c) 2009, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

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National Minority Donor Awareness Day is August 1, and New York Blood Center (NYBC) and its regions in Manhattan, Long Island, Hudson Valley, Brooklyn/ Staten Island, and New Jersey call on the community to help us meet the great need for blood from diverse donors.Historically, National Minority Donor Awareness Day emphasized minority organ and tissue donation, but blood donation remains the most widely used gift of life. Organ and tissue transplant procedures cannot take place without adequate blood supplies, and many patients have unique blood needs that can only be met by blood donors of the same ethnic or racial background.

Every two seconds, someone needs blood. Your community blood supply is a lifeline for you, your family, neighbors, and friends. NYBC serves one of the most diverse areas in the nation making it imperative that we not only maintain an ample blood supply, but also collect blood that closely mirrors the diversity of the communities we serve. A shortage of diverse blood donors can seriously jeopardize patient care.

Currently, NYBC donors are 71% White, 8.4% Hispanic/Latino, 6.8% Black/African American, and 4.6% Asian/Pacific Islander. Unfortunately, this does not mirror the diversity of our patient population.

The goal of New York Blood Center’s PreciseMatch(R) Program is to ensure diverse communities have access to the most precisely matched blood products whenever patients might need them. Some chronically transfused patients, such as those with sickle cell disease, thalassemia, cancer or leukemia, pregnant women and newborn babies, can build up antibodies following frequent transfusions and may “reject” a transfusion or have a bad transfusion reaction. These patients require a precisely-matched transfusion from someone who has inherited the same antigens, or markers, in their blood. Like eye color, or other inherited characteristics, this “precise match” blood is most often found in someone from the same ethnic or racial background.

Please give blood today. You can also help patients in need by organizing a blood drive in your community, house of worship, or place of work. People can give blood every 56 days.

To donate blood, please call:

Toll Free: 1-800-933-2566

Visit: www.nybloodcenter.org

To schedule your very own blood drive please contact:

Queens/Long Island__ Karen Muscolino__ 516-478-5038

Kmuscolino@nybloodcenter.org

Manhattan__ Patty Killeen__ 646-812-9014

Pkilleen@nybloodcenter.org

Brooklyn/Staten Island__ Wally Farraj__ 718-797-7825

Wfarraj@nybloodcenter.org

Bronx/Hudson Valley__ Andrea Cefarelli__ 914-784-4639

Acefarelli@nybloodcenter.org

New Jersey__ Marie Forrestal__ 732-220-7184

Mforrestal@nybloodcenter.org

If you cannot donate but still wish to participate in bringing lifesaving products to patients in need, please consider volunteering at a local blood drive.

Any company, community organization, place of worship, or individual may host a blood drive. NYBC also offers special community service scholarships for students who organize community blood drives during the summer. Blood donors receive free mini- medical exams on site including information about their temperature, pulse rate, blood pressure and hemoglobin level. Eligible donors include those people at least age 16 (with parental permission or consent), who weigh a minimum of 110 pounds, are in good health and meet all Food & Drug Administration and NY or NJ State Department of Health donor criteria. People over 75 may donate with a doctor’s note.

About New York Blood Center:

New York Blood Center (NYBC) is one of the nation’s largest non- profit, community-based blood centers. NYBC has been providing blood, transfusion products and services to patients in greater New York since 1964. NYBC is also home to the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute and the National Cord Blood Program at the Howard P. Milstein National Cord Blood Center, the world’s largest public cord blood bank. NYBC provides medical services and programs (Clinical, Transfusion, and Hemophilia Services) through our medical professionals and transfusion medicine physicians.

Contact: Leslie Gonzalez

lgonzalez2@nybloodcenter.org

(212) 570-3304

Office (646) 342-3038

SOURCE: New York Blood Center

Originally published by New York Blood Center.

(c) 2009 PRNewswire. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Modifying lifestyle helped U.S. women significantly lower their recently diagnosed high blood pressure, researchers said.The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found women who adhered to a regime of maintaining normal weight, daily vigorous exercise, eating a diet high in fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products and low in sodium and taking a folic acid supplement self-reported less hypertension.

Hypertension — high blood pressure — has contributed to more excess deaths in women than any other preventable factor, said study leader Dr. John Forman of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Our data indicate that adherence to a combination of low-risk lifestyle factors could have the potential to prevent the majority of new-onset hypertension in young women irrespective of family history of hypertension and irrespective of oral contraceptive use,” the study authors said in a statement.

The study included 83,882 adult women — ages 27 to 44 years — in the second Nurses’ Health Study who did not have hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes or cancer in 1991. There was follow-up for new hypertension for 14 years through 2005.

Women may want to reconsider that popular style accessory, certain hard plastic water bottles available in fashion- coordinating colors. New animal studies link the chemical bisphenol A, which leaches from polycarbonate plastics and food can linings, with heart arrhythmias in females and permanent damage to a gene important for reproduction. Other recent research suggests that human exposure to BPA is much higher than previously thought. In animals, fetal exposures to BPA can be especially risky, sometimes fostering brain, behavioral or reproductive problems (SN: 9/29/07, p. 202). Canada and some U.S. jurisdictions have voted to ban polycarbonate plastic in baby bottles for that reason. But the new heart data suggest that even adult exposures to BPA might cause harm.In one new study, researchers treated mice with BPA during the middle of their pregnancies. All female offspring of the treated mice suffered an irreversible genetic change in one of the “master regulatory genes” of fertility, Hugh Taylor of the Yale School of Medicine reported in June in Washington, D. C, at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.

This gene, HOXAlO, orchestrates the activity of “hundreds - if not thousands - of downstream genes,” Taylor says. Through the genes it controls, HOXAlO helps synchronize the timing of uterine changes and ovulation. Without that synchrony, “you won’t get pregnancies,” he explains.

In the mice, the HOXAlO gene lost a methyl group (a carbon bound to three hydrogen atoms), permanently altering its activity and rendering uterine tissue hypersensitive to the effects of estrogen.

That’s probably not good, Taylor says, because “many diseases we see in adults owe their origins to fetal exposures” - when genes become inappropriately modified.

In another study presented at the endocrine meeting, Scott Belcher of the University of Cincinnati and his colleagues reported that BPA boosted “proarrhythmic activity” in isolated muscle cells from mice and rats.

Arrhythmias, or heartbeat irregularities, are blamed for a higher mortality rate after heart attacks in premenopausai women compared with men, Belcher says.

During pregnancy, vulnerability to heart arrhythmias rises with higher estrogen levels. Belcher’s team found that BPAs effect on arrhythmia risk was nearly identical to estrogen’s. In whole rat hearts exposed to BPA or estrogen, pockets of cells refused to beat in concert with others, setting up potentially life-threatening arrhythmic events. The problem escalated dramatically when the female hearts were exposed to both estrogen and BPA

Belcher’s group traced the effect to a certain type of estrogen receptor called the beta form, which is more active (and more abundant) in women. The scientists linked this receptor’s activity to a leading cause of arrhythmias - a leak of calcium from a part of heart cells known as the sarcoplasmic reticulum.

These data suggest that at estrogen levels typically found in premenopausal women, the addition of BPA could spike vulnerability to arrhythmias, Belcher says.

Although a broad host of animal studies have linked BPA to adverse health effects, comparable human data do not exist. Any human risks would also depend on how much BPA actually gets into the body.

To probe one BPA source, Karin Michels of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston recruited 77 undergraduates to consume all their cold drinks for a week out of stainless steel bottles. The next week, the participants drank from polycarbonate alternatives. Michels’ team sent students’ urine samples to a lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assay BPA levels.

Even in the first week, when drinking from steel bottles, most students showed measurable levels of BPA Those concentrations rose by 69 percent in the second, polycarbonate week, to 2.0 micrograms per gram of creatinine, a waste product in urine, the team reports online May 12 in Environmental Health Perspectives.

“I went in expecting that we’re so overwhelmed by BPA from other sources that this one variable would not make a difference,” Michels recalls. “But it did.”

Studies have indicated that food is the dominant source of BPA for most people and that any of the chemical ingested from food should peak in blood within four hours, then quickly be excreted. However, there are growing suspicions that previous studies have underestimated how long BPA lingers in the body.

“By 12 to 18 hours [after eating], it should be practically gone,” says Richard Stahlhut of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. “For years that’s been almost a mantra.”

But when his group looked at residues excreted by 1,469 adults who had fasted before giving urine, there was still about as much BPA excreted 12 to 20 hours after a meal as just five hours after eating, the team reported in the May Environmental Health Perspectives.

This finding couldmean there are major sources of BPA contamination other than food, Stahlhut says. More likely, he now suspects, a substantial amount of the BPA entering the body may temporarily collect in fat, then slowly empty back into blood before being excreted.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates typical daily human BPA consumption at roughly 0.1 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But when Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri-Columbia and colleagues administered 4,000 times that much to 11 rhesus monkeys, BPA blood residues in the spiked monkeys ended up only oneeighth as high as seen in a German study of pregnant women, he reported at the Endocrine Society meeting.

If these monkeys metabolize BPA at rates comparable to people, vom Saal says, then “humans would have to be exposed to over 1,000 micrograms per kilogram per day in order to achieve the kind of [blood] levels that are seen in multiple studies, not just the [German] one.”

Based on such data, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent a letter on June 2 to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg asking the FDA to “reconsider the Bush Administration’s position that BPA is safe at current estimated exposure levels.”

Copyright Science Service, Incorporated Jul 18, 2009

(c) 2009 Science News. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Children on a high fat diet to stem seizures may ward off kidney stones with a supplement, U.S. doctors said.The study, published in Pediatrics, looked at 301 children being treated for seizures with the ketogenic diet at Baltimore’s John Hopkins Children’s Center. It found children receiving the supplement potassium citrate were seven times less likely than others to develop kidney stones.

Senior investigator Dr. Eric Kossoff said the ketogenic diet given many children whose seizures are not responding to medication seems to initiate biochemical changes that eliminate seizure-triggering short circuits in the brain’s signaling system.

However, the low-carbohydrate diet causes a buildup of calcium in the urine and about 6 percent of those on it form kidney stones, he said.

“We can confidently say this is a safe and powerful way to prevent kidney stones, and it should become part of standard therapy in all ketogenic dieters, not just those who already show elevated urine calcium levels,” Kossoff said in a statement. “If you wait, it might be too late.”