For The Union-Tribune
Growing problem
In 2018, the CDC warned that in seven states, the adult obesity rate was 35% or higher. Six years later, it’s now 23 states, plus Guam and Puerto Rico with obesity rates of 35% or higher.
All 50 states have adult obesity rates above 20%.
Obesity rates are greater in the Midwest and South and lower in California, New York and much of the Northeast. Only Colorado and the District of Columbia reported obesity rates under 25%.
There were racial differences, too: Asian adults did not have an obesity prevalence over 35% in any state, but Latino and Black adults hit the 35% threshold in 34 and 38 states, respectively.
Kids, too
The obesity rate is rising in children as well. One in five U.S. children and adolescents is obese, triple what it was in the 1970s. The growing problem has prompted the American Academy of Pediatricians to shift its guidelines regarding childhood obesity from “watchful waiting” through youth to considering the “highest level of intensity appropriate for and available to the child,” including bariatric surgery, GLP-1 medicine like Ozempic and intensive behavioral treatment.
Body of knowledge
The greater omentum is a double-layered, apronlike structure that varies in size and hangs from the lower border of the stomach. It is composed of fatty tissues that act like a protective covering for abdominal organs. It also plays a role in immune response and helps to isolate and contain infections or inflammation within the abdomen.
Doc talk
Orthostatic hypotension — becoming dizzy from standing up too fast
Mania of the week
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliomania — excessive and persistent use of long words like hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliomania
Never say diet
In recognition of Thanksgiving, the Major League Eating speed-eating record for whole turkey is 9.35 pounds in 10 minutes; jellied cranberry sauce (13.23 pounds in eight minutes); green beans, french-cut (2.71 pounds in six minutes); and pumpkin pie (20 pounds, 13 ounces in eight minutes).
Eaten sequentially, that’s over 45 pounds of food consumed in a little over half an hour, or about as much time as it takes Uncle Hank to explain why everything has gone to hell. Oh, and peas: 9.5 pounds in 12 minutes.
Best medicine
Why did the urologist lose his license?
He got in trouble with his peers.
Medical history
This week in 1989, a team of doctors at the University of Chicago Hospitals implanted part of a woman’s liver in her 21-month-old daughter in the world’s first successful living donor liver transplant. Alyssa Smith of Schertz, Texas, received a portion of mother Teri’s liver.
The donated liver portion then regenerated to normal volume over subsequent weeks. The liver is the only internal organ capable of regeneration. It does not grow back like a salamander’s tail, but rather the remaining tissue grows larger.
Ig Nobel apprised
The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that’s hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.
In 2004, the Ig Nobel Prize in psychology went to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Harvard University for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, they can overlook everything else (inattentional blindness). In this case, it was a woman in a gorilla suit.
Med school
Q: What does the epiglottis do?
A: The epiglottis is a small cartilage “lid” that covers the trachea or windpipe. Its job is to close when you swallow to prevent food or liquid from entering the lungs. It is not that little punching bag-looking bit of tissue dangling at the back of your throat. That is the palatine uvula. It keeps food and liquids from backing up behind your nose when you swallow, but it also produces abundant saliva to keep your throat moist and lubricated.
Curtain calls
In 2020, a 54-year-old construction worker in Massachusetts suddenly suffered fatal cardiac arrest. Though he reportedly had a poor diet, the deadly culprit turned out to be his penchant for eating 1 1/2 bags of black licorice daily.
The active ingredient in black licorice is glycyrrhizic acid, which in high amounts can cause hypertension, hypokalemia, metabolic alkalosis, fatal arrhythmias and renal failure. Now there’s a death story with a twist.
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
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