Did you know that it was National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month? It's sad we have a national day observing this issue.

Studies show obese children are often destined to become obese adults. The causes of childhood obesity are so obvious to me plentiful food high in calories, fat and sugar and a lack of physical activity. Cutting short or cutting out the physical education in elementary school and focusing on academic achievement and test scores was the beginning. Test scores were more important than health scores.

The other fact I can't help but notice is the adult obesity epidemic. How can the kids succeed without adults setting the healthy, active, example? Among U.S. adults, ages 20-74 years, the percentage of people considered overweight is 35 percent of the population.

And it gets really sobering when we look at obesity rates for other countries. This is one race to the top that I really don't think we want to win! Not only do we rank high in the percentage of people who are overweight, but look at what we are spending on health care compared to other nations. Many of our health woes, can be blamed on our own poor diets and lack of exercise.

The statistics when you look at them are not pretty.

The present political debate is filled with speeches about our over-burdened healthcare system. It's no wonder. Think about how different things were 20 years ago when kids were outside playing sports and burning calories instead of sitting inside playing video games on the computer. Including school, kids can go an entire day without being physically active.

"You can't take away computers because they have become an integral part of their lifestyle," said Dr. Robert Keith, a nutritionist. "Kids are going to play video games and watch all of these TV programs despite all of our best efforts."

Dr. Keith says part of the solution is to re-introducing mandatory physical activities in the public schools.

And, he said, parents need to encourage their kids to be active and take part in physical activities with them. Guess what? When parents get up off the couch themselves they are less likely to become part of the obesity crisis gripping our nation.

Recently I attended an assembly in a neighborhood elementary school and I arrived early to get a good seat to see my granddaughter get an award. While waiting I noticed that most adults were looking down at a device in their hands and concentrating on the screen of their phone or mini computers, with their thumbs moving like mad. No one was talking with their companion or neighbor next them. Enough said.

I know we can't trash all the technology we have in our life it's fun, we all love it and I wouldn't live without it. But we need to get our priorities straight and make sure we have a balance of physical activity and good nutrition so that we don't become a statistic on the charts. So get out and get active.

THE NKORANZA South Municipal Public Health Nurse, Comfort Korkor on Monday advised the general public to desist from eating too much fatty food.

She said fatty foods were a potential threat to one's life because too much of it could cause one to contract diabetes.

Madam Korkor gave the advice at a day's workshop on the causes and preventive measures of diabetes and malaria organized by the Nkoranza South Municipal Directorate of the Ghana Health Services for members of the Nkoranza Hairdressers' Association.

Participants were taken through topics such as 'Types of Diabetes their signs and symptoms,' 'Effects of Malaria,' 'the importance of regular exercise' and 'the importance of fruits and vegetables.'

She said diabetes was also a hereditary disease and mentioned "juvenile diabetes" (the one by birth), and "diabetes mellitus" (acquired during pregnancy) as the two types of diabetes.

Madam Korkor said excessive drinking of water and frequent urination especially during the night could be an indication that a person had diabetes, stressing that the urine of a diabetic patient often tasted sugary and there were occasions when ants would be found at the place where the patient urinated indicating the sugary nature of the urine.

She stressed the importance of exercising the body regularly to avoid obesity and also urged the eating of more fruits and vegetables to promote one's health.

Vitamin D, a vitamin synthesized by the body when exposed to sunlight, can help the body fight infections of deadly tuberculosis, researchers say.

According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, patients who were given vitamin D in combination with antibiotics recovered from tuberculosis (TB) more quickly than those who just took antibiotics.

More tests would be needed before it could be given to patients routinely.

Vitamin D was used to treat the lung infection long before antibiotics were discovered, with patients being prescribed "forced sunbathing", known as heliotherapy. However, the treatment disappeared when antibiotics proved successful at treating the disease.

Tuberculosis kills close to 1.5 million people each year, and many strains of tuberculosis are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics - rendering it untreatable.

Researchers from Queen Mary University in London looked at 95 patients who had non-resistant TB.

Those who took the combination of antibiotics and vitamin D recovered two weeks faster than those who did not take vitamin D.

According to BBC News, patients who only took antibiotics took an average of 36 days to recover while patients who took both vitamin D and antibiotics recovered in just 23 days on average.

"This isn't going to replace antibiotics, but it may be a useful extra weapon," Dr. Adrian Martineau, one of the researchers from Queen Mary University."It looks promising, but we need slightly stronger evidence," Martineau added.

Vitamin D appears to work by calming inflammation during the infection. An inflammatory response is an important part of the body's response to infection.

During TB infection, it breaks down some of the scaffolding in the lungs letting more infection-fighting white blood cells in. However, this also creates tiny cavities in the lungs in which TB bacteria can camp out.

"If we can help these cavities to heal more quickly, then patients should be infectious for a shorter period of time, and they may also suffer less lung damage," Dr Martineau said.

The doctors suggested this might also help in other lung diseases such as pneumonia and sepsis.

Researchers have discovered a link between low vitamin C, beta-carotene levels and dementia, meaning antioxidant rich fruit and veg - such as spinach, carrots and apricots - could help fight the disease's devastating symptoms.

German scientists looked at the differences between 74 people with mild Alzheimer's disease and 158 healthy subjects.

The participants, between 65 and 90 years of age, underwent neuropsychological testing, answered questions about their lifestyle and had their blood examined and their body mass index calculated.

The team including epidemiologist Professor Gabriele Nagel and neurologist Professor Christine von Arnim found the serum-concentration of the antioxidants vitamin C and beta-carotene were significantly lower in patients with mild dementia than in control group.

There was no such difference between the groups in levels of other antioxidants including vitamin E, lycopene, coenzyme Q10.

Dr Nagel said although more studies were needed to confirm the results, the findings suggested fruits and vegetables could play a role in fighting the disease.

"Longitudinal studies with more participants are necessary to confirm the result that vitamin C and beta-carotene might prevent the onset and development of Alzheimer's disease", said Dr Nagel, of the University of Ulm.

"Vitamin C can for example be found in citrus fruits; beta-carotene in carrots, spinach or apricots."

Alzheimer's disease symptoms including forgetfulness, lack of orientation and cognitive decline are caused by alterations in the brain including amyloid-beta-plaques, degeneration of fibrillae and a loss of synapses.

However, oxidative stress, which constrains the exploitation of oxygen in the human body, is also suspected to promote the development of the disease.

This led scientists to investigate whether antioxidants might protect against neurodegeneration.

The study - supported by the German Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Wurttemberg and the European Union - was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Scientists have discovered new potential targets for treating squamous cell lung cancer, which causes approximately 400,000 deaths per year worldwide.

Squamous cell lung cancer kills more people each year than breast, colorectal, or prostate cancer, ranking second only to lung adenocarcinoma in the number of deaths it causes.

But unlike the most common form of lung cancer, squamous cell carcinoma has no treatments aimed at the specific genetic alterations that drive it.

Now The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network, led in part by scientists at the Broad Institute, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Harvard Medical School, has identified many potential therapeutic targets based on the large number and variety of DNA alterations they discovered in most of the tumours they studied.

"This study clearly shows that squamous cell carcinoma, like lung adenocarcinoma, is a cancer with diverse genomic causes, many of which are potentially susceptible to drug inhibition," said Matthew Meyerson, co-leader of the project within TCGA, Broad senior associate member, and professor of pathology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

"This provides many new therapeutic opportunities for squamous cell carcinoma that would be suitable for clinical trials," he noted.

The first targeted treatments for lung adenocarcinoma, erlotinib (Tarceva) and gefitinib (Iressa), were aimed at mutations in the EGFR gene. Unfortunately, and like other drugs being tested in clinical trials that target several other genes altered in lung adenocarcinoma, they do not help patients with squamous cell carcinoma.

The TCGA effort, a multicenter consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health, is the first comprehensive genomic characterization of this lung cancer subtype.

As in the three previous TCGA reports on the brain cancer glioblastoma, on ovarian cancer, and on colorectal cancer, the scientists used multiple large-scale approaches to highlight key molecular defects. They sequenced the protein-coding segments of the genomes of 178 squamous cell carcinoma tumors, along with normal tissue from the same patients.

The researchers also sequenced the whole genomes of 19 tumor and normal tissue pairs. They mapped a diverse catalog of genomic alterations, including the rearrangements of chromosomes and other structural changes in regions of the genome that might not encode proteins but could control nearby genes involved in cancer development.

The comprehensive study confirmed some previously identified genomic alterations. For example, the TP53 gene was altered in 90 percent of the tumours and the CDKN2A gene was inactivated in 72 percent of tumours. These genes normally prevent cancer, but when they are switched off, tumours can grow unimpeded. CDKN2A may be susceptible to a kinase inhibitor, presenting an opportunity for clinical trials.

Overall the researchers identified mutations or amplifications in three families of tyrosine kinases, which are enzymes that act like power switches for many cellular functions. Frequently altered in cancer, they are already being investigated as therapeutic targets in other cancers. The researchers also found genomic alterations in signalling pathways that could present important opportunities for treatment.

In another striking finding, the researchers discovered mutations in the HLA-A gene that hampered its function in tumours. HLA genes direct the arm of the immune system that discriminates between its own tissues and foreign invaders. This is the first cancer in which these mutations have been found, but they are likely to occur in other cancers, Meyerson said.

"To our knowledge, this is the first example of a tumour that has a genomic mechanism for evading an immune response. This may be important in understanding the immune response to squamous cell carcinoma and also in envisioning how immune-regulatory therapy might be used for this disease," he said.

While much works needs to be done, the scientists see many opportunities.

Their work was published online in Nature.