Jessi blog

Eskimo Study Suggests Diet Rich in Omega-3 Fats May Reduce Risk of Obesity-Related Disease

SEATTLE, March 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A study of Yup'ik Eskimos in Alaska, who on average consume 20 times more omega-3 fats from fish than people in the lower 48 states, suggests that a high intake of these fats helps prevent obesity-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

The study, led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and conducted in collaboration with the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, was published online March 23 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"Because Yup'ik Eskimos have a traditional diet that includes large amounts of fatty fish and have a prevalence of overweight or obesity that is similar to that of the general U.S. population, this offered a unique opportunity to study whether omega-3 fats change the association between obesity and chronic disease risk," said lead author Zeina Makhoul, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Cancer Prevention Program of the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center.

The fats the researchers were interested in measuring were those found in salmon, sardines and other fatty fish: docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, and eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA.

Researchers analyzed data from a community-based study of 330 people living in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta region of southwest Alaska, 70 percent of whom were overweight or obese. As expected, the researchers found that in participants with low blood levels of DHA and EPA, obesity strongly increased both blood triglycerides (a blood lipid abnormality) and C-reactive protein, or CRP (a measure of overall body inflammation). Elevated levels of triglycerides and CRP increase the risk of heart disease and, possibly, diabetes.

"These results mimic those found in populations living in the lower 48 who have similarly low blood levels of EPA and DHA," said senior author Alan Kristal, Dr. P.H., a member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division. "However, the new finding was that obesity did not increase these risk factors among study participants with high blood levels of omega-3 fats," he said.

"Interestingly, we found that obese persons with high blood levels of omega-3 fats had triglyceride and CRP concentrations that did not differ from those of normal-weight persons," Makhoul said. "It appeared that high intakes of omega-3-rich seafood protected Yup'ik Eskimos from some of the harmful effects of obesity."

While Yup'ik Eskimos have overweight/obesity levels similar to those in the U.S. overall, their prevalence of type 2 diabetes is significantly lower - 3.3 percent versus 7.7 percent.

"While genetic, lifestyle and dietary factors may account for this difference," Makhoul said, "it is reasonable to ask, based on our findings, whether the lower prevalence of diabetes in this population might be attributed, at least in part, to their high consumption of omega-3-rich fish."

For the study, the participants provided blood samples and health information via in-person interviews and questionnaires. Diet was assessed by asking participants what they ate in the past 24 hours and asking them to keep a food log for three consecutive days. Height, weight, percent body fat, blood pressure and physical activity were also measured.

The median age of the participants was 45 and slightly more than half were female. The women were more likely than the men to be heavy, and body mass index (height-to-weight ratio) for all increased with age.

"Residents of Yup'ik villages joined this research because they were interested in their communities' health and were particularly concerned about the health effects of moving away from their traditional ways and adopting lifestyle patterns similar to those of residents in the lower 48 states," Makhoul said.

Based on these findings, should overweight and obese people concerned about their chronic disease risk start popping fish oil supplements or eat more fatty fish?

"There are good reasons to increase intake of fatty fish, such as the well-established association of fish intake with reduced heart disease risk," Makhoul said. "But we have learned from many other studies that nutritional supplementation at very high doses is more often harmful than helpful."

Before making a public health recommendation, the researchers said that a randomized clinical trial is needed to test whether increasing omega-3 fat intake significantly reduces the effects of obesity on inflammation and blood triglycerides.

"If the results of such a trial were positive, it would strongly suggest that omega-3 fats could help prevent obesity-related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes," she said.

The National Center for Research Resources, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health funded the study, which also involved investigators from the University of California-Davis.

At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, our interdisciplinary teams of world-renowned scientists and humanitarians work together to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Our researchers, including three Nobel laureates, bring a relentless pursuit and passion for health, knowledge and hope to their work and to the world.

Provided by Newswise, online resource for knowledge-based news at

Media contactsKristen Woodward206-667-5095

SOURCEFred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

,Dawn Penn | Come Again mp3 downloads , download mp3 Various Artists - Russisch Orthodoxe Weihnachtschoere

First Person: I'm a Teacher, and the Recession is Not My Fault

m a high-school math teacher. What I usually hear next relates to how the person I'm talking with hated math, was never good at math, or wishes they had had a good math teacher who made it interesting or applicable.

I've had this conversation hundreds of times with hundreds of different people. Yet somehow, in all those conversations, no one has ever said, "I hated math in high school, and you get paid too much, so why don't you give us all a break and give up some of your pay and benefits."

No one has said that, until now. Wis. Gov.recently went against a court order and put into action his restrictions on collective bargaining for state public employees. Walker, who did not complete college, has stated that he will cut $9 billion from public education in Wisconsin. Walker, who started the year with a , and spent it, now is seeking to fill the hole he dug, and thinks that public employees are the problem. But that's in Wisconsin. I live in Illinois.

Nearby in Ohio, though, Gov. John Kasich is set to sign alimiting the collective bargaining rights of teachers, police, firefighters and all public employees, effectively taking away their voice in the discussion of retirement, health, and job security. But that's in Ohio. I live in Illinois.

Illinois is a Democratic state. Illinois has Barack Obama. Illinois has a budget problem, too. My collective bargaining rights haven't been attacked yet, and I don't expect them to any time soon. Illinois just makesand passes votes in closed sessions when no one is looking. But every day my friends and Facebook acquaintances rip into public employees, as if I'm not one of them. They jump on the bandwagon and use me and my colleagues a scapegoat for the recession. Then when I tell them the facts, like that I pay 9.5 percent of my salary to my pension fund, that the state hasn't paid into that fund in 40 years, and that our fund is sound and not dipping into state reserves. They back off of me, but blame my colleagues who are retiring now and making a wealthy $70,000 per year in retirement.

I've just reached a point of being tired of the punches, the low blows, and the comments. Please consider viewing me the way I view your child when he's in my classroom -- as a person with value, personality, and gifts who's worthy of my time and respect. Treat me differently, and education will surely change.

I'm a high-school math teacher in Illinois. This means that I understand at least two things well -- math and teaching. I'm disheartened, however, by the lack of understanding of those two subjects among leaders in many states surrounding mine. PBS reported on its show "Need to Know" about the issue in a clear, non-partisan way, which I appreciate. Here it is:

Watch the . See more

Denis Sheeran has been teaching mathematics in Lake County, Ill., since 1999. He has taught Algebra I through Calculus, and AP Statistics, as well as other Topics Courses.

The Guardian embarking on significant U.S. expansion

div class="yn-story-content">

The U.K. Guardian is on the verge of expanding its U.S. footprint.

"We will be announcing an American editor shortly," Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian's editor-in-chief, told The Cutline in an interview last week. He said the liberal English broadsheet is building a new U.S. digital operation that will be based in New York rather than Washington, D.C. (The paper's roughly 10 stateside reporters are currently based in both cities.) Pressed for additional details, Rusbridger demurred, but said the venture "will be significantly larger than anything we've done in the states before." He was presumably referring to the Guardian'sto crack the American news market, the most recent being GuardianAmerica.com, which had .

The Guardian began laying the groundwork for this expansion of its American shop last week with the addition of a New York-based chief revenue officer, whose job will be "," according to paidContent's Robert Andrews.

"We're not in a position to say more than that at the moment," Rusbridger said. But he offered that "the United States is going to be a more important part of what we do in the future."

Rusbridger spoke with The Cutline from his office last Thursday during the Changing Media Summit, an annual confab the Guardian sponsors in London. The event made headlines thanks to Arianna Huffington's announcement there that her rapidly growing news and commentary website, , willthis summer. But Rusbridger was already talking about The Guardian's next big gathering--Activate New York, a technology conference that will,to a press release, "bring together many of the world's brightest and most influential figures to debate how technology is driving positive social change on a global scale."

Activate New York dovetails with The Guardian's broader push into the U.S. market, Rusbridger said. While The Guardian has hosted several previous Activate summits in the U.K., the upcoming installment, scheduled for April 28 at the Paley Center for Media, will be the first conference it has organized in the states.

"It's had a certain saliency over the last couple of years here, so we just wanted to see whether it would grow roots in the United States," said Rusbridger. He added that the theme of the gathering aligns closely with his own professional interests: "What interests me a great deal at the moment are the dividing lines between open and closed societies," he said. "The most interesting things are certainly happening on the open side. I'm extremely interested in the sharing of scientific knowledge, the sharing of patents, how news organizations can collaborate and form networks and how that's spilling into and affecting government activism."

The Guardian of course has recently gained a very high profile in the media world on the basis of one such collaborative effort--its and several other international media outlets in publishing reports on a trove of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and classified U.S. diplomatic cables acquired last year via the controversial open-document organization WikiLeaks.

The Guardian has since had a falling out with WikiLeaks and its embattled founder, Julian Assange, and Rusbridger said he had not had any recent contact: "I've heard that he's working on a new project with some different media partners, but I don't know what it is and he's obviously decided to move on from us."

But Rusbridger did confirm that The Guardian has been in talks about a possible collaboration with OpenLeaks, a newer document-leaking platform launched in December by high-ranking WikiLeaks defector Daniel Domscheit-Berg. (New York Times executive editor Bill Keller alsothat his newspaper is mulling an OpenLeaks venture.) On the other hand, The Guardian may develop an in-house document-leaking system, Rusbridger said--in the same vein as a project that the New York Times is .

"We haven't yet definitively worked out how effectively we could build the technology," he said. "It's an ongoing dilemma that we're thinking about."

The Guardian's ambitious U.S. plans come as Huffington'shas latelybeen commanding the lion's share of interest in the digital journalism world. (Huffington is slated to participate in.) Rusbridger, for his part, was a bit equivocal about the Huffington push. "She's expanding in all directions. She wants to cover the whole waterfront in terms of every kind of subject. That's admirable, but it's going to be quite fraught in terms of retaining any kind of focus or distinctiveness."

But might HuffPo'sevolve to a point where its reporting and writing rivals that of papers like The Guardian?

"There's no reason why it shouldn't, except the expense," said Rusbridger. "I think its purely a question of where [Huffington] wants to place her focus. She's a bright woman and she's hiring bright people. ... There's no reason any of these insurgents can't do journalism the same way [as legacy media], but they will run into all the same problems of focus and resource as the old companies."

The Cutline also asked Rusbridger about his thoughts on The New York Times' paid online model, which goes into effect at 2 p.m. Monday.

"I can't see anywhere in world that's tried charging [online] for general news that has made a go of it in the sense that you get enough people and enough money to make up for the loss of influence," he said. Nevertheless, he also cautioned that "I'm not a Taliban of the free. If the New York Times ended up with hundreds of thousands of subscribers who were all going to pay decent sums of money, of course you'd be idiotic not to respect that and learn from it. So I don't think any of us can be in a completely entrenched position."

And what are The Guardian's plans for the royal wedding on April 28, an event that has other major news outlets ?

"Of course we'll cover the day of. We're planning a supplement for the next day and we'll live-blog it," said Rusbridger, noting that he wouldn't be assigning more than a dozen journalists to the story. "But [Prince William] is not even next in line for the throne, so his constitutional significance is pretty tiny at the moment. It will be a nice human story on the day, but we won't go overboard."

US likely to help Taiwan upgrade F-16s: premier

Taiwan Premier Wu Den-yih confirmed Tuesday that the United States is likely to help the island upgrade its F-16 A/B fighters as it is reluctant to arm Taipei with more advanced jets.

Taiwan has been pressing for the more powerful F-16 C/Ds, saying it badly needs the weaponry as a bargaining chip against its former bitter rival China.

But the fate of a proposed arms deal remains uncertain, Wu said, amid speculation that it could jeopardise Washington's ties with Beijing.

"My understanding is that Washington does not say 'yes' or 'no'. The deal is still under Washington's evaluation," Wu said during a press conference in Taipei.

Wu said that "upgrading the F-16A/Bs is the more likely direction".

The US Congress in 1979 passed the Taiwan Relations Act requiring the United States to provide the island with defensive weapons.

A sale of F-16 C/Ds to Taiwan would be certain to ignite the anger of Beijing, which reacted furiously when the Barack Obama administration in January 2010 announced a 6.4-billion-dollar arms package for the self-governing island.

The package included Patriot missiles, Black Hawk helicopters, and equipment for Taiwan's F-16 fleet, but no submarines or new fighter jets.

A furious Beijing suspended military exchanges with Washington in response.

The backbone of Taiwan's air force consists of some 60 ageing F-5s, 126 Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDFs), 146 US-made F-16A/Bs and 56 French-made Mirage 2000-5s.

Ties with China have improved markedly since Beijing-friendly Ma Ying-jeou became Taiwan's president in 2008, but China still refuses to renounce the possibility of using force should the island declare independence.

After 67 Percent Tax Hike Last Month, Ill. Governor Wants to Borrow $8.75 Billion

COMMENTARY | Just a few days agoIll. Governor Pat Quinn was trading potshots with N.J. Governor Chris Christie over which state was in worse financial condition.New Jersey's bonds were downgraded recently, and just last month Quinn pushed through a 67 percent tax increase that affects both individuals and corporations.

Now, however, thehas reported that Quinn has admitted that even with the expected influx of income taxes, which is already being withheld from paychecks across the state, he still needs a loan of $8.75 billion to pay 36,000 vendors.Sounding a bit like a political Madoff peddling a pyramid scheme, Quinn plans to pay back the loan with the money raised by the income tax hike.

More disturbing?Quinn and his staff have declined to say just how far off from their annual budget his administration is.It could be $3 billion, which means that with the $8.7 billion the total deficit between income taxes raised and expenses is a whopping $12 billion.

Rumor also has it that Quinn wants to try to raise cigarette taxes as well.The governor also has his staff working on ways to slash human services funding and state employees.

Illinois's financial situation is so bleak that House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has even suggested cutting pension benefits for current state employees, which may be unconstitutional in addition to radical.

Although Illinois residents are currently tightening their belts thanks to the recent income tax rate increase for individuals from 3% to 5%, the law that put that rate increase in place came with a cap that limits how much the state can spend in each of the next three years.

Chicago's localaffiliate has speculated that while the cap on spending this year has left the state with enough room to spend the $7 billion expected to be raised, future years could be problematic.Expenses may increase to the point where discretionary spending must be cut.

Despite the over the top theatrics from Quinn, a clear plan to keep the state of Illinois from devolving into a similar financial disaster in the future is yet to be announced.Without a change in the way that Illinois allocates its funding to different state agencies, it is impossible to know where all these billions of dollars that Quinn is requesting will go - or where so many billions have already gone.