WEDNESDAY, April 23 (HealthDay News) -- If you're an athlete or fitness enthusiast who suffers a strained muscle, sprained ankle or foot injury, you don't necessarily have to stop exercising.

"Exercise can definitely be beneficial for a person dealing with an injury. Depending on its type, the injured area should be moved and not left in place for a long period of time," Colleen Greene, wellness coordinator with MFit, the University of Michigan Health System's health promotion division, said in a prepared statement.

"Some people think they should just rest and not move at all with an injury. Doing that can actually be worse because -- depending on the amount of time one does not move the appendage -- the muscle might begin to atrophy," Greene said.

If you suffer an injury, the general rule of thumb for initial treatment is Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation (RICE). Once you've done that, consult a doctor as soon as possible. If the injury is severe enough, you may be referred to a physical therapist or specialist trainer. They'll help guide your recovery and offer tips on how to maintain strength while you heal.

The goal is to maintain strength, not to gain it, while you recover, said Greene, who added that you should pay attention to pain as you try different workouts.

"Pain is always the indicator; discomfort is OK, but pain tells you when you should stop what you are doing and do something else. You always want to keep in mind that you should be doing something that doesn't re-injure or further injure yourself," she said.

It's best to avoid injury in the first place, and there are preventive measures you can take to avoid pulling or straining a muscle: Warm up for five to 10 minutes; cool down at the end of your workout; and stretch.

"We find that as people age, they can actually pull muscles by doing everyday things such as bending over to grab a bag of groceries or leaning over to put something on a shelf," Greene said. "So the preventative measures that should be taken to avoid pulling or tearing a muscle with exercise are also measures that should be taken to avoid tearing or pulling a muscle in everyday life, not just on a basketball court."

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases has more about sports injuries.

SATURDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) -- Pregnancy has long been considered a kind of gastronomical free-for-all. After all, a pregnant woman has to nourish two bodies with the food she eats, right?

The problem is, the baby's nutritional needs are only around 300 calories a day, and extra weight gain can increase the risk of pregnancy complications for both mother and child.

And, weight concerns don't stop after the baby is born, because extra weight gain after pregnancy increases the risk of complications in subsequent pregnancies, even if a woman never gains enough to be considered overweight.

"Women think they have carte blanche to eat whatever they want during pregnancy, but that's not a good idea," said Dr. Miriam Greene, a clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University Medical Center and the author of the book, Frankly Pregnant: A Candid, Week-by-Week Guide to the Unexpected Joys, Raging Hormones, and Common Experiences of Pregnancy.

"If you eat for two, you'll end up with complications you didn't need to take on. Eat what your appetite tells you to eat, and eat slowly, so you can tell when you're full," advised Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, an obstetrician at MacDonald Women's Hospital at Case Medical Center, University Hospitals in Cleveland, and author of the book, The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book.

During pregnancy, an average-weight woman should gain about 25 to 35 pounds, according to Greene. "You don't want your weight gain to be less than 15 or greater than 40," she said.

But many women aren't heeding that advice. A recent report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found that about one-quarter of American women gain more than 40 pounds during their pregnancy. The IOM is currently reviewing its guidelines on pregnancy weight gain and expects to issue new guidelines during the summer of 2009.

In the meantime, the IOM recommends that women with a body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) of less than 18.5 should gain 28 to 40 pounds during pregnancy, while women with an average BMI -- 18.5 to 24.9 -- should keep weight gain between 25 and 35 pounds. Overweight women with BMIs of 25 to 29.9 should try to gain between 15 and 25 pounds throughout their pregnancy, and obese women with BMIs over 30 need only gain 15 pounds.

Gaining too much weight during pregnancy puts both baby and mom at risk of complications, such as gestational diabetes and high blood pressure, labor complications, stillbirth and delivery of a large-for-gestational age baby, according to the March of Dimes.

Greene said about two-thirds of her patients manage to stay within the guidelines. And those who don't are very disappointed at how hard the weight is to get off afterward.

She recommends that her pregnant patients eat well-balanced diets and that they don't give in to every food craving. "It's not healthy to gain weight eating pints of ice cream," she said.

Greenfield is also a fan of most exercises during pregnancy. Not only can exercise help you stave off pregnancy weight gain, it improves overall well-being as well, she said.

"Pregnancy is a special time when a lot of women will take better care of themselves to take care of the baby. It's a golden opportunity to take care of yourself, and you may have an impact on your health and your baby's health in the long run," Greenfield noted.

And, it's not just during pregnancy that women have to be concerned about extra pounds. A recent study found that every one or two point increase in a woman's BMI between pregnancies translated to an increased risk of gestational diabetes, high blood pressure and delivering a large baby by 20 percent to 40 percent. Women who increased their BMI more than three points between pregnancies had a 63 percent increased risk of delivering a stillborn baby.

The increases in the risks of complications held true even if the BMI changes didn't place a woman into the overweight or obese category, the study found.

More information

To learn more about weight gain during pregnancy, visit the American Pregnancy Association  .

FRIDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) -- Overeating, not the obesity it causes, is the actual cause of metabolic syndrome, suggests a study with mice by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Metabolic syndrome is a collection of health factors that increase the risk of developing insulin resistance, fatty liver, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

This study was among the first to propose that weight gain is an early symptom, not a direct cause, of metabolic syndrome, the researchers said.

"Most people today think that obesity itself causes metabolic syndrome," senior author Dr. Roger Unger, professor of internal medicine, said in a prepared statement. "We're ingrained to think obesity is the cause of all health problems, when, in fact, it is the spillover of fat into organs other than fat cells that damages these organs, such as the heart and the liver. Depositing fatty molecules in fat cells where they belong actually delays that harmful spillover."

In this study, Under and his colleagues compared normal mice to mice that were genetically altered to prevent their fat cells from expanding. Both groups of mice were overfed.

The normal mice got fat but didn't develop signs of metabolic syndrome until after about seven weeks of overeating. The genetically altered mice stayed slim but became seriously ill within a few weeks and displayed evidence of severe heart problems and major increases in blood sugar levels eight weeks before minimal heart problems developed in the normal mice, the researchers said.

The genetically altered mice showed significant damage to heart cells and to the insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. They also got sick quicker, because the extra calories they consumed weren't stored in fat cells, but rather in other tissues, the researchers said.

The study was published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The exact cause of metabolic syndrome, which affects about 50 million Americans, is unknown, but lack of exercise and obesity have been tagged as the primary underlying contributors to the development of the condition, according to background information in the study.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about metabolic syndrome.

THURSDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- Washing fresh fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of food poisoning, but only irradiation kills almost all disease-causing bacteria, new research shows.

The study suggests that irradiation, which is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, can kill bacteria that are beyond the reach of conventional chemical sanitizers, including inside the leaves of spinach and lettuce.

"If you have pathogens that are inside a leaf, then normal chemical sanitizers are not going to be able to kill those very effectively," said lead researcher Brendan A. Niemira, a microbiologist with the United States Department of Agriculture at the Agricultural Research Service in Wyndmoor, Pa.

"What I have demonstrated is that pathogens that are inside a leaf are killed by radiation," Niemira said. "This is something that has not been demonstrated before."

"The spinach outbreak in the fall of 2006, in particular, raised questions about how these organisms survived the various treatments that are applied -- the rinses and the washes and things, Niemira noted in a statement.

In addition, Niemira looked at pathogens that are protected inside a biofilm. Pathogens form complex communities on the surfaces of leaves called biofilms, he explained. "Once they are inside these biofilms, they are very difficult to kill."

In irradiation, food is exposed to electronic beams that create positive and negative charges. This process disrupts cell-destroying pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella, as well as insects.

Irradiation is used to kill bacteria and insects to extend the shelf life of food, for example, by delaying the ripening of fruits or the sprouting of vegetables. Irradiated foods, except for spices, must be labeled as such, according to the FDA. The FDA has been considering whether to approve irradiation to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria since 1999, Niemira noted.

The USDA researchers presented their findings Thursday at the American Chemical Society annual meeting, in New Orleans.

In their study, Niemira and his colleagues found a way to draw bacteria into the leaves of leafy green vegetables. The vegetables were then treated either with a three-minute water bath, three minutes of chemical treatment, or irradiation.

The researchers found that washing with plain water did not reduce bacteria levels in spinach or lettuce. Chemical treatment did not significantly reduce E. coli in spinach leaves and was less than 90 percent effective when it came to removing E. coli from lettuce.

Irradiation, however, reduced the level of E. coli by 99.99 percent in lettuce and by 99.9 percent in spinach, the researchers found.

In tests of biofilms that contained salmonella or E. coli, those that contained salmonella died more easily when exposed to radiation, while E. coli was a little bit more resistant, Niemira noted.

Irradiation has been criticized as a stopgap measure that ignores the bigger problem of how food in the United States is grown, processed and sold. Critics also claim that irradiation changes the taste and nutritional value of food, in addition to producing toxic chemicals.

"We have concerns about food irradiation," said Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety. "We think food irradiation is basically a Band-Aid approach to dealing with how you produce food and how you process it."

In addition, Mendelson is concerned about the process itself. "We know that irradiation produces unique substances in food that may have toxic effects. We also know that it affects both the nutritional quality of food and characteristics of the food that make it a pleasure to eat," he said.

"We don't think it's a viable technology. We think it's something consumers should avoid," Mendelson said.

However, supporters of irradiation say that the process is the only practical way to prevent spread of dangerous bacteria and increase shelf life, given the realities of how food is produced today.

"When you consider that the global problem with food will only increase, we need to preserve as much food as possible for distribution as we increase our population," said Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center.

"I think irradiation is a very good alternative technique, and it should be used more than it is," Tierno said. "Irradiated food products may be the means for extending shelf life of foods and, in addition, the killing of potential pathogens -- it may be the only means -- there may be no alternative," he said.

Niemira noted that scientific evidence shows that irradiation is safe and nutritional values remain unchanged.

"All the researchers showed that irradiated food is perfectly safe," Niemira said. "Do people want to approach the subject of irradiated food from a straight scientific standpoint -- as safe and effective? If there are other issues they want to bring to that and from a philosophical perspective, they say they don't want to eat irradiated food, well, that's another issue."

More information

For more about irradiated food, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.