Health Tips ... from UPI

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS MAY FOOL BODY

Indiana researchers find diet soft drinks may not be the best way to fight obesity. Purdue University researchers Terry Davidson and Susan Swithers say artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body's natural ability to "count" calories based on foods' sweetness. Their study is published in the International Journal of Obesity. "The body's natural ability to regulate food intake and body weight may be weakened when this natural relationship is impaired by artificial sweeteners," Davidson says. "Without thinking about it, the body uses food characteristics such as sweetness and viscosity to gauge its caloric intake." The researchers hypothesize that artificial sweeteners may fool the body into thinking a product sweetened with sugar has no calories and, therefore, people overeat.

FEMALE TEENS INFLUENCED BY MOVIES

U.S. teenage girls who have never smoked are far more likely to start smoking if their favorite movie star smokes in movies. The three-year study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, finds on-screen smoking by popular actors is undermining public health efforts to keep children from smoking. "We've heard for years that big-screen movies influence kids to smoke, and we wanted to know if that is true," says John Pierce, director of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center at the University of California at San Diego. Girls whose favorite star smoked on-screen were 80 percent more likely to smoke by the time of the follow-up interview than their counterparts whose favorite star did not smoke on-screen.

PASSIVE SMOKE UNDERESTIMATED

The full effects of passive smoking may have been underestimated, a 20-year British study finds. Most studies on passive smoking examined the risks of living with someone who smokes, however, the researchers say workplace and other additional exposures have been ignored. Researchers at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London and the Royal Free UCL Medical School examined blood cotinine levels -- which measures tobacco exposure -- and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke in 4,729 men from 18 British towns. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, finds higher concentrations of blood cotinine -- a nicotine by-product -- among non-smokers were associated with a 50 percent to 60 percent increase in coronary heart disease.

BLOOD PRESSURE LINKED TO CHOLESTEROL

People in the United States with high blood pressure are highly likely to have cholesterol problems that increase their risk for heart attack and stroke. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests that more than two-thirds of people with hypertension may also have high cholesterol that is most likely not being treated aggressively enough. "This double whammy has enormous implications for disease prevention," says study leader Dr. Stephen Turner, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Turner says patients who have hypertension should have their cholesterol checked and should treat both problems aggressively.

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(EDITORS: For more information on SWEETENERS, contact Susan Swithers at (765) 494-6279 or swithers@purdue.edu. For TEENS, Nancy Stringer at (619) 543-6163 or nstringer@ucsd.edu. For SMOKING, BMJ Publishing +44(0)20 7387 4499. For BLOOD PRESSURE, Lee Aase at (507)284-5005 or newsbureau@mayo.edu)