I do have a lot of empathy for cancer patients," she said

Photographs that appear to show that actor Michael Douglas is still smoking, months after diagnosis and treatment for Stage IV throat cancer don't surprise health experts who say many cancer-stricken smokers just can't quit.

Up to 18 percent of lung cancer patients and 12 percent of patients with colo-rectal cancer continued to smoke after a cancer diagnosis, according to a recent study by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researcher Kathryn E. Weaver. Just as surprisingly, about 25 percent of their family members continued to smoke, even after watching a loved one's struggles.

"It just speaks to the incredible addictive power of nicotine," said Weaver, an assistant professor in the department of social sciences and health policy whose work was published this spring in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

Head and neck cancer patients may be particularly vulnerable to the pull of nicotine, she said. Half of patients with those kinds of cancers are smoking at the time of their diagnosis, compared with about 20 percent to 40 percent of people with lung cancer.

Scoop: Photos show throat-cancer survivor Michael Douglas smoking.

Plus, patients with head and neck cancers typically have to endure the stress of the diagnosis and surgery or other treatment that can cause changes in eating and appearance.

Some cancer patients continue to smoke because they think there's no point to stopping, but Weaver said that's just not true. Stopping smoking after a diagnosis has been associated with better response to treatment, reduced symptoms and even prolonged survival.

"I do have a lot of empathy for cancer patients," she said. "One message we need to emphasize is that it's never too late to quit."

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Don't Let Food Names Fool You!

The details: These perceptions can have unhealthy effects: According to study author Caglar Irmak, PhD, assistant professor of marketing at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, the study's findings show that dieters may actually end up eating more of these not-so-healthy foods. Says Irmak, "One of our key findings is that dieters rate foods with healthy-sounding names [for example, salad] as healthier than identical food items with less-healthy-sounding names [for example, pasta]." Dieters base their food decisions on the name of the food items, instead of the ingredients, says Irmak. So they may eat more calories than what their dieting goals prescribe. "In one of our studies, when a candy was called 'fruit chews,' dieters ate significantly more candies than when the candy was called 'candy chews'."

5 Ways food labels try to mislead you.

What it means: Irmak's advice is to be vigilant about a food's actual ingredients. "Dieters need to focus on the ingredients of the food items, rather than names only, as many food items are healthy in name only," he says. But the good news is that checking the ingredients can erase the misleading effects of the food's name."In one of our studies, when we asked dieters about the healthfulness of each ingredient in the food item before they evaluated the overall healthfulness of the item, the effect of the food name vanished," says Irmak.

It's possible to avoid being seduced by a healthy-sounding food, if you pay attention. Here are some tips for sorting the "health" from the hype:

6 Things food industry executives don't want you to know.

Salads aren't always healthy.

Often, dieters skip pizza and burgers and opt for main-course salads, imagining them to be the healthiest foods on the menu. And restaurants perpetuate the belief that their salads are nutritious, low-calorie options, even though many salads at chain restaurants can hover around (or top) 1,000 calories, thanks to gigantic portion sizes, fatty and/or fried toppings, and creamy dressings. These super-size salads can also contain almost a day's worth of sodium, so buyer beware. Fast fixes include having a half portion, if it's on the menu, or just packing up half of your order to take home.

All bottled waters aren't the same.

Some flavored waters or vitamin-enhanced waters can contain up to 200 calories per bottle. Sucking down just one of these a day could create a 20-pound weight gain in a year's time. A smarter substitution? Calorie-free flavored waters without added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Look for brands that contain just a hint of natural flavoring, or sip on naturally flavored seltzer water for hydration minus the additives.

Fruit-flavored snacks aren't fruit.

Gummy fruit treats, fruit roll-ups, fruit bars and other items with fruit on the label may contain some juice or fruit flavoring, but often don't actually contain fruit. But they can contain high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, and other unhealthy ingredients. A superior swap is pretty obvious—go for fresh fruit. Another portable option? Chewy dried fruit (remember to check the label for added sugar and calories). Both offer up the fiber, antioxidants and other nutrients missing from fruit-flavored snacks.

Veggie chips are still, well, chips.

While baked veggie chips might seem better for you than traditional chips, they can still contain up to 8 grams of fat per one-ounce serving—almost as much as a small bag of potato chips. Having actual cut-up veggies, even with a small amount of dip, is a better way to satisfy your craving for crunch. The fat in the dip even helps with the absorption of key nutrients in the vegetables.

If healthy eating, is important to you, watch out for misleading healthy-sounding food names. According to a study published online ahead of print in The Journal of Consumer Research, simply changing the name of a food item can influence its perceived healthfulness to dieters, who seem to rely more heavily on food cues—such as food names—than nondieters. Ambiguous names like "veggie chips," "flavored water," or simply calling a dish a "salad" can convince dieters that the item has nutritional value, whereas other names lead to the belief that the item is unhealthful.

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Cancer Found in Young 9/11 Cops

(AP) Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer.

The numbers are tiny, and experts don't know whether there is any link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster.

But doctors who coordinated the study, published Monday in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said people who worked at the site should continue to have their health monitored.

"What we are trying to get out there is: Be alert," said Dr. Jacqueline M. Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

The researchers looked at 28,252 emergency responders who spent time amid ground zero dust and found eight cases of multiple myeloma.

Those findings were no surprise. Multiple myeloma is the second most common hematological cancer in the U.S. after non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Normally, researchers would expect to find about seven cases in a group as large as the one examined in the study.

However, four of the people who fell ill were under age 45, and multiple myeloma is thought to be more rare among people of that age. Under normal circumstances, researchers would have expected to find only one case of the disease in that age group.

Those four young multiple myeloma patients included one officer who was caught in the dust cloud on 9/11 and then spent months working long hours at the site. Another spent 111 days at the Staten Island landfill where the rubble was sifted. Two others had less exposure, working 12 and 14 days each in the pit and rubble pile.

The study said it is possible the monitoring program was simply more effective at finding the illness among people who wouldn't ordinarily be subjected to intense medical tracking.

Nevertheless, Moline said, "You shouldn't be seeing so many cases of myeloma in younger folks." The median age of diagnosis for that cancer in the general public is 71.

Several groups are studying New Yorkers exposed to toxic dust when the skyscrapers collapsed.

To date, no study, including the one published Monday, has established a link between that dust and cancer, said Lorna Thorpe, a deputy commissioner and epidemiologist at New York City's health department.

The timing of the four cases examined by the team at Mount Sinai also raised questions about whether they are related to their work at ground zero, she said.

Most research on multiple myeloma indicates that it usually takes 10 to 20 years for someone to develop that cancer after an environmental exposure to a carcinogen.

In these cases, the cancers were diagnosed in as little as three to four years after the attacks, suggesting that something else caused the disease.

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health-Lose 9 Pounds in 11 Days

one of the main reasons that people have troubles with diets is that their bodies seem to respond poorly to hardcore diets after awhile. Have you ever been on a diet that started out really well, but then after a few days you found yourself unable to keep the gains going no matter how little you ate? The main reason for this is the fact that the metabolism in your body ground to a halt due to the lack of input and as a result you were unable to burn fat in the same way that you did when you first started dieting. This is the bane of the existence of many diets and it is also why many really serious diets are only effective as short term measures.

Calorie shifting is a strategy that aims to correct this problem by allowing you to eat the right foods at the right time. For starters, it allows you to consume carbohydrates and proteins. The former will give you the energy you need to power your metabolism and the latter will allow your body to produce large amounts of glucagon, a hormone in the body that is responsible to a large degree for the burning of fat and calories. Along with the input of carbohydrates and proteins, you are also going to be eating a lot of high-energy foods at times that will allow your body to build up its metabolic rate. Once that happens, the foods are then going to be reduced so that your caloric intake is smaller, but the metabolic rate keeps going. The end result is fat-burning metabolisms that will help you take off some serious pounds at the end of the calorie shifting period.

This is basically how the principle is supposed to work and in theory it does sound good. Theory is the key word there, as it still remains to be seen how well the Idiot Proof Diet incorporates the principle of calorie shifting into the product that they sell.

Calorie Shifting within the context of the Idiot Proof Diet
The Idiot Proof Diet works in cycles. Each cycle is 14 days long, which basically means that you are going to run through approximately 2 to 2.5 cycles each month depending on where the previous cycle ended in the previous month. The cycle of 14 days is divided into two different areas. The first 11 days represent the period of time during which you are on the calorie shifting diet and the last 3 days represent a period of rest between the end of the previous calorie shifting time zone and the start of the next one.

What you basically need to do on the calorie shifting 11-day portion of each cycle is to use the Idiot Proof Diet generator to create a diet regimen that you will then follow through the 11-day period. With the Idiot Proof Diet, there are four meals a day that are created and placed in a way to maximize the calorie shifting benefits. Recipes are available for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian populations.

An example day for a non-vegetarian would be something along the following lines:

* First Meal: Start with a plate of tuna salad and a glass of low fat milk with apples for dessert
* Second Meal: Eat a combination of shrimp and chicken
* Third Meal: Take some ham cold cuts and bacon strips, eating them together with some baked beans
* Fourth Meal: Take some slices of roast beef, halibut broiled in a low-fat sauce and combine them with some mixed vegetables


For vegetarians, similar meals are possible, with protein substitutes such as nuts, eggs and soy products put in place of the meat and dairy products. As you can see a lot of the recipes are protein heavy and this is one again to help burn fat off while at the same time increasing the metabolic rate in an attempt to create a positive fat-burning feedback cycle that can be increased through each diet stage.

Final Thoughts
All things considered, the theory and practice behind the Idiot Proof Diet both appear to be on solid ground from a scientific basis. There have been many people reporting success with these particular methods as well, so there is at the very least anecdotal evidence that the Idiot Proof Diet does indeed work. The principle of calorie shifting is a sound one and that in turn means that the diet is based on firm ground from the scientific point of view.

Preparing the meals and following the diet exactly might turn out to be an inconvenient hassle at times, but if you want this program to succeed for you, following the meal outlines exactly is more important here than in just about any other diet. If you know right now you won’t have the discipline and/or effort to follow those plans, don’t purchase the product. It is as simple as that.

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health-To protect kids from the H1N1 virus

To protect kids from the H1N1 virus when they're at camp, Dr. Jeffrey Boscamp, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, recommends the following:

* Consider leaving siblings behind when visiting a child at camp. The H1N1 virus is particularly contagious among children.
* Check your temperature the night before and the morning of your visit. Bring some extra alcohol-based hand sanitizer with you.

* Confirm that the camp is doing regular screenings, promoting proper hygiene and updating parents on any reported cases of swine flu.
* Find out if any H1N1 cases have been reported at the camp and if it has quarantined areas for infected children.

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