Medicare, which covers some 42 million American seniors, will pay for obesity screening and behavioral therapy as part of its portfolio of preventive services.

About 72 million American adults, including about a third of Medicare recipients, are obese, and the related health-care costs total some $325 billion a year. The federal decision will now allow Medicare beneficiaries to see their doctors for regular weight-loss counseling — a low-cost, low-tech solution — and may spur private insurers to do the same.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ decision summary, obese Medicare beneficiaries — with a body mass index of 30 or higher — seeking weight-loss counseling may see their primary care physician for one face-to-face visit every week for the first month. Then, Medicare will pay for one face-to-face visit every other week for the next five months. If the patient loses at least 3 kg (6.6 lbs.) over the first six months, Medicare will pay for an additional six months of once-a-month face-to-face visits with the doctor.

Continue reading more about this coverage at TIME

For years, studies of obesity have found that soon after fat people lost weight, their metabolism slowed and they experienced hormonal changes that increased their appetites. Scientists hypothesized that these biological changes could explain why most obese dieters quickly gained back much of what they had so painfully lost.

But now a group of Australian researchers have taken those investigations a step further to see if the changes persist over a longer time frame. They recruited healthy people who were either overweight or obese and put them on a highly restricted diet that led them to lose at least 10 percent of their body weight. They then kept them on a diet to maintain that weight loss. A year later, the researchers found that the participants’ metabolism and hormone levels had not returned to the levels before the study started.

The study, being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, is small and far from perfect, but confirms their convictions about why it is so hard to lose weight and keep it off, say obesity researchers who were not involved the study.

Read the rest of the article at the NYT.

When it comes to getting fit a person’s best friend just might be a four-legged one.

Experts say studies show dog owners walk more, walk faster, and are more likely to enjoy an active lifestyle because of their companion animal.

“I’m fascinated by what a great motivator dogs can be,” said Dr. Sandra McCune, co-editor of the book, “The Health Benefits of Dog Walking for People and Pets.”

McCune, an animal behaviorist based in Leicestershire, England, said studies show if you’re a dog walker, you’re more likely to meet the guidelines for daily activities.

Dogs are the reason behind two-thirds, 66 percent, of the walks their owners take each week, according to a recent survey of more than 1,011 adults commissioned by pet food company Mars Petcare.

One-quarter of people with children and pets regularly visit parks and other outdoor spaces because of their dog.

“Personally, I have a Labrador,” McCune said. “When it’s dark, when it’s raining, the dog needs a walk, every day.”

She said dog walking also strengthens social and communal ties.

“If people go out with a dog, they’re more likely to have a conversation,” she explained.

According to the poll some 44 percent of dog owners aged 65 and older exercise on a weekly basis because of their dog.

Get more details at Reuters.

You may be obese, but does that automatically mean you’re unhealthy?

The conventional wisdom is that if you’re overweight or obese, you’re in mortal danger because that extra weight is like a ticking time bomb ready to unleash diabetes, heart disease and other health complications.

But doctors have known for years that obesity doesn’t affect all people the same way. An obese person could lead a healthy life while another person with the same body mass index, or BMI, could have severe medical problems.

Two studies published Monday suggest reframing the way medical practitioners look at overweight and obese patients. The studies question the notion that BMI and weight determine health — even when someone is severely obese.

“Our study challenges the idea that all obese individuals need to lose weight,” said Dr. Jennifer Kuk, assistant professor in York University’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science in Toronto. One in five obese people may not have medical problems, the authors estimated.

The challenge is determining who are the “healthy obese” and those who may not have complications now but may develop them in the future.

The studies appear in two publications, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism.

Read more from CNN

Dieters beware: Offerings at popular restaurants may have more calories than what’s stated on menus or company websites.

A team of scientists purchased items from 42 fast-food and sit-down eateries in Indiana, Arkansas and Massachusetts, then measured the calories they contained. The list of stops on their calorie-busting tour included Burger King, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Only 7% of the 269 foods tested were within 10 calories of what the restaurants stated, the scientists found. And almost 20% packed at least 100 more calories than what was indicated. Over the course of a year, an extra 100 calories daily can add up to 10 to 15 pounds, said study lead author Susan Roberts, a senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

The biggest discrepancies occurred at sit-down restaurants, where the stated calorie information and what the researchers measured was off by an average of 225 calories, according to the study, which was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. At fast-food restaurants, the average discrepancy was 134 calories per menu item.

“Restaurant food is hand-prepared, which can create some variation,” said Joy Dubost, director of nutrition and healthy living at the Washington-based National Restaurant Assn., a trade group.

For the rest of the story, read the Los Angeles Times

A new, theoretical analysis finds that about half of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease are potentially changeable, and that reducing them could substantially decrease the number of new cases of disease worldwide, according to a study to be presented Tuesday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

The study is the first known analysis that tries to quantify and compare how risk factors are associated with Alzheimer’s. It will be published Tuesday on the journal Lancet Neurology’s website after the conference presentation.

Factors that increase one’s risk for Alzheimer’s that are considered modifiable include diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, smoking, sedentary behavior, depression and low educational level, say the authors from the University of California, San Francisco.

In the U.S., physical inactivity is the biggest changeable factor, accounting for 21% of the risk for Alzheimer’s, followed by depression and smoking. Added together, the factors account for about 50% of the risk.

If these risk factors were decreased by just 10%, about 184,000 Alzheimer’s cases in the U.S. and 1.1 million cases world-wide could be prevented, according to the research. A reduction of 25% on all seven risk factors could prevent nearly half a million cases in the U.S. and more than three million world-wide, the analyses showed.

There are some five million people in the U.S. thought to have Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, and about 36 million cases globally, according to Alzheimer’s Disease International.

For the rest of the story, read The Wall Street Journal

After 20 years of rising obesity rates, the Keystone State has become the 19th most obese state in the country.

The eighth annual “F as in Fat” report by the Trust for America’s Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that 28.5 percent of Pennsylvanian adults are obese. That’s more than double the obesity rate for the state in the late 1980s, which was 13.7 percent.

There is a bright spot in “F as in Fat,” however: The number of states showing what the study’s authors called statistically significant increases in their obesity rates dropped to 16 this year from 28 in 2009. Pennsylvania’s own obesity rate increased by half a percent over the past year, which the study authors did not consider statistically significant.

If obesity rates are slowing, it could be due in part to an outpouring of public interest in preventing obesity — particularly in children, said Jim Marks, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Policies at the state and local levels may be beginning to have an effect,” Dr. Marks said. “But it is a small victory, and it does not mean we can ease off the gas pedal.”

For the rest of the story, read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Chubby babies and tubby toddlers are at risk for becoming overweight children and obese adults, so parents, doctors, and other caregivers need to help prevent infants and young children from getting fat, the National Academy of Sciences concluded Thursday.

Mothers, fathers, day care workers, preschool employees and others should limit how much time kids spend parked in front of the television, watching videos and using other electronic gadgets and make sure they get enough exercise and sleep and eat the right foods, the academy’s Institute of Medicine recommends in a new report.

“A lot of conventional thinking has been that a big baby is a healthy baby,” said Leann Birch, director of the center for childhood obesity research at Pennsylvania State University, who chaired the 14-member panel that issued the 140-page report. “What’s happened over the past decade or so is that the evidence has been building that early overweight or early rapid weight gain places kids at risk for later obesity.”

About 10 percent of U.S. children between infancy and age 2 are already overweight, according to the report. Among kids ages 2 to 5, the situation is even worse – more than 20 percent are too heavy, a rate that has doubled since the 1980s, the report says.

For the rest of the story, read San Francisco Chronicle

“Deaths from pregnancy-related causes, which usually occur around the time of childbirth, have risen dramatically in the United States in the past decade. In a report released Tuesday, a committee investigating such deaths in California cited an increase in cesarean-section births as a major contributor to the disturbing trend.

The report was issued by the California Pregnancy-Related and Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review, a committee of experts who investigated the increase in maternal mortality.

Deaths related to pregnancy in California have risen from 8.0 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1999 to 14.0 deaths per 100,000 births in 2008. The report reflects data only from 2002 to 2003 but shows a marked change in the safety of giving birth in California, especially for black women and poor women.”

Find out more from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Patients told by their physicians they were overweight or obese were more likely to acknowledge a weight problem and try to do something about it, a new study shows.

Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina and Imperial College London found that getting an honest assessment from a physician appeared to be a key factor in whether or not study participants considered themselves overweight.”

Read more from the Wall Street Journal