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| Tipping the Scales Against Obesity |
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It would appear that the popular television show The Biggest Loser, which provides cash prizes to contestants who lose probably the most weight, has 7 Days Herbal Slim nothing on Corporate America.
With what can perhaps best be classified as a lose-win proposition, big companies, such as General Electric (ticker: GE), Oracle (ORCL), and Halliburton (HAL), are increasingly turning to weight-loss contests to improve health and combat the more than $153 billion annually in productivity alone that a Gallup Well-Being Index in 2011 estimated sheds to absenteeism by employees who pack too many pounds.
Apparently, the contest works, because employees possess some figurative--and literal--skin in the game, says David Roddenberry, co-founder of a contest coordinator, HealthyWage. "Loss-aversion is really a powerful principle," says Roddenberry, who notes that participants (who could start adding some members of the family) are loath to lose the $70 both start working to go in the competition, which generally lasts 12 weeks for short-term versions and nine months for long-term ones. Groups of five, some of them executives, are formed, and the successful entrants are the ones who shed a certain percentage of how much they weigh.
Paige Niccoll, HealthAhead operations leader for General Electric's GE Capital, says 5,000 people participated in its first foray into team-losing in April. "Many people gained in the experience," Nicoll says (pun perhaps unintended), having a total of 23,000 pounds being lost. The company awarded the five members of the very best team $5,000 each. With 60% of GE Capital's employees considered obese on bmi, Nicoll adds, the contest would be a "can't-lose type of deal."
The president will require executive action to reform the immigration system, offering to shield as many as five million illegal immigrants and give them work permits. It might represent the most important alterations in U.S. immigration policy in nearly 3 decades. The unilateral move angered Republicans; House Republicans sued the administration on health care reform.
Snap Election Called
Japanese Pm Shinzo Abe said he was delaying a sales-tax increase to keep the economy from foundering, and he required easy election to find a mandate for his decision. The move came after
a second consecutive quarter of monetary contraction was reported.
Muddy Picture
Fed officials grappled with weak international economies, slowing growth forecasts in your own home, concerns about lower inflation, and financial-market volatility in their meeting in October. Although they were reasonably confident about labor conditions, "they remained cautious about sending a tightening signal too soon," wrote Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
Big Mergers
Actavis pays $66 billion in cash and stock for Allergan, apparently thwarting a hostile bid by Valeant. Halliburton said hello would buy rival Baker Hughes for $34.6 billion of cash and stock, for any 31% premium to Baker's pre-bid price.
Fed Reviewing Practices
The Federal Reserve plans a sweeping overview of its practices in supervising big banks, as a result of concerns that its internal culture can quash dissent. Separately, Goldman Sachs Group dismissed two bankers after one of these allegedly brought to the firm secret documents in the Ny Fed. New York Fed President William Dudley defended the financial institution from accusations to be too close to the banks it supervises in a hearing.
Rate Cut in China
In a surprise move, China cut lending rates for the first time in additional than two years amid expectations that it is economy could miss its annual growth target. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi reiterated that the bank was ready to expand its stimulus program. Global markets rallied, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index hitting new highs.
Israelis Killed During Worship
Two Palestinians armed with a gun and meat cleavers killed five Israelis, four of them worshipers in a synagogue. The murder of three U.S.-Israeli rabbis, a British-Israeli rabbi, and a Druse policeman raised fears from the conflict escalating to 1 centered on religion.
Air-Bag Problems Expand
Pressure grew for Japanese air-bag maker Takata to conduct a U.S. nationwide recall. A Takata official testified Meizi Evolution Botanical Slimming the organization knew as early as May 2005 that certain of their air bags had exploded but didn't investigate or warn auto makers from the possible defect for two years.
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| 11月22日（土）18:47 | トラックバック(0) | コメント(0) | Music | 管理
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| 'BelPhen' Passes Early Safety Test |
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Patients lost more weight combining lorcaserin (Belviq) with phentermine than taking lorcaserin alone, but there have been some potentially Instant Slim Tengda Diet Pills adverse variations in cardiac parameters, researchers reported here.
In a phase II study, patients lost a greater proportion of their bodyweight over 12 weeks when adding twice-daily phentermine for their lorcaserin prescription, compared with lorcaserin alone (8.7% versus 3.8%), according to Steven Smith, MD, of Florida Hospital in Orlando, and colleagues.
Although rates from the primary outcome of serotonergic-related adverse events were similar across groups, changes in blood pressure and pulse rate weren't as favorable for those who added phentermine to their regimens.
The findings were presented because the only "late-late-breaking abstract" during a poster session at the Obesity Week meeting here.
Smith told MedPage Today the lorcaserin half of the combination may have mitigated some of the cardiac effects of phentermine.
"We were amazed," he said. "We realize that both of these pathways we're touching in terms of control centers within the brain are related to and associated with one another. A number of them operate in a seesaw fashion -- you will find circuits that suppress, and circuits that activate. Here, the thing is reciprocal relationships instead of additivity."
Experts have long been asking whether combining lorcaserin with phentermine may be the next big diet drug craze, since the combination could be similar to the weight-loss blockbuster Fen-Phen, which was pulled from the market for adverse cardiovascular events.
The problems were chalked up to the fenfluramine (or dexfenfluramine) component, which targeted serotonin 5-HT2B receptors that are said to be expressed in heart muscle, among other tissues. Lorcaserin instead targets 5-HT2C receptors, which the company says are not expressed within the heart, negating concerns about cardiovascular risk.
The 238 overweight and obese patients in the 12-week study were randomized to one of three groups: lorcaserin alone (10 mg twice a day) or lorcaserin plus phentermine (15 mg), either a couple of times daily.
All patients received standardized weight-loss counseling during the trial.
The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients reporting a minumum of one of nine common potential serotonergic adverse events: headache, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, xerostomia, diarrhea, vomiting, insomnia, or anxiety.
Smith said the cardiac effects were not entirely unanticipated, but "when you appear at the magnitude, it seems to become less than we typically see with phentermine alone. We know there are positive blood pressure effects with lorcaserin. This really is one of those areas where you put these two together and you may tight on blood pressure and heart rate difficulties with phentermine than we'd have normally expected."
Adam Tsai, MD, of Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Denver, and chair of The Obesity Society's public affairs committee, said the issue will be if the weight-loss benefits of the combination will outweigh the increases in these cardiovascular risk markers.
"The differences in blood pressure level changes were small compared to the heart beat changes, and there happen to be plenty of studies that would say an increase in heart rate carries an increased chance of cardiovascular events," Tsai said.
But he explained he was not worried about the risk of valvulopathy since the drug works via a different mechanism than Fen-Phen.
The most common Green Lean Body Capsule
adverse events overall were xerostomia, headache, constipation, fatigue, and dizziness.
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| 11月7日（金）19:20 | トラックバック(0) | コメント(0) | Music | 管理
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