A study in the July 1 issue of the journal SLEEP shows that sleep extension is beneficial to athletic performance, reaction time, vigor, fatigue, and mood in collegiate basketball players. The study is the first to document sleep extension and the athletic performance of actively competing athletes. ...

Poor maternal diet before conception can result in offspring with reduced birth weights and increased risk of developing type II diabetes and obesity. This work, which is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow on Saturday the 2nd of July, used an animal model to illustrate the importance of maternal diet even before pregnancy begins. ...

Introducing increasing amounts of foods that contain baked milk into the diets of children who have milk allergies helped a majority of them outgrow their allergies, according to a study conducted at Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Jaffe Food Allergy Institute. The data are reported in the May 23 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. ...

Only half of obese Mexican-American adults receive diet and exercise advice from their physicians, although obesity is on the rise for this group. “Among this obese population, not seeing 100 percent of people receiving advice is discouraging. There is a much higher risk of having negative health consequences,” said Ha Nguyen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of family and community medicine at the Wake Forest ...

You are making a healthier choice when opting for a diet soda instead of a calorie-laden drink, but beware that you do not sabotage your good behavior by indulging in fat-adding foods. “I suspect that people are likely drinking those diet sodas to wash down high fat and high-calorie fast food or take-out meals, not as a complement to a healthy meal prepared at home or to quench a thirst after a tough workou ...

A high-fat diet can be bad for your health. However, a snack-based “cafeteria”-style diet of highly palatable, energy-dense foods is even worse, according to new research. A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that rats that ate snack foods commonly consumed by children and adults in the U.S. ate more, gained more weight, had more tissue inflammation, and were intol ...

Marijuana is the most prevalent illicit drug used by teenagers and adults around the world. Nearly a third of high school students in the United States report smoking it, and most high schoolers say they have access to the drug. To many people, smoking pot is no big deal. They cite reasons such as: "it isn't dangerous or addictive" and "everybody is doing it." Denise Walker, co-director of the University of ...

A recent study from scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies suggests that a strawberry a day (or more accurately, 37 of them) could keep not just one doctor away, but an entire fleet of them, including the neurologist, the endocrinologist, and maybe even the oncologist. Investigations conducted in the Salk Institute's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory (CNL) will appear in the June 27, 2011, i ...

Over the past 30 years U.S. adults have been eating larger portions and eating more often, according to a new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers. The findings help illustrate that how Americans are eating contributes to the country’s obesity epidemic. Check the end of this report for a link to download this open access study that is freely available in June 2011 issue of the jo ...

Synthetic fat substitutes used in low-calorie potato chips and other foods could backfire and contribute to weight gain and obesity, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. The study, by researchers at Purdue University, challenges the conventional wisdom that foods made with fat substitutes help with weight loss. The study was published online in the APA journal Behavioral ...