new york times for tuesday

new york times for tuesday

Frequent self-weighing by young women linked to depression

Young women who weigh themselves frequently may be at risk for depression, a new study suggests.

They were much more likely to be concerned about their weight, to have depression and to have lower levels of self-esteem and body satisfaction, the researchers said.

More than than 1,900 young adults were included in the study. Fifty-seven percent were female. The group was asked about self-weighing habits. Researchers tracked the participants’ weight and psychological well-being over a decade.

The study appears in the November/December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

“Females who strongly agreed they self-weighed reported engaging in extremely dangerous weight-control behaviors at a rate of 80 percent,” lead author Carly Pacanowski, of the University of Minnesota, said in a journal news release.

“Adolescent obesity is a public health concern, but body dissatisfaction and weight concerns are predictors of eating disorders,” she noted.

Obesity-prevention programs need to avoid making body dissatisfaction worse. One way to help is to understand how behaviors such as self-weighing can affect teens, Pacanowski said.

She also recommended that doctors ask young women about self-weighing.

“Noting changes in this behavior over time can be helpful for investigating other, more concerning changes in well-being among young adults,” she said.

Although the study found an association between increased self-weighing and problems such as depression, it wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Personalized ‘pills’ from a 3D printer?

With 3D printing, the concept of personalized medicine could take on a new dimension, researchers report.

Mass-produced drugs can’t take into account specific patient characteristics such as race, weight, and kidney and liver functions. Customized medications, on the other hand, might be more effective and less likely to cause side effects, the researchers said.

For this study, investigators from Wake Forest University, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina created a prototype computer algorithm featuring software for 3D printing of personalized medications. After receiving details about a patient’s specific medical and biological characteristics, the software determines personalized doses and provides data for 3D printing of medications.

Five doses of 80 “pills” — ranging from 124 to 373 milligrams — were created through 3D printing, with little variability, the researchers said.

The findings show that using 3D printing to create customized medications is possible. But, further research is needed before this technology might become available for patients, said Dr. Min Pu, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and colleagues in an American Heart Association news release.

The study was to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. Data and conclusions presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Parents the target of deceptive food ads, study says

Parents are the target of many misleading television ads for children’s foods and drinks, new research indicates.

For the study, published online Nov. 9 in the journal Pediatrics, researchers analyzed TV commercials for children’s foods and beverages that aired over one year in the United States.

Most were for unhealthy products, such as sweetened cereals and sugary drinks, which came as no surprise, the researchers said.

What did surprise the researchers was that many of the commercials were directed at parents and featured lifestyle themes such as family bonding. For example, they found that 73 percent of total airtime for ads featuring children’s sugar-sweetened drinks targeted parents.

All of the parent-targeted ads for children’s sugary drinks included messages about nutrition or health benefits, even though such products are linked with obesity, dental decay and other health problems, the researchers pointed out.

“This marketing strategy consists of a one-two punch, with the children’s ads aiming to increase the likelihood of a purchase request from the child, and the parent advertising aiming to undermine the parent’s ability to say ’no’ to the request,” senior study author Diane Gilbert-Diamond said in a journal news release.

How this might affect the family’s eating patterns isn’t known.

“We need to determine how these advertising messages might undermine the ability of parents to identify healthy foods for their children,” study lead author Jennifer Emond said in the news release. Emond is a research instructor in the department of epidemiology at the School of Medicine at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.