WEDNESDAY, Feb. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Reducing children's salt intake may lower their consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks and reduce their risk of obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems later in life, British researchers say.

Scientists at St. George's University of London analyzed data on more than 1,600 boys and girls, aged 4 to 18, in Great Britain, and found that those who ate a lower-salt diet drank less fluid. The researchers estimated that cutting 1 gram of salt from a child's daily diet would reduce the child's overall fluid intake by 100 grams per day.

The data analysis also revealed that children who ate a lower-salt diet also drank fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks. The researchers calculated that reducing a child's salt intake by 1 gram per day would reduce the child's sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption by 27 grams per day.

"If children aged 4 to 18 years cut their salt intake by half (i.e., an average reduction of 3 grams a day), there would be a decrease of approximately two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child, so each child would decrease calorie intake by almost 250 kcal per week," Dr. He said in a prepared statement.

Not only would reducing salt intake lower blood pressure in children, but it could also play a role in helping to reduce obesity, said He.

The study was published in the current issue of Hypertension.

In a related editorial in the same issue of the journal, Dr. Myron H. Weinberger of the Indiana University Medical Center, wrote that reducing children's intake of salt and sweetened beverages, combined with increased physical activity, "could go a long way in reducing the present scourge of cardiovascular disease in our industrialized society. Obviously, each step in this progression requires further definition and confirmation. This presents a formidable challenge as we move into the 21st century."

More information

The Nemours Foundation has more about overweight and obesity in children.

Gout, caused by excess uric acid in the blood, is a joint disease that causes extreme pain and swelling. Cases of gout, which is most common in men, have doubled in the United States over the past few decades.

In this study, published in BMJ Online First, researchers looked at more than 46,000 men, aged 40 and older, with no history of gout. Information on the men's food and beverage intake was collected at the start of the study, and details about their weight, medication use and medical conditions were recorded every two years during the 12-year study.

During that time, 755 of the men were diagnosed with gout. The risk was much higher in men who drank five to six servings of sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week and was 85 percent higher in those who drank two or more of the beverages a day, compared to those who had less than one serving per month.

The increased risk was independent of other gout risk factors such as body-mass index, age, diuretic use, high blood pressure, alcohol intake and dietary habits. Diet soft drinks did not increase gout risk.

The study also found that fruit juice and fructose-rich fruits such as apples and oranges were associated with increased gout risk. But the researchers said this higher risk of gout needs to be balanced against the many health benefits provided by fresh fruits and vegetables.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about gout.

"I went to the hospital at five years of age, and I thought to myself, 'OK, I'm going to die.' Because never having been to the hospital before, I just thought that's where you went to die," said Cleveland, of Syracuse, N.Y.

He didn't die. The hospital personnel just tested and confirmed that he had type 1 diabetes. But Cleveland has gone on to enjoy life to the fullest, pursuing mountain climbing and other outdoor adventures, having a rewarding career as an accountant at General Motors, and raising a family -- with his wife, Ruth, 86 -- all the while monitoring his blood sugar and taking insulin as needed each day.

"He amazes me," Ruth Cleveland said. "He's still able to take care of the yard, even drive a 32-foot motor home to Florida -- and he does it well."

People like Cleveland -- and his older brother Gerald, who is 91, and also has type 1 diabetes-- serve as a reminder on Nov. 14 , World Diabetes Day, that amid the grim statistics lies the notion that a life with diabetes can be active, healthy and without limits.

According to the World Health Organization, 3.2 million people worldwide die from diabetes each year and, if improperly managed, the illness can shorten lifespans by an average of 12 years. More than 18 million Americans have diabetes, with 95 percent developing the obesity-linked type 2 disease.

Type 1 disease usually begins in childhood and is linked to an inability of the insulin-producing cells to do their job. It typically means a lifetime of blood glucose monitoring and insulin supplementation.

Most type 1 diabetics don't let it overwhelm them, however.

"Yes, diabetes is something that you have to deal with, but it's just another part of your life," said 73-year-old Alan Lewis, professor emeritus of oceanography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Lewis was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 69 years ago but has also spent most of his adult life as a competitive swimmer. He only eased up on the competition at age 71, after a back injury got in the way of his breaststroke.

That setback is only temporary, he said. "The old juices are still flowing, so I have a feeling that I will get back into competitive swimming in about a year," Lewis said.

Experts say that type of can-do attitude, coupled with steadfast attention to blood sugar monitoring, diet and exercise, are the keys that allow diabetics to live well into their 70s, 80s, and even beyond.

Diabetes care has certainly improved since the Clevelands and Lewis were diagnosed as children. Today, high-tech pocket-sized glucose monitors mean quick, easy blood-sugar monitoring is literally at your fingertips. Insulin delivery is also easier than ever.

In the 1930s and 1940s, however, blood sugar could only be tested at home via urine sampling, which provided patients with only a much-delayed look at blood glucose levels. Medical crises -- moments when sugar levels dipped so low a coma might result -- were common.

"When you talk to the elderly with diabetes who have gotten to live to today, they have lived through a time and place when we really couldn't take care of diabetes very well," said Dr. Larry Deeb, immediate past president for medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association.

"However, even then, they made the commitment to take care of themselves," he added. "They reviewed their urine glucose, they took their insulin every day, they watched their diet and were active."

"It takes a huge commitment to take care of yourself with diabetes, to mind it every day," he said. "There's never a day off."

And yet, most elderly diabetics say that managing their diabetes quickly became routine.

"I think I was so focused on what was of interest to me in my life that diabetes was simply something I got used to," Lewis said. "It became just a hurdle I needed to go through to get someplace."

Indeed, many older diabetics may have lived so long, because "they have turned their diabetes into an asset," explained Dr. Sheri Colberg, a Virginia Beach, Va., exercise physiologist who has done much research on diabetes, longevity and lifestyle.

Colberg -- a type 1 diabetic herself -- interviewed dozens of diabetic seniors for her book, 50 Secrets of the Longest Living People With Diabetes. "I actually had some people who told me, 'Diabetes saved my life,' " she said. "They said to themselves, 'If I don't do this, I am going to die sooner.' They used diabetes as an incentive to adopt a healthier lifestyle, better eating patterns. And to stay physically active -- every one of them was physically active."

That's something Cleveland and Lewis agreed with.

"I've always been more of an outdoor person and more interested in exercise, games, swimming, thing like that," Cleveland said. "They were definitely advantageous for a diabetic."

Lewis added that the discipline and energy expenditure demanded by competitive swimming forced him early on to closely track his blood sugar highs and lows.

"I would advise people to test frequently, to get to know what your own [blood sugar] profile is, and then to set up a game plan to deal with those effects," he said.

Exercise also helps people stay slim, which is always a good thing when it comes to either type 1 or adult-onset type 2 diabetes, Deeb said. Indeed, all of the advice for people with type 1 disease would apply to the greater population of people with type 2 illness, he said.

Another key to a long, healthy life with diabetes: the support of loved ones.

Lewis said his wife, Carolyn, has helped him manage his diabetes for more than 50 years. Cleveland credits Ruth with helping him get him through the tough times.

"I got married at age 27, and my wife has done the most wonderful job of helping me that anyone ever could," Cleveland said.

Ruth Cleveland said her husband initially kept his diabetes a secret from her when they were first courting more than 60 years ago, due to the stigma then attached to the disease.

"He claims he was afraid to tell me, afraid that I wouldn't want to continue seeing him," she said.

Those fears were unfounded.

"If anything, it made me appreciate him more and want to be a part of his life," Ruth said. "Which has turned out to be wonderful."

More information

Find out more on managing diabetes at the American Diabetes Association.

TUESDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Using a plate and cereal bowl that indicate proper portion sizes helped obese patients with diabetes lose weight and decrease their use of glucose-controlling medications, says a Canadian study.

The plates -- divided into painted-line sections for carbohydrates, proteins, vegetables, cheese and sauce -- held enough for an 800-calorie meal for men and a 650-calorie meal for women. The bowl allowed for a 200-calorie serving of cereal and milk.

Over six months, about half of 122 patients (average age 56) used the portion-control plates and bowls, while the rest of the patients received usual care consisting of dietary assessments and teaching by dietitians.

The patients who used the portion-control plates and bowls lost an average of 1.8 percent of their body weight, compared to an average of 0.1 percent among those who received usual care.

The University of Calgary researchers also found that 16.9 percent of the patients who used the portion-control plates and bowls, which were donated by a U.K. company called The Diet Plate, lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, compared with 4.6 percent of patients who received usual care.

"This is important, as a 5 percent weight loss has been shown to be clinically significant in terms of decreasing morbidity and mortality associated with obesity-linked disorders such as cancer and (heart attack)," the study authors wrote.

The use of diabetes medications decreased by 26.2 percent among patients using the plates and bowls, compared with 10.8 percent among those who received usual care.

The portion-control plates and bowls offer a simple, inexpensive method of weight control that shows promise in helping obese people with diabetes, the study authors concluded.

The findings were published in the June 25 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about eating and diabetes.

SUNDAY, June 3 (HealthDay News) -- In an era of highly complex medications with highly complex mechanisms and even more complicated names, take comfort that some basic (and pronounceable) lifestyle changes can have an impact on cancer outcomes.

Diet and exercise still matter, according to two studies that were presented Saturday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago.

One study found that individuals with stage III colon cancer who had undergone surgery and chemotherapy had higher odds of relapsing or dying if they followed a predominantly "Western" diet of red meat, fat, refined grains and dessert.

"This is the first large amount of data to look at whether diet affects colon cancer survivors, and the suggestion is that dietary factors may have an effect," said study author Dr. Jeffrey Meyerhardt, an assistant professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. "Certainly we need more studies to understand the patterns. We also need to emphasize that diet is not a substitute for standard treatment."

Dr. Neal Meropol, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, added: "This suggests that diet can influence not only the development of cancer, but the chance that your colon cancer will come back. This is a very important result because it suggests that one can make a behavioral adjustment that could reduce their risk of dying from colon cancer."

Meropol emphasized, however, that the issue of diet and cancer development or recurrence is an extremely complex one.

People with stage III colon cancers have positive lymph nodes, although the cancer does not indicate any evidence of spreading outside of the local colon area. Standard treatment is surgery followed by chemotherapy.

More than 1,000 patients with stage III colon cancer who were participating in a trial of adjuvant chemotherapy were asked to complete questionnaires on their diet for six months after the chemotherapy ended. Researchers then tracked the participants to see if their cancer recurred or if they died.

Dietary patterns fell into two categories: "Western," which involved a high intake of red meat, fat and dessert, and "prudent," meaning high fruit, vegetable, poultry and fish consumption.

The two dietary patterns did not necessarily preclude each other. "Everyone has some score for each of those patterns," Meyerhardt stated. "Someone might eat a lot of hamburger and a lot of vegetables."

People who consumed the highest levels of the Western diet had almost quadruple the risk of recurrence or death compared with those who consumed the least in this category.

"Those who had a higher intake of a Western-pattern diet characteristic of more red meat and dessert had a significantly higher risk of recurrence and mortality, about four times as high," Meyerhardt said.

What's interesting is that the dietary pattern seemed to have an effect in a relatively short period of time -- years, as opposed to a lifetime. Why? One hypothesis is that this type of diet stimulates some growth factors that allow the growth of microscopic disease, Meyerhardt said.

But it also raises the question of whether the study participants had modified their diet after their diagnosis or whether this was a continuation of past patterns. "Future research should be geared toward answering that very question, whether changing a diet from Western to prudent would in fact reduce the risk of dying from colon cancer," Meropol said.

A second study, also from Dana-Farber, found that previously sedentary breast cancer survivors who exercised reduced the amount of insulin in their blood. It was unclear, however, what effect this might have on cancer recurrence, but the suggestion is that insulin levels may explain why physical activity has been associated with better outcomes.

Previous studies have shown that women who shed extra pounds and became more physically active had a lower risk of breast cancer recurrence. Women who are obese at the time of diagnosis, by contrast, have a higher level of recurrence.

For this study, researchers assigned 101 women with breast cancer to a 16-week program of cardiovascular exercise and strength training or to "normal" care. All women had their insulin and blood glucose levels measured, as well as their weight, body composition, and waist and hip circumference. Participants had already completed chemotherapy and/or radiation but had not started on any hormonal therapies, said study author Dr. Jennifer Ligibel, an instructor of medicine at Dana-Farber and Harvard.

Women in the exercise group lowered their insulin levels by about 20 percent, Ligibel said, an amount that approached statistical significance. These women also had a trend toward improved insulin sensitivity, meaning how their body responds to the hormone insulin.

"The ultimate goal is to look at exercise vs. not exercising and see what happens to women's breast cancer," Ligibel said.

More information

Visit the American Cancer Society for more on diet, physical activity and cancer.