“The average American gains five pounds over the holiday season.”
It’s a common assertion over the holiday season, but where is the evidence?
“A Prospective Study of Holiday Weight Gain” from the New England Journal of Medicine (published March 23, 2000) investigated this claim and found that Americans experience a net 0.48-kg weight gain in the fall and winter. “Since this gain is not reversed during the spring or summer months,” the study found, “[the weight gained] probably contributes to the increase in body weight that frequently occurs during adulthood.”
Two more recent studies also investigate the 5 pound phenomena.
“The effect of the Thanksgiving holiday on weight gain.” from the Nutrition Journal (published 21 November 2006) and “The effect of the holiday season on body weight and composition in college students” from Nutrition and Metabolism (published December 2006) assessed potential changes that occur in body weight during the Thanksgiving holiday break in college students and found participants gained a significant amount of BW (0.5 kg) during the Thanksgiving holiday. “While an increase in BW of half a kilogram may not be cause for alarm,” the authors noted, “the increase could have potential long-term health consequences if participants retained this weight gain throughout the college year.” In fact, although average body weight remained relatively unchanged from pre-Thanksgiving to post-New Year’s, a significant positive relationship existed between the change in BMI and percent fat, total fat mass, total fat free mass, and trunk fat mass for the pre-Thanksgiving and post-New Year’s visits.
So what is to be done about it?
A study from the International Journal of Obesity (London) looked at “The role of conjugated linoleic acid in reducing body fat and preventing holiday weight gain.” Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), is a naturally occurring dietary fatty acid shown to reduce body fat in animals. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study among overweight adults, 3.2 g/day CLA significantly reduced body fat over 6 months and prevented weight gain during the holiday season. “Although no adverse effects were seen,” the study reports, “additional studies should evaluate the effect of prolonged use of CLA.”
Can’t get your hands on linoleic acid isomers?
Check out these tips on having a healthy holiday:
Heft for the Holidays: How to Hold Off Those Extra Pounds from NIH News in Health
Healthy Holiday Eating from SAMHSA’s Family guide
Holidays the Healthy Way from the CDC
Holiday Meal Planning from the American Diabetes Association
Seasonal Food Safety from the USDA
Countdown to the Thanksgiving Holiday from the USDA
The Louisiana 2 Step Initiative
Surviving Thanksgiving: Keep Food Safe, Don?óÔé¼Ôäót Overindulge from the LSU AgCenter
The United Health Foundation recently released its 2007 state health rankings.
The good news:
Louisiana has improved from last year!
The bad news:
We’re still number 49.
Today’s Times-Pic takes a look at Louisiana health care quality. You can also read the UHF report, which offers state health snapshots and other statistical information here.
The Dental Collection has been fully restored to the Dental Library. Although further adjustments will be made, it’s good to have access to that collection again. It has been in climate controlled storage since the storm.
Micromedex has a new search option for clinicians at the point of care. Get fast solutions to clinical questions with the new Point-of-Care Solution.
The Point of Care solution offers
?óÔé¼?ó Quick on-the-floor access
?óÔé¼?ó Intuitive workflow-based interface
?óÔé¼?ó Trusted summary-level information
Where is it?
Use either link on the Micromedex homepage to access the new look.
More Features
* Fewer clicks to get the answer you need
* No lengthy documents to scan
* Seamless searching across content areas (without re-entering your search term)
* Word Wheel searching
* Spelling help
Plus, it offers enhanced summary drug information:
* Indications and Dosing ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ now includes efficacy, strength of evidence, and strength of recommendation ratings
* Regulatory Status and Generic Availability ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ displayed in the summary document
* Drug Toxicity (New Section) ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ provides information on clinical effects, treatment,
and range of toxicity
* Clinical Teaching (New Section) ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ offers point-of-care counseling information for clinicians to use when educating patients about their medications
The library is pleased to welcome its newest staff member, Sabrina Caston. Sabrina will be joining the Circulation staff. She is a native New Orleaninan and graduated from Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. Welcome Sabrina.
SIGN UP NOW, ONLY 2 SPACES LEFT!
Need help managing your references and research? What if there was a tool you could instantaneously load references into from a database, one that could generate a Works Cited Page for you in the format you need, one that is accessible from anywhere?
THERE IS!!
RefWorks is an online research management, writing and collaboration tool designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies, similar to EndNote. RefWorks is a free service for LSUHSC members.
Join Maureen ?óÔé¼?ôMolly?óÔé¼?Ø Knapp for a basic overview of RefWorks on Monday November 5th from 12-1pm in the Library Lab 401K. This one hour class will show you how to create a RefWorks account and use it in tandem with the research database of your choice to save time and frustration when writing your next research article.
Email mknapp@lsuhsc.edu or call us at 568-6100 to reserve a spot.
OTHER CLASSES ARE AVAILABLE
Check out our blog to see what else is coming up:
https://www.lsuhsc.edu/library/news/?cat=10
LSU Healthcare Network will provide flu shots for LSUHSC faculty, staff and students on Thursday, November 1st, and Friday, November 2nd, from 12:30 – 4:00 PM in the 7th floor lobby of the Lions/LSU Clinics Building at 2020 Gravier Street.
There will be no charge for students, and the cost for faculty and staff will be $20?óÔé¼ÔÇ£either by cash or check (no credit cards).
Come by the library today for BRAINS, candy, free giveaways and more!
In honor of our upcoming visit from everyone’s favorite zombie librarian**, here’s a list of illnesses, in order of victims’ comestibility
**
WHO: Zombrarian & Miss Information
WHAT: Brain consultation services, forensic photography, misinformational cartography, candy
WHEN: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31ST, 11:30 – ?
WHERE: Library 3rd floor
WHY: Because October is National Medical Libraries Month, that’s why!
Tomorrow is LSUHSC’s Fall Fest from 3:30-6:30 PM in the 500 block of Bolivar Street. Come join in the festivities-there’ll be plenty of delicious food and refreshments, a live band and entertainment for the kids including clowns with balloons and an airbrush tattoo artist. (And when you see your favorite medical librarian, come say hello! We promise not to shush you.)
Looking for more community events?
Check out nolafunguide.com – it’s New Orleans’ comprehensive, up-to-date website featuring cultural events and attractions, coordinated by the Arts Council of New Orleans.
Have an iPod, Zune or other personal media player? Well you should know that you can download & listen to podcasts from a variety of health sciences journals (many of them for free!).
Nature, Lancet, Science and NEJM are but a few of the journals making podcasts. There’s even Scrubcasts for you medical students.
In fact, our cousins at the LSUHSC-Shreveport Library have put together a podcast webpage listing many of these resources. Check it out: http://lib.sh.lsuhsc.edu/podcasts.html
Please note: LSUHSC-NO members do NOT qualify for the LSUHSC-Shreveport iPod drawing. If someone was kind enought to donate an iPod to our library, we would happily do this.
Here’s an interesting & free online resource for all you physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners out there:
PeerClip is a new tool that combines two ways gain knowledge?óÔé¼ÔÇØreading medical literature and interacting with peers?óÔé¼ÔÇØinto a powerful online tool. Currently PeerClip is available exclusively to physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners & free to qualified users. As a librarian, I can’t check it out, but it sounds mighty interesting.
Here’s a neat application for your Palm, Pocket PC or Smartphone:
FOCUSED MEDICAL SPANISH
FREE assessment tools to health care professionals who are charged with treating non-English speaking persons in the acute medical setting. These assessments are intended for all levels of Spanish proficiency, but especially for those with little or no Spanish language skills.
This could be really useful to you clinicians out there. These handouts give you phonetical pronunciations and translations of simple Spanish terms & phrases encountered during the medical interview. Whether you need to know
?Le duele el pecho? (Do you have chest pain?) to El sufre a menudo de nerios? (Does he have a history of anxiety?), these handouts show how to ask the right yes/no questions.
All you need to use it is Adobe Reader for Mobile Devices (also free – download here). Once you have Adobe reader, just download the files you want and sync your PDA. To access them from your PDA just use the Adobe link on your PDA.
DONT HAVE A PDA?
You can print out regular PDFs of medical Spanish AND listen to MP3 pronunciations on this site as well.
As they say in Spanish, ?é?íp?â?ísatelo bien! (Enjoy!)
The second-annual Ali Abdulla Al-Ubaydli scholarships for mobile medical computing offer five $1000 Scholarships for Mobile Medical Computing. In addition to academic record, the application requires reading and critically evaluating a piece of the medical literature. Scholars are also be published in the Mobile Medical Computing Reviews journal.
More information
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