News digest – oxygen scan, tiny tech, Chief Medical Officer’s report, ovarian cancer drug approval and… contradicting articles?

Our scientists revealed a new approach to MRI scanning that could help doctors spot areas of low oxygen inside tumours in a less invasive way. This could be important for guiding treatment, but the Mail Online and Express got a little carried away with this, as the research is still at an early stage.

An analysis of data from the Million Women Study – which we part-fund – found that being unhappy or stressed doesn’t shorten your life. So it’s ok if you’re not feeling festive just yet.

A new report from England’s Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, warned of the growing need to tackle obesity. The BBC has more on this, and we’ve blogged before about the leading theories on how obesity can cause cancer.

Scotland’s new food standards body warned that the country had made little progress in hitting certain dietary targets like fibre consumption. The BBC covered this.

Asking patients to keep track of certain symptoms and report them online to their doctor could help improve their quality of life. Reuters has the details.

Sticking three twisted strands of genetic material inside a special gel could help get an experimental treatment into cancer cells, according to early US research. Gizmag has more.

Gizmag also covered more tiny technology, as US scientists found that microscopic nanobubbles could help sneak drugs into cancer cells. It’s still early days on this one though.

Obesity 'biggest threat to women's health' in England

Obesity is the biggest threat to women's health and the health of future generations, warns England's chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies.
In her annual report, which focuses on women, she said tackling obesity should be a national priority to avert a "growing health catastrophe".
She said either the food industry needed to do more or it would face a sugar tax.
Dame Sally is also calling for better treatment of ovarian cancer and more open discussion on incontinence.
England's top doctor said obesity was so serious it should be a priority for the whole population, but particularly for women because too often it shortened their lives.
In England in 2013, 64% of women aged 34-44 and 71% of women aged 45-54 were classified as overweight or obese.
Obesity increases the risk of many diseases including breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Sugar tax
Dame Sally warned that if the food industry did not clean up its act then new taxes may be the only option.
She told the BBC: "I think it is inevitable that manufacturing has to reformulate and resize, that supermarkets and others need to stop cheap promotions on unhealthy food and putting unhealthy food at the check-out, and limit advertising dramatically.

Plus-size models fuel obesity, says study

Washington DC: On a day we saw actor Parineeti Chopra’s dramatic new photoshoot to announce to the world how much weight she’s lost in the last few months, comes this new debate: Can plus-size models be held responsible for triggering an obesity epidemic in the world?

As the spotlight on plus-size fashion is getting bigger and brighter, it is feared that its runway walkers may be fuelling obesity epidemics with their natural body shapes. The increasing use of plus-sized models in advertising campaigns may be contributing to growing rates of obesity, according to the study from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business.

The study found that as advertising campaigns increasingly use fewer images of models that are underweight and aesthetically flawless, instead utilising non-traditional models with larger body types, the tactic can have a detrimental effect on the public’s lifestyle and eating behaviour.

The study’s authors posit that efforts to increase acceptance are resulting in increasing the amount of thought consumers put into their appearance and heightening body anxiety -- ironically the opposite of what many of these marketing campaigns are trying to achieve.

The findings have implications for both public policy makers and advertisers. The researchers advise both to be mindful of how individuals’ bodies are portrayed in the media, and develop new strategies that don’t focus on suggesting any shape is “good” or “bad”.

Although, this study demonstrates that accepting larger bodies results is associated with negative consequences, research also shows that ‘fat-shaming’ or stigmatising such bodies fails to improve motivation to lose weight, says co-author Brent McFerran.

He noted that since neither accepting nor stigmatising larger bodies achieves the desired results, it would be beneficial for marketers and policy makers to instead find a middle ground -- using images of people with a healthy weight and more importantly, refraining from drawing attention to the body size issue entirely.

Rising risk of obesity among China's 'left behind children'

Some 61 million rural children left behind by parents moving to China’s booming urban centers are at risk from increased fat and reduced protein in their diets, research suggests.

Some 61 million rural children left behind by parents moving to China's booming urban centres are at risk from increased fat and reduced protein in their diets, research from The University of Manchester, published in Public Health Nutrition suggests.

The study of 975 children from 140 rural villages in nine provinces carefully analysed nutritional intake and showed a particular risk to boys who were left behind in the care of grandparents or one parent while a mother or father sought work away from home.

The research was led by Nan Zhang from the University's School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work. She said: "There are sound financial reasons why so many people move from rural to urban areas in China, but the benefits that more money brings to a family can often be at the expense of child nutrition.

"The Chinese government needs to recognise this growing problem among rural communities and this research provides some evidence to target health policies on encouraging a balanced diet."

Type 2 diabetes reversed by losing fat from pancreas

Type 2 diabetes is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas, researchers show. They add that losing less than one gram of that fat through weight loss reverses the diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes affects 9% of the global population and was once known as adult-onset diabetes but is now found in young adults and children. It causes too much glucose in the blood due to the pancreas not producing enough insulin -- a hormone which breaks down glucose into energy in the cells -- together with insulin resistance, a condition in which the body responds poorly to insulin.

Diabetic women at greater heart disease risk

Women with Type 2 diabetes are twice as likely to have coronary heart disease compared to men, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement.
"Cardiovascular disease may be more deadly for women with Type 2 diabetes than it is for men," said Judith G. Regensteiner, chair of the statement writing group and director of the Centre for Women's Health Research at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.

While scientists do not fully understand how the inherent hormonal differences between men and women affect risk, they do know that "some risk factors for heart disease and stroke affect women differently than men and there are disparities in how these risk factors are treated".

The statement said that the women with Type 2 diabetes have heart attacks at earlier ages than men; are more likely to die after a first heart attack than men; and are less likely to undergo procedures to open clogged arteries, such as angioplasty or coronary artery bypass grafting than men.

Legalising cannabis could help stop the obesity crisis by turning people away from alcohol, US study finds

Legalisation caused young people to move away from calorific alcohol and helped older people suffering from chronic pain become more active, the study found
A new study by Californian researchers has suggested that legalising cannabis could help bring down obesity rates - because rather than drinking pints of alcoholic beverages to celebrate or relax, people spark up a calorie-free joint instead.

The study, conducted by scientists from Cornell and San Diego Universities, involved the analysis of 22 years of health data from states which have decriminalised cannabis either for medical or recreational use.
In states where weed was made legal, obesity levels dropped by between 2 and 6 per cent.

Among younger cannabis users, the researchers found that many substituted large amounts of alcoholic drinks for cannabis, meaning they consumed less calories.

And among older people, medical cannabis helped alleviate common ailments like joint and chronic pain, allowing them to be more active and letting them burn more calories.