Can Social Media Help You Lose Weight?

At the start of the New Year, when weight loss is often a priority, building a support team to help keep us on track can be extremely helpful. This might typically consist of family members, friends, co-workers, or perhaps even a nutritionist or registered dietitian. But today, support can also be found online. Plenty of Web sites focus on losing weight, and include communities that provide support and encouragement. Since many of us spend a lot of time on social media sites–maybe too much if you ask my husband!–why not use these platforms as another tool for support? In fact, one study suggests employees participating in a workplace wellness program who also joined the company’s Facebook page, run by a registered dietitian, stayed with the program longer than those who didn’t.

[See Already Struggling With Your New Year's Resolution?]

Could it actually make sense that gluing ourselves to our mobile device or computer could help us shed pounds? It sounds like quite the oxymoron, since increased screen time doesn’t usually equate to weight loss. But here’s how to make social media sites work for you:

Facebook

Facebook is a place where you can share what’s going on in your life with friends, but you may not feel comfortable announcing what you weigh or that you’re trying to lose weight. On the other hand, you may enjoy posting fitness milestones, such as training for and completing your first marathon, or a bike ride for your favorite charity. Sharing your fitness goals with the Facebook universe may be helpful, because the more people who know about it, the more likely you are to stay committed.

[See Small Steps, Big Change: How to Lose 50 Pounds Without Really Trying]

Rather than simply connecting with friends on the site, you can also connect with health and fitness professionals, such as registered dietitians, or pages for diet books, like mine, The Small Change Diet. You can also “like” the pages of health and fitness magazines and your favorite brands. The folks who run these pages may post articles that provide you with helpful weight-loss tips, and many organize regular Facebook chats, allowing you to ask an expert your questions. The more that healthy information is “in your face,” the more likely you are to stick to it.

Most importantly, you may discover a weight-loss community on Facebook, where like-minded individuals share their weight losses (or gains) and offer support. Daily accountability could be just what you need, and knowing others are rooting for you can make a world of difference. If you can’t find a Facebook community you like, start your own.

Twitter

So many of my patients don’t have Twitter accounts, because they think they have nothing clever or witty to say. My advice to them is always the same: You don’t have to “say” anything; you can just follow, at least at the beginning. Registered dietitians (I’m @kerigans) have great tips and, if they’re like me, are more than happy to answer questions via Twitter. I’ve had followers tweet a picture of their dinner and ask what my dietitian colleagues and I thought of it–priceless information for free.

[See Best Plant-Based Diets]

Just as you do on Facebook, follow fitness professionals, health magazines, and other sources that provide weight-loss motivation. Once you feel comfortable, you may decide to join in the conversation, since that’s what social media is all about. Perfect example of how it can benefit you: One morning, I tweeted that I felt more like staying in my pajamas than going to yoga. Some of my followers chimed in that they were feeling the same way, BUT stressed that we should all still exercise. And so we all did. And trust me, none of us regretted going–rather, we were thankful for each other.

[See Are Mobile Health Apps Helpful?]

Seek out people on Twitter and Facebook who you find inspirational, and hopefully a little of what they do will rub off on you. Since nothing is etched in stone, you can unfollow, unlike, or unfriend them if they aren’t helping you. And please keep in mind that while social media can be another tool in your pursuit of weight loss, it’s not the end all. Healthy eating, fitness, and plenty of sleep actually need to happen away from a screen.

Hungry for more? Write to [email protected] with your questions, concerns, and feedback

Keri Gans, MS, RD, CDN, is a registered dietitian, media personality, spokesperson, and author of The Small Change Diet. Gans’s expert nutrition advice has been featured in Glamour, Fitness, Health, Self and Shape, and on national television and radio, including The Dr. Oz Show, Good Morning America, ABC News, Primetime, and Sirius/XM Dr. Radio.

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William & Kate's Future Home: Anmer Hall?

By Simon Perry

01/10/2013 at 04:00 PM EST

Anmer Hall, on the Sandringham estate

REX USA

It's a house fit for a (future) king.

That's the speculation in Britain, where the magnificent Anmer Hall on the Sandringham estate, Queen Elizabeth's retreat in Norfolk, has been mentioned as a possible family home for William and Kate when they leave Wales.

A report in the Sunday Telegraph suggested the house, in the tiny village of Anmer, 120 miles north of London, is being earmarked for the couple. But it is believed the current tenants may stay for a few more years.

Still, royal preparations could already be in the works. The estate reportedly applied in December for a series of planning measures for the home. Details are not being made public, for security reasons, but PEOPLE has confirmed they include rerouting the driveway into the property, extending a garage block and converting woods stores for accommodation.

Building a new "garden room" is also in the plans.

William knows the house well, as his close friends the van Cutsem family rented it for many years. Emilie van Cutsem, the mother of four sons who are close to Princes William and Harry, was seen by some as a surrogate mother to the princes in their teen years, after they lost their mother Diana, Princess of Wales.

Buckingham Palace had no comment, saying the house is a private home on a private estate.

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Flu season hits early and, in some places, hard

NEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers have limited visitors, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to handle the feverish patients.

Flu season in the U.S. has hit early and, in some places, hard. But whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen.

"Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The evidence so far is pointing to a moderate season, Schaffner and others believe. It just looks bad compared with last year — an unusually mild one.

Flu usually doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, but it is already widespread in more than 40 states.

What's probably complicating the situation: The main influenza virus this year tends to make people sicker. And there are other bugs out there causing flu-like illnesses. So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else.

"There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The flu's early arrival in the U.S. coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu and a new norovirus that causes what some people call "stomach flu."

Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it's sometimes hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a norovirus, not the flu.

Flu is a major contributor, though, to what's going on.

"I'd say 75 percent," said Dr. Dan Surdam, head of the emergency department at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Wyoming's largest hospital. The 17-bed ER saw its busiest day ever last week, with 166 visitors.

The early onslaught has resulted in a spike in hospitalizations, prompting hospitals to take steps to deal with the influx and protect other patients from getting sick, including restricting visits from children, requiring family members to wear masks, and banning anyone with flu symptoms from maternity wards.

One hospital in Allentown, Pa., this week set up a tent for a steady stream of patients with flu symptoms.

But so far, "what we're seeing is a typical flu season," said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

On Wednesday, Boston declared a public health emergency, and all the flu activity has caused some to question whether this year's flu shot is working.

There's a new flu vaccine each year, based on the best guess of what flu viruses will be strongest that year. This year's vaccine is well-matched to what's going around. The government estimates that between a third and a half of Americans have gotten the vaccine.

But the vaccine isn't foolproof, and even those who were vaccinated can still get sick. At best, the vaccine may be only 75 percent effective in younger people and even less so in the elderly and people with weak immune systems.

Health officials are analyzing the vaccine's effectiveness, but early indications are that about 60 percent of all vaccinated people have been protected from the flu. That's in line with how effective flu vaccines have been in other years.

In New York City, 57-year-old Judith Quinones suffered her worst case of flu-like illness in years, laid up for nearly a month with fever and body aches. "I just couldn't function," she said.

She decided to skip getting a flu shot last fall. But her daughter got the shot. "And she got sick twice," Quinones said.

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

Most people with flu have a mild illness and can help themselves and protect others by staying home and resting. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.

The last bad flu season involved a swine flu that hit in two waves in the spring and fall of 2009. But that was considered a unique strain, different from the regular winter flu.

___

Online:

CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

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Wall Street climbs on China data; S&P nears resistance

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Thursday on optimism about global growth spurred by stronger-than-expected exports in China, the world's second-biggest economy, and the S&P 500 hovered around a five-year high.

Financial and energy stocks were the day's top gainers in afternoon trading. The financial sector index <.gspf> rose 1 percent and the energy sector <.gspe> was up 0.7 percent.

Financials benefited from events this week that added clarity to mortgage rules and banks' potential exposure to the housing market.

The government's consumer finance watchdog announced mortgage rules on Thursday that will force banks to use new criteria to determine whether a borrower can repay a home loan.

Earlier this week, several big mortgage lenders reached a deal with regulators to end a review of foreclosures mandated by the government.

Bank of America gained 2.6 percent to $11.73, while Morgan Stanley was up 3.2 percent at $20.24, one day after sources said the bank plans to cut jobs.

"It's a resolution. It's not hanging over their heads," said Kurt Brunner, portfolio manager at Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Data showed China's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown.

"In and of itself it is being interpreted positively that they've stopped the downturn (in growth)," said Brunner. "If they continue to produce good growth, that's going to be supportive of our global manufacturers."

The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index hovered near a five-year closing peak of 1,466.47. On Friday, the index had closed at its highest since December 2007.

"The market is technically right at the level of resistance, near 1,465-1,467," said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.

"A solid breakthrough above the level would be the start of a next leg higher, but it looks like it is going to be difficult to break above that level for now," Frederick said, citing concerns about the corporate earnings season and impending negotiations over the U.S. debt ceiling.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 40.53 points, or 0.30 percent, to 13,431.04. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 5.41 points, or 0.37 percent, to 1,466.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> edged up 0.42 points, or 0.01 percent, at 3,106.23.

Thursday's session had earlier included a dip that traders said was triggered by a trade in the options market that prompted a large amount of S&P futures to hit the market at the same time. That sent the S&P 500 index down rapidly but those losses were recouped by late afternoon.

Shares of upscale jeweler Tiffany dropped 5.1 percent to $60.02 after it said sales were flat during the holidays.

Herbalife Ltd stepped up its defense against activist investor Bill Ackman, stressing it was a legitimate company with a mission to improve nutrition and help public health. The stock was down 3 percent at $38.75.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Global Update: China Moves to Prevent Spread of Yellow Fever From Africa

In a move that underlines how many Chinese citizens now work in Africa, China’s quarantine officials recently urged greater efforts to make sure that a yellow fever epidemic now raging in Sudan does not come back to China.

Local health authorities were asked to scan all travelers arriving from Sudan for fevers. Chinese citizens planning travel to Sudan were advised to get yellow fever shots. Customs officers were told that containers arriving from Sudan might have stray infected mosquitoes inside.

Sudan’s epidemic is considered the world’s worst in 20 years. Sweden, Britain and other donors have paid for vaccinations. The United States Navy’s laboratory in Egypt has helped with diagnoses.

Estimates of the number of Chinese working in Africa, many in the oil and mining industries or on major construction projects, range from 500,000 to 1 million. Experts on AIDS have previously warned that the workers could become a new means of bringing that disease to China, which has a low H.I.V.-infection rate.

ProMED-mail, a Web site that follows emerging diseases, has tracked reports about the Sudan outbreak, with its moderators adding valuable context. China’s mosquito-killing winters make a large yellow fever outbreak there unlikely, moderators said. But Sudan’s containment efforts are troubled. For example, vaccinated people cannot get cards proving they have had shots, but the cards are reported to be for sale at police checkpoints.

Australia’s now-endemic dengue fever, according to ProMED moderators, may have come from mosquitoes arriving in containers from East Timor.

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Nintendo president describes Wii U sales as ‘not bad’

Nintendo’s (NTDOY) new Wii U gaming console came out of the gate strong and saw first-week sales reach 400,000 units in the U.S., however sales have since stalled and the system has been labeled a flop by some. While consumer interest in the company’s new console has slowed right out of the gate, Nintendo’s president recently said that he isn’t worried even though sales aren’t where he hoped they would be.

[More from BGR: Smooth sailing is over for Apple]

“At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the U.S. had no Wii U left in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in an interview with Reuters. “But sales are not bad, and I feel it’s selling steadily.”

[More from BGR: New ‘higher-end’ iPhone reportedly launching by June, low-end model could be coming as well]

The executive declined to give specific details on sales or forecasts, although he did say that Nintendo plans to focus on developing attractive software for its 3DS handheld to appeal to new users, and will seek new ways to increase Wii U sales in a changing market.

Nintendo previously announced that it hopes to sell 5.5 million Wii U devices by the end of March and more than 24 million Wii U games in the same timeframe.

This article was originally published by BGR

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It's a Girl for Rosie O'Donnell

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/09/2013 at 03:30 PM ET

It’s baby number five for Rosie O’Donnell!

The comedian and wife Michelle Rounds welcomed daughter Dakota through adoption on Saturday, Jan. 5, her rep confirms to PEOPLE. Weighing in at 5 lbs., 5 oz., “moms and baby are healthy and happy.”

O’Donnell, 50, Tweeted the happy news Wednesday.

“We [are] thrilled to announce the arrival of [our] daughter Dakota – #withloveandthanks – AMEN,” she writes, sharing a snapshot of herself cuddling with Rounds and their new baby.

O’Donnell is already mom to children Vivienne, 10, Blake, 13, Chelsea, 15, and Parker, 17, with her ex, Kelli Carpenter.

After suffering a heart attack and dealing with Rounds’ desmoid tumors diagnosis last year, O’Donnell tells PEOPLE, “I will gladly stay home. I want to try to work hard at getting myself healthy, on Mich and I getting started and maybe finding a baby.”

Courtesy Rosie O’Donnell

– Sarah Michaud with reporting by Liz McNeil

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported a tantalizing hint that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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Wall Street up after Alcoa earnings news

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday as Alcoa's better-than-expected revenue and a positive outlook boosted investor confidence ahead of an earnings season expected to show lackluster results.

The session's rise was the first of the week after the market retreated from the S&P 500's highest point in five years, hit last Friday. Worries about a weak earnings season kept the markets down earlier in the week.

Shares of Alcoa Inc were trading flat after early gains, following the company's earnings release after the bell on Tuesday. The largest U.S. aluminum producer said it expects global demand for aluminum to grow in 2013.

Traders have been cautious as the current quarter was shaping up like the previous one, with companies lowering expectations in recent weeks, said James Dailey, portfolio manager of TEAM Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

"So the big question and focus is on revenue, and Alcoa had better-than-expected revenue," which calmed the market a little, Dailey said.

Overall, corporate profits were expected to beat the previous quarter's meager 0.1 percent rise. Both earnings and revenues in the fourth quarter were expected to grow by 1.9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The lowered expectations also leave room for companies to surprise investors even if their results are not particularly strong, analysts said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 59.47 points, or 0.45 percent, at 13,388.32. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 3.86 points, or 0.26 percent, at 1,461.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 14.93 points, or 0.48 percent, at 3,106.74.

Clearwire Corp shares jumped 7.7 percent to $3.15 after Dish Network bid $2.28 billion for the company, trumping a previous Sprint offer and setting the stage for a takeover battle for the wireless service provider that owns crucial mobile spectrum.

Herbalife Ltd stock rose 4 percent to $39.89 following news that hedge fund manager Dan Loeb took a stake of more than 8 percent in the nutritional supplements seller, according to a regulatory filing. Prominent short-seller Bill Ackman had previously accused the company of being a "pyramid scheme," which Herbalife has vehemently denied.

Facebook Inc shares rose above $30 per share for the first time since July 2012, trading up 4.7 percent at $30.43. Facebook, which has been tight-lipped about its plans after its botched IPO in May, invited the media to its headquarters next week.

Apollo Group Inc slid after heavier losses early on, a day after it reported lower student sign-ups for the third straight quarter and cut its operating profit outlook for 2013. Apollo's shares were last off 6.6 percent at $19.55.

(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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China Says It Will Overhaul Re-education System

BEIJING — China will start overhauling its draconian system of re-education through labor in the coming year, according to the state news media, signaling the incoming leadership’s determination to alter one of the government’s more widely despised cudgels for punishing petty criminals, religious dissidents, petitioners and other perceived social irritants.

The brief announcement on Monday, by the official Xinhua news agency, lacked details, but legal advocates said they were hopeful that the five-decade-old system for locking up offenders without trial would be significantly modified, if not abolished altogether.

“If true, this would be an important advance,” said Zhang Qianfan, a law professor at Peking University who has long pushed for the system’s demise. “It’s a tool that is widely abused.”

Established by Mao Zedong in the 1950s to swiftly neutralize political opponents, re-education through labor has evolved into a sprawling extralegal system of 350 camps where more than 100,000 people toil in prison factories and on farms for up to four years. Sentences are meted out by local public security officials, and defendants have no access to lawyers and little chance for appeal.

Since the 1980s, legal scholars and human rights advocates have been urging an end to the system and urging that the prosecution of minor offenses be shifted to criminal courts. The campaign has been re-energized in recent months by several cases, widely promoted in the news media, in which people were consigned to the camps for criticizing or simply annoying local party officials.

Among the more notable cases was that of Ren Jianyu, a college graduate turned village official in southwestern China who was sent to a work camp for “subversion” after investigators found in his closet a T-shirt that declared “Freedom or death.” In November, local officials, apparently cowed by a welter of condemnation in newspapers and on the Internet, cut short his two-year sentence.

A similar backlash also persuaded officials in Hunan Province last summer to free a woman, Tang Hui, who was given an 18-month sentence after she repeatedly protested that the seven men who had raped and forced her 11-year-old daughter into prostitution had been treated too leniently.

But any jubilation that the system might be on its way out was tempered by the manner in which the news emerged. Details of a conference held by top judicial and legal officials were reported online on Monday by a number of news media outlets — including word that the party would “stop using the system” within a year. Those accounts, however, were later deleted, leaving only the brief Xinhua account.

Chen Dongsheng, a bureau chief for the official Legal Daily who listened to a closed-circuit telecast of the meeting, told The Associated Press that Meng Jianzhu, chief of the Communist Party’s politics and law committee, had pledged to end the system, saying it had “played a useful role in the past, but conditions had now changed.”

But Mr. Chen’s microblog postings on the subject promptly disappeared, and he could not be reached for comment.

In its own report, Xinhua used the word “reform,” suggesting the changes to the system labor might be less than sweeping. Such changes could involve giving the system the legislative authority it currently lacks and subjecting decisions to some level of judicial review, although China’s party-controlled courts rarely rule in favor of defendants.

In a separate account of the same meeting, Xinhua included comments by Mr. Meng and Xi Jinping, the incoming president, but left out any mention of re-education through labor. Mr. Xi, who has promised to strengthen the nation’s legal system since his elevation to party secretary in November, reiterated his support for greater rule of law, saying the government should “improve empathy and public credibility of legal affairs work, striving to ensure that the public feels that justice is served in every law case.”

Rights advocates are pleased that the issue is on the leadership’s agenda but said that the devil would be in the details. Previous proposals for change, they noted, have included an 18-month cap on sentences, weekend furloughs for prisoners and access to lawyers for defendants. But such modifications alone, they said, would leave intact the bones of a system that violates international legal conventions as well as Chinese law.

“The risk is we’ll get re-education lite — a system that perpetuates the ability of police to deprive people of liberty for significant periods of time without trial or judicial oversight,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “My fear is that such a system would end up being harder to do away with.”

Patrick Zuo contributed research.

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