PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Long-term childhood poverty contributes to young adult obesity rates

Research from the UH Department of Health and Human Performance, Texas Obesity Research Center

Long-term childhood poverty contributes to young adult obesity rates
2014-05-09
(Press-News.org) A new study from the University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP) finds childhood poverty reaches into the lives of white, Hispanic and African-American young adult women, contributing to their propensity to be overweight and obese.

"We know that having a low socioeconomic status during childhood contributes to children being overweight or obese," said HHP's Daphne Hernandez, who also is an executive board member of the UH Texas Obesity Research Center. "We've found a connection between the long-term exposure to poverty during childhood and obesity rates among young adult woman."

Hernandez examined how repeated exposure to poverty during childhood impacts a young adult's risk of being overweight or obese. The results are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

She examined nearly 4,000 young adults born between 1980 and 1990 and the number of years from birth to age 18 that they were exposed to family-level poverty. The data came from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Young Adults files. She noted children who experience repeated exposure to family-level poverty generally reside in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities that are filled with stress.

"There are behavioral and physiological underpinnings associated with residing in stressful environments that are associated with weight gain, especially among women," she said. "Further, disadvantaged neighborhoods are associated with more fast food restaurants, fewer grocery stores, lower levels of safety and fewer opportunities for physical activities. All of this can contribute to weight gain over time"

While the rate of obesity increased along gender and ethnicity lines for young women, the same was not true for young adult white men.

"Poverty is associated with adolescents gaining work experience as early at 13 years old. For boys, this may mean being involved in manual labor jobs which are related to greater levels of physical activity," Hernandez said. "The higher level of physical activity may act as a 'protective factor' against obesity among white children who experience repeated exposure to poverty during childhood."

Hernandez studies the impact of family dynamics on nutrition, health and obesity. She says this new research suggests that helping families get out of poverty may be valuable in lowering the percentage of white, African-American and Hispanic women who are overweight or obese in young adulthood.

"Although we are no longer in an economic recession, many families are still experiencing the lingering effects of the recession and living in poverty. Truly, helping families move out of poverty may improve the long-term health status of their children as they grow into adulthood."

INFORMATION: END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Long-term childhood poverty contributes to young adult obesity rates

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Forty is not too old or too late to start endurance training

Forty is not too old or too late to start endurance training
2014-05-09
Amsterdam, 9 May. A study of healthy senior men has found that "relatively intensive" endurance exercise confers benefits on the heart irrespective of the age at which they began training.(1) The benefits were evident and comparable in those who had started training before the age of 30 or after the age of 40. As a result, said the investigators, 40 is not too old to start endurance training. The study, which was performed in France, was reported today at the EuroPRevent congress 2014 in Amsterdam by David Matelot, from the Inserm 1099 unit in Rennes, France. The study ...

Salt needed: Tolerance lessons from a dead sea fungus

2014-05-09
Despite its name, the Dead Sea does support life, and not just in the sense of helping visitors float in its waters. Algae, bacteria, and fungi make up the limited number of species that can tolerate the extremely salty environment at the lowest point on Earth. Some organisms thrive in salty environments by lying dormant when salt concentrations are very high. Other organisms need salt to grow. To learn which survival strategy the filamentous fungus Eurotium rubrum uses, a team of researchers led by Eviatar Nevo from the University of Haifa in Israel, Igor Grigoriev ...

States opting out of Medicaid leave 1.1 million community health center patients without health insurance

States opting out of Medicaid leave 1.1 million community health center patients without health insurance
2014-05-09
WASHINGTON, DC and NEW YORK (May 9, 2014)— An estimated 1.1 million community health center patients are left without the benefits of health coverage simply because they live in one of 24 states that have opted out of the Medicaid expansion, a key part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a new report. The research, by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University also shows that the vast majority (71 percent) of the 1.1 million ...

Implantable device to beat high blood pressure

2014-05-09
An implantable device that reduces blood pressure by sending electrical signals to the brain has been created by a group of researchers in Germany. The device has successfully reduced the blood pressure in rats by 40 per cent without any major side effects, and could offer hope for a significant proportion of patients worldwide who do not respond to existing medical treatment for the condition. The first results have been published today, 9 May, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering. The device consists of 24 individual electrodes that are integrated into ...

Study shows short bursts of intense exercise before meals control blood sugar better than 1 continuous 30 minute session

2014-05-09
New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) indicates that brief bursts of intense exercise before meals (termed exercise 'snacking' by the study authors) helps control blood sugar in people with insulin resistance more effectively than one daily 30-minute session of moderate exercise. The research was conducted by exercise science and medicine researchers, including Monique Francois and Associate Professor James Cotter from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. The study used a cross-over design, ...

From age 30 onwards, inactivity has greatest impact on women's lifetime heart disease risk

2014-05-09
From the age of 30 onwards, physical inactivity exerts a greater impact on a woman's lifetime risk of developing heart disease than the other well-known risk factors, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. This includes overweight, the finding show, prompting the researchers to suggest that greater effort needs to be made to promote exercise. The researchers wanted to quantify the changing contribution made to a woman's likelihood of developing heart disease across her lifetime for each of the known top four risk factors in Australia: ...

Frequent arguments with family and friends linked to doubling in death risk in middle age

2014-05-09
Frequent arguments with partners, relatives, or neighbours may boost the risk of death from any cause in middle age, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Men and those not in work seemed to be the most vulnerable, the findings indicate. The evidence suggests that supportive social networks and strong relationships are good for general health and wellbeing, but the authors wanted to find out if the stressors inherent in family relationships and friendships had any impact on the risk of death from any cause. They therefore ...

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may have caused up to half of recorded stillbirths in worst hit areas

2014-05-09
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may have been responsible for up to half of all recorded stillbirths in the worst hit areas, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. And the true fetal death toll may even be higher, because of the displacement of people whose homes and way of life were destroyed, suggest the authors. Hurricane Katrina struck the state of Louisiana, USA, on August 29 2005, followed by Hurricane Rita a month later on September 24. Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in American history, while Rita was the ...

Super-charged tropical trees of Borneo vitally important for global carbon cycling

Super-charged tropical trees of Borneo vitally important for global carbon cycling
2014-05-09
A team of scientists has found that the woody growth of forests in north Borneo is half as great again as in the most productive forests of north-west Amazonia, an average difference of 3.2 tons of wood per hectare per year. The new study, published today in the Journal of Ecology, examined differences in above-ground wood production (one component of the total uptake of carbon by plants) which is critically important in the global cycling of carbon. Trees are taller for a given diameter in Southeast Asia compared with South America, meaning they gain more biomass ...

Exact outline of melanoma could lead to new diagnostic tools, therapies

Exact outline of melanoma could lead to new diagnostic tools, therapies
2014-05-09
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University have identified a specific biochemical process that can cause normal and healthy skin cells to transform into cancerous melanoma cells, which should help predict melanoma vulnerability and could also lead to future therapies. More than 70,000 cases of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, develop in the U.S. every year. The work was published today in PLoS Genetics, in work supported by the National Institutes of Health. "We believe this is a breakthrough in understanding exactly what leads to cancer ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Reevaluating nonoperative management for pediatric uncomplicated acute appendicitis

Metabolically active visceral fat linked to aggressive endometrial cancer, new study reveals

Scientists glimpse how enzymes “dance” while they work, and why that’s important

California partnership aided COVID-19 response and health equity, report finds

University of Oklahoma secures $19.9 million for revolutionary radar technology

Study finds restoring order to dividing cancer cells may prevent metastasis

High-accuracy tumor detection with label-free microscopy and neural networks

Wayne State research reveals fetuses exposed to Zika virus have long-term immune challenges

Researchers deconstruct chikungunya outbreaks to improve prediction and vaccine development

Study finds one-year change on CT scans linked to future outcomes in fibrotic lung disease

Discovery of a novel intracellular trafficking pathway in plant cells

New tool helps forecast volcano slope collapses and tsunamis

Molecular coating cleans up noisy quantum light

From Parkinson's to rare diseases, discovered a key switch for cellular health

Tiny sugars in the brain disrupt emotional circuits, fueling depression

Mini-organs reveal how the cervix defends itself

Africa, climate, and food: How to feed a continent without increasing its carbon footprint

Researchers demonstrates substrate design principles for scalable superconducting quantum materials

How better software choices could cut US health care costs

Concussion history in NCAA athletes yields mixed health outcomes

Counting plastic reveals hidden waste and sparks action

Warming oceans may pose a serious threat to American lobsters

Deaths from drug-induced unintentional injury rise across the US

In car crashes with pedestrians, age and zip code may predict extent of traumatic injuries

AI optimizes evacuation, diagnosis, and treatment of wounded soldiers in Ukraine

Mastectomy linked to worsened sexual health, body image after surgery

Drop in credit score after cancer diagnosis linked to increased mortality, study shows

Use of weight loss drugs before bariatric surgery has soared in recent years, study finds

EMS call times in rural areas take at least 20 minutes longer than national average

Rectal bleeding in young adults linked to 8.5 times higher risk of colorectal cancer

[Press-News.org] Long-term childhood poverty contributes to young adult obesity rates
Research from the UH Department of Health and Human Performance, Texas Obesity Research Center