WASHINGTON – If you're looking for a little help shedding extra pounds after the holidays, the government is warning you to stay away from nearly 30 weight-loss products that contain unlisted and possibly dangerous ingredients.

The pills are advertised as "natural" fat busters and have intriguing names like Imelda Perfect Slim and Zhen de Shou. Some are touted as new versions of "ancient remedies" from Asia.

They may promise an easy fix to weight problems, but the Food and Drug Administration on Monday said the concoctions contain unlisted ingredients, including high doses of a powerful anti-obesity drug, as well as a suspected carcinogen.

"When consumers are buying these products online, we're telling them that if it sounds too good to be true, it is likely to be too good to be true," said Michael Levy, an FDA lawyer who works on enforcement issues.

FDA lab testing found 28 dietary supplements that could land unsuspecting users in the emergency room. Most of the diet pills appear to be coming from China. They are mainly sold on the Internet.

Nearly all of the pills contain sibutramine, a powerful appetite suppressant that's a chemical cousin of amphetamines. It can cause heart attacks, strokes and heart palpitations, especially in people with a history of high blood pressure or heart problems.

Sibutramine is also the chemical ingredient in the prescription drug Meridia, which is used to treat obesity. But FDA testing found that some of the diet pills contain nearly three times the recommended daily dose.

Several of the pills contain phenolphthalein, a chemical long used as a laxative, but which is now being withdrawn from the market because of cancer risks.

None of the supplements lists the dangerous ingredients on the label. "Consumers have no way of knowing that these products contain powerful drugs that can cause serious health consequences," said Dr. Janet Woodcock, head of the FDA's drug evaluation center.

The FDA is considering criminal charges against some of the companies, because they have not responded to requests for recalls.

The products are:

Fatloss Slimming, 2 Day Diet, 3x Slimming Power, 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming, 3 Day Diet Japan Lingzhi, 24 Hours Diet, 7 Diet Day/Night Formula, 7 Day Herbal Slim, 8 Factor Diet, 999 Fitness Essence, Extrim Plus and GMP.

Also:

Imelda Perfect Slim, Lida DaiDaihua, Miaozi Slim Capsules, Perfect Slim, Perfect Slim 5x, Phyto Shape, ProSlim Plus, Royal Slimming Formula, Slim 3 in 1, Slim Express 360, Slimtech, Somotrin, Superslim, TripleSlim, Zhen de Shou, Venom Hyperdrive 3.0

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On the Net:

FDA warning: http://tinyurl.com/8oufor

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Did you know?

* This year, more than 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
* Almost 10,000 women will develop cervical cancer.
* All women are at risk for breast and cervical cancer, even those who have no family history of the disease.
* Survival rates are high for women who detect breast and cervical cancers in the early stages, when the cancer is small and has not spread.



What can you do?

* Get regular mammograms, clinical breast exams performed by your doctor and Pap tests. *
* Do breast self-exams monthly, beginning at age 20.

Other things you can do to reduce your risk of cancer include eating a variety of healthy foods with an emphasis on plant sources, adopt a physically active lifestyle, maintain a healthy weight, stop smoking and limit your alcohol intake.

* Refer to your individual plan for benefit coverage and information about age and frequency for these screenings.

Other things you can do to reduce your risk of cancer include eating a variety of healthy foods with an emphasis on plant sources, adopt a physically active lifestyle, maintain a healthy weight, stop smoking and limit your alcohol intake.


Source: American Cancer Society
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A one-year-old Argentine baby boy apparently had the same fate as wild child Mowgli in Disney's film The Jungle Book, when he was found being kept alive by cats on the streets.

Police officers who found the tiny lad were surprised to see how the cats snuggled up to keep him warm during freezing nights, which would otherwise have claimed his life.

The animals licked the baby boy as he ate scraps foraged by them.

They even hissed when a female cop approached the boy in Misiones, Argentina.

The tot was rushed to hospital, where doctors uggested that he was kept alive by the care he received from the animals.

Policewoman Alicia Lorena Lindgvist found the baby by a canal in the Christ King district on Wednesday.

"I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that's where I saw him. The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him, licking him because he was really dirty," the Sun quoted her as saying.

"When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept," she added.

Alicia also revealed scraps of food were lying by the kid.

"I picked him up and took him to the nearest police station. He was still really dirty and he was then taken to the hospital. The doctor who examined him said he should have perished in the cold," she said.

"The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting," she added.

The police have found the baby's father, who himself is a homeless man.

The tot's father has admitted that he had lost him several days ago while collecting cardboard to sell.

He even revealed that his son had always received good care from cats.

Explaining how the boy could have survived due to the cats' behaviour, a spokesman for Thames Valley Animal Welfare, which deals with feral cats and strays in Berkshire, said: "They would have viewed the baby like a big hot water bottle. Cats will cuddle up to anything to keep warm, even dogs."

He added: "In our experience of cat colonies, when a mother has a litter, all the other cats will go and fetch food. The baby could have been feeding off the scraps they brought. Cats in Argentina stay in large packs to survive - much more than cats over here."

Source-ANI
SRM
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Brittle bones are a known consequence of alcoholism, and now new findings suggest that even young men are at risk of developing low bone mass. Surprisingly, a similar risk was not seen in their female counterparts.

In a study of 57 alcoholic adults between the ages of 27 and 50, researchers found that one quarter of the men had lower than normal bone mass. Just 1 of the 20 women the researchers examined had a deficit in bone mass.

The latter finding, the researchers speculate, might be explained by the women's relatively high estrogen levels that, for the time being, may have protected their bone mass.

In contrast, men had no such hormonal protection and, like their female counterparts, showed high deficiency rates of vitamin D, which is important in maintaining bone mass.

The findings suggest that even young alcoholic patients should have their bone mass and bone metabolism screened, the researchers report in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"The fact that even relatively healthy young male alcoholics -- without any kind of liver disease -- show low bone mineral density is an important finding," lead researcher Dr. Peter Malik, of the Medical University Innsbruck, told Reuters Health.

It's thought that alcoholism leads to bone thinning, in part, because of toxic effects on the body's bone-forming cells. However, indirect effects may be at work as well; alcoholics often have poor diets and little exercise, both of which can drain bone density.

Malik pointed out that in this study, bone density was not related to the duration of patients' alcohol dependency or to the amount of alcohol they had consumed before going into treatment.

This finding suggests that alcoholic patients' lifestyle habits may indeed contribute to waning bone density.

It's not clear whether bone density improves if the alcoholics are able to stop drinking, Malik said, as few studies have followed young recovering alcoholics' bone health over time. He and his colleagues now plan to study that question.

SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, February 2009.

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THURSDAY, Nov. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Compared to real acupuncture, placebo acupuncture was associated with significantly higher overall pregnancy rates among women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF), says a University of Hong Kong study.

In real acupuncture, fine needles are inserted into particular points on the body. In placebo acupuncture, blunt needles that look identical to real acupuncture needles retract into the handle of the needle when pressed on the skin, but still give the sensation and appearance of entering the skin.

The researchers gave real or placebo acupuncture to 370 women on the day of embryo transfer and found that 55.1 percent of those who received placebo acupuncture became pregnant, compared to 43.8 percent of those who received real acupuncture. The findings were published in the Nov. 13 issue of Human Reproduction.

"We found a significantly higher overall pregnancy rate following placebo acupuncture when compared with that of real acupuncture," study author Dr. Ernest Hung Yu Ng, an associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, said in a European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology news release. "In addition, there was a trend towards higher rates of clinical pregnancy, ongoing pregnancy, live birth and embryo implantation in the placebo acupuncture group, although the differences did not reach statistical significance."

The results suggest that placebo acupuncture may not act as an inert control for real acupuncture and may be having a real effect. That theory is supported by the fact that the researchers noted significant changes in measurements for uterus receptivity and patient stress levels after the women received both the real and placebo acupuncture.

There are two possible explanations for the study results.

"Placebo acupuncture is similar to acupressure and therefore is good enough to improve the pregnancy rate," said Ng, who added it's also possible that real acupuncture may, in some way, reduce the pregnancy rate.

"So far, there is no evidence that real acupuncture would adversely affect IVF outcomes because, in a previous meta-analysis of several acupuncture studies, the pregnancy rate was higher in the acupuncture group than in the control group. However, we cannot draw a firm conclusion about this from our current study, as we did not compare the two groups with a third control group of patients who received neither form of acupuncture. Further studies should be conducted to compare placebo or noninvasive acupuncture and controls without acupuncture," Ng said.

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