You've surely known kids whose parents smoke declare their repulsion for the habit. The health risk, the expense, the filth of smoking seem to deter many youngsters from following in the footsteps of mom and dad. Theoretically, anyway. In practice, these same kids may fall prey to the very act they vowed to reject.

How about kids raised in households filled with sugary snacks and drinks, foods packed with fat, salt, and calories, and parents with expanding waistlines? Seems only natural these children, despite good intentions, end up struggling with healthful eating and weight management.

We are what our parents teach us. It's all we know for a good many years. And by the time we are able to make our own independent decisions, it's often too late. Our parents' actions and values are already programmed within us -- and it takes hard work to switch things up.

So here's my plea for this Sunday morning: do your kids a favor and become a positive role model. Don 't just tell your little ones what is right and healthy and virtuous -- show them. Let your behavior be the gold standard now, so that later, it's likely to be what your sweet babies will fall back on.

Here are seven ways to get started:

Feed 'em well
If kids learn healthy eating habits early, they're likely to stick with them. Offer whole grains options (rice, bread, pasta) and snacks that are not in the junk food group. Don't even buy the stuff you may later wish to clear out of your cupboard. Guests at our house are offered two drink options -- water or milk. Why? Because if we have juice (it's loaded with sugar) or soda (also sugary and calorie-laden), our kids just can't hold back. But if we don't have these beverages, they are never an option. Out of sight, out of mind.

Keep 'em moving
Take your kids to the park, get them running around your backyard, take them swimming, organize a kid-friendly football game, invest in a kite. Quiet activities are also good -- and necessary -- but when in doubt about how to entertain your busy little bees, make them move!

Let 'em see you sweat
You need to keep moving too. Not only for your own well-being -- that's obvious -- but so your kids see your physical activity as a staple of healthy living. Teach your kids to do push-ups and sit-ups and do them together. Jump rope, run laps at a local track, ride bikes, or dance. Just don't expect your kids to stay active if your idea of exercise is flipping through TV channels.

No TV
Turn off that TV. Rid your household of junk-food commercials, mind-numbing content, and addictive inactivity. Let TV be a treat -- a small one -- and not an expectation.

No smoking
Need I explain? It's unhealthy, costly, dirty, and a sure contributor to cancer. Try with every ounce of your being to keep this habit away from your impressionable children.

No stress
Some stress is unavoidable. Some is even healthy. But the kind of stress that hurts our tummies, gives us headaches, and threatens our health should be minimized. We must do our best to control our own stress so its effects don't spill over. And we must teach our kids how to cope too. Fortunately, some of the techniques listed above also work for this category -- physical activity, for example, does wonders for lowering stress. We can become experts at deep breathing -- have your kids practice with you. And we can teach a bit of distraction. If homework is making kids crazy, go with them on a short walk where they can regroup and return to the task with a clear head.

No double standards
We simply cannot say one thing and do another. Smoking while preaching the dangers of the habit just doesn't make sense. Saying "no" to sweets with your hand in the cookie jar is downright unfair. Carrying around extra weight and demanding physical fitness is simply ineffective. So make a commitment to yourself and your kids that you will do as you say. It's the only way.

Findings from an international study suggest that women with a waist size of more than 34 inches are more likely to develop cancer of the womb than women who boast slimmer waistlines.

The study, funded in part by the British charity Cancer Research UK, sized up 223,000 women worldwide and determined that women with a waistline less than 31 inches have half the risk of developing womb cancer than their heavier counterparts.

There has been a significant rise in cases of womb cancer in Britain. And the link between the disease and weight gain is most prevalent among postmenopausal women who have never used hormone replacement therapy or the birth control pill.

According to the National Sizing Survey conducted in 2004, the average British woman now has a 34-inch waist. This is more than six inches bigger than the average size of a woman in the 1950s, says Dr. Lesley Walker of Cancer Research UK.

"Women are larger than they were when they existed on a wartime diet and were generally more active and this is having serious consequences," Walker says.

More than 6,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with womb cancer each year. The disease kills about 1,000 annually.

I guess the concept is happy -- the public urging for our world's policy makers to make cancer a top priority -- but the fact that becomes all too apparent on this World Cancer Day is quite sobering. More than seven million people die from cancer and close to 11 million new cases are diagnosed worldwide each year. In 2006, cancer killed more people than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

So today is both happy and sad. But for now, let's focus on the happy.

The Geneva-based International Union Against Cancer (UICC) and member organizations in 86 countries are launching a five-year campaign to impart life lessons to children so they can prevent cancer later in life. Parents are critical in this campaign and must take an active role in teaching their children techniques for saving their lives.

Forty-three percent of cancer cases can be prevented through healthy lifestyles that begin in childhood. The World Cancer Campaign slogan -- Today's Children, Tomorrow's World -- underscores the possibility that a concerted effort among world leaders, parents, and their children can make a real difference through four key actions -- providing a smoke-free environment for children; ensuring children keep physically active, eat a healthy diet, and avoid obesity; educating children about vaccines for virus-related liver and cervical cancers; and limiting children's exposure to the sun.

Former First Lady Barbara Bush, Her Royal Highness Lalla Slama of Morocco, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and tennis star Steffi Graf are some of the powerful voices powering this campaign that UICC president Dr. Franco Cavalli says can save so many lives if embraced by those at the highest decision-making levels.

"Complacency and inaction on the part of world community will effectively contribute to more than 10 million deaths every year by 2020," he said.

Over the years, here is an on-going conversation I have with my family physician:

Doctor: What kind of exercise are you doing?

My reply: I have three kids and a house to keep clean. I think that is all the exercise I need.

Doctor then rolls his eyes.

End of conversation.

I am 5-foot, 7-inches, weigh 120 pounds and am on the go from 5:30 AM to about 10 PM each night. Aside from work as an artist and writer, which requires that I sit at a drafting table or in front of the computer (which is not prolonged sitting -- I am up and down, up and down -- because as every parent knows, somebody always needs something or something needs to be done) I am in movement.

I am physically able to climb down riverbanks and over river boulders when we go fishing, and I can hike up any hill with the best of them. I do not worry that I am out of shape. I know I am not physically inactive. You can bet I will be taking a copy of this latest research with me to my next visit to see the doctor. He asks the same exercise question each time, only this time, I have data to back up my claim that I am indeed getting a very good form of exercise.

According to researchers, when it comes to the best workout, cleaning the house outranks playing a sport as a better form of exercise and "far more cancer protective." They state "that moderate forms of physical activity, such as housework, may be more important than less frequent but more intense recreational physical activity in reducing breast cancer risk."

The women in the study spent an average of 16 to 17 hours a week cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry, and the researchers found housework cut breast cancer risk by 30 percent among the pre-menopausal women and 20 percent among the post-menopausal women. The study focused on women and breast cancer, but there is no reason to believe that these findings will not translate into cancer prevention for all cancers, and for men as well, as exercise is known to offer protection against the development of cancer. And in weighing in for the guys, men do housework too.
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Nilotinib is an investigational drug that targets the same protein as Gleevec, but through a different mechanism. Nilotinib, according to results recently presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Society of Hematology, is effective and well tolerated in patients with chronic-phase myeloid leukemia (CML) who do not respond to or cannot tolerate Gleevec.

In the past the only curative treatment for CML was a stem cell transplant. Researchers are focused on finding curative therapies that do not involve so much of a mortality risk and are more easily tolerated. A study was conducted to further evaluate the treatment with nilotinib in patients with CML who have stopped responding to Gleevec. Results of the study indicate that nilotinib was effective.

Numbness is wearing off, and I am beginning to feel twinges of pain surrounding the area where my port was once located. I can't see what was done to me today -- because the area is carefully bandaged -- but I know from what I feel that my skin has been cut and sewn back together. I feel the skin tightening, stretching, pulsing and while it's not terribly comfortable, it's pretty minor compared to the pain of so many other cancer procedures -- like my lumpectomy, my chemotherapy, my nausea, my neutropenia, my allergic reactions to various medications.

So I am fine, following my port removal that was predicted to last a few hours but somehow took most of the day. The actual procedure took just one hour, and the twilight drug that kept me in a peaceful funk allowed me to relax while the port that was tunneled into the tissue underneath my skin was precisely taken from my body. It was an uneventful experience -- except for a few tears that dripped from my eyes during the final moments before my surgery. I think it may have been the power of the moment -- the moment signaling the end of my active cancer journey. Or it may have been the power of support offered by my sister and my three-year-old son who accompanied me today. Or it may have been the power of the response I gave a nurse who had just seen my little guy and asked me if I planned to have more children. My response -- probably not, because of cancer -- seemed a little too final, a little too sad.

It may have been the combination of everything, all adding up over the past two years, that brought tears to my eyes today. But for now, the tears are gone. And the port is gone. For now, my cancer is gone.

Why don't more people stick with an exercise routine? Perhaps in part because it gets repetitious and boring. Exercise can be a lonely activity and it is more difficult to keep yourself motivated. Personal trainers have always been a remedy for both of the aforementioned problems, but realistically, how many of us can afford a personal trainer?

According to iTrain, with an MP3 player you can now download customized workouts with a personal trainer. The downloads are set to music and combines modern technology, entertainment, and health in a portable format. It doesn't matter what kind of workout you enjoy, iTrain seems to offer a program. There is iTread, iCycle, iClimb, iStrength, iSculpt Traditional and iSculpt Ballet, iStretch, iTeenTrain Hip Hop, iTeenTrain Kick Boxing.

Grace Lazenby, a fitness expert with 15 years in the Hollywood training industry, realized that MP3 players might be an excellent means of offering her fitness and training to the masses.

In addition to Lazenby, other fitness experts who keep you going through your workout include yoga instructor Heath House, boxing expert and member of the US Air Force boxing team Nick Narvaez, boxing expert and Group Exercise Instructor of the Year Keith Irace, and member of the Brazilian National Team of Gymnastics.

Anything that adds to the enjoyment of a workout is a bonus, and I can see the benefits of iTrain for all ages, but one of my first thoughts when I read about iTrain is that it makes an excellent gift for a teen or young adult.

via Adam at Netscape

Welcome back from the weekend! Here is a review of what we were talking about during the second week in July in our other health blogs.

From The Cardio Blog:

• Bucindolol: experimental heart failure drug.
• Mammograms can find heart health problems.
• Eggs: bad or not bad for heart health -- which is it?
• The clock of life and time of day determines heart health.
• Extreme obesity raises mortality rate in women.
• Austrailian stem cell research innovates new heart treatment.
• Public physical activity program helps weight loss, lower blood pressure.
• Tuna imported from Latin America has highest mercury level.
• Eating less helps slow aging process.
• Teens helped to learn healthy diet habits with household food rules.
• Volunteer work helps seniors stay active and healthy.
• Working overtime worse for womens health.
• Aging and single living combined linked to higher heart disease risk.
• Tubby kids motivated to exercise by reward of TV time.
• Humidity and high temps linked to rise in summer heart attacks.
• Comedian Red Button dies of vascular disease.
• Migraine aura linked to increased heart attack stroke risk.
  

From The Diabetes Blog:

• Martial arts black belt uses youth group to fight diabetes.
• FDA approves GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug.
• Pink Floyd Syd Barrett dies from diabetes complications.
• Update on fatal NC car crash involving diabetic driver.
• Major study links Type 2 diabetes and glaucoma risk.
• Life insurance industry plays catch-up.
• A1c Champions program trains diabetes mentors.
• Danish study confirms suspected diabetes, multiple sclerosis link.
• Debate continues on virtues, shortcomings of inhalable insulin, Exubera.
• Blogger's advice to T2 diabetics: follow in footsteps of movie producer Weinstein.
• Diabetes, obesity blamed for sky-high US kidney failure rates.
• Canadians await approval of inhalable insulin.
• Lifestyle ed could greatly reduce diabetes onset in older Americans, say researchers.

To your good health! To a great week!

While the effectiveness of a seaweed extract acting as a potent inhibitor of human papilloma viruses, HPV, that can lead in some cases to cervical cancer, has not been tested in any human clinical trials -- in the lab it has impressed the National Cancer Institute researchers who have been studying it.

According to researchers, carrageenan extracted from marine red algae (seaweed) showed a thousand-fold greater potency compared with other inhibitors they have tested in halting HPV.

Dr. John Schiller, senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, who was involved in the development of the HPV vaccine, made the carrageenan discovery.

Schiller cautions that the results do not prove that carrageenan will work as a practical HPV topical microbicide. However, the positive results in the lab, together with the fact that carrageenan-based over-the-counter products are already available -- make carrageenan look even more promising to researchers in blocking the sexual transmission of HPV.

The new cervical cancer vaccine is effective for about 70 percent of the HPV viruses that can cause cervical cancer. It is also an expensive vaccine that might prove cost prohibitive for low-income women in economically distressed countries. The researchers think, if carrageenan proves as effective in human clinical trails as it has in the lab, the inexpensive carrageenan could be a significant benefit in the prevention of HPV.

One researcher, Dr. Connie Trimble, an HPV researcher at Johns Hopkins University, feels so positive about the recent advancements and discoveries in relation to cervical cancer that she said, "With all the potential tools now, we could really start to think about the end of cervical cancer. Between the vaccines and some of the prophylactics -- wouldn't that be a medical success story!"

The new cervical cancer vaccine has certainly brought to light a great deal of information about one of the major causes of cervical cancer -- the human papilloma virus, HPV. According to statistics, 50 percent of sexually active adults are infected with HPV. In most cases, a woman will not experience any symptoms if she has contracted HPV through sexual activity, and HPV resolves itself in most cases. However, in a small number of cases, a woman infected with HPV will go on to develop cervical cancer.

University of Washington researchers have released a report stating that the proper use of condoms can offer effective protection against infection from the human papilloma virus, HPV, about 70 percent of the time for young sexually-active females. Condoms need to be used with every sexual encounter. The researchers of this study emphasize that the practice of using condoms does not afford 100 percent protection.

The new cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, is reported to offer 100 percent protection from HPV infection, but is only recommended for young girls before they become sexually active. Condoms might provide some protection for women already sexually-active and not candidates for the cancer vaccine.

I will share anything and everything about my own experience with breast cancer -- how I found it, how it was removed, how it was treated, how I fared through the whole ordeal, how I'm surviving now. I figure that if I spread the word about what happened to me, that others will become more aware and some -- especially those with a new diagnosis -- will benefit from whatever wisdom I have to impart. So I am an open book. I talk about breast cancer, answer questions about breast cancer, and probably insert my opinion about the topic to some who don't really care. But I will continue talking and sharing -- and writing -- because the alternative would be a disservice to the few I may be able to help.

So a card stuck in the middle of a magazine caught my eye the other day. The slogan on it reads, Tell Someone and the illustrations on this card -- that functions as a postcard -- show women reaching out to other women. There are women talking on the phone and a woman tapping another on the shoulder. The message they appear to be spreading is highlighted in the text below the graphic representation of this campaign to raise awareness of cervical cancer. The message is about HPV -- human papillomavirus -- and about how millions of women already have it and how some don't even know they have it. I learned from reading this card that for some, HPV will clear on its own. But for some, cervical cancer may develop. This is why Pap tests are critical. And so what all women should be telling other women is this -- ask your doctor about the importance of Pap tests. And be active in your own health. And follow all recommendations for detecting health concerns early. I learned from reading this card that I should tell someone about this. And so now I have.

That there is an effective cervical cancer vaccine about to hit the market is encouraging news. Any successful and safe cancer prevention method is good news. Recently, a public service announcement, PSA, has been airing on television attempting to raise awareness about the virus that can lead to cervical cancer. The PSA I am seeing is coming from Merck, one of the drug companies that will be selling the vaccine. Unless I am mistaken, not once does the PSA mention the vaccine -- only the virus associated with cervical cancer. I believe this is intentional. I believe the drug company might be anticipating a resistance from the parents of teenage daughters to the vaccine based on ethical and moral grounds. If I were a drug company, I would quickly and reasonably decide to try to keep the vaccine above the fray of ethical and moral objections by promoting education about the virus.

Vaccines are a preventative measure against virus, not a treatment for after-exposure to a virus. As such, the ideal population to reach with a cervical cancer vaccine that protects against the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus, HPV, will be teenage girls before they become sexually active. I predict it is going to be a controversial issue and debate where sexual activity of teenage girls becomes the focal point and not the potentially life-saving cancer prevention vaccine. I am betting the current awareness-raising ad campaign from the drug company in the virus link to cervical cancer is an attempt to minimize the debate with an educational approach. That's my hunch.