Excerpts from recent South Dakota editorials News & Observer Bad news is rarely convenient. Crime doesn't always happen during bankers' hours, and fires don't wait until the sun comes up. Today, we applaud law enforcement responders to last week's 14-hour chase and standoff and officer-involved shooting in ... and more »

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Excerpts from recent South Dakota editorials - News & Observer

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 10, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Warding off the joint pain of gout may be as easy as eating right, a new study suggests.

Gout, a joint disease that causes extreme pain and swelling, is caused by excess uric acid in the blood. It's the most common form of inflammatory arthritis, and its incidence has risen among Americans over recent decades, Harvard researchers noted.

But the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet -- which is high in fruits and vegetables, and low in salt, sugar and red meat -- can lower levels of uric acid in the blood.

The American Heart Association has long supported the DASH regimen as a way to help avoid heart disease.

"Conversely, the [unhealthy] Western diet is associated with a higher risk of gout," said Dr. Hyon Choi, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues. The "Western" diet describes the fatty, salty, sugar-laden fare of many Americans.

One nutritionist wasn't surprised by the new findings, pointing out that the DASH diet is low in compounds called purines, which break down to form uric acid.

"I can see how the DASH diet may benefit someone with gout," said Jen Brennan, clinical nutrition manager at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "The DASH diet avoids excessive consumption of red and organ meats known to have high purine levels."

Brennan added that the DASH diet "also encourages high intake of fruits and vegetables. We want to encourage fluids and vitamin C for these patients to help rid the body of uric acid, and fruits/vegetables can support this."

In their study, the Harvard researchers analyzed data from more than 44,000 men, aged 40 to 75, who had no prior history of gout. The men provided information about their eating habits every four years between 1986 and 2012.

Over the study period, more than 1,700 of the men developed gout.

During 26 years of follow-up, those who followed the DASH diet -- high in fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, low-fat dairy products and whole grains, and low in salt, sugary drinks and red and processed meats -- were less likely to develop gout than those who ate a typical Western diet, the findings showed.

The Western diet is high in items such as red and processed meats, French fries, refined grains, sweets and desserts.

The study wasn't designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship. However, the findings suggest that the DASH diet may provide "an attractive preventive dietary approach for the risk of gout," the researchers concluded.

Choi's team noted that many people who have high uric acid levels also have elevated blood pressure, or "hypertension" -- another reason to switch to the healthier DASH diet.

According to the study's lead author, Sharan Rai, of Massachusetts General Hospital, "The diet may also be a good option for patients with gout who have not reached a stage requiring [uric acid]-lowering drugs, or those who prefer to avoid taking drugs." Rai is with Mass General's division of rheumatology, allergy and immunology.

"And since the vast majority of patients with gout also have hypertension, following the DASH diet has the potential of 'killing two birds with one stone,' addressing both conditions together," Rai said in a hospital news release.

However, more studies are needed to track the diet's effectiveness in curbing gout flare-ups, the researchers said.

Dana Angelo White is a registered dietitian at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. She called the new study "another win for the DASH diet, a sensible plan that emphasizes whole foods and a healthy balance of all major food groups. I'm pleased to see a study that highlights the benefits beyond cardiovascular health. If more people ate this way, we would continue to see decreases in all kinds of chronic illness."

The study was published online May 9 in the BMJ.

WebMD News from HealthDay

SOURCES: Jen Brennan, R.D., clinical nutrition manager, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; Dana Angelo White, M.S., R.D., registered dietitian and clinical assistant professor of athletic training and sports medicine, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Conn.; Massachusetts General Hospital, news release, May 9, 2017; BMJ, news release, May 9, 2017

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Diet May Lower Your Odds for Painful Gout - WebMD

Katy Weber was 14 when she tried dieting for the first time, swilling a SlimFast to combat her new curves.

My body was changing, and I was uncomfortable, says Weber, now 42 and a professional health coach. After that, she says, I spent most of my adult life yo-yo dieting.

None of the dozen or so diets she tried were successful until she began Weight Watchers after her youngest child was born in 2012.

She dropped 50 pounds within 10 months.

I felt like I had totally figured it out, she says. Weber went so far as to work as a Weight Watchers leader in her town of Rosendale, NY. But as time wore on, maintaining her new weight became an unhealthy burden. I was so anxious I felt like I couldnt enjoy myself around food anymore it became my full-time identity.

All that pressure led to a nasty binge-eating habit, and by the summer of 2016, after shed put roughly 30 pounds back on, Weber realized something had to change.

I originally set out to discover why I was binge-eating, because I thought if I could just quit it, Id be the perfect dieter, she says. But in research, I realized [the problem isnt] the bingeing its the dieting. She no longer diets, and says she actively avoids weighing herself but is happy with her body at long last. That number on the scale is so irrelevant to who I am as a person, she says. Im free of the self-loathing and judgment that had plagued me since adolescence.

That number on the scale is so irrelevant to who I am as a person. Im free of the self-loathing and judgment that had plagued me since adolescence.

People are increasingly realizing that dieting can be unhealthier than carrying around those extra 10 or 20 pounds. Last March, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the percentage of overweight Americans who are trying to lose weight decreased by 7 percent from 1988 to 2014. The diet-food market has been in decline since 2011, market research firm company Mintel reported in September of 2016. Consumers are shifting toward eating fresher foods rather than those marketed as fat-free or low-calorie. And diet sodas, once a mainstay for those hoping to shed pounds, saw sales fall at a much faster rate than regular sodas in 2016. Even Weight Watchers, which tapped Oprah Winfrey as its spokeswoman in 2015, has had its struggles.

Dieting is on the decline, says neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt, author of Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession With Weight Loss. Most peoples experience with it is that they work very hard, and then a year later, theyre heavier.

And, some research has found that dieting can have adverse effects. According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, published in the journal Obesity in January, feeling bad about your weight can lead to higher stress levels and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

We identified a significant relationship between the internalization of weight bias and having a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome, which is a marker of poor health, writes study author Rebecca Pearl.

But whether ditching a diet is a healthy choice depends on what a person does instead, Aamodt says.

If in fact people are just getting frustrated and saying, Theres no point to worrying about my health, nothing matters, and eating a bunch of Big Macs by the pool, then it wouldnt be a good thing from a public-health standpoint, says Aamodt. On the other hand, if people stop [dieting] because theyre realizing there are other ways to be healthy that dont involve using weight control as a measure of success, that would make a difference.

She says that focusing on the numbers on the scale can actually prevent people from living a healthy lifestyle.

Exercising regularly is a very effective way to improve health, whether or not you end up losing weight doing it, which most people dont, she says. But when people dont lose weight, they give up. Thats a place where the focus on dieting does people a disservice its discouraging. The same goes for habits such as eating wholesome foods and getting more sleep.

2011 (left): Katy Weber had tried dozens of diets and weighed roughly 210 pounds. 2013 (middle): Weber lost 60 pounds on Weight Watchers but was obsessed with staying thin. Today (right): She doesnt weigh herself and feels happier than [shes] ever been.Tamara BeckwithMost successful diet-quitters practice mindful, or intuitive, eating. It all essentially comes down to learning to pay attention to when youre hungry or not hungry, Aamodt says.

Focusing too much on weight loss led Isabel Foxen Duke, 30, to develop an eating disorder. She went on her first diet at age 3 on the orders of her pediatrician. By the fifth grade, she was forcing herself to throw up, and her weight fluctuated by up to 60 pounds, as she binged, purged and counted calories.

I didnt realize that dieting was the problem, because I assumed, like most people, that [dieting works and] there was something wrong with me, says Duke, who now works as a health coach and recently moved from New York to San Francisco. I felt like a failure all the time.

By age 20, she was fed up. I kind of had a crash-and-burn moment, where I was like, I cant do this anymore. she says. I thought, this fight is so bad, Id rather just put on weight. So she, like Weber, quit dieting and started eating intuitively, following her bodys hunger cues and cravings, and hasnt looked back. Shes now settled at what she calls her bodys natural weight, and says her self-esteem is no longer tied to what she does or doesnt eat.

If youre going to control your food, theres a really high probability that youre going to lose control at some point, says Duke, who says that her body is now at the weight its supposed to be, naturally. Its not really sustainable, and its not really functional. If youre not eating when youre hungry, youre going to binge.

If people stop [dieting] because theyre realizing there are other ways to be healthy that dont involve using weight control as a measure of success, that would make a difference.

But, some experts say that many Americans should still try to lose weight.

It costs over $6,000 more per year to be obese as a female. Youre spending more money on insurance, says Rochester, NY-based eating psychology expert Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D., author of Bright Line Eating. Waistlines are continuing to expand, and the reality is that we cant sustain that.

She pins the blame on the unhealthy foods that make up most modern diets, and helps her patients to cut out food groups such as white flours, to stop fighting against their metabolisms, and to create healthy habits such as eating meals on a regular schedule.

But others say creating strict rules about what goes into your mouth rarely works.

That was the case for Weber. She says that letting her body decide when and what she eats has left her healthier and happier than her dieting days. Ive stopped fighting with [myself], she says. Im trusting my own hunger and fullness cues.

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It might be a bad idea to go on a diet - New York Post

Chemical content of bears hair reveals surprising eating habits

Researchers from Canada and the US have revealed new insights into the eating habits and hair-growth patterns of a wild grizzly bear population, by analysing the chemical content of their fur.

The team led by Garth Mowat, the head of the Canadian governments Natural Resource Science Section in the Kootenay region of British Columbia, was studying the dietary patterns of grizzlies around the provinces Stikine river. By examining the ratios of different isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur in the samples, the researchers could determine what proportion of vegetation, fish, or land mammals like moose and mountain goats made-up the bears diet.

While researchers sometimes look at animals droppings to learn about their eating habits, Mowat explains that this method is not always accurate. What you have in the scat is what they didnt absorb, and so theres a strong bias against foods that are highly digestible, he says. So for example salmon was regularly underestimated in the diet because it almost doesnt appear in the scats. To overcome this issue, scientists regularly turn to laboratory-based methods, such as isotope analysis, for more precise measurements

The team set up traps that could snag a few hairs from a grizzly bears back as it scratched itself on a tree trunk, or made its way down a trail to a feeding ground. Back in the lab, the isotopic analyses brought some unexpected results.

Surprisingly, even during the peak of the salmon season many bears shun the river, choosing instead to continue foraging for vegetation. That was the most intriguing result to us. We thought that any bear that lives within walking distance of the salmon stream would go down and eat some salmon, says Mowat.

While some female bears with cubs, and smaller males, might avoid the salmon streams to duck confrontation with aggressive larger males, Mowat points out that in other coastal regions, smaller bears still manage to eat salmon from very young ages.

Throughout the year, bears diets shift from protein-rich to fattier foodstuffs, as they build up their fat reserves for the winter. Because carbon-13 is often depleted in fatty tissues, this complicated the researchers task, as they would observe significant variation in isotope patterns among hairs from individual bears.

Once they have satisfied their protein needs, they will start focusing on the parts of the animal that are high in fat, because transferring fat to fat fish fat to bear fat is the most efficient chemical pathway, says Mowat. [A salmons] brain is mostly fat, so they break the skull open and eat the brain. The roe is high in fat, and then the skin, even though it doesnt seem very good to eat to us, is largely fat. These selective eating habits meant that Mowats team would often come across gruesome scenes of skinned and decapitated salmon carcasses strewn across the banks of the river.

They also found that the wild bears hair grew later in the year than previously thought. Previously, it was believed that the regions grizzly bears started growing their thicker winter coats from May or June. However, the presence of the isotopic signature of salmon consumption in longer hair samples showed that in fact the bears started to grow their thicker coats later in the summer, as it would not be possible for this signature to appear before the salmon had returned to the Stikine. This finding has important implications for other researchers who want to study bear behaviour by analysing their hair.

One of their more important observations is that some bears dont start growing hair until late in the summer. Weve done a lot of the basic research regarding stable isotopes and their use on bears by doing feeding studies with captive bears, says Charles Robbins, an expert on grizzly bears from Washington State University, US. While we can initiate new hair growth in May if we feed plenty of food, we can also delay it into August and September by feeding at levels where the bears either just maintain their weight or slightly lose weight. Many field researchers have wanted to section hair to look at diets throughout the hair growing season, but Ive warned them that they need to fully understand the temporal aspects of hair growth and not assume when hair starts growing.

Jeff Curtis, an environmental scientist from the University of British Colombia, whose lab ran much of the isotopic analyses, explains that his team are now using these techniques to track the habits of other animals. In particular, they have been tracking European starlings an invasive species in North America that cause severe damage to food crops. Weve been using a multi-element approach to identify where young starlings immigrate from to damage crops, and they are what they eat weve been able to basically determine where to concentrate those efforts to try to control them, says Curtis.

This article is reproduced with permission fromChemistry World. The article wasfirst publishedon May 10, 2017.

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Grizzly Diet Has Several Surprises, Bear Hair Chemistry Shows - Scientific American

Ah, the NFL offseasonthe time we take a brief respite from setting our fantasy lineups as pro football players vacation in luxurious destinations likeSaint-Tropez or other such places this reporter can neither afford nor pronounce. That is, unless said football player is five-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, who is most likely grinding away at some ridiculous workout in "The Grit Room."

What's that? You don't know what a Grit Room is? Clearly, you don't work at your craft at elite levels.

A piece in Men's Journal this week profiled Brady's longtime trainerand business partner Alex Guerrero. Or, as writer Mike Chambersdescribed Guerrero in the article, he's the quarterback's "trainer, nutritionist, counselor, spiritual guide, massage therapist, and godfather to Brady's youngest son."

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For the story, Chambers rehabbed hisshattered heel with Guerrero at the TB12(Tom Brady's number with the New England Patriotsis 12) Sports Therapy Centerin Foxborough, Massachusetts, which hasthemed rooms, including the aforementioned Grit Room,the Determination Room, the Perseverance Roomand the We Got This Room. Chambers' rehab process withGuerrerocomplete with casualrun-ins with Brady's supermodel wife Gisele Bndchen and Patriots tight-end Rob Gronkowskisounded suspiciously like readjusting his life to mirror Brady's. The writer was pushed physically and put on a diet that eliminated coffee and nightshadevegetables such as mushrooms and tomatoes that apparently lead todastardly inflammation. That theory haslong been a driving force inBrady's diet, which purportedly also featureswhole grains, lean meats andabsolutely nowhite sugar, white flour or MSG. And don't you dare approach Brady with a strawberry.

"I've never eaten a strawberry in my life. I have no desire to do that," the quarterback told New York Magazine in September without expanding much further on, why, exactly he has a crusade against the sweet, red berries.

Guerrero's methods have long been controversial, Boston Magazine publishinga 2015 piece titled, "Tom Bradys Personal Guru Is a Glorified Snake-Oil Salesman." He had apparentlyfalsely called himself a doctor in an infomercial that pitched super greens that prevented cancer, AIDSand diabetes, as well as helping folks lose massive amounts of weight. The Federal Trade Commission came down on him for that and later for purportedly pitching a drink he claimed could prevent concussions, according to the Boston Magazine article.

Guerrero, meanwhile, put writer Chambers through hard training despitehis foot being "crushed like a soda can." The trainer saidhe was retraining the brain to not think of the foot as injured. Ten weeks after starting rehab, Chambers said he was rock-climbing, returning to the activity that injured his heel in the first place. When it came to the injury'sprogress his doctor, Chambers wrote, was in disbelief.

Guess anything is possible with enough Grit (and, of course, no nightshade vegetables).

Read more:
Tom Brady's Training Program Features a 'Grit Room' and His Diet Is ... - Newsweek

About 20 years ago, I came across a fascinating research article in a prominent medical journal called the Lancet that highlighted the cardiovascular benefits of a newly described diet. What caught my attention was the very significant improvement in heart outcomes for people who followed this diet.

Lets go through some of the details. This research was done in France, and enrolled 600 people who had had a previous heart attack. The 600 people were divided into two groups, one of which was trained to follow a Mediterranean diet, and the second group was asked to follow a conventional heart healthy diet. The patients were monitored for five years and at the end of five years the two groups were compared.

The Mediterranean diet group was considered as the experimental group and the heart healthy diet group was the control group. At the end of the study period, it was found that there were 16 cardiac deaths in the control group and three in the experimental group. In addition, there were 17 subsequent heart attacks in the control group and five in the experimental group. As you can see from these statistics, there was very significant improvement in cardiac outcomes in the Mediterranean diet cohort. The magnitude of the benefit of the Mediterranean diet was to such a degree that it exceeded the benefit of certain medications that are used to treat heart disease.

What caught my attention was that after the publication of this study, there was very little publicity generated in the lay newspapers and magazines about such dramatic findings. I was so intrigued by the beneficial results of this study that I reached out via email to the lead author, Dr. Michel de Lorgeril from France, inquiring as to the details of this Mediterranean diet. He graciously responded to me and provided me with some information about the Mediterranean diet.

Fast forward to 2017 and many of us have heard about the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet. It has been described in some circles as an anti-inflammation diet. This is important because according to our current understanding, inflammation contributes to many chronic health conditions, including coronary heart disease, arthritis, colitis and other conditions. The Mediterranean diet is also associated with a reduced risk of cancer, Parkinsons disease and Alzheimers disease. For these reasons many health care organizations have recommended adoption of the Mediterranean diet in order to prevent many major chronic diseases.

You may be wondering at this time what the Mediterranean diet consists of? The emphasis is on eating primarily plant-based foods such as fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, legumes and nuts. For example, residents of Greece are said to consume about nine servings a day of antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables.

There is also an emphasis on eating healthy fats such as olive oil and canola oil to replace butter and margarine. Olive oil provides monounsaturated fat, which is a type of fat that can help to reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol. In addition, eating nuts, like almonds, cashews, pistachios and walnuts also provide beneficial fats. Using olive oil and vinegar as a salad dressing is a healthy choice, as well. Using herbs and spices instead of salt to flavor our foods is also recommended. Red meat should be limited to only a few times a month. Fish and chicken can be eaten about twice a week. Drinking red wine in moderation is also common in European countries where the Mediterranean diet is followed. And last but not least, getting plenty of exercise helps to promote the heart healthy features of the diet.

Dr. Mark Roth is an internal medicine physician with University Hospitals.

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Benefits of the Mediterranean diet - Cleveland Jewish News

Men's Health

The Best Way to Diet For Your Personality Type Men's Health In this latest episode of The Men's Health Podcast, we interview Jen Widerstrom, a former American Gladiator and the current star trainer on NBC's The Biggest Loser. Jen is also the author of the new book Diet Right for Your Personality Type.

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The Best Way to Diet For Your Personality Type - Men's Health