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Health Check: 16/11/2011

16/11/2011

BBC World Service - Health Check, 16/11/2011

Could a different cut-off point for calculating obesity in South Asians fight diabetes?

Could a different cut-off point for calculating obesity in South Asians help to fight diabetes? What twins, conjoined at the brain can tell us about the mind. Sleeping sickness map in Uganda

OBESITY AND DIABETES
Obesity is a becoming a huge global problem.  You can find out if you are overweight or obese – by using one of the many BMI or Body Mass Index calculators on the internet. You simply provide your height, weight and gender and a chart will show you whether you need to lose weight to protect your health.  But a new British study is calling for the definition of obesity amongst South Asians to be reclassified. A person is said to be obese if their BMI is over 30.  But using data from more than 6,000 people Professor Kamlesh Khunti from Leicester University is calling for a lower cut-off point. 

TWIN MINDS
Twin girls from Canada - Tatiana and Krista Hogan - are challenging what we know about the mind. The five year old girls are joined at the head, and each has her own brain but one part – the thalamus – is joined. So one girl can see or taste something whilst the other seems to respond. Professor Todd Feinberg, the author of From Axons to Identity: Neurological Explorations of the Nature of the Self, is particularly interested in what their case can tell about our ideas of self. He and the girls’ neurosurgeon, Professor Doug Cochrane from BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, consider how the anatomy of the twins’ brains is challenging accepted ideas about the mind. 

SLEEPING SICKNESS
In Uganda there is a fear that two types of a lethal disease are moving closer together. Sleeping sickness is spread by tsetse flies, which carry the trypanosome parasite. The two strains of the disease are now separated by just 100km - and part of their life cycle is spent in cattle, which are moved around the countryside. Treating the condition is expensive and it’s often difficult to diagnose because the symptoms can mimic malaria. It’s hoped that better prevention and treatments can limit its spread.

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