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  johnpi 8:14 am on November 18, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: American Muslims (71), health (30), health risks, Muslims in America (36), public health (6)

  A new report is out that ranks the healthiest and unhealthiest states in the US. The top, most healthiest states in the country were dominated by New England. In order, they were: Vermont, Utah, Massachusetts, Hawaii and New Hampshire.

  The least healthiest states in the US were all in the South. They were, in order from 45th to 50th, South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

  Most of the top five states for Muslims in the US (California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey and Indiana) scored in the 20s – except for Illinois, which weighed in at 35 down in the lower half of the list.

  This means that statistically speaking, Illinois Muslims are more likely than other US Muslims to be adversely affected by at least one of 22 measures of public health, including binge drinking, drug abuse, smoking, poor diet, preventable heart disease, violent crime, a high prevalence of obesity, higher infant mortality, teen pregnancy, a low high school graduation rate, a higher percent of children in poverty, limited availability of primary care physicians and preventable hospitalizations.

   

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  johnpi 10:22 am on November 12, 2009 | 7 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: fasting (11), food (31), food restrictions, girls' health (3), halal food (5), health (30), health risks, modesty (11), obesity (2), public health (6), women's health (5)

  We don’t blog alot about health issues here, and for Western Muslims, I don’t think anybody who does health studies ever looks at us specifically in a way that it would be a ‘Muslim’ story, but there are huge trends in the larger society and it’s fair to ask how much or whether we are a part of them, and how much a specific ‘Muslim lifestyle’ plays into those trends.

  Studies suggest overweight kids are coronary time bombs.

  Russell Pate was driving through a neighborhood one late afternoon when he noticed something odd.

  He couldn’t hear the sounds of children playing. No jump rope patter. No squeals of a bike’s brake. No crack of a bat — just silence.

  The streets were deserted because the neighborhood kids were cocooned in their homes, Pate says. It was a scene he’s seen over and over again.

  “Now you can drive through entire neighborhoods where you know there are a lot of young kids there and hardly see any of them out,” says Pate, an American Heart Association spokesman.
  ….

  A study released last November at a Heart Association conference found that the neck arteries in obese and overweight children were similar to those of 45-year-olds. The children in the study also had “abnormal cholesterol” and were said to be at high risk for heart disease in the future.

  The story cites television, video games, the obsession with testing and fast food as culprits. Here in the West, Muslims are usually well-off and well-fed, but despite (or perhaps because of) fasting, food and modesty restrictions, are Western Muslims fat?

   
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  johnpi 9:26 pm on October 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: environment (24), environmentalism (17), health (30), health care (7), health risks, healthcare (8), OIC (10), public health (6), tropical diseases

  Tropical disease: Neglected tropical ills extract steep toll in Islamic world, a journal article says.

  Muslim nations shoulder a “devastating burden” of the world’s neglected tropical diseases, according to an article published Monday in the Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases journal.

  The article, a combination of analysis and editorial written by the journal’s editor, Peter J. Hotez, shows that the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference account for 40 percent of the world’s infestations with intestinal worms.

  Worm infestations, which are most common in children, can stunt their growth and make them too tired to stay awake in school. They can cause dangerous anemia in pregnant women and disabling pain in farmers.

  Member countries also have 20 percent of leprosy cases and 21 percent of blinding trachoma.

  At the same time, the article said, there is no school of tropical medicine anywhere in the Islamic world, even though several Persian Gulf nations are building top-tier universities.

   
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  johnpi 9:23 am on March 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: babies, biphenol A, children (40), dangerous chemicals, health risks, infants, puberty

  Credit where credit is due: Conn. attorney general’s activism prompts baby-bottle makers to stop using bisphenol A, which is implicated in causing several types of cancer, obesity, diabetes, and early onset of puberty in girls. More about the health hazards of bisphenol A here.