Cornelius Parks & Recreation has spaces still availabe in a Monday moring class for Sun Style Tai Chi. Meanwhile, Davidson Parks & Rec has announced signups for a variety of March classes. Details below. Read the full story

By LYNDSAY KIBILOSKI
DavidsonNews.net

A friend and I decided to take a late evening trip to Starbucks the other night for a wintertime favorite, hot chocolate. I approached the counter, ordered and was immediately confronted with some bad news: My favorite, the salted caramel hot chocolate, had been discontinued. When I asked the obvious “Why?” I was told that it had too many calories. Read the full story

Parks & Recreation Departments in Davidson and Cornelius are kicking off weight-loss challenge programs this month, with weekly weigh-ins and education sessions and cash prizes for the biggest losers. Read the full story

SOURCE: Lake Norman Regional Medical Center
MOORESVILLE - Lake Norman Regional Medical Center will hold a free educational seminar “Boost Your Weight Loss: Is Surgical Weight Loss Right for You?” on Thursday, Jan. 14, 7 p.m., at the Statesville Civic Center, 300 South Center Street, in Statesville. Read the full story

The writer is president and CEO of United HealthCare of North Carolina.

Garland Scott

By GARLAND SCOTT

Obesity is tipping the scales as one of North Carolina’s biggest problems. Over the last 20 years in North Carolina, the percentage of the population that is obese has increased from 12.9 percent to 29.5 percent.

That’s an alarming trend, and it’s playing out in just about every community across the country. In fact, it’s a trend that has catapulted obesity to one of the top health problem facing our state and our nation. Read the full story

A new study shows that overuse of CT scans and widespread variations in radiation doses may lead to new cancer deaths. “When healthy people are exposed to the radiation, the imaging may create more problems than it solves,” the Los Angeles Times reports. See Dec. 15, 2009, “Overuse of CT scans will lead to new cancer deaths, a study shows”

Researchers say loneliness isn’t just a personal problem – mass loneliness is a threat to public health, the Los Angeles Times reports. Research published in the latest issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology asked these questions about loneliness: “Who feels it? And how are lonely people connected to the rest of us?” The authors found “like a virus, loneliness is contagious.” Read the article on LATimes.com.

Cognitive Daily is a psychology website that reports on peer-reviewed research in the field of cognition. It’s the work of Davidson residents Greta Munger, a psychology professor at Davidson College, and husband Dave Munger, editor of ResearchBlogging.org and a columnist on SeedMagazine.com.

Are women more social than men? Common sense and many research studies say so. But is that really the whole story? Cognitive Daily last week looked at additional research suggesting that men have larger social networks than women do, and that male-male friendships last longer than female-female ones. Read the Nov. 17 item: “Men often treat their friends better than women do.”

If you have 4 hours free over the next 4 months, you can be a part of one of the first studies based at the new North Carolina Research Campus! The UNC-Chapel Hill Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis is looking for toddlers to participate in a research study of memory and “good” fats. It will require 4 visits in a 4-month period of time. Nutritional supplements are provided and Read the full story

Slacklining. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Slacklining, which has participants making their way along a flat strip of nylon stretched between trees just above the ground, has been widely popular in Europe and among climbers. Now the exercise is spreading outside in the U.S. via college campuses, parks and youth camps.

“It’s like tai chi on a tightrope,” the Los Angeles Times reports. Read more about the latest fitness craze in an L.A. Times article, “Looking to achieve balance? Try slacklining.”