According to the latest Gallup Poll.

U.S. adults who are obese report higher rates of daily pain than those who are not, according to Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index surveys of more than 1 million Americans. In fact, the higher an individual’s Body Mass Index (BMI) score, the more likely he or she is to report experiencing pain, with 44.1% of those with BMIs of 40 or higher saying so.

Gallup and Healthways calculate BMI scores based on respondents’ self-reports of their height and weight collected as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Respondents answered questions about pain between 2008 and 2010, including if they experienced pain yesterday and if they had pain conditions in the last year.

Sixty-three percent of the 1,010,762 people who responded to the survey were classified as overweight (38%) or obese (25%). Obese respondents were further classified into one of three obesity levels as defined by the World Health Organization.

And, the link is stronger among women and older Americans.

Additionally, as Americans age, excess weight is associated with even more pain — especially for people aged 40 and older. This finding suggests a developmental process in which individuals who have chronic pain conditions, such as arthritis or other rheumatic diseases, may reduce their physical activity levels, which in turn leads to elevated BMIs. Alternately, older, normal-weight Americans were only slightly more likely than younger Americans to report daily pain.

Good news!

Tony Gwynn is recovering after surgery and hopes to resume his coaching duties at San Diego State soon.

Surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from Tony Gwynn’s cheek was declared a success on Wednesday and the question for Thursday, especially with his San Diego State team set to open its season without its coach, is when will that signature smile return to the Aztecs’ dugout?

Gwynn, 51, underwent the surgery at the University of California-San Diego’s Thornton Hospital and his doctors released a statement that they believed the cancer had not spread. The tumor represented a recurrence of a cancer that was initially operated on in August 2010. This time, doctors said that to go deep enough, they would have to remove Gwynn’s facial nerve and replace it with another from his body, which meant it could take up to 18 months for Gwynn’s face to regain full function. He is hopeful, however, of returning to work in about a month.

After his surgery, Gwynn told Tom Friend of ESPN.com that he is ahead of schedule already. “Last time, I couldn’t lift my eye or close my mouth,” he said. “This time, my eye can close, my mouth can close. I feel good. I’m talking better than I did last time.”

What a shame, but a word to the wise.

Tony Gwynn, the Hall of Fame outfielder who 18 months ago blamed smokeless tobacco for a malignant growth inside his right cheek, was in his 13th hour of surgery Tuesday evening to remove a new cancerous tumor in the same spot.

According to Gwynn’s wife, Alicia, doctors do not believe the cancer has spread outside of Gwynn’s salivary gland. But she expects to know more after Tuesday’s intricate surgery, in which she said five doctors would likely perform a nerve graft to preserve Gwynn’s facial functions. The operation began at approximately 9:15 a.m. PT, and, as of 11 p.m. PT, the 51-year-old Gwynn was still in the operating room.

Tony told them to take [the malignant tumor] all out,” Alicia Gwynn said Tuesday morning. “They said they may need to remove the facial nerve — they might have to go a lot deeper. But he just told them to take it out. And if they do remove the facial nerve, they’ll replace it with a nerve from his shoulder or his leg.

Please don’t use smokeless tobacco and if you do QUIT.

What a shame, but a word to the wise.

Tony Gwynn, the Hall of Fame outfielder who 18 months ago blamed smokeless tobacco for a malignant growth inside his right cheek, was in his 13th hour of surgery Tuesday evening to remove a new cancerous tumor in the same spot.

According to Gwynn’s wife, Alicia, doctors do not believe the cancer has spread outside of Gwynn’s salivary gland. But she expects to know more after Tuesday’s intricate surgery, in which she said five doctors would likely perform a nerve graft to preserve Gwynn’s facial functions. The operation began at approximately 9:15 a.m. PT, and, as of 11 p.m. PT, the 51-year-old Gwynn was still in the operating room.

Tony told them to take [the malignant tumor] all out,” Alicia Gwynn said Tuesday morning. “They said they may need to remove the facial nerve — they might have to go a lot deeper. But he just told them to take it out. And if they do remove the facial nerve, they’ll replace it with a nerve from his shoulder or his leg.

Please don’t use smokeless tobacco and if you do QUIT.

Yes, actually doubling the risk of memory loss, according to a new study.

New research suggests that consuming between 2,100 and 6,000 calories per day may double the risk of memory loss, or mild cognitive impairment (MCI), among people age 70 and older.

The study was just released and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting in New Orleans April 21 to April 28, 2012. MCI is the stage between normal memory loss that comes with aging and early Alzheimer’s disease.

“We observed a dose-response pattern which simply means; the higher the amount of calories consumed each day, the higher the risk of MCI,” said study author Yonas E. Geda, MD, MSc, with the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

At my current weight of 230 pounds, I am eating around 1900 net calories. Of course, this will decrease, with my reduction in body weight.

But, at least I am under the threshold of daily calories at present.

The odds of having MCI more than doubled for those in the highest calorie-consuming group compared to those in the lowest calorie-consuming group. The results were the same after adjusting for history of stroke, diabetes, amount of education, and other factors that can affect risk of memory loss. There was no significant difference in risk for the middle group.

“Cutting calories and eating foods that make up a healthy diet may be a simpler way to prevent memory loss as we age,” said Geda.

Wow, am I relieved!

Coffee has a bad reputation when it comes to heart health, while tea is generally accorded special healing properties. We have good news for both coffee and tea drinkers: neither is bad for the heart.

Interest in the links between coffee and health is not new. In 17th-century Europe, coffee was thought to aid digestion and gout but cause impotence and paralysis — not a favorable trade-off, and also not correct. Today the coffee-health question focuses on the heart.

While some scientists have suggested that coffee might be bad for the heart, others (probably coffee drinkers) have repeatedly rebutted their findings. Among people who are not habitual coffee drinkers, the caffeine from two cups of coffee increases blood pressure by two to three mm Hg. This effect is short-lived and is usually absent among those who drink coffee regularly. Coffee can cause a temporary increase in heart rate, but it is an uncommon cause of abnormal heart rhythms. Boiled or unfiltered coffee contains oils that may increase total and LDL cholesterol levels, but these chemicals are removed by the filtering process, so most coffee has no effect on cholesterol. Finally, some studies suggest that coffee contributes to arterial stiffness. However, other research suggests that two cups of coffee per day actually causes arteries to relax.

In studying the health effects of coffee, cardiologists have focused on hypertension. Coffee does not cause high blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure and you like coffee, you can continue to drink it. Turning to the heart, large studies demonstrate no increased risk of coronary heart disease among coffee drinkers, whether they prefer regular coffee or decaf. While we have no prospective, randomized comparative studies examining cardiac outcomes over 10 to 20 years among people assigned to drink coffee or another beverage, there is enough evidence for us to conclude that coffee does not cause heart disease and that it can be part of a heart-healthy diet.

Guess, I will celebrate with another cup!

The training for the Los Angeles Marathon on March 18th this week was HILL training – meaning running the hills around Dodger Stadium. The course was a little over 5K and Run/Walk 5 ran the course three times, reversing the order each time.

Here is head pace leader Walt’s blog piece on the run.

Now, for my photos:

NOT surprisingly the answer is yes.

When people in the U.S. are asked to provide their weight for research surveys, they underestimate their weight and overestimate their height, despite numerous public reports about increasing rates of obesity. Whites are more likely to do so than Blacks or Hispanics, a new study finds.

Wen and her colleague, Lori Kowaleski-Jones, Ph.D., found that in all ethnic groups, both men and women overestimate their height. Women also under-report their BMI more than men do, and White women are more likely to do so compared to Black and Hispanic women. The authors speculated this was because White women have a stronger social “desire for a lean body” and were more acutely aware of their weight problems. Those who were overweight, in the oldest age group and who had a college education were also more likely to under-report their BMI.

The researchers said, however, the under-reporting bias is “generally small” with the range of difference between measured and self-reported BMI falling within the 1 BMI unit range.

Wen said their results highlight the care that should be taken when making comparisons of BMI across different U.S. socio-demographic groups.

I think it is only natural to flatter yourself in these surveys or underestimate your own pathology.

Unfortuantely, using the My Fitness Pal application with my weight-loss peers, I am brutally honest. And, I have a way to go!

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

A new analysis has found that a substantial number of lung and colorectal cancer patients continue to smoke after being diagnosed. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study provides valuable information on which cancer patients might need help to quit smoking.

When a patient receives a cancer diagnosis, the main focus is to treat the disease. But stopping smoking after a cancer diagnosis is also important because continuing to smoke can negatively affect patients’ responses to treatments, their subsequent cancer risk, and, potentially, their survival. Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH, of the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, led a team that looked to see how many patients quit smoking around the time of a cancer diagnosis, and which smokers were most likely to quit.

The investigators determined smoking rates around the time of diagnosis and five months after diagnosis in 5,338 lung and colorectal cancer patients. At diagnosis, 39 percent of lung cancer patients and 14 percent of colorectal cancer patients were smoking; five months later, 14 percent of lung cancer patients and 9 percent of colorectal cancer patients were still smoking. These results indicate that a substantial minority of cancer patients continue to smoke after being diagnosed. Also, although lung cancer patients have higher rates of smoking at diagnosis and following diagnosis, colorectal cancer patients are less likely to quit smoking following diagnosis.

Obviously, some patients, even after having cancer, have a hard time breaking the addictive cycle of nicotine.

Physicians and dentists must develop strategies to help these patients quit and quit for good.

Unbelievable, I mean really?

If you were a smoker, would seeing an image of plaque building up in your neck artery help you quit?

That was the central question posed by a study of 536 smokers recently published online by the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers wanted to know whether using ultrasound images of the carotid artery could serve as a “teachable moment” and improve quit rates when added to an intensive smoking-cessation program.

Plaques in the carotid are a predictor of cardiovascular disease risk, explains Nicolas Rodondi, a professor at the University Hospital Inselspital, in Bern, Switzerland, and an author of the study. But screening for the plaques has been controversial, because it’s not clear whether it actually improves health.

The smokers — who were between 40 and 70 years of age and smoked an average of a pack a day — were randomized into two groups. One received carotid plaque screening, and the other didn’t. Both then participated in a one-year smoking cessation program that included six 20-minute individual counseling sessions and nicotine replacement therapy.

At the end of the year, the researchers got a surprise: the quit rates were high, but there was no significant difference between the groups (24.9% in the screening group and 22.1% in the non-screening group). Nor was there a difference in quit rates between the screened folks who had and did not have plaques.

Maybe this communication was not sufficient of a “teachable” moment. Or, maybe these folks were motivated to quit smoking, in any case.

Do smokers really need to be scared? Or, do physicians and dentists need better communication tools?

I would say the latter.

Watch the video below and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section.