Health briefs: App for diabetics, night owls eat more and eat worse, online health magazine for boomers

App for diabetics

A new iPhone/iPod/iPad app offers practical care pointers and humor every day to America's diabetics - perfectly timed to help them learn more and feel better, one day at a time.

The app, titled "Shot in the Arm," delivers diabetes management advice in brief, simple doses - which gives diabetics a prompt every day to improve the way they manage the disease. The care tips alternate with anecdotes and jokes from some of America's best comics.

"The ideas come at exactly the right time," says Richard Nash of Nashsmile LLC, the developer of the calendar, who's had type 1 diabetes for 42 years. "You check your phone one morning, you read a brief, simple idea to help you control your diabetes, you try it that day, it works - and all of a sudden, it's not a diabetes management tip from a book or a website. It's part of your life."

"And the next day, you check your phone again and there's something funny; it's not a lecture from your doctor or your spouse - it's fun."

"Shot in the Arm" is available for $2.99 in Apple's App Store.

Night owls eat more,

eat worse

Staying up late at night can lead to an additional 2 pounds a month weight gain, researchers reported recently. The study showed people who go to bed late eat more food, have worse diets and are more likely to have a higher body mass index.

Many studies over the past 10 years have pointed to the need for people to sleep when they're supposed to (at night) and to sleep for the needed amount of time - about eight hours for adults. Keeping a healthy sleep schedule allows the body's circadian rhythms to stay in sync and keeps a range of metabolic and physiological systems running smoothly.

In the study conducted by Northwestern University scientists, late sleepers consumed more calories at dinner and after 8 p.m., ate more fast food, drank more high-calorie soft drinks and had lower fruit and vegetable consumption. Overall, late sleepers consumed 248 more calories per day than normal sleepers. The late sleepers tended to eat less in the morning, then steeply increased their caloric intake in the afternoon and evening.

The study was published online in the journal Obesity.

Boomers online magazine

Carolyn Worthington is betting aging boomers are talking Internet-speak. While people 65-plus still make up less than 10 percent of active Internet users, their numbers are on the rise.

And what are they looking at after their bank accounts and e-mail and the weather?

Many of them are looking for health information.

Worthington, a successful producer of public television documentaries, education materials, books and other informational tools associated with aging, launched "Healthy Aging" as a digital - soon to be print version - health magazine at healthyaging.net.

"There are myths of aging out there and we aim to dispel them," she says. "We're going to educate people to feel more positive about aging."

Among articles featured on the site were a look at the plus side of traveling along, profiles of three people who got "fit" after 50 and The Mediterranean Diet.