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Monday, June 4, 2012

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Good eating is not a punishment, but an opportunity

Turn on your TV, open a newspaper, or boot up your computer and you're bound to get some confusing news about diet and health. Don't let it drive you to distraction or to the donut shop. Instead, remember four key facts:
   1. What you eat affects your appearance, your energy and comfort, and—above all your health.
   2. America is on the wrong track. Two out of every three of us are overweight or obese. Diabetes and high blood pressure are on the rise. Heart attacks, strokes, and cancer are distressingly common. Many factors contribute to these complex problems, but the basic reasons are simple: we eat too much, we choose the wrong foods, and we don't get enough exercise.
   3. Scientists know what diet is best for health (see below). The fine print has changed and is likely to change some more, but the key facts are in.
   4. Good eating is not a punishment, but an opportunity. If you know why it's important and what to do, you'll find it enjoyable and satisfying. And if you establish an overall pattern of healthful nutrition, you'll have plenty of wiggle room to savor the treats that matter most to you.

A software for predicting bone loss risk

Iranian researchers have managed to develop software that predicts the risk of osteoporosis, the silent bone disease associated with fragile fractures, with high accuracy.
Osteoporosis is the thinning of bone tissue and loss of bone density over time. The silent disease, which is more common in women older than 50, is often diagnosed too late when the patients suffer severe bone loss or related fractures.
Physicians usually diagnose osteoporosis through measuring bone mass using different techniques including Bone Mineral Densitometry (BMD) which exposes the patients to certain amounts of x-ray radiation.
The Dual-emission X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), which is considered as the most common and standard method in this regard, lacks desirable accuracy especially in studying lumbar spines.
The new software developed by Amirkabir University of Technology researchers showed promising results in determining the risk of bone loss as well as diagnosing patients with osteoporosis, said lead researcher Maede Mohammadifar.
The accuracy of the new software in predicting the risk of osteoporosis is higher than 97 percent, said Mohammadifar, adding that the new method can also help physicians detect individuals who need to undertake BMD as a screening test.
According to the evaluation study, the software, which provides the radiography images of the five lumbar spines, has also showed 81 percent accuracy in diagnosing individuals suffering from the disease.

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