Also the educational materials have been updated. Numerous books are no longer accessible, but have been replaced with exceptional substitutes. Members can sign up using email or phone to get great tips concerning weight management or smoking cessation. The pregnancy program even has an optional text-messaging feature. All members signed up for the program will acquire a Chronic Care Guide.

The outreach efforts are now concentrated on members at the highest risk level. Members who are considered “most impacted” will be called by specially trained nurses who will invite them to engage in health coaching and to join the MHP program. The hope is to reach more of the members who will benefit the most from the program.

The Pregnancy program has been changed to self-refer only, because it is sometimes very hard to identify members early in their pregnancy. Claims will be monitored for high-risk pregnancies and these members will be referred to a case manager.

All members’ claims will be constantly monitored for status changes, and the outreach will be adjusted accordingly. The “most impacted” members will receive a phone call from  a health coach, who will work with them whether or not they choose to enroll in the MHP program.

The members who are identified for the program but not considered “most impacted” will get a mailed invitation. The members who do enroll in the Member Health Partnerships program will receive  an annual mailing.

Some things will remain the same. Members who join our programs will still continue to receive targeted information and services, which will help them take care of their particular health care needs. Customized benefits, like nutritional counseling and discounts are also available to members. Members currently in the MHP program will not have to do anything to remain in the updated program; they will automatically be enrolled.

The agency claims that NIH scientists are confident that the two antibodies can be utilized to make more powerful HIV vaccines or more improved treatments for the ominous condition.

Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which performed the research, said that “The discovery of these exceptionally broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV and the structural analysis that explains how they work are exciting advances that will accelerate our efforts to find a preventive HIV vaccine for global use.” Details were published in the online edition of the Journal Science.

Some symptoms of lactose intolerance are stomach cramps, bloating, excessive gas and diarrhea. What’s confusing to many is that these symptoms are common to other types of conditions. Also, some people who are lactose intolerant may only need to eat smaller portions of dairy products to avoid these irritating symptoms. About one or two cups of milk each day is usually safe for most people in this category, particularly when eaten with other foods, as specified by the committee.

If you or a loved one think that you might be lactose intolerant, you may want to get your doctor to validate it with a blood, stool or breath test. If it turns out to be true, decrease your intake of dairy foods. Try to get the suggested amounts of vitamin D and calcium from other sources, like sardines, tofu, kale, salmon, fortified cereals and supplements.

These are the first new prescription drugs to come out in more than ten years. Since U.S. obesity rates are close to 35 percent of the adult population, the anticipation is very high. Even a drug that is somewhat effective is very exciting.

However, not one of the three drugs seems to be on the brink of a major success in research. Not much success has come from the makers of drugs when it comes to comprehending and treating the triggers of overeating. With two of the drugs presented for approval, drugs that are already out there were joined together – an anticonvulsant and an amphetamine – but not without troubling side effects. The third drug is a safer medication but seems to be less effective.

Safety issues have always been a problem for decades in the never-ending search for a successful breakthrough weight loss drug. Perhaps the most memorable one was the Wyeth’s diet pill drug combination fen-phen. It was taken off the market in 1997 due to its connection with heart valve damage and lung problems.

The review of Vivus Inc.’s pill Qnexa will be posted by the FDA July 12 and they will hold a public meeting July 14 to review the data. Orexigen Therapeutics Inc.’s Contrave is to be reviewed in October and Aren Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s lorcaserin is to be reviewed in December.

In clinical trials, Qnexa was the winner with the best weight loss results in clinical trials. In this trial, patients lost between 13 and 15 percent of their body weight. On the down side, this drug had the most amount of patients quitting due to undesirable side effects, which included memory and concentration problems.

This year’s report revealed that twenty-nine percent of people in North Carolina are obese, which means that one has a body-mass index of 30 or more; 29.9 percent of South Carolinians are considered obese.

Embarrassing to us southerners, all but one of the 10 fattest states are in the South, with Michigan as the only exception. It tied with North Carolina for 10th place. Also of great concern is the fact that almost 19 percent of N.C. children and 15 percent of S.C. children are obese. Obesity rates have risen in 27 states, including North Carolina. It seems to be more common in poor people, blacks Hispanics and women.

At least 20 diseases are caused or aided by obesity. The two main diseases induced by obesity are diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Some animal studies have shown that natural contents in soy contain the same hormone-imitating traits as some plastic additives. Currently scientists are deliberating about how to deal with this threat.

Last month a scientific report was issued by researchers at the National Toxicology Program, based in Research Triangle Park, which concluded that the risk of soy formula is of “minimal concern” for infant health.

On a five-level scale, this increased the level of concern from a 1 to a 2. The group established its decision on recent animal studies and said more human studies that indicate health risks are necessary before raising any additional alarm.

For decades, soy formula has been used as a substitute to milk formula for children who happen to be lactose intolerant or for families wanting to stay within a vegan diet.

In the last few years though, studies done on animals in laboratories have discovered a connection between estrogen-like substances in soy, which are natural compounds called isoflavones, and developmental damage in offspring.

These animal studies demonstrate that fetal or newborn exposure to genistein, a dominate isoflavone in soy formula, could cause early puberty and other possible problems later in life. Biologist Heather Patisaul, of N.C. State University, said “brief exposure to genistein can produce long-lasting effects in rats.

The RTP-based National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and The National Toxicology Program, assembled a panel of 14 scientists to check out the safety of soy infant formula.

These animal studies showed potential harm at blood levels similar to what is seen is seen in babies, according to pediatrician and panel chair Gail McCarver of the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. This said, the group maintained that an increased amount of concern is not justified at this time because of inadequate data from human studies.

Panel member Emilie Rissman, a biologist at the University of Virginia, said that the majority of the animal studies have been performed on single isoflavones evaluated one at a time, even though soy formula is made of more than one type of isoflavone and other elements that could interact with each other.

There are some scientists who disagree with the group’s conclusions. Patisaul exclaims, “Why worry about bisphenol A and not soy?” She claims that there are many more effects from soy than from bisphenol A, a hormone-imitating compound found in plastic that spiked recent controversy worldwide.

The conclusions from the panel was summarized and posted March 16 at http://cerhr.niehs.nih.gov/.

All the more, the french fry also go a healthier makeover. This said, there is still more to be improved, especially for some of the products sold in grocery stores that have taken the place of heart-damaging trans fat along with its harmful friend, saturated fat.

Eighty-three foods who had undergone a healthy makeover since 2006 were examined by a Harvard researcher and a consumer advocacy group. During this same year, the federal government started to demand that food labels list the amount of trans fat in packaged products. New York also became the first of various cities to phase them out in restaurants.

Trans fats are made when hydrogen is put in liquid oils to harden them for baking or to increase their shelf life. Once trans fats were undesirable and a major enemy, food makers and restaurants experimented with different cooking oil and fat substitutes, all the while trying to prevent the loss of taste and texture. The question is just how health are these imitations?

During the study, grocery products and restaurant food were checked for fat content by Harvard researcher Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Some of the items that were studied include margarine, baked goods and fast food from five different chains.

The researchers chose not to do their own chemical testing. Instead they used the Food and Drug Administration databases, industry brochures and nutrition labels to determine trans fat and saturated fat levels. The results were released in a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Almost all of the foods examined were free or mostly free of trans fats. One example came from a large order of McDonald’s french fries, in which the trans fats dropped from 7 1/4 grams to an absolute zero! Also, numerous companies and restaurants did not increase their saturated fat content when they slashed trans fat. Sixty-five percent of supermarket products and ninety percent of restaurant food contained saturated levels that were actually lower, unchanged or just a little higher.

But Dr. David Heber, who heads the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, warns that even though trans fat is taken away from gluttonous foods, it doesn’t make them healthy. Heber said, “Trans fat or not, a doughnut is still a doughnut. Even Homer Simpson will back me up on that.”

Earlier studies have shown a connection between height and heart conditions such as angina, heart attacks and angioplasties. This is the first significant analysis of these type of studies, which includes research from all over the world.

During the study, researchers from Finland examined 52 preceding papers that contained information on height and heart problems in more than 3 million men and women.

The patients’ heights were not reviewed objectively by the experts, but within the circumstances of a specific country’s inhabitants. They discovered that the shortest people in the population were 1 1/2 times more prone to acquire heart problems or die from them than the tallest people.

On average, the short people were under 5 feet, 3 inches as compared to the tall people who were at least 5 feet, 9 inches.

Currently, scientists are not clear on why short people could be more vulnerable, but they believe there could be some reasons. For one thing, being short could be the outcome of being poor. Some studies have indicated that taller people are often hired before shorter people. For this reason, some people of small stature could be malnourished, causing them to be prone to health problems in overall. Scientists also believe that more petite arteries could possibly get clogged faster with cholesterol and get harmed easier by changes in blood pressure.

On the more positive side for short people, the lead author of the study , Tuula Paajenen, said that short people do not need to be frightened. She suggested that people concentrate more on taking healthier steps such as eating a balanced diet, exercise, and not smoking; things that are actually possible to change.

The Good Health Club Physician Toolkit presents messages from the “Good Health Club, ” which is a group of friendly animal characters that motivates children to:

* Eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day

* Curb screen time to 2 hours or less each day

* Exercise at least 1 hour each day

* Eliminate sweetened drinks

Dr. Don Bradley, senior vice president and chief medical officer at BCBSNC, and Dr. Edie Bernosky, Chapel Hill pediatrician, are both pleased and optimistic about the new program.

In the last 20 years, type 2 diabetes (formerly called adult-onset diabetes) has been reported among U.S. children and adolescents with increasing incidence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One in three U.S. children born in 2000 could get diabetes during their lifetime and the pervasiveness of obesity in children aged 6 to 11 has more than doubled in the past 20 years, rising from 6.5 percent in 1980 to an astounding 17 percent in 2006.

Since 1999, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has developed an assortment of programs in our community that focus on healthy lifestyles. The lifestyle modification program, called Health Lifestyle Choices, gave customers the support and instruments they needed to reach and maintain a healthy weight. In 2005, BCBSNC converted into one of the very first insurers to label obesity as a medical condition and cover nutritionist visits. Since 2007, they have augmented model tool-kits to assist families in getting routine exercise and taking control of managing their health and well-being.

To take a look at the Good Health Club Physician Toolkit and to get more information about what the Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies are accomplishing in their communities to fight childhood obesity and diabetes, please visit www.bcbs.com/goodhealthclub.

Published in the European Heart Journal, the finding found that rates of nonfatal heart attacks, angina and even death from heart-related conditions were 60 percent higher in people who worked at least three hours more than what is considered the “normal seven-hour day” when compared with those who didn’t work overtime.

The Whitehall II study, a long-term investigation on the health of 10,000 London office workers who were tracked since 1985, provided the data. In this specific study, the health of 6,014 of these men and women was observed for an average of 11 years.

Although the researchers are not sure what the link is caused by, they did find that overtime workers tended to be type A people, more prone to heart disease and more anxious and depressed. The key question is: did the overwork cause them to be that way or were they that way in the beginning?

It could be that they were simply stressed out from all that extra work since chronic stress is bad for the heart. Or maybe they did not get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation appears to be connected to more health problems over time. In any case, it seems to be better for your health to avoid long hours at the office. Instead, try getting more exercise or just doing things that relax you. When you are less stressed, your productivity is likely to improve anyway.

Unfortunately, some of us just don’t have control over how much we have to work. The study adds that the workload “has increased in recent years” and the U.S. is even one of the countries that is way above average in this area.

This said, it is worth mentioning that the scientists said having “decision latitude” seems to reduce the link between overtime and angina rates in the study. They noted that it is possible that choosing to work long hours might not be as harmful to your heart as actually being forced to work those extended hours.