AN EXTRA THREE to four servings of low-fat milk, yogurt or cheese every day will not cause you to lose weight by itself, but increasing dietary calcium while reducing total calories will help you lose more pounds faster, especially abdominal fat, researchers say. A study published in the April issue of Obesity Research found that adults who included dairy foods in a reduced-calorie diet lost an average of about 24 pounds in six months, compared with about 19 pounds for those on a low-dairy diet supplemented with 800 milligrams of calcium each day and about 15 pounds for those on the same diet without extra calcium. The study included 32 obese adults on balanced diets who reduced their total calories by 500 a day.
Fat from the abdomen amounted to 19 percent of total fat lost among patients on the low-calcium diet, 50 percent for those taking calcium supplements and 66 percent for those in the high-dairy group. The study was funded by the National Dairy Council.
SQUATTING PUTS TREMENDOUS stress on the knees and doing it habitually appears to contribute to arthritis later in life. To determine the extent of that risk, Boston University medical researchers studied more than 1,800 men and women age 60 and older in China, where squatting is common. Based upon interviews and X-ray images of the knees, the researchers found that Beijing residents with a history of squatting had, at age 25, an increased chance of developing a breakdown of the knee joint, a condition called tibiofemoral osteoarthritis. The more time they had spent squatting, the greater the prevalence of the condition, the researchers found. Although squatting is less frequently practiced in the United States, lead author Dr. Yuqing Zhang said that the study findings would apply to baseball catchers, weight lifters and gardeners.
GIVING INSULIN ALONG with clot-busting medications and other drugs after a heart attack may improve the likelihood of survival by limiting inflammation and damage to the heart muscle. In a study of 32 heart attack patients treated in the emergency room at the University of Buffalo, researchers gave half the participants a low-dose infusion of insulin for 48 hours in addition to the clot-buster reteplase and other common heart attack treatments, including aspirin and the blood thinner heparin. The other half received the usual drugs plus a saline solution. Patients who received the insulin in addition to standard treatments had lower measures of several inflammatory factors, including C-reactive protein. They also had 60 percent lower levels of creatine kinase, a protein released by the damaged heart muscle, demonstrating that the insulin helped protect the heart muscle.
