Eating more meat and dairy products has been linked to a higher rate of type 1 diabetes (also known as juvenile diabetes), and having a diet heavy in plant products - especially cereals - was tied to less type 1 diabetes, a recent study suggests. So does this mean that serving oatmeal instead of bacon cheeseburgers will prevent your child from getting diabetes?

Program Aims to Help Tots Exposed to Drugs

Little Rachel, at only 18 months old, runs around the playroom finding toys and watching older children work on computers. Her 3-year-old sister, cute and bespectacled Kacey, gamely tries more physical activities. Towheaded Taz, who already is big at age 3, is the leader for an obstacle course game.

Body Piercing Gone Awry

From the tongue to the navel to, yes, the private places, body piercings are becoming more and more common. But untrained piercers, unsanitary conditions and people who simply don't take care of their punctured parts are contributing to an increase in infections, injuries and even deaths.

Would you like to reduce unnecessary email, but still stay professionally connected?

Instead of using our listservs to discuss topics, start posting health, fitness, and nutrition questions to the PE-Forum, then email your favorite listserv to invite comments ON THE FORUM rather than to everyone on the email list!

The PE-Forum is easy-to-use once you complete a first time registration.

Check it out!

The next time you go to put food in your mouth, ask yourself a question. Are you REALLY hungry? Does your body really need that food ? That snack? That second portion at dinner?

Asthma-Proof Your Child

Obesity from lack of exercise, another childhood health crisis, is helping fuel today's asthma epidemic. Overweight children are twice as likely to develop asthma as normal-weight kids.

Promoting Physical Activity Through School Physical Education

Jim Morrow and colleagues outline how physical education can contribute to the promotion of regular physical activity, and its associated fitness and health benefits.

School Health Index

Here's a self-assessment and planning tool that will enable schools to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their physical activity and nutrition policies and programs, and develop an action plan for improving student health.

Four months into a solo bike tour of Australia, Susie Stephens’ knees, hips and ankles had become so stiff and swollen that she could barely stand up to get in and out of her tent. For weeks she had attributed her symptoms to overtraining; after all, she’d been cycling eight to 10 hours a day. By the time she came home, she couldn’t straighten her elbows. Her fingers had swollen up as if they were broken. “In five months,” says Stephens, 35, a nonprofit consultant in Winthrop, Wash., “I went from being very athletic to not being able to turn on the shower by myself.”

A physical therapist prescribed stretching and strengthening exercises, but the pain worsened. It wasn’t until two months later that a doctor stunned Stephens with a definitive diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis, a progressive disease in which the body’s immune cells attack the membranes surrounding the joints.

Stephens is lucky. She began treatment before the disease permanently damaged her joints — and lucky, she says, that her pain was severe enough to demand medical attention. “Otherwise, I might have played the stoic forever,” says Stephens. “When you’re young and athletic, you don’t think anything serious could be wrong with you.”

It's crucial for women to recognize their symptoms because many chronic conditions (rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and thyroid disease) are not emphasized in medical school, and thus physicians may not put all your symptoms together. You are your own best advocate.

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It's easy to eat foods that will give you lots of energy and help you stay healthy! One way to eat right is to follow the U.S.D.A. Food Pyramid.

Calculate Your Body Mass Index (BMI)

See if your weight puts you at risk of health problems.