Compression stockings are used to treat disorders like varicose veins, venous ulcers, blood clots, and lymphedema. These stockings apply pressure on veins and tissues that are close to the skin. The pressure ensures that the amount of blood that the veins can carry is restricted. This prevents the veins from swelling beyond a limit. Since the pressure applied by these stockings is highest at the ankle and lesser towards the upper parts of the leg, the blood is forced back to the heart. They also apply pressure on the tissues below the skin. These tissues transfer the pressure to the blood which gets pumped into the capillaries that go into the deeper tissues of the leg.

Effect on Varicose veins

Varicose veins are veins that cannot properly send blood to the heart because of the malfunctioning of the valves that are supposed to prevent the blood from flowing backwards. Veins of legs tend to be more susceptible to this condition because they have to withstand the pressure of standing and walking. Compression stockings artificially reduce the diameter of the veins and the blood circulation is partially normalized.

DVT/PTS
These stocking are also used to treat deep vein thrombosis (DVT). In this case blood is forced into the deeper veins where the blood has clotted. This usually happens to passengers who travel for long periods in planes that do not have properly adjusted humidity levels. Low humidity leads to DVT. The condition is commonly referred to as 'economy class syndrome'. Often patients who have DVT develop Post Thrombotic Syndrome (PTS). This disorder can be prevented by the use of compression stockings. Thus patients with DVT are suggested to wear them for two years after they have had DVT.

Other Uses
Compression stockings are worn by pregnant women too because their blood vessels are affected by pregnancy induced hormonal changes. This is because they produce more blood to ensure that the growing fetus gets the oxygen and nutrients it needs. These stockings are also prescribed for patients with lymphedema because they prevent the accumulation of lymph by preventing the fluid from seeping out of the capillaries.

It must be noted that these stockings are not similar to socks used by athletes to enhance performance. The pressure applied by these stockings is much higher and physician's prescriptions are required to purchase some types of compression stockings. The stockings are difficult to put on and require gloves to be worn on feet to reduce friction.



Posted by: Evelyn    Source

Corporations spend billions of dollars each year on food advertising. For example, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and McDonald's each spent more than $1 billion in advertising in 2007. A newly released study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests those advertisers are missing out if their ads only mention taste and ignore our other senses.

Naturally, most food ads mention the taste of the food being marketed. But authors Ryan S. Elder and Aradhna Krishna (both University of Michigan) demonstrate that tapping into our other senses can actually increase consumers' taste perceptions.

"Because taste is generated from multiple senses (smell, texture, sight, and sound), ads mentioning these senses will have a significant impact on taste over ads mentioning taste alone," write the authors.

In the experiments, participants were randomly assigned to view one of two ads. One ad was designed to appeal to multiple senses (for example, a tagline for a chewing gum read "stimulate your senses"), while the other ad mentioned taste alone ("long-lasting flavor"). After sampling the gum, the participants listed thoughts they had regarding the item and then rated the overall taste.

"The multiple-sense ad led to more positive sensory thoughts, which then led to higher taste perception than the single-sense ad," the authors write. "The differences in thoughts were shown to drive the differences in taste." The results were repeated with potato chips and popcorn.

The authors believe their research can help advertisers reword ad copy to lead to significant differences in taste. "These results are of great value not only to food advertisers, but also to restaurants, as the descriptions contained within menus can actually alter the taste experience," the authors write. "Further, companies can implement the findings into product packaging information to alter the taste of products consumed in the home. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, ensuring positive consumption experiences is critical to success".


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

What Does the Zodiac Sign Say about You Losing Weight? Part 2

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What Does the Zodiac Sign Say about You Losing Weight?New Medifast Coupons Good for July 2009 »

What Does the Zodiac Sign Say about You Losing Weight? Part 2

Libra

In order to be beautiful and healthy you need to include foods that can cleanse your organism:

+ carrots, asparagus, beet, corn, rice; and fruits like figs, apples, strawberries, peaches, blueberries, raisins.

Sometimes you get nervous, like we all do, but in order to cope with your anger easier you need to eat more foods rich in cooper and these are:

+ cucumbers, radishes, green salad; and meats like sea food; and of course cereals made of oats, wheat germ; more foods you need to include in your menu are: potatoes, apricot, pear, grapes.

Scorpio

Avoid fatty foods. But that is valid for everyone who wants to lose weight no matter what zodiac sight they are.

- Exclude butter and cream from your menu.

+ Instead include more fish and sea food rich in proteins; also eat more eggs, milk products and game.

You will feel much better and in very good health if you eat plenty of fresh and dried fruits. They aid in toxins excretion, support your immune system and help you be in high spirits.

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New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be.

A study presented on Friday at the European Congress on Obesity is the first to examine the question of the proportional contributions to the obesity epidemic by combining metabolic relationships, the laws of thermodynamics, epidemiological data and agricultural data.

"There have been a lot of assumptions that both reduced physical activity and increased energy intake have been major drivers of the obesity epidemic. Until now, nobody has proposed how to quantify their relative contributions to the rise in obesity since the 1970s. This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories. It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role," said the study's leader, Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia.

The researchers started by testing 1,399 adults and 963 children to determine how a number of calories their bodies burn in total under free-living conditions. The test is the most accurate measure of total calorie burning in real-life situations.

Once they had determined each person's calorie burning rate, Swinburn and colleagues were able to calculate how much adults needed to eat in order to maintain a stable weight and how much children needed to eat in order to maintain a normal growth curve.

They then worked out how much Americans were actually eating, using national food supply data (the amount of food produced and imported, minus the amount exported, thrown away and used for animals or other non-human uses) from the 1970s and the early 2000s.

The scientists used their findings to predict how much weight they would expect Americans to have gained over the 30-year period studied if food intake were the only influence. They used data from a nationally representative survey (NHANES) that recorded the weight of Americans in the 1970s and early 2000s to determine the actual weight gain over that period.

"If the actual weight increase was the same as what we predicted, that meant that food intake was virtually entirely responsible. If it wasn't, that meant changes in physical activity also played a role," Swinburn said. "If the actual weight gain was higher than predicted, that would suggest that a decrease in physical activity played a role."

The scientists observed that in children, the predicted and actual weight increase matched exactly, indicating that the increases in energy intake alone over the 30 years studied could explain the weight increase.

"For adults, we predicted that they would be 10.8 kg heavier, but in fact they were 8.6 kg heavier. That suggests that excess food intake still explains the weight gain, but that there may have been increases in physical activity over the 30 years that have blunted what would otherwise have been a higher weight gain," Swinburn said.

"To return to the average weights of the 1970s, we would need to reverse the increased food intake of about 350 calories a day for children (about one can of fizzy drink and a small portion of French fries) and 500 calories a day for adults (about one large hamburger)," Swinburn said. "Alternatively, we could achieve similar results by increasing physical activity by about 150 minutes a day of extra walking for children and 110 minutes for adults, but realistically, eventhough a combination of both is needed, the focus would have to be on reducing calorie intake".

He emphasized that physical activity should not be ignored as a contributor to reducing obesity and should continue to be promoted because of its a number of other benefits, but that expectations regarding what can be achieved with exercise need to be lowered and public health policy shifted more toward encouraging people to eat less.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source