That's Fit

In the past 20 years, cancer incidence in young adults has doubled. The grand total: 70,000 diagnosis each year. Ouch. How about some salt for that wound: Cancer survival rates in young adults have not improved over the past 30 years, mostly due to delayed diagnosis. Want more?

The medical community at large is grossly uneducated about how to effectively communicate, treat, and follow-up with young adults. And the number one social issue faced by young cancer survivors is isolation. In a nutshell, young adults are a critically underserved population whose needs (fertility, education, sexuality, peer support, financial aid, insurance, employment) are so different than the needs of other age groups.

How do I know all of this? Because I just grabbed these facts and figures from young adult cancer survivor Matthew Zachary's website I'm Too Young For This -- or i[2]y -- which happens to offer the latest and greatest information for the under-40 population grappling with cancer health issues. It's a place Zachary hopes sticks around for a very long time.

For seventeen months now, Zachary has been hosting this place where young adults can mix and mingle and improve their quality of life. In order to keep his machine going strong, he needs some help. Some financial help.

If you are willing and able to support this growing organization with a tax deductible donation, check out The Stupid Cancer Fund at http://fund.i2y.com. If you can't donate, then I hope you'll still check out i[2]y -- for yourself, a friend, a loved one, or an acquaintance. Anyone young, and touched by cancer, and wishing to be heard.

Need a good nutrition website you can count on? Check out Dole's site at www.dolenutrition.com and at your fingertips will be a wealth of health information. Navigate your way through nutrition news -- Foods That "Age" You is one new topic. Check out Food Facts A-Z -- a briefing on Acorn Squash starts things off. Hop on over to Recipes -- anyone for some Caribbean Beans and Rice? How about the lowdown on children's nutrition? You'll find it here. You can even access Dole's Nutrition Newsletter during your visit to this website -- recent news: The Skinny on Cancer.

It's a one-stop shop, this site founded by The Dole Nutrition Institute (DNI) and David H. Murdock, chairman and owner of the world's largest provider of fresh fruits and vegetables, who wanted to go beyond just offering healthy products by cultivating the seeds of knowledge and offering the public scientifically-validated information on nutrition and health.

Take a look. Do you like what you see?

I just took a spin through Fitzness.com, the website belonging to my friend and fellow That's Fit blogger, Fitz. While there, touring all the hot spots, a scrolling news listing caught my eye. Today's featured news includes a notice from Fitz that she has one training vacancy available, a reminder to a check out her low-fat desserts and for those seeking quick and easy exercise tricks, a fitness tip for the day.

"Do 50 push-ups throughout the day," writes Fitz. "All at once, or ten at a time. It will tone your entire upper body!"

Simple, isn't it? If you want a fit upper body, drop and do 50. Every day. I'm game. Are you?

Right now you can find almost anybody in the world using the internet, whether it's through paying a high-tech online service or simply "Googling" names and seeing what pops up. But what if, in searching for long lost relatives in particular, there was an enormous online DNA database you could check? Now that would be cool. Creepy, sure. But cool.

Well we're one step closer (practically there, actually) to that possibility with Ancestry.com. You can order a DNA kit, swab yourself, and send it in to their system where they'll check you against all the other DNA in their system. If a match is found they'll notify both parties and if everyone agrees, contact information is exchanged.

Interesting idea, and it's all supposedly private and anonymous, but I'm skeptical to say the least.


Via Book of Joe

It's always nice when readers send in interesting health and wellness-related websites for everyone at That's Fit to check out. One of the most recent ones that caught my eye was the website for Dr. Gourmet. According to the site, Dr. Gourmet is both a physician and a chef, making him an expert on healthy but tasty food.

The site includes links to a wealth of resources including a Q&A section, a newsletter, columns and resources for things like body mass index and hip-waist ratio. The highlight of the site though, is Dr. Gourmet's My eatTHIS diet. The free, interactive menu software can be accessed online and gives advice on how to eat healthier, how to eat to lose weight and even how to plan healthy but delicious menus for the whole family.

The diet can also cater to those with dietary restrictions such as lactose intolerance and food allergies. Sounds like something worth giving a try. If you check out the site and decide to try the planned menus, make sure to come back and let us know what you think.

It seems that the next frontier for many technology and web companies is to launch a service that lets individuals track their health stats and associated information on the web. We all have our lives on the web anyway these days, right?

Microsoft has joined Google as a company that wants to help you manage your own medical and health information with the launch of a service last week to do just that. The problem is that the confidentiality of that kind of sensitive information becomes suspect when a technology provider starts handling it instead of a medical practitioner. Well, maybe.

Do you need your own medical information stored on a website (albeit, a secure one), or would you prefer that information stay as is in the venue of your doctor's office? How could an offering like this help you as a patient?

October is breast cancer month so before you pin on your pink ribbon and head out to enjoy a lovely fall day, take a look at a few facts and sites, and learn a bit more about the disease. Risk factors include lifestyle habits like drinking alcohol and smoking, and heredity also influences whether or not you'll get the disease. The good news is you can work to prevent breast cancer by eating a healthy diet, limiting alcohol intake and not smoking.

If you're interested in learning a lot more about breast cancer, take a look at some of the sites listed in this piece. As it's a Canadian article, many of the websites are Canadian but the information listed applies to women everywhere. Two sites mentioned in the article that I found interesting were the Breast Cancer Support Services Inc and the Breast Self-Exam website.

The first offers a range of frequently asked questions (with answers) about the disease as well as help on how to deal once you've been diagnosed. The latter gives step-by-step instructions, along with illustrations, on how to examine your own breasts in order to find any suspicious lumps.

Do you know of any helpful sites that you can share?

There are all kinds of different types of quit smoking assistance out there, but no matter what kind of help you get it's not an easy habit to break. And although doing so for the sake of your children is a powerful motivator, they can help you in more ways than you might have thought. A website called C.H.A.M.P.S.S. (Children Helping And Motivating Parents to Stop Smoking) provides resources and tips for kids on how to help their parents kick the habit, making suggestions like simply asking parents to quit and finding out what they can do to help and offer support.

C.H.A.M.P.S.S. is full of resources, offering advice and links for adults too on how to quit, and how to help keep kids and teens from starting up in the first place.

As everyone jumps on the New Year's resolution bandwagon, diet and weight-loss websites are more popular than ever. So far in 2007, the website belonging to weight-loss show The Biggest Loser has experienced the biggest gain in audience, with eDiet's and Weight Watcher's websites not far behind. All in all, visits to weight-loss websites are up 57% from last month, according to this.

Unfortunately, the high traffic numbers to these websites usually see a sharp decline in the second week of January, suggesting that New Year dieters aren't really all that interested in making long-term changes -- they just want that quick fix, and perhaps find it too hard too keep up. If you're truly committed to losing weight this year, please give it more than 2 weeks. You owe it to your health.

What weight-loss sites are you frequenting? Besides That's Fit, of course!