Health and fitness briefs: Swine flu? There's an app for that

iPhone shows flu outbreaks

A new iPhone application called "Outbreaks Near Me" shows users the spread in their area of H1N1 swine flu and other infectious diseases including syphilis, tuberculosis, and hepatitis, Children's Hospital Boston said in a news release. Users who download the app enter a location to see the latest infectious disease reports in real time, the hospital said. HealthMap, an online database that collects and reports information on infectious diseases, powers the app, which also lets users set alerts for new outbreaks.

The app was developed by researchers at the hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.

Rich man, thin man

A new economics paper suggests that simply making people richer is a powerful way to promote healthier eating habits and create a drop in BMI (body mass index a common measure of obesity.)

A problem boosting obesity among Americans is "grazing." These are the midnight snacks, extra trips to the cookie jar and linners (that's the extra meal between lunch and dinner) that we're all guilty of.

Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas found that higher wages meant less grazing. Here's why: When time is sort, people substitute grazing for eating, essentially switching to multi-tasking an activity that may be one of the more readily multi-tasked. When your time is more precious (because you have higher earning potential with that time), you cut out the time-wasting activities like grazing, and your meals start to more closely resemble the healthier three square meals.

Strong quads protect knees

Millions of older women suffer the pain and stiffness of arthritis in their knee joints, which can severely curtail everyday activities like climbing stairs or getting out of a car.

It turns out there may be a way to protect our knees: strong thigh muscles. That's according to a University of Iowa study, which found that women who had the strongest thigh muscles were about 50 percent less likely to develop knee pain compared with those with the weakest muscles. The study didn't find the same association in men.

Previous research has shown that strong quadriceps muscles (located in the upper half of the leg) help protect against cartilage loss behind the kneecap and also provide crucial support for the joint. However, strong thigh muscles don't appear to actually prevent osteoarthritis in the knee; about 10 percent of the female participants developed knee arthritis over the 21/2-year study, according to X-rays.