Apples really can help keep the doctor away

? They are low in calories (a medium-size apple has only 80), fat-free, sodium-free, cholesterol-free and full of fiber.

? They contain immune-boosting Vitamin C, which is important for the growth and repair of all body tissues. Vitamin C also helps to heal cuts and wounds and keeps teeth and gums healthy.

? They help you meet your daily fruit intake. The USDA recommends about two cups of fruit per day for most adults. A medium apple counts as a cup of fruit, so if you snack on one fresh apple while on the go, you are halfway to meeting your daily fruit intake.

Ready to start looking for apple recipes? Be careful. Many apple recipes contain loads of butter and refined sugar (think traditional apple pie) and advise you to remove the skin, stripping away important dietary fiber and nutrients. With apple season in full swing, find out how to maximize your “apple a day.”

Keep the skin on

Most of the fiber in apples comes from the skin and the pulp. When you remove the skin, you remove about half the fiber. A medium apple with skin contains 3.3 grams of fiber, whereas a medium without skin has only 1.7 grams. Applesauce and apple juice contain even less. Dietary fiber is important for weight management, because it keeps you fuller longer. Dietary fiber from fruit, as part of an overall healthful diet, helps reduce blood cholesterol levels and might lower the risk of heart disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Plus, fiber aids in proper bowel function and helps to reduce constipation.

An apple’s skin is also incredibly nutrient-rich. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, apples are loaded with the powerful antioxidant quercetin, which is found predominantly in the skin. Quercetin is a phytochemical with anti-inflammatory and heart-protecting qualities, and may reduce the growth and spread of cancer cells.

Eat the right apples

Choose apples with the stem intact. Also try smelling them — you should be able to actually smell the freshness.

Apples can stay fresh in your refrigerator for up to three weeks. Keep them in a plastic bag and away from other foods with strong odors.

Make them part of your routine

Consumed whole, apples make for a mess-free and convenient snack. For a more filling option, you can slice them up and dip them into yogurt or your favorite nut butter. Diced apples also make a great topping. Try them with your morning oatmeal or lunchtime salad.

Visit a nearby orchard or your farmers market for fresh off-the-tree apples. Use them in any of these healthful recipes, found in The Post’s Recipe Finder at washingtonpost.com/recipes:

?Apple recipes for a seaonal feast

?Autumn Fruit and Vegetable Bisque

?Beet and Apple Slaw

? Carrot Apple Soup

? Curried Sweet Potatoes With Apples

? Gingered Applesauce

? Honey-Braised Chicken Thighs With Apple

? Moroccan Chickpeas With Apples

? Squash and Apple Puree

? Waldorf Salad

?Warm Ginger, Apple and Cabbage Slaw

? Wild Rice, Sweet Potato and Apple Chowder

Apple pie makeover

Apples are probably most known for their role in popular American desserts such as apple pies, cobblers, crisps, cakes and tarts. Apple pie is a classic fall comfort food, but a typical slice of it can set you back anywhere from 300 to 600 calories (and this doesn’t include the vanilla ice cream you might scoop on top of your slice).

This apple pie makeover is a healthful and portion-controlled dessert that is great for adults or children. Importantly, this recipe leaves the apple skin on to increase the overall nutrients and fiber, making the recipe more healthful and satisfying.

Most apple pie fillings drown the apples with refined sugar. And most crusts are loaded with butter and refined flour. This Apple Pie Bites recipe gains subtle sweetness naturally from apples, applesauce and brown rice syrup, a liquid sweetener that is both gluten-free and vegan. It is made by cooking sprouted brown rice in water that is then evaporated, producing a syrup that retains antioxidants. In this recipe, it helps to act as a binding agent for the crust as well as a sweetener.

The crust contains no butter and is made from brown rice flour and almond flour, which means it’s gluten-free and vegan-friendly. It’s also in­cred­ibly simple; this recipe would be great for a novice chef.

One bite might not get you nearly as many nutrients as a whole fresh apple, but it will satisfy your apple pie craving (and your sweet tooth). At 50 calories a pop, you can afford to go back for seconds — or even thirds.

Recipe: Apple Pie Bites

Gordon, a master of public health professional and a master certified health education specialist, is creator of the healthful recipe site EatingbyElaine.com. Find her on Twitter at @EatingbyElaine.

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Just What The Doctor Ordered For Amgen

Amgen (AMGN) has been in the news primarily due to the dilly-dally that kept going on for months on the acquisition of Onyx (ONXX). Now that it is a done deal, the focus has shifted to discussions on the company's entry into the blood cancer market. The acquisition is a good opportunity in a new market not only because it marks the entry of Amgen into the blood cancer space, but also because Amgen needed it badly.

Amgen's entry into the multiple myeloma market

Amgen paid $10.4 billion primarily for Onyx's main, and the only fully-owned multiple myeloma (MM) drug, Kyprolis. MM is a cancer of the plasma cells, a type of white blood cell. Amgen has ten products in the market for treatment of various diseases including cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, but none in the blood cancer space. The company is currently evaluating candidates in four modalities - antibody, cancer immunotherapy, small molecules and protein/peptibody (a flexible alternative format to antibodies).

The disease remains incurable as nearly all patients suffer a relapse or develop resistance to the medicine. The MM market has seen great advancement in the last ten years with a number of new drugs being approved by the FDA. Still, Kyprolis had a dream launch after approval in July last year.

The drug was able to capture 10% market share with sales of $18.6 million in the quarter it was launched. This was way above $7-15 million that the analysts had forecast. In the first six months of 2013, sales touched $125 million. Net sales for Q2 2013 were $61 million, plus $10 million deferred revenue on account of inventory at distributors waiting to be shipped to physicians and hospitals.

Competition

Kyprolis was approved with a specific condition that it is to be a third line treatment, meaning it can be given only to patients who do not respond to other MM drugs - Velcade of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Revlimid from Celgene (CELG). Additionally, the disease must have progressed after a therapy had been stopped within the last 60 days.

Kyprolis is expected to get stiff competition from Celgene's Pomalyst, approved for MM in February 2013, and which, like Kyprolis, is also a third line treatment.

The strong launch of Pomalyst - Q2 sales of $66 million - prompted the company to raise the sales estimates for 2013 by 25% to $115 million.

Financials

Amgen is the world's largest biotechnology company with $17.27 billion annual revenue and a net income of $4.35 billion or $5.93 per share. The Onyx deal is the fifth largest in the history of M&As in the biotechnology industry, and despite a strong balance showing more than $22 billion in cash and cash equivalents, Amgen had to borrow $8.1 billion in 5-year loans on an average interest rate of 1.3%. Actually, it makes sense and is in line with what most cash rich companies with overseas presence normally do. Most of Amgen's cash reserves are stacked abroad with its overseas subsidiaries and it will have to pay tax if the money is brought back to the U.S.

Investors' take

The Onyx acquisition is a big plus and marks Amgen's first foray in treatment of MM, the second most common blood cancer. The National Cancer Institute estimates that there are roughly 21,700 MM patients in the U.S. and nearly 10,710 deaths every year from the disease.

Cancer drugs command a high price in the market. At the recommended dose for an average sized patient, Kyprolis costs $10,000 per 28-day cycle. That makes Kyprolis the most expensive MM drug. Depending upon the frequency of dosage, Velcade costs anything between $4,000 and $8,000. Revlimid, on the other hand, costs $7,900.

Along with Kyprolis, Amgen also gets Onyx's two other cancer drugs - Nexavar and Stivarga - where Onyx partners with Bayer. Together, both partnership agreements contributed nearly $92 million to Onyx's revenue in the quarter ended June 30, 2013.

Just what the doctor ordered for Amgen

Over the years, Amgen has grown through M&As. In 2001 it acquired Immunex and through it the rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel. Currently, Enbrel is among Amgen's topline products.

Amgen needed an Onyx-like acquisition badly. For one, sales of Aranesp and Epogen, its flagship drugs for anemia, are dropping on concerns of safety, and loss of monopoly in 2012 to Affymax (AFFY), which received FDA approval for a rival anemia drug. Secondly, four of its top selling products go off patent in 2015.

My take

Amgen deserves inclusion in every biotech portfolio. It is a dividend paying company, yielding 1.69% at CMP, with a fair potential for growth due to the Onyx acquisition and its pipeline drugs.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, but may initiate a long position in AMGN over the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)

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Contemplating reasons for not getting results of HIV tests increases likelihood of returning to doctor

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry;  Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 31 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Contemplating reasons for not getting results of HIV tests increases likelihood of returning to doctor

Some studies of at-risk populations suggest that up to half of the people tested for HIV never return to the doctor's office to find out their test results. While many of these people may simply forget to return or deem the results unimportant, it is likely that a portion of people don't return because they don't want to know the results.

In three studies, Jennifer Howell and James Shepperd of the University of Florida investigated whether prompting people to contemplate their reasons for seeking and avoiding the health information would make them more willing to receive their medical results.

The results of these experiments are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Participants filled out a motives questionnaire intended to make them think thoroughly about the reasons underlying their decision to seek or avoid their results. Questions included: "Learning that I am at high risk for diabetes would be distressing," or "I would regret not learning my risk for diabetes."

All participants also filled out a diabetes risk calculator and received the opportunity to learn their risk. Those who filled out the motives questionnaire before deciding whether to learn their risk were more likely to choose to see their results than those who filled it out after deciding whether to learn their risk. The same trend emerged when participants generated their own reasons for seeking or avoiding their risk for cardiovascular disease. Together, these two studies suggest that prompting people to contemplate their reasons for seeking or avoiding health information makes them more likely to seek out information about their own health risks.

But it turns out that this effect was only applicable for conditions that are treatable. In the last experiment, some participants were told that TAA deficiency - a made-up condition - was treatable, and some were told it was not. Contemplation made participants more likely to seek out their test results when they thought the condition was treatable, but not when they thought it was an untreatable disease.

As medical treatments become more advanced, early detection and intervention will become increasingly important. Simply asking patients to contemplate the reasons they would seek or avoid their screening results may make them more likely to follow up with their doctor, thus reducing the public health burden.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our hiv / aids section for the latest news on this subject.

This article was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to J. L. Howell under Grant DGE-0802270; by an Intergovernmental Personnel Assignment Agreement between J. A. Shepperd and the National Cancer Institute; and by National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research Grant U54DE019261-0, funded through the Southeast Center for Research to Reduce Disparities in Oral Health, to J. A. Shepperd.

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