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The latest government figures show that more than 60 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. Carrying this extra weight puts them at a greater risk of developing heart disease, stroke, some cancers, diabetes, or other diseases. But just what is meant by "overweight" or "obese"?
A reliable indicator is body mass index, or BMI. It's a number that gauges total body fat, allowing male and female adults to determine if they are underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. You can calculate this number by dividing your weight by your height squared. An easier way, however, is to use the handy BMI calculator the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has created. With it, you can see where you stand in the body fat spectrum and establish if you have a risk factor that should be addressed.
One caveat: Though BMI can be a strong predictor of serious disorders, it does have limitations in that it may overestimate body fat in those with a muscular build and underestimate it in older persons who have lost muscle mass. For this reason, it's always best to discuss your BMI with a health care professional.
Note that the calculator is just for figuring adult BMIs. Arriving at this number for children and teens is a bit trickier. That's because children's bodies change as they grow. Also, boys and girls differ in their body fatness as they mature. On a special site that shows how to determine a child's BMI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that BMI decreases during the preschool years, then increases into adulthood.
For many of us, exposure to information about the neurological disorder autism is likely limited to the movie "Rain Man." But autism actually is fairly common, affecting as many as 1 in 500 children, according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Often diagnosed by age 3, autism is about four times as likely to affect boys as it is girls. Autism-related behaviors can range in impact from mild to disabling. In most cases, no underlying cause can be identified, but researchers are investigating the possible role of infectious, metabolic, genetic, and environmental factors.
Want to learn more about autism? Three federal Web sites have a wealth of material:
In the very near future, we'll be surrounded by products created through nanotechnology. Already this science--defined as research and development on a scale smaller than a living cell--is being used to create novel materials for applications in electronics, biomedical, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and other industries. Products derived from nanotechnology, such as new paints, dental bonding agents, burn and wound dressings, and sunscreens are on the market now.
Because some of these products, as well as others that are proposed, fall within the FDA's oversight, the agency has created a Web site to help clarify nanotechnology regulation. Here, the agency explains that some of these new products fall neatly into the categories of drugs, devices, or other areas within FDA purview. Others, such as a drug delivery device, are considered "combination products" requiring a special kind of oversight.
The Web site contains several slide presentations and links to other resources, including the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which offers a good overview of government activities in nanotechnology.
FDA.gov is written by John Henkel, a member of the FDA's Website Management Staff.