Staying alive to a disco beat

Supplements not much help to knees

In 2006, researchers reported that the widely used diet supplements glucosamine and chondroitin were no more effective against osteoarthritis than a placebo, except for a small benefit in some people with arthritis of the knee. Now a new study suggests that the substances may be ineffective for them, too.

That two-year study, published in the October issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism, examined glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, the two together, and celecoxib. It found no significant difference between any of the four treatments and a placebo. No treatment achieved a clinically important improvement, and the disease progressed at the same rate in all groups. Dr. Allen D. Sawitzke, the lead author, said that further study might still find some benefit.

Women who gain more than 40 pounds during pregnancy are about twice as likely to give birth to a heavy baby as those who gain less, according to a large new study.

Mothers of babies who weigh more than about nine pounds at birth are at greater risk for birth complications, and heavy babies are more likely to be overweight or obese later in life.

It is well known that mothers with gestational diabetes are more likely to have large babies, but this study showed a strong effect of weight gain even in mothers who were not diabetic.

The study was published in the November issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Well, you can tell by the way he pounds your chest, he's an ER man, and his tempo is best.

That's right -- "Stayin' Alive," the song some people might pay to get out of their head, may be just what their heart needs if it suddenly stops.

Researchers say the Bee Gees song, from the 1977 hit movie "Saturday Night Fever," offers almost the perfect pace for performing chest compressions on people who have had heart attacks. Emergency workers doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation are advised to press down on the chest 100 times a minute. "Stayin' Alive" has 103 beats a minute.

The findings were presented at a conference of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

-- New York Times