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Obese men are more likely to be infertile than their slimmer peers, according to the first study to look at whether a man's weight influences a couple's fertility. Every excess 10 kilograms may cut a man's fertility by 10 per cent, Dr Markku Sallmen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and colleagues at National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, write in the September issue of Epidemiology. Sallmen was a post-doc at NIEHS when he conducted the study. The researchers looked at couples

Being a little overweight can kill you, according to new research that leaves little room for denial that a few extra pounds is harmful. Baby boomers who were even just a tad pudgy were more likely to die prematurely than those who were at a healthy weight, U.S. researchers reported Tuesday. While obesity has been known to contribute to early death, the link between being overweight and dying prematurely has been controversial. Some experts have argued that a few extra pounds does no harm. However, this is one of the first major studies to account for the factors of smoking...

In the 30-plus years that Richard Atkinson has been studying obesity, he has always maintained that overeating doesn’t really explain it all. His epiphany came early in his career, when he was a medical fellow at U.C.L.A. engaged in a study of people who weighed more than 300 pounds and had come in for obesity surgery. “The general thought at the time was that fat people ate too much,” Atkinson, now at Virginia Commonwealth University, told me recently. “And we documented that fat people do eat too much — our subjects ate an average of 6,700 calories a day. But...

(FOX NEWS) - Rabbi Marc Sack drank diet soft drinks, cycled about 70 miles a week, and limited sweets and he struggled with hunger, "a big issue for me was appetite control." But when the weight wasn't coming off, he saw a dietitian who told him to stop the diet soda. "that was a big surprise to me," said Sack. "I thought I was doing something great by only drinking diet coke, and she really caught me off guard with that one." Jennifer Broder Katz is Rabbi Sack's food coach. She says artificial sweeteners like those found in diet sodas...

EVERY time Marie Cabrera goes shopping, she brings along her mental checklist of things to avoid. It includes products with artery-clogging trans fats, cholesterol-inducing saturated fats, MSG and the bogeyman du jour, high-fructose corn syrup. That last one, she says, is the hardest to avoid unless she happens to be shopping in the small natural-foods section of her supermarket. As she pushed her shopping cart down an aisle of the Super Stop & Shop near her hometown of Warren, R.I., recently, Ms. Cabrera, a retired schoolteacher, offered her thoughts on why she steers clear of high-fructose corn syrup: "It's been...

Immortality is within our grasp . . . In Fantastic Voyage, high-tech visionary Ray Kurzweil teams up with life-extension expert Terry Grossman, M.D., to consider the awesome benefits to human health and longevity promised by the leading edge of medical science--and what you can do today to take full advantage of these startling advances. Citing extensive research findings that sound as radical as the most speculative science fiction, Kurzweil and Grossman offer a program designed to slow aging and disease processes to such a degree that you should be in good health and good spirits when the more extreme...

HARTFORD, Conn.,   Connecticut's state legislature voted on Thursday to ban sales of sodas and other sugary beverages in state elementary, middle and high schools as part of an effort to stem teen obesity.Gov. Jodi Rell has pledged to sign the bill, which would make Connecticut the fourth U.S. state with a strong law in schools to trim the growing American teenage waistline. The ban includes all regular and diet sodas, along with "electrolyte replacement beverages" such as Gatorade. The only drinks allowed to go on sale in schools would be bottled water, milk or 100-percent fruit and vegetable drinks. "The...

The users call the drug Lizzie, the Big Brother or sometimes Gilly. On blogs they rave over its uncanny ability to melt away pounds, although some are wary of its side effects, which can include nausea and strange welts. The users are not fad dieters or methamphetamine addicts, but people with diabetes. And the subject of their rhapsodies is not a gray-market diet pill sold on late-night television but Byetta, a federally approved diabetes medicine, available only by prescription, whose popularity and sales have soared since its introduction last June. For diabetics, the weight loss caused by Byetta comes as...

Indian minister said offering $10m for beheading cartoonistBy Haaretz Service Last update - 08:38 19/02/2006 An Indian state minister has offered a reward of more than $10 million and a prospective killer's weight in gold to anyone who beheads one of the cartoonists who angered Muslims by depcting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, the London Sunday Times reported this week. The offer follows a Pakistani cleric's reward of $1 million and a car for the killing of one of the cartoonists. The new, larger reward was announced by Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of minority welfare in the Indian state...

U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. Glennon Parks Jr. Mailman Sheds Weight, Obtains Age Waiver to Join Corps By Sgt. Scott Whittington 4th Marine Corps District EVANSVILLE, Ind., Feb. 14, 2006 —He already has an eagle on his uniform, but now he’s ready to put that one on hold for another – the eagle, globe and anchor. This 34-year-old, postal worker hung up his mailbag and headed for Parris Island Oct. 12 but not without a few bumps in the road. Glennon Parks Jr., has been a postal worker for the last 15 years. He started at the U.S. Postal Service...

SYDNEY, Australia - A prison inmate in Australia lost a dramatic amount of weight, squeezed through a gap in the wall and escaped, a newspaper reported. Robert Cole, 35, was serving time for sex offenses and armed robbery in a prison hospital in New South Wales state when officials noticed he was missing early Wednesday, The Sydney Morning Herald reported in its online edition. Cole, who had recently undergone a dramatic weight loss, slipped his 123-pound body through a gap between the bars on a cell window and a brick wall at which he'd been chipping away, the paper quoted...

Baghdad's mortuary reels under the weight of killings By Oliver Poole in Baghdad (Filed: 07/11/2005) The bodies are arriving at the mortuary in Baghdad in such large numbers that the orderlies have run out of places to store them properly. They are forced to leave them in piles in the overloaded freezer compartments or send them for burial in anonymous graves. Grief at the funeral of a driver, killed on Saturday by gunmen Last month there were 972 corpses received, almost all victims of violent death. The vast majority were brought in with bullet holes. Many had their hands bound...

Habitual and enthusiastic singers may be more predisposed to put on weight because exertions in the lungs act as a trigger for their appetite. A new study suggests that hormones released during singing may be responsible for the excess weight common among opera singers. Peter Osin, consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital, suggests the mechanism of singing encourages the lung cells to release chemicals including leptin, a protein made by the body's fat cells that is involved in the regulation of appetite. (C) 2005 Evening Standard - London. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved

From the Scotsman, we have the alarming discovery that overeating at work is a big part of obesity. According to the story: Almost three-quarters of Scots blamed a poor diet at work for weight gain and the same amount admitted the type of food they eat directly affects how well they work. The results have led doctors to call for a "Jamie Oliver-style revolution" of the work canteen, with fruit replacing fry-ups. Workers said that stress and a lack of time leaves little room for healthy eating. More than half admitted struggling with low energy levels as a result, with...

TEL AVIV, October 20 (RIA Novosti) - The Israeli military command is planning to shut off the elevators in its General Staff buildings to improve the physical condition of officers in administrative posts, an Israeli army spokesman said Thursday. "During the day, the elevators will be switched off for a certain time, so all General Staff officers will have to walk up and down the stairs," he said, noting that the mandatory exercise was a part of Health Week, scheduled for late October through early November. The officers will also be given lectures on nutrition and [leading] a healthy lifestyle...

Juice extracted from the blue agave plant, best known when it is distilled into tequila, may help dieters shed pounds and cut cholesterol, say Mexican scientists. Sadly for the world's growing band of tequila lovers, agave's possible health benefits are lost when the plant is distilled into alcohol. A team led by Dr Jorge Segura of the University of Guadalajara, close to the town of Tequila, the cradle of Mexico's famous alcoholic export, are launching a new study into the health effects of agave this week.

All the research shows that eating a good breakfast is critical to a healthy lifestyle. Skipping this important meal only ensures that you'll be hungrier when lunch rolls around. According to a study reported in the "American Journal of Epidemiology," people who skip breakfast are four-and-a-half times more likely to be overweight than those who don't. That all sounds splendid, but in the meantime, your cell phone is ringing and you're trying to get the kids to school, all while making a mad dash to work. Even when experts are faced with the question, "Is it better to eat nothing...

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai policemen with waistlines larger than 40 inches have been ordered to reduce their weight in order to look good when they direct traffic, the police department announced Tuesday. Recent medical examinations of 4,150 police officers in Bangkok found that 49 percent have high cholesterol and are overweight, which is "an obstacle" in directing traffic, said a statement from the Metropolitan Police Bureau. Eighty-eight of the overweight officers whose waistlines ranged between 40 and 49 inches were ordered to join the "Smart Police," a one-month weight-loss program. Participants will have to eat according to doctors' instructions and...

Has the fat fever broken? Don't count on it. After an article in a leading medical journal reported last week that people who are overweight, but not obese, have a lower risk of death than normal-size and skinny people, it might seem that pleasingly plump could finally become the socially accepted norm. But even the Centers for Disease Control, whose researchers helped conduct the journal study, continue to say that fighting fat remains a top public health priority. And some social critics and medical researchers say that because there are so many groups with an entrenched interest in crusading against...

I wasted $3.99 last night renting "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason." Well, I hated it. First of all, it is quite annoying to me that everyone treats this girl like she is so unbelievably fat, what with all the references and snide comments about her weight. What does she weigh, like 135-140? Hello, I haven't weighed that since... 9th grade. Give me a freakin' break. I have news for you fat-phobes out there, I am well over 200 pounds and I don't have as much of a problem with my weight as this gal, who is maybe 10 lbs....