WEDNESDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News) — The edict to eat less and exercise more is far from far-reaching, as a new analysis points to the increased consumption of potato chips, French fries, sugary sodas and red meat as a major cause of weight gain in people across the United States.

Inadequate changes in lifestyle factors such as television watching, exercise and sleep were also linked to gradual but relentless weight gain across the board.

Data from three separate studies following more than 120,000 healthy, non-obese American women and men for up to 20 years found that participants gained an average of 3.35 pounds within each four-year period — totaling more than 16 pounds over two decades.

The unrelenting weight gain was tied most strongly to eating potatoes, sugar-sweetened beverages, red and processed meats and refined grains such as white flour.

“This is the obesity epidemic before our eyes,” said study author Dr.

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WEDNESDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News) — Researchers searching for an early indicator of autism say they’ve discovered a promising possibility: an impairment in the ability of the brain’s right and left hemispheres to communicate with each other.

In the study, researchers did brain imaging scans (fMRIs) on 29 sleeping toddlers with autism, 30 typically developing kids and 13 children with significant language delays, but not autism. All were between 1 and 4 years old.

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NEW YORK (CNN) — Beachgoers are being warned to stay out of the water this weekend at four popular beaches around New York City after raw sewage from a Manhattan plant spilled into the Hudson River, authorities said.

Health advisories also have been issued for portions of the Hudson River, the East River, the Harlem River and the Kill Van Kull, cautioning people against participating in water-related activities such as canoeing, kayaking and swimming, according to the New York City Department of Health.

The sewage spill began Wednesday after a fire began in the engine room of the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, according to a press release Friday from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

The sewage spill was stopped Friday night, and two of the engines damaged by the fire have been brought back online, the department said.

The health advisories were issued for South Beach, Midland Beach and Cedar Grove Beach on Staten Island, and Sea Gate in Brooklyn, according to the release.

The beaches are not closed, but the New York City Department of Health recommends that people not swim or enter the water at those locations. Read more…

Multiple chins, bulging tummies and flabby arms: It’s easy to see where fat accumulates on the body.

When a person starts losing weight, where does the fat go? And what parts of the body can you expect to see results?

Headlines from fitness magazines promise exercises to blast away belly fat and activities to spot-reduce flab. Read more…

First coined by the Roman poet Horace and later adopted by Winston Churchill to describe his own depression, the metaphor of the “black dog” has been used for centuries. Now a mental health charity has reclaimed the expression and wants to bring it to a plinth near you.

Sane is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month and, to mark the occasion, it will be continuing the fight to beat the taboos surrounding mental illness by producing larger-than-lifesize sculptures of dogs that its founder and chief executive, Marjorie Wallace, hopes will be sponsored by companies, schools and individuals and put in prominent positions up and down the country.

The campaign has attracted the support of celebrities who have suffered from depression, including Rory Bremner, Stephen Fry and Ray Davies, and each dog will have a specially designed coat.

“The black dog has been used as a metaphor for depression from classical mythology through medieval folklore to Churchill.

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TUESDAY, July 19 (HealthDay News) — Older adults who keep active may be helping to reduce their odds of losing their mental abilities, two new studies suggest.

Both reports were published online July 19 in the , to coincide with presentations scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Paris.

“We looked at an objective measure of physical activity — most previous studies looked at self-reported levels of physical activity, which always has some inherent error,” said the lead researcher of the first study, Laura E.

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As run after run flows from his majestic bat, Marcus Trescothick no longer sings to himself with quite the same anxious need. But sometimes, during a tricky patch on a difficult pitch, he will repeat the old mantra. It conjures a surreal image as, opening the batting for Somerset on a cloudy summer’s day, Trescothick silently sings the words of Eminem’s Lose Yourself.

“Look,” he will hum under his breath, his Somerset accent mangling a skinny white rap from Detroit, “if you had one shot, or one opportunity/To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment/Would you capture it?”

Trescothick, who lost his career with England to a debilitating mental illness, now captures the moment over and over again.

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ReutersKarachi, Pakistan (CNN) — At a morgue in Pakistan’s largest city, five linen pouches — each the size of a loaf of bread — line the shelf of a walk-in freezer.

Wrapped inside each small sack is the corpse of an infant.

The babies are victims of what one relief agency calls Pakistan’s worst unfolding tragedy — the killing and dumping of newborns.

“Sometimes they hang them and sometimes they kill by the knife, and sometimes we find bodies which have been burned,” said Anwar Kazmi, a manager at Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest privately run social service and relief agency.

Records at Edhi Foundation show more than 1,200 newborns were killed and dumped in Pakistan last year, an increase of about 200 from the previous year.

Families view many of these children as illegitimate in a culture that condemns those born outside of marriage.

Statistics show roughly nine out of 10 are baby girls, which families may consider too costly to keep in a country where women frequently are not allowed to work.

The babies are usually just days old. Read more…