Heavy Matters

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Though most people are aware that today is a national holiday in Mexico, it’s also Liberation Day for the Netherlands as they celebrate their freedom from Nazi Germany in 1945. If you’re celebrating today, make sure you save some time to see our stories this week which include a fascinating three-part series on the Science of Obesity, done by our own Marsha Hitchcock. And fast food eaters beware: if you celebrate with a Super Sized Coke, fries and a Big Mac, you’ll need to walk seven straight hours to burn it off!

According to experts at Johns Hopkins, three out of four adults in the United States will be overweight or obese by 2015, with 66-percent of American adults currently overweight. Read the reports to learn about a gene that may influence obesity, how clinical interventions may help kill the craving to eat (like the drug therapy researchers at Temple University are looking at that could treat obesity as an addiction), and about the less invasive approach for blocking hunger signals that researchers are studying at Tufts Medical Center. I was somewhat alarmed by the results of the online survey Yale conducted where nearly half of the people who responded said they would give up a year of their life rather than be fat, with 30-percent saying they would rather walk away from their marriage, be depressed, or become alcoholic rather than be obese. The good news is, if you eat 500 fewer calories a day, it adds up to a pound of weight loss a week. With the huge obsession Americans have about weight, it makes me wonder if the statement is true that “what we resist, persists,” given all the time, money, focus and energy we spend on this topic.

Something I had never heard much about before we did our report on it was fire in the OR, where flash fires break out in the operating room when heat, oxygen and combustible materials combine. Thank heavens there are only 650 a year and almost all are due to system failures, not because of the doctors, according to Tulane’s Donald Palmisano, M.D. And speaking of something else I haven’t heard much about is in our report on anesthesia awareness, where about 100 times a day patients are awake and aware during surgery while under anesthesia. What a horrible thought. . .to come awake while under the knife but be too paralyzed to let anyone know you’re awake and feeling pain from the surgery. On a happier note, we have an interesting In-Depth Doctor’s Interview with Alan Ripps, D.M.D. who explains a high-tech system that creates a permanent dental crown the same day with one visit to the dentist’s office.

In case you missed them, you may want to check our past reports, Prostate Cancer Breakthrough or Better Eyes in Old Age Premium Content in the Archives may be purchased for as little as $9 for 24-hour, unlimited access. If you would like to access Premium Content for the first time click here.

By the way, I’m taking three teenagers to London and Paris for their first trip abroad in late May. If anyone has suggestions for what teenagers might enjoy doing there, please send them to me, because I’m not sure what to do with them! I do know we’re going to track down Lorenzo, the Flying French Man. Click here: to see his video: Video Lorenzo : the Flying French Man...

And there's more where that came from...

Marjorie Bekaert Thomas
President, Ivanhoe Broadcast News

"It is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them."
-- Agatha Christie