According to published research from a University of Illinois economist, advertising bans DO work on children. In fact, an outright ban covering the entire U.S. media market would be the most effective policy tool for reducing fast-food consumption.
“The advertising lobby is very fond of saying bans don’t work, that regulations don’t work,” said Kathy Baylis. the professor that reseached this. However, about $11 billion per year is spent on advertising aimed at children.
Kathy Baylis, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics, studied the ban on junk-food advertising imposed in the Canadian province of Quebec from 1984 to 1992 and its effect on fast-food purchases.
By comparing English-speaking households, who were less likely to be affected by the ban, to French-speaking households, Baylis and co-author Tirtha Dhar, of the University of British Columbia, found evidence that the ban reduced fast-food expenditures by 13 percent per week in French-speaking households, leading to between 11 million and 22 million fewer fast-food meals eaten per year, or 2.2 billion to 4.4 billion fewer calories consumed by children.
“Given the nature of Quebec’s media market and demographics, a ban would disproportionately affect French-speaking households, but would not affect similar households in Ontario or households without children in either province,” Baylis said.
The Germans have discovered why junk food advertising works.
In a recent study, Axel Steiger and his research group at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany investigated the molecular processes involved in visual stimulation.
The Research
Subjects were shown either delicious food or non-edible objects.
The concentrations of different hormones in the blood such as grehlin, leptin and insulin, which play a role in the regulation of eating, were measured.
The researchers observed that the concentration of grehlin in the blood increased specifically in response to the visual stimulation of food images.
“The findings of our study demonstrate for the first time that the release of ghrelin into the blood for the regulation of food consumption is also controlled by external factors. Our brain thereby processes these visual stimuli, and the physical processes that control our perception of appetite are triggered involuntarily. This mechanism could prompt us to eat a piece of cake just two hours after breakfast,” says Petra Schüssler, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute.
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Ice baths are fashionable in professional sports. But, do they work on pain?
Baseball stars like C. J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers swear by cold therapy. The San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and other N.B.A. teams provide players with high-tech cryotherapy machines. And Paula Radcliffe, the British runner, said she took a 10-minute ice bath after setting her world-record marathon time in 2003. “It takes the inflammation down in my legs,” she said.
Researchers wrote:
The ice bath ”hasn’t been well studied,” says Christopher Sforzo, an M.D. and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine. The researchers looked through many data bases, dating back to 1929. They could find only the 17 studies they reviewed as scientific enough to include.
On average the people studied were 16 to 29.
The temperature of the ice baths varied among studies, usually about 50 to 59 degrees. People sat in the baths for five to 24 minutes. They usually were immersed up to the waist.
The ice baths were typically taken within 20 minutes of finishing the workout. In some studies, people took more than one ice bath after a workout.
Fourteen studies compared ice baths with rest or no treatment. Some studies compared ice baths to warm baths, warm-cold alternating baths, light jogging, and compression stockings. The researchers found no differences in relief between these remedies.
The ice bath reduced muscle soreness by about 20%.
Many of the studies did not look at complications.
The review is published in The Cochrane Library.
Soreness defined
The soreness that can occur after unaccustomed exercise or a stepped-up workout is known as delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. It usually peaks between 24 and 48 hours later.
It involves muscle stiffness, swelling, declines in strength, and localized muscle soreness.
Experts think it’s due to mechanical damage that occurs to the muscle fibers. That can lead to inflammation and pain.
How do ice baths work?
Experts don’t have an answer to that. A number of studies used blood samples to examine the effect of immersion on inflammation and muscle damage.
no studies found an effect on the inflammation response.
The researchers did find a reduction in pain, and that can follow inflammation and muscle damage.
Maybe ice baths don’t work.
Some researchers suspect “The Placebo Effect” is at work here.
“The physician’s belief in the treatment and the patient’s faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy that is almost guaranteed to produce an improvement and sometimes a cure.” Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick, Follies and Fallacies in Medicine.
Ice Baths: Not for Everyone
Immersion in cold water can affect the heart, blood vessels, and respiratory system.
Traditional pain relief recommendation for sprains and strains
Cold first: it’s usually best to first apply a cold compress for about 20 minutes at a time every four to six hours over the first few days. Cold reduces swelling and inflammation and relieves pain.
Then heat: Start using heat after pain and swelling have decreased, usually two to three days after the injury. Heat relaxes tightened and sore muscles and reduces pain.
Heat is usually better than cold for chronic pain, including arthritis. It also relaxes the muscles.
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