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Health and Life
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Tiger Woods kept his saucy private life under wraps for years, but the flaws of English soccer superstar John Terry, one of the country's most prominent athletes, have always been on very public display.
In 2001, Mr. Terry drunkenly taunted American tourists in a Heathrow Airport hotel in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. A year later, he was caught on camera urinating in a beer glass, which he then dropped on the floor. In 2008, Mr. Terry was fined for parking his Bentley in a spot for the disabled. Last December, he was secretly filmed giving unauthorized tours of his team's training ground to journalists posing as businessmen, allegedly in return for GBP 10,000 (or $15,900) cash.
None of these pratfalls stopped Mr. Terry from winning and keeping one of the nation's highest honors: being named captain of England's national soccer team, a cherished post he has held since 2006. But now Mr. Terry stands accused of the taboo offense that might finally cost him the job: having an affair with a teammate's partner.
Late last week, a U.K. High Court lifted an injunction preventing publication of allegations that Mr. Terry, the married father of twin 3-year-olds, had engaged in an extramarital relationship with the former girlfriend of Wayne Bridge -- a teammate of his on England's national team who formerly played alongside Mr. Terry for Chelsea in the English Premier League. Mr. Bridge and the woman, lingerie model Vanessa Perroncel, have a child together.
A spokesman for Mr. Terry said his 'position is that this is a private matter.' Chelsea issued a statement saying: 'The club will give John and his family all the support they need in dealing with it.' The coach of England's national team, Fabio Capello, will decide whether Mr. Terry remains as captain. Mr. Bridge has issued a statement saying he won't comment in the interest of protecting his son. Ms. Perroncel has made no comment.
The resulting public cloudburst has brought finger-wagging comment from a government minister over Mr. Terry's fitness to be captain if the allegations are true; taunts from profane British soccer fans capable of making Oakland Raiders fans blush; and 24/7 coverage of how the central characters -- Mr. Terry and his wife, Mr. Bridge and Ms. Perroncel -- are trying to repair the damage.
Soccer players, long an object of British obsession, once enjoyed a protective bubble that minimized revelation of their bad-boy antics. But the game has been transformed in recent years by big TV money, free-spending owners and lavish salaries and endorsement deals.
At the same time, a lucrative side business has been created around players' wives and girlfriends, branded WAGs (as in Wives and Girlfriends), spawning popular TV shows, launching celebrity careers and breaking down the wall between players' public and private lives.
All that has turned English soccer into a big reality TV show. The current flare-up is even more intense because it comes in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup -- a tournament England thinks it can win for the first time since 1966.
England opens its Cup quest on June 12 with a high-profile match against the U.S. in South Africa. One former member of the U.S. national team, Alexi Lalas, doesn't think the Terry scandal will matter: 'You don't have to like your teammates; you have to be confident they can do their job on the field. If England's going to fail, it's not going to be because of this.'
Soccer's transformation from national sport to national soap opera has cast a harsh light on the peccadilloes of Premier League players, says Tony Cottee, who played for the English national team from 1986 to 1989.
'There was a lot worse going on back then,' he says, 'but you didn't read about it because football wasn't as high-profile as it is now.'
But, Mr. Cottee adds, 'There was always an unwritten law that you didn't go near another player's wife or girlfriend, and you expected the same from them. . . . In the world we live in now, these things are going to get out.'
Whatever those 'things' were, they tended to exist as legend passed along by diehard fans rather than TV and tabloid stories. British soccer fans have been known to loudly chant taunts about the sex lives of opposing players during matches.
Interest in the private lives of players has come to rival their exploits on the field. A catalyst was the 2002 debut of the British television hit 'Footballers' Wives,' a sex-and-soccer drama that highlighted the gaudy outfits and extravagant lifestyles of the modern Premier League players' women.
WAG culture jumped from fiction to real-life phenomenon during the 2006 World Cup tournament in Germany, as the shopping, partying and champagne-quaffing of the glamorous, fashion-obsessed partners of England's players seemed to generate as much attention as the action on the pitch.
A cottage industry now feeds the British fascination with the soccer lifestyle. A crucial role is played by people like Max Clifford, a London public-relations man who has developed a bustling business touting -- and sometimes selling -- the stories of WAGs. Mr. Clifford has had some sizzling soccer clients in the past, most notably Rebecca Loos, who claimed several years ago to have had an affair with superstar David Beckham -- a liaison he denies.
Mr. Clifford is clear-eyed about his role. 'Most people in this country would rather read about other people's sex lives than have sex themselves,' he says. 'I've broken more kiss-and-tells and scandals than anyone, and the majority had nothing to justify them. It was purely entertainment, stimulation, titillation -- circulation most importantly. And we move on.'
Mr. Clifford's latest client: Ms. Perroncel, the model at the heart of the Terry scandal. He is her spokesman. He says she has protested that she doesn't do interviews, and 'I'm certainly not going to start now.' But she has been offered cash for her story, and Mr. Clifford says she isn't yet sure how to proceed.
'She's anxious to get across that there are things in the papers that are wrong,' he says. 2010-02-09
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Abstinence-only sex education can work -- if it's based on established strategies for helping young people change their attitudes about other types of risky behavior like smoking and drinking, new research shows. African-American sixth- and seventh-graders who completed the eight-hour program, which involved a series of brief activities and games (and no lecturing), were one-third less likely to start having sex in the next two years compared to their peers who took part in a similar program that targeted health issues unrelated to sex. "The evidence is solid, and it's new, because this has never been done before," says Dr. John B. Jemmott III of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who helped conduct the new study and design the intervention, along with his wife Dr. Loretta S Jemmott and their colleague Dr. Geoffrey T. Fong of the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Despite the massive amounts of money the United States has poured into promoting abstinence-until-marriage programs, there have been only a handful of flawed studies investigating the effectiveness of such programs, the investigators note. These federally supported programs -- initiated during the Clinton years at the behest of Congress -- follow a series of guidelines focusing on the importance of abstaining from sex until marriage, and underscoring the allegedly harmful physical and psychological effects of premarital sex and out-of-wedlock childbirth. "They're not based on an understanding of the motivation of children to have sex or to practice abstinence, and that's what this intervention was based on," John Jemmott said. He and his colleagues designed their program using techniques proven to help adolescents avoid risky behaviors like cigarette smoking, drinking and drug use. Classes were conducted in groups of six to 12 children, with activities that included listing the pros and cons of abstinence versus the pros and cons of having sex. "This activity is in the context of a whole intervention that begins with a consideration of what are their goals and dreams for the future, where do they see themselves five years from now, where do they see themselves 10 years from now," Jemmott explained. These and similar activities, he said, help young people realize on their own that abstinence is likely to be the better choice. Other activities included role-playing and games designed to help participants understand and resist peer pressure. Jemmott and his team assigned 662 children to this program; an eight-hour "safer sex only" program designed to promote condom use; an eight- or 12-hour intervention combining both approaches; or a control group in which children underwent an eight-hour educational program on health issues unrelated to sex. Among the 132 boys and girls who completed the abstinence-only program, about a third said they started having sex within the following 24 months, compared to half of the 129 control group participants. Around 20 percent of the abstinence-only group reported having sex during the past three months, compared to around 30 percent of the control group. One criticism leveled at abstinence-until-marriage programs is that they discourage condom use and put kids at greater risk of sexually transmitted disease if they do decide to have sex, Jemmott said. But the current study found no evidence that the abstinence-only program had any effect on condom use. Students who participated in the comprehensive programs were slightly less likely than control group participants to report having multiple partners. Getting young people to hold off on having sex can have major beneficial consequences down the road, Jemmott noted; it reduces their risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease and getting pregnant, while the older someone is when they do have sex for the first time, the more likely they will be to use contraceptives. 2010-02-09
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A few extra pounds might help you live longer if you're past your prime but otherwise healthy, a new study finds. "Perhaps we should tell our grandparents to get fat," chuckled geriatrician Dr. Thomas Yoshikawa, "to go ahead and eat that candy." Although his suggestion may seem counterintuitive, Yoshikawa is only half-joking. The Journal of The American Geriatrics Society, of which he is editor-in-chief, just published a report showing that overweight elderly Australians were 13 percent less likely to die during a 10-year period than those who kept their weight within the recommended range. Physicians routinely follow guidelines issued by the World Health Organization when they advise patients about their waistline. Because weight depends on height, they use a standard measure called body mass index (BMI), which is calculated as the weight in kilograms divided by the height in meters squared. Healthy weight is defined as a BMI anywhere between 18.5 and 24.9 in adults, whereas 25 to 29.9 is overweight and 30+ is obese. The new study suggests that in the elderly, these boundaries may be too narrow. While no one is questioning that extra fat poses health risks in young and middle-aged adults, it may cushion the impact of frailty and old age, Yoshikawa told Reuters Health. "We're not advocating that people get obese," said Yoshikawa, who was not involved in the new study. But "if you are five or 10 pounds heavier, it's better than being five or 10 pounds lighter." So far, nobody knows exactly how BMI affects lifespan in older people. Some researchers speculate that it acts as an energy reserve that can help the elderly cope with illness. For the study, Australian researchers followed more than 9,000 men and women who were between 70 and 75 years old at the outset. The participants reported their height and weight as well as various factors related to health and lifestyle. About 33 percent of the women and 44 percent of the men were overweight. Over 10 years, more than 2,000 of the participants died. Women who had an active life and didn't smoke were the most likely to be alive at the end of the study. But neither health nor lifestyle could fully explain why overweight people of both sexes survived longer than their normal-weight peers, who fared no better than obese individuals. In terms of survival, the best BMI was between 26 and 27, well within the overweight range. "We did find it surprising," Dr. Leon Flicker, the study's lead researcher, told Reuters Health in an e-mail. The new results are consistent with earlier research showing that fat may be beneficial in old age. But Flicker, who directs the Western Australian Center for Health & Aging at the University of Western Australia, said he had not expected a decidedly protective effect. While the findings are based on people living in the community and may not apply to sick or frail people in nursing homes, Flicker still believes physicians should bear them in mind when seeing patients. "If somebody is over the age of 70 years, and does not have a specific problem associated with being overweight (such as diabetes mellitus or severe osteoarthritis) then there is no need to provide advice to lose weight," he said. Other experts urge caution before changing medical recommendations. So far, they say, studies have never directly tested the effect of gaining weight in old age. "There is no evidence to suggest that intentionally gaining weight is good," Ian Janssen, an epidemiologist at Queen's University in Canada who was not part of the new research, told Reuters Health. Factors such as high blood pressure and daily function need to be taken into account, he added. Still, Yoshikawa noted, if you are healthy and fit once you reach 70, you probably don't have to worry about a little extra fat, because the negative health consequences usually don't kick in for several years. 2010-02-09
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