MANILA, Philippines—Even before the unkind words and scrutinizing looks Lani Ayala receives from people around her, the 38-year-old real estate and property leasing officer from Davao City already knew she really had to take control of her life.

Weighing 112.5 kg (248 lb), she knew she was way beyond the average that her 5’3” frame should have.

Although her health has remained fine she nevertheless decided to do something to lose weight and keep it.

“Of course I tried fad diets like South Beach, The Zone, and rotation and even played badminton as well as work out in the gym. In the end I just repeated an endless cycle of sudden weight-loss followed by equally fast weight-gain that began when I was in Grade 4, when my parents put me on a diet,” Ayala remembered.

In the 1930s a Scottish miner seeking work moved his family to the Kent coalfield. After settling them into a house in Betteshanger, he travelled back to Scotland and removed a door frame from their old house.

He carried it back to Kent and carefully built it into one of the doors there. Why? Because this precious scrap of wood was covered in the pencil marks that he and his wife had made as they measured the growth of their children. He could not bear to part with this tangible record of their growth and health.

Parents have always wanted to track their children's progress, and until about 30 years ago had little difficulty.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Morbidly obese adults who undergo a particular type of stomach bypass surgery called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) appear to be at increased risk of developing kidney stones earlier than previously thought. The increase in stone risk was evident just three months after the surgery.

"Although this study demonstrates that there is a higher risk for developing kidney stones (after RYGB), it is important to weigh the risk against the many benefits that RYGB has for the morbidly obese patient, including decreasing cardiac (illness) and improving diabetes," Dr. Manoj Monga, from the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, noted in a written statement.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Paradoxically, obesity may offer some protection against heart-related "events," like heart attack, in people who have a stent placed to prop open a clogged coronary artery, research shows.

In a study, researchers found that obese patients who had stents placed in diseased arteries had a lower incidence of adverse cardiac events than their normal-weight counterparts.

Larger randomized trials are needed to confirm or refute the obesity paradox seen in this and other relatively small studies of drug-eluting stents, Dr. Ahmed A. Khattab of the Segeberger Kliniken in Bad Segeberg, Germany, and colleagues note in a report in the American Journal of Cardiology.

Sleep apnea is the temporary stoppage of breathing during sleep. Technically, a person is said to have sleep apnea if breathing stops for at least ten seconds, five times an hour.

Your body responds to the stoppage of breathing by waking you, which leads to sleep apnea sufferers experiencing very poor sleep. In addition, sleep apnea sufferers tend to experience serious health complications including an increased risk for:

As millions of teenagers begin their final summer before college, not a few are prepping for cosmetic surgery, to take advantage of the long recovery time and a transition from one peer group to the next. In the aftermath of a $20 million-plus court award in Pennsylvania in May to a family whose 18-year-old daughter died from what was likely a pulmonary embolism after liposuction, some parents may be wondering whether cosmetic treatments in teens are safe.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A broad range of policy and environmental initiatives at the local, state and federal levels aimed at increasing physical activity and healthful eating is needed to reduce rates of obesity in the United States, according to an American Heart Association (AHA) scientific statement in the Association's journal Circulation, published Monday.

In an AHA-issued press release, Dr. Shiriki Kumanyika, chair of the working group that wrote the scientific statement "Population-Based Prevention of Obesity," noted that "almost all of our current eating or activity patterns are those that promote weight gain -- using the least possible amount of energy or maximizing quantity rather than quality in terms of food."