Photo: bethography - meltingmama, Flickr

It's not news that obesity in the United States has become a serious issue. Not only is it damaging on a personal level, but on a national one. For example, obesity has cost the state of California alone an estimated $41 billion yearly in health care and other factors. And, a study found spending on obesity-related conditions has doubled over the past 10 years and now accounts for 9.1 percent of medical spending.

In fact, it's a big enough problem that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is holding its inaugural Weight of the Nation Conference on Obesity Prevention and Control. The conference began yesterday and will go through tomorrow, and you can keep up with it on Twitter by following @CDC_eHealth or searching #won09.

It's certainly going to be interesting to see what decisions and legislation ultimately come out of this conference -- acknowledging the gravity of the situation is certainly a step in the right direction. But what will the next step be?

Despite media attention and public service campaigns, obesity in the US has risen over the past year. No states had a decline in obesity and 37 states reported increases in obesity. At least 20% of adults are obese in every state except for Colorado. As recently as 1991, no states had an obesity rate that exceeded 20%.

It's clear that more public campaigns are needed to halt this harmful rise in public health. Better food choices and nutrition programs in schools as well as an increase in physical education opportunities. More public opportunities and programs for fitness. Walkable communities that promote -- not hinder -- an active lifestyle. The options are limitless, really. But public programs and campaigns will never take the place of personal responsibility. While an infrastructure that encourages a healthy lifestyle is necessary, people also need to take control of their own health.

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Want to put this obesity crisis into perspective? Check out this post from The Agonist. It shows several maps, which represent the percentage of obese people in each state via colour coding. The maps go from mostly blue (low levels of obesity) to all red, orange and yellow (high levels of obesity.) In fact, in 2004, no state has less than 15% obesity among it's residents, and most have above 20%. And that was three years ago -- I'd be willing to bet that these stats have gone even high since.

Obesity seems to be growing exponentially, and it's clear that if we don't do something soon, a huge chunk of the nation is going to kill themselves with their own indulgence. But how do we stop this epidemic before the entire map turns red?

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Can you imagine a country where 3,000 new cases of AIDS develop every single month? That's happening in China according to state media in that country.

That's quite a few cases, even in country with over a billion people. The same state media report concluded that 38 percent of these new cases happened due to sexual transmission -- a rise of over 30 percent from the prior year.

Is China a ticking time bomb on many fronts? Perhaps the explosion in population combined with a stellar economic growth rate recently is going to cause severe mismanagement of overall growth on every front in that country. On the health front, this AIDS news is not even close to good.

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Are you surprised at all when I tell you American obesity rates are soaring? Probably not. I wasn't when my husband told me about this weighty article he'd read. It revealed that not one state showed a decline in obesity during the year 2006. Mississippi was the first state to crack the 30 percent barrier for obese adults. West Virginia and Alabama were just slightly behind. Colorado was the leanest state with a 17.6 percent rate. This year's report, looking at overweight children for the first time, has the District of Columbia topping the charts with heavy kids and Utah boasting the lowest rates for little ones.

Obesity is becoming an epidemic. And we need to treat it as an emergency. First step: determine where you stand. My hubby located this body mass index (BMI) calculator. I share it with you today so you can chart your own measurement. Just enter your height and weight and then calculate your BMI with one click of your mouse. If you come up with the number 30 or higher, you fit the definition of obese. If you find yourself in this predicament, you're in the right place. That's Fit offers an abundance of health and fitness tricks that can help you whittle away at your digits. If you are below the 30 mark, pat yourself on the back. And keep on truckin' in the direction of health, fitness, and wellness.

There's just one way to fix our nation's obesity problem -- plain old hard work. Each and every one of us must eat right, exercise right, and minimize our health risks. Only then can we watch our obesity statistics, like our BMIs, melt away to more perfect numbers.

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In the Midwestern U.S. right now, allergies are a-plenty. Not a day goes by that the pollen, mold and ragweed counts are off the charts. It's being called one of the worst late-summer allergy seasons in a decade where I live.

Across the pond, health officials in the UK are calling the allergy outbreak in Britain an "epidemic." That sort of language is used when it comes to diseases, but allergies?

Allergy sufferers have apparently grown up large numbers in England, and it's not just to the air outside. Food allergies are escalating, and food labels are being scrutinized as well. Soon, the words "may contain nuts" just won't be enough. Allergy sufferers need to know exactly what is in the foods they eat beyond vague descriptions.

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I've become quite the anti-sugar nut. I don't want any part of sugar and find myself closely examining every food label I come across. The lower the sugar, the happier I get. Sugar-free? Even better.

It's been fairly easy for me to wean myself off sugar. Cutting it from my kids' diets is more of a challenge. They want it, crave it, beg for it. Slow and steady is my plan for them. In time, I hope to have them choosing fresh fruit for snacks, instead of Chips Ahoy cookies.

Christina Sbarro over at ParentDish wrote on September 15 about some sugary new research which makes me more convinced my kids are better off without the refined white stuff.

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Those of you who are avid gamers are undoubtedly familiar with the increasingly popular World of Warcraft -- an online game with millions of users around the globe. Recently a "corrupted blood" disease spread through the virtual community as an uncontrolled plague, killing off thousands of players and creating chaos -- all in spite of attempts to control the outbreak with quarantine measures.

While you might think this is of little interest to those outside the game, scientists say it's an excellent model for studying how humans would react in a real-life infection.

Players responded to the outbreak in a number of different ways -- some working to save the infected, some fleeing cities to try and outrun the disease, and still others infecting other players on purpose, just to be cruel.

Up until now, doctors were left either studying previous outbreaks, or relying on mathematical models to study the potential effects of a real-world epidemic. This new research could provide them with insight into how a potentially harmful new virus -- like bird flu, for example -- would spread, taking into account the variable of human behavior.

This seems like it could prove to be a very useful tool in helping doctors and scientists feel more prepared in the event of a modern-day plague.

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Can a computer game help health experts better plan for the next epidemic? It can, and it is. It started when a computerized illness that started as an intentional "challenge" for advanced players of the popular video game World of Warcraft back in 2005 soon did what many real illnesses do in the real world: it broke loose and began running rampant among computer characters of the game that the creators didn't intend. What's interesting is that how the computer game epidemic spread was very similar to how real ones do -- so similar in fact that it's helping real health experts fine tune how they do their research. The game is pointing out flaws in the current research system along with natural occurrences and social tendencies that surprisingly hadn't been thought of before.

Of course all the game designers had to do to fix their "epidemic" was reset the system and redo some programming. Too bad it doesn't work that way in the real world too.

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I haven't read much about the upcoming 2008 Olympics, and although it's good that they're preparing for the worst, I was surprised that some of the first of news I came across was about how Beijing is setting aside thousands of hospitals beds in case of an infectious disease outbreak. Not about swimmers or track runners, but the fear of a pandemic.

But this is a particularly big deal because China has a negative history surrounding the handling of infectious outbreaks in the past (i.e. SARS), so the fact that Beijing has made such an effort and reduced the reporting time for an outbreak from what used to be a week to as little as 10 hours is a good thing. China has also been making some positive moves in the fight against bird flu as well.

So, fun or not, positive moves like this should get press too.

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Millions of people, 5 million+ people according to recent estimates, are living with Alzheimer's right now. That's a ten percent increase in the last five years, and with Alzheimer's being an age related disease those numbers are only projected to go higher and higher as the baby boomer population hits retirement age. Some are even using the word epidemic to describe the fact that by the year 2030 experts predict almost 8 million people will have the diagnosis.

Lay the blame on unbalanced technology -- we're keeping people alive longer by treating things like heart disease and cancer more effectively, only to be helpless when they come down with a diagnosis like Alzheimer's a few years later.

Oh, the irony.

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Scientists seem to think so, because they're asking to exhume the body of a man who died way back in 1919.

The reason they're interested in digging up this particular guy is because he died of the Spanish flu, and is supposedly buried in a lead-lined coffin -- which would mean his body is probably well-preserved and will provide valuable scientific insight on fighting the potential bird flu pandemic. One thing the article doesn't say is why this almost 100 year old body is going to help us more than doing autopsies on more recently deceased flu victims...?

Anyway, I'm not the squeamish type normally, but as interesting as it might be to see just how "well preserved" the body is, I wouldn't wanna be the guy to crack that coffin open.

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The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released a new report on homelessness in LGBT youth. Of the estimated 1.6 million homeless American youth, between 20 and 40 percent are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and are at risk on the streets as well as in the shelter system. Considering that between 3 percent and 5 percent of the U.S. population identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual it is clear that LGBT youth experience homelessness at a disproportionate rate. Once these youth come out to their parents many are told to leave home. Many leave home on their own to get away from physical and mental abuse.

The report touches on the harassment and violence that many of these youth experience in the shelter system and also on critical problems affecting their mental health like depression, loneliness, withdrawn behavior and delinquency. Homeless LGBT youth run a higher risk of substance abuse and risky sexual behavior leading to many sexually transmitted diseases. LGBT youth face the threat of victimization everywhere, at home, at school, at their jobs, at shelters, and on the streets. To learn more information on this topic visit the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force website. Get involved as a volunteer with these youth and become a mentor.

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Maybe I'm just being naive (it wouldn't be the first time), but I never really thought about the fact that if a bird flu pandemic hit then the grocery stores and the availability of food would be affected. It's not like a natural disaster where the physical ability of trucks to deliver goods is interrupted, but more the idea that if as many as 40% or more of workers are out sick at any given time there just won't be the manpower needed to keep grocery store shelves stocked. They are doing their best to prepare, but I guess the funding they need just isn't there.

I'm not one to panic, but it wouldn't hurt to keep things well stocked at home -- just in case.

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In the wake of all the flu warnings we've been hearing for the last several months, federal health officials have released a new system for ranking the severity of the flu outbreak each flu season. Developed by the CDC and called the "pandemic severity index," it's designed to both weigh the risks of an expected outbreak and also give advice to local officials on how to handle it (i.e. school closings, quarantines, etc).

The new system would rank flu outbreak severity on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most mild and 5 being the most severe. The hope is that if there ever is a true flu epidemic, this system can help government and health officials react in the best and most efficient way. I know the flu is a real threat, and the need for a system like this is no surprise, but still -- it's a little scary.

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