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| 28 Aug 2009 - 17:40 by daisy |
General
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| For the body conscious, 'cankles' offer another focus for obsession |
Barbara Simone of Glen Burnie, Maryland, considers herself terribly flawed. She refuses to show her ankles and she'd never allow them to be photographed. She barely wants to talk about them; in fact, when asked about her legs, she mumbles under her breath that she hates them.
Why would someone be so self-conscious about a certain part of her body? "I have cankles -- that's all I can say," she laments. "They are huge and they are horrible. ... And I will never wear a skirt or dress again."
Cankles? What are cankles? We've heard about saddle bags, muffin tops and love handles, but it seems that some women and men of the 21st century are now focused on the chubby joints of their lower extremities.
Far from being a medical term, "cankles" is slang for the part of the leg where the ankle meets the calf when there is no definition or indentation. In most cases, cankles are just large ankles -- what used to be called "big bones." But in society's quest for all things thin and shapely, big-boned ankles have taken on a name -- and a life -- of their own.
According to podiatrists, the average ankle size is about 10 to 11 inches around; men's ankles may be a little larger. The American Podiatric Medical Association does not recognize cankles as a medical problem, but according to Dr. Kathya Zinszer, a physician at Temple University's School of Podiatric Medicine, cankles can be caused by all types of medical issues.
"Things like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular risks, sometimes just lymphedema," says Zinszer. "All of those can lend themselves to deformed ankles or what people are [calling] cankles." But Zinszer says that most cankles are "God-given."
Zinszer has seen patients try to alter their cankles. Some people turn to ankle liposuction, which can cost anywhere between $4,000 to $8,000, depending on how extensive the ankle-shaping need is.
But Zinszer doesn't recommend liposuction because it can do more damage than good. "The foot, the lower extremity, has a lot of neuromuscular structures," she says, explaining that by removing some of the tissue, nerves and vasculature can be damaged, creating an even bigger problem.
There are exercises that can keep your ankles firm. However, they don't always work. Jeff Timmons, a personal trainer from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, says he has clients who constantly complain about the size of their ankles. Many plead with him to help them shape their legs and give their ankles definition.
( Read the full article at Cnn.com )
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Editorial
Lyposuction on you ankles? Come on! What a waste of money, if you are going to pay for lypo get the fat sucked off your big butt, then maybe it wouldn't slide down your legs to your feet.
This article is just another symptom of the fat syndrome the USA is facing. Being fat is not a disease (except in very rare cases), it is not a disability (I just want to slap people who have handicap tags for their cars because they are so fat it hurts to walk, we should deny those type of applicants and make them park at the far end of the lot, maybe they will lose some of that fat walking to the store), being fat is GREED and LAZINESS. If we will not take the time to take care of ourselves by eating healthy foods and getting regular exercise we deserve to have fat ankles and fat everything else and the health problems that go with it.
Want to fix our health care system? Deny paid care for people who cause their own problems and refuse to fix them. If a person has had bypass surgery and they still eat a supersized Big Mac meal with a large shake five times a week from McD's then they do not deserve insured health care. They are trying to kill themselves, let them do it. In the same regard people who abuse alcohol should not be on a list for liver transplants, save the few livers that are available for cancer patients and people suffering from diseases they did not invite. If self abusers want to see a doctor about it, make them pay for it out of their own pocket. If you want to abuse your body that's fine, but don't expect everyone else to pay the consequences of your self abuse.
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| 25 Aug 2009 - 16:10 by daisy |
General
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| Wanted reality TV contestant found dead |
HOPE, British Columbia - For Ryan Jenkins, life ended in a suicide in a remote Canadian motel room, and police who had sought the reality show contestant in the killing of his ex-wife hunted Monday for someone new: the mysterious woman who accompanied him to his lodgings.
Jenkins was accused of killing his ex-wife, a model whose body was so badly mutilated when found in a trash bin outside Los Angeles it had to be identified by her breast implants' serial numbers. He evaded a massive international manhunt for days as he crossed from California into his native Canada.
The dramatic end came at an isolated motel at the edge of British Columbia's mountainous interior, on the outskirts of Hope, a town with limited claims to fame as the place where the first Rambo movie was filmed and where residents make giant wooden carvings with chainsaws.
{Read the whole story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32534223/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/}
Editorial
It's hard to believe that he would kill a person, run off to another country, and suddenly commit suicide.
According to Fiore's mother, he was an abusive type, and she took him back under promises that he would change and wouldn't hurt her anymore. Shortly after that she was killed and mutilated.
If he went to the trouble to pull out her teeth and cut off her fingers to prevent identifying the body why would he later commit suicide? Something doesn't smell right in that.
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| 24 Aug 2009 - 17:39 by daisy |
General
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| Divided Democrats put Obama in health care bind |
(excerpt from CNN) -- As President Obama struggles to regain control of the health care debate, he's finding himself caught in a game of tug of war with members of his own party.
The conservative Blue Dog Democrats don't want a bill with a government-sponsored, public health plan, and liberal Democrats have said they won't pass legislation without one.
Despite strong majorities in both chambers of Congress, Democrats have been unable to reach an agreement on the legislation. And the administration has acknowledged that it will be difficult to pass a bill with bipartisan support.
"The White House needs to take more of a role in trying to broker a deal between the Blue Dogs and party liberals -- in bringing them together and trying to figure some compromise," said Stu Rothenberg, a political analyst and editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.
"It's like a coach who took a ball, threw it in the middle of the court and said, 'OK, go get it.' And everybody runs there, and they have a huge scrum, and there's not a lot of progress," Rothenberg added.
"I think he needs to be more hands-on. ... Why not start with areas of consensus among all Democrats and then try to move out from there?"
The president has spent the past week trying to put out fires sparked after his administration appeared to hedge on support for the public option. At a town hall event last weekend, Obama said, "The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."
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| 22 Aug 2009 - 12:49 by daisy |
General
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| Small plane crashes near high school football field |
(as seen on CNN) -- A small plane crashed Friday near an Ohio-area high school during a football scrimmage.
Spectators at a practice game at Harrison High School watched from the bleachers as the plane went down at 8:08 p.m. ET, said police officer Jennifer Coyle, who witnessed the incident.
Two people on the plane died at the crash scene, authorities said.
According to CNN affiliate WLWT, witnesses said the plane was heading toward the football field when it suddenly dropped, crashing in a gravel pit near the school.
"It looked like he was going straight for the boys on the field, but then just did a straight nosedive," Mindy Brinson told WLWT.
It is not yet known what caused the plane to crash. Harrison is in the southwest corner of Ohio.
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| 22 Aug 2009 - 12:46 by daisy |
General
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| Heat deaths put pressure on football tradition |
(article excerpt from CNN.com) -- Before Friday night lights, there is summer suffering.
For generations, the rite of twice-daily summer football practice endured. In August, players would report as early as 7 a.m., work hard for a few hours, eat to get ready for more football, and then drill again in the afternoon. The athletes, often wearing 15 pounds of gear, would run plays, crushing and tackling each other under the scorching heat.
But in recent years, the ritual of two-a-days has come under scrutiny as heatstroke deaths have increased. On Monday, a high school coach from Louisville, Kentucky, will go to trial on charges of reckless homicide and wanton endangerment in the heat-exhaustion-related death of one of his players.
As medical understanding of the risks of heat exertion has advanced, more teams have instituted water breaks. And new technology allows for better tracking of young athletes' body temperature.
That's a far cry from the philosophy that held for decades.
"Anyone that tells you they enjoyed two-a-days, they're lying or insane," said Bill Curry, who played football for 20 years and is now Georgia State University's first football head coach. "We felt like it was a condition of employment. You're not going to be tough or great unless we did it. It was a macho gladiator thing. We just sucked it up."
Curry was coached during his Green Bay Packers years by the legendary Vince Lombardi, whom he described as "demanding and very emotionally draining." Lombardi held two-a-days without water breaks, but the practices were short, said Curry, a former NFL center. His most demanding boss was NFL Hall of Fame coach Don Shula, who demanded six weeks of two-a-days.
"We wore pads for both practices. It was a 100 degrees and no one died," Curry said. "We won virtually every game. The smartest coaches are the ones who knew how to push, but also knew when to back off. That's the difference."
But sometimes coaches can get in trouble for pushing too hard.
A 15-year-old student at Pleasure Ridge Park High School in Louisville, Kentucky, collapsed in practice last year and died three days later. His temperature reached 107 degrees and witnesses said the coach, Jason Stinson denied the student water on that hot August day, according to CNN affiliate WLKY. The station reported Stinson pleaded not guilty at the arraignment. WLKY: Coach faces trial
The Kentucky case is one of the recent heat-related fatalities in football that made headlines. Since 1995, 39 football players have died in heat-related deaths, triggering new practice guidelines, wrongful death lawsuits and even criminal charges.
Last year, six football players died from heatstroke -- four of them were high school students, according to the Annual Survey of Football Injury Research. "There is no excuse for any number of heatstroke deaths since they are all preventable with the proper precautions," the report authors wrote.
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| 21 Aug 2009 - 17:55 by daisy |
General
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| UK minister condemns Lockerbie bomber's 'hero's welcome' |
LONDON, England (article excerpt from CNN.com) -- It was "deeply distressing" and "deeply upsetting" to see the convicted Lockerbie bomber get a hero's welcome in Libya, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Friday.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi arrives in Tripoli, Libya.
Just hours after being freed from a Scottish prison where he was serving a life sentence, Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi walked off a plane in his native country to a cheering crowd that waved flags and honked horns.
"Obviously, the sight of a mass murderer getting a hero's welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing," Miliband told BBC radio Friday morning. He added that personally, "I find it deeply distressing of course, as well."
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had specifically asked Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi not to give al Megrahi a celebratory welcome, Brown's office at 10 Downing Street said.
Brown wrote a letter to Gadhafi, delivered to the Libyan Foreign Ministry on Thursday, asking the Libyans to act with sensitivity with regard to al Megrahi's return.
The letter was private and therefore won't be released to the media, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.
Al Megrahi, 57, was convicted in 2001 of planting a bomb on Pan Am flight 103 which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 killing all 259 of those aboard the plane -- including 189 Americans -- and 11 people on the ground.
He suffers from terminal prostate cancer and has three months to live, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said.
MacAskill released al Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying he was going home to die. His decision was highly controversial, drawing criticism from the United States and dividing family members of the 270 Lockerbie victims.
Both Brown and Miliband made clear that the decision to release al Megrahi was for the Scottish government to make. But Miliband said Libya must now act responsibly.
"I think it's very important that Libya knows, and certainly we have told them, that how the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days after the arrival of Mr. Megrahi will be very significant in the way the world views Libya's reentry into the civilized community of nations," Miliband said.
"It is in our interests to stand up for our own principles in the interests of international relations," he said. "Where Libya is willing to abide and engage in the international system in a way that does the right thing for those international principles, we will engage with Libya."
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| 21 Aug 2009 - 16:30 by daisy |
General
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