These new results reveal that it may take drinking as few as two soft drinks a week to nearly double the risk of contracting this horrible disease—one with an unusually low survival rate that’s considered largely incurable.

In fact, “People who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87% increased risk,” compared to those who don’t drink sweetened sodas, says the study’s author Noel T. Mueller, a research associate at the Cancer Control Program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The beverage industry protested the results, saying the study is flawed because it doesn’t examine a large enough segment of cases and doesn’t really prove cause and effect.

The pancreas lies behind the stomach and manufactures hormones such as insulin that keep blood sugar in check, as well as producing juices and enzymes that help break down food. When too much sugar is ingested, those processes are disrupted, leading to a high occurrence of cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, 42,000 people died from pancreatic cancer last year. If this study’s findings are correct, sugar is responsible for a large number of those deaths—and that means we’re all paying more for healthcare and health insurance.

I’m with Jeb: we should all cut out the sodas and switch to tea instead! If switching is all it takes to cut our chances of contracting cancer by 87%—count me in!

What do you think? Post a comment and let us know.

More Information:

WebMD

Healthfinder.gov

If you’re like most people, you probably have a hard time problem solving in instances like that. Between other drivers’ rude behavior, complicated gagetry in your car and little to no time to react to changes around you, driving can be very stressful.

But there’s something else hampering your ability to respond, too. Experts say frightened people often can’t remember even simple steps to protect themselves in dangerous situations, when necessary, because their attention is so focused on what’s happening at the moment.

That leaves “no cognitive space left to think of alternatives,” says Dr. Boadie Dunlop, a psychiatrist and director of the Mood and Anxiety Program at Emory University.

So when your brain can’t handle all the information it’s being bombarded with, how does it prioritize it all and choose what to pay attention to and what to ignore?

Let’s answer that question with another question. Remember telling your kids, “Practice makes perfect” to get them to keep working at memorization or help them hone certain skills? Apparently, it’s time to take your own advice.

“If you practice something over and over, that will be the thing that happens,” especially in stressful situations, says Peter Norton, associate professor of psychology at the University of Houston.

To make sure you respond appropriately while driving, Norton says you should sit in your car and go over the steps you should take in unexpected situations. He reasons that, when you go into “panic mode,” what you’ve already practiced doing has become a natural tendency, and that controls how you actually respond.

“To do something that’s not natural…is just not going to come to mind,” Norton adds.

For parents with new teen drivers, taking Norton’s advice makes even more sense. Your kids take classes and practice driving to learn how they should respond to situations on the road. If you follow their lead, not only will you react automatically the way you should when under stress; you’ll also provide a great example for your kids, help avoid accidents and keep your car insurance rates down.

Don’t let habit rule while driving. Start thinking about and practicing your responses when driving under pressure. It’s time to take your own (or your parents’) advice: ”Practice makes perfect!”

Wrong! Apparently, those cute little gas-savers don’t just roll around on the green anymore. In the majority of states, they’re also allowed on secondary roads within a few miles of owners’ homes.

Man, have I been missing out! If I had only known, I might have purchased one and taken the side roads to work in it every day, saving myself a ton of money on gas and avoiding piling all those miles on my car. I can see it now (vroom-vroom!)….

But last week, I read an interesting article in the Myrtle Beach Sun News online. South Carolina, which has apparently allowed carts on the state’s secondary roads for 23 years, is considering expanding the distance they can be driven from home from two miles to five.

Now, S.C. residents may be able to play 18 holes, bring their grocery list along, and stop off at the local Piggly-Wiggly on the way home from the golf course to pick up the week’s groceries. Or visit a local post office to mail some packages. Or maybe just stop off at a friend’s house for a cup of coffee in their little rolling cart.

How convenient!

With the rising cost of fuel and transportation, many people are looking for ways to trim costs, find alternate means of transportation and reduce vehicle emissions in the environment. At first glance, golf carts seem to meet all three standards. Whereas city busses or lightrail systems maintain a certain schedule that riders must adjust to, golf cart owners can come and go as they please, as if they were driving a regular car or other licensed vehicle.

In addition, many are electric, so they reduce gas consumption and avoid polluting the air. And because they’re small, they can be parked in much tighter spaces and easily maneuvered from one place to another.

But there’s actually a big difference. Not only do most carts lack safety equipment like horns and lights required for normal cars to be considered road-worthy; they’re also much more dangerous, as they’re completely open and offer absolutely no rollover protection.

Yet in many states, including South Carolina, all that’s required for owners to drive a golf cart on side streets–and to cross major highways–is a driver’s license, a $5 permit and proof of liability insurance. As long as they’re driven during daylight hours only and the owner carries the registration papers along on the ride, he can putter around town in this vehicle designed solely for the golf course to his heart’s content.

Maybe I should rethink this puttering-to-work thing. What happens when I’m toodling along at 15 mph, the top industry-recommended speed for carts on flat ground, and a line of cars with impatient drivers stacks up behind me? Should I pull over and let them by, or stand my ground because, after all, I have just as much right to be there as they do?

And what about crossing major roads? If I cut it a little too close, I could find myself staring down the nose of one of those vehicles going 65 mph–and end up roadkill!

It seems to me the risks outweigh the benefits. Maybe I’ll keep my safety-rated Altima and avoid those golf carts—for safety’s sake.

In fact, State Farm reported a disturbing trend involving some Toyota models way back in 2007.

Late that year, the company contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to report a worrying accident trend it was seeing amongst drivers of some Toyota vehicles.

State Farm processes a huge volume of consumer claims each year. The company felt the pattern of accidents it was seeing was not normal and indicated a problem, though few other insurers saw the same.

Few others, however, write enough auto policies to make such a trend noticeable. State Farm, on the other hand, holds more than 42 million auto policies nationwide.

As reported in the Insurance Journal, spokesman Kip Diggs said of the company’s actions, “When you start to see significant claims activity that indicates that there may be widespread problems with a product, that’s when you go to the NHTSA. There had to have been significant activity, a noticeable trend, for that to happen.”

Now, two Congressional leaders are requesting information from State Farm and four other top auto insurers, including Geico, Allstate, Farmers and Progressive. Lawmakers are looking for any information regarding consumer complaints of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyotas and any warnings these companies may have provided the NHTSA concerning defect trends in those vehicles.

Consumers who own recalled Toyotas and were involved in accidents during the past few years may have seen their insurance rates rise unfairly due to mechanical defects like stuck accelerators and floor mats that caused braking issues.

With further research, if some of those mishaps are proven to have been caused by vehicle fault, rather than driver error, some Toyota owners may see their insurance premiums return to the rates they were paying pre-accident.

This isn’t the first time State Farm has come to consumers’ aid regarding safety. The company also collected data and tracked problems that linked rollover accidents in Ford Explorers with Firestone tires 10 years ago. 

With the previous trends the insurer noted concerning Toyota, it seems State Farm is at work on drivers’ behalf once again.

That’s a great question…and we’re here to answer it.

Say you’re driving your brand new, 2010 Toyota Camry down the street and your accelerator (the defective part, in this instance) sticks. Suddenly, you’re careening through your neighborhood at speeds upward of 50 mph, totally in a panic.

You smash on the brakes but, before you can regain control, your car smashes into the back of a vehicle that pulls out in front of you, propelling both cars off the road and into a ditch. 

What now? Should you file an insurance claim? Though the accident was technically your fault, it would never have happened if that defective part hadn’t left you without control over your vehicle.

If this should happen to you, try to relax. If your car is driveable, move to a safe place out of traffic, call 9-1-1 and report the accident. When the police arrive, tell them what happened, and then call your insurance company to relate the incident and file a claim.

Once your insurer has investigated and confirmed your account of the story, they’ll pay the claim under the liability or physical damage section of your insurance policy. Afterward they’ll likely seek reimbursement from the car’s manufacturer (in this case, Toyota), because the defective part actually caused the accident. 

“This type of unforeseen event is what insurance is for,” said Robert Passmore, senior director of claims for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) in an article on accidents involving recalled Toyotas published in yesterday’s Insurance Journal.

 But what about your insurance rates? Will you have to pay more for insurance coverage following this type of accident?

Not likely, says Passmore—not unless a large number of accidents can be attributed to the defective part and the vehicle involved is expensive to repair.

“Insurers look at the cost of claims over a period of time. They are interested in how much it costs to repair a vehicle and how often the vehicle is involved in an accident,” he remarked.

With the previously good safety record Toyota enjoyed prior to recent recalls, these issues aren’t likely to cause thousands of accidents—or drive up insurance rates. Still, we have to wonder what went wrong.

Apparently, safety problems have been present but under wraps for the maker of the most popular car in America for some time, says the nation’s largest auto insurer. We’ll address that next time on the blog. 

For now, if you drive a Toyota (or any other vehicle involved in a nationwide recall), check with your insurance agent to make sure you have plenty of liability coverage under your present policy. Then rest assured: Your auto insurance has you covered!

Some say it’s all about environment—and we should be teaching our kids healthy eating habits from the time they’re young to prevent lifetime weight gain. Proponents of the nurture theory often place the blame on the shoulders of the overweight, saying they’re fat because they’re lazy, eat too much or lead a sedentary lifestyle.

Others point to genetics, claiming that, no matter what they eat or how much they exercise, they’re destined to be fat, just like their parents or other family members. No matter how hard they try, they just can’t get the extra weight off, and often put themselves at further health risk by resorting to desperate measures in order to lose the additional weight.

Either way, obesity can lead to many health problems that are difficult to overcome and can make getting and staying insured difficult.

In fact, those who are overweight usually pay at least 15 percent more for health insurance than individuals of normal weight—if they can get insured at all.

But a new report published today in the journal Nature now indicates that genetics may play a larger role in obesity than any of us previously realized.

In a recent European study, scientists found a rare genetic abnormality that is linked to both severe obesity and learning disabilities: the absence of 30 genes that reportedly virtually guarantee that a person will become obese.

What are the missing genes doing to cause obesity? No one is really sure, but experts speculate their absence may cause the production of an enzyme or protein that keeps the overweight from being able to burn energy efficiently.

With the genes necessary for regulating the body’s calorie consumption and energy burning process absent, obesity appears to result 100 percent of the time.

Though balancing caloric intake with expended energy is often the key to maintaining a healthy weight, the bodies of the obese don’t always function normally. Instead, they often “extract calories from food more effectively and may not be burning energy as efficiently as others,” says Dr. Stuart Weiss, an assistant clinical professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, in today’s Yahoo news article on the subject.

Maybe in the future, we’ll all undergo genetic tests to see if we’re missing any genes and, if so, what can be done to counteract the effects of their absence. Who knows, maybe scientists will find a cure for obesity—or figure out a way to overcome the effect of genetics on our bodies.

Meanwhile, it looks like science is proving that nature plays a much bigger role than previously thought.  

Additional Resources:

Weigh in: Do your kids make the grade?

Obesity & Genetics

Fat Chance

According to national news stations, most schools and businesses in that state shut down to try and cope with the onslaught of freezing rain, sleet and snow that is forcasted to continue until midnight tonight.

As snow piles up, ice settles in and pipes freeze this winter, your home can suffer costly damage—and those lead to repairs that someone has to pay for.

So who will it be: you or your insurance company? Do you know?

The good news is, “standard homeowners policies provide coverage for a wide range of winter-related disasters, such as losses incurred due to burst pipes, wind damage and wind-driven rain, as well as well damage or power outages caused by downed trees, limbs or other falling objects,” according to the Insurance Journal.

So if the temperature drops below freezing, your pipes burst and your home ends up submerged in 6 inches of water, you’re likely covered for the repairs that will need to be made.

If the tree in your front yard gets weighed down with snow and subsequently falls on your home, you’re likely covered for both its removal and the repair for the damage it caused your home.

If the weight of ice and snow on your roof causes a portion of it to collapse, and water comes pouring in through your attic, your insurer is most likely responsible for fixing, replacing and repairing the damage that results from it, too.

But under what circumstances do you become responsible for the damage your home and property suffers due to winter weather conditions?

If you choose to purchase a very basic homeowners plan, often referred to as “fire only” coverage, the burden for this kind of damage will be solely yours.

If that tree loaded with snow falls in your yard and has to be cut up and carted away—but it doesn’t damage, break or hurt anything in the process—that responsibility is yours.

If you leave your home in Wisconsin vacant in the winter in favor of a warmer dwelling in Florida, you must pay for any weather-related damage that occurs in that vacant home while it’s left unattended.

For tips on minimizing the effect winter weather can have on your home and property, check out this press release from the III. Then get in touch with your home insurance agent and find out which damages are covered under your policy and which ones aren’t.

For more information:

How to Winterize Your Home

Old Man Winter Arrives Early This Year

Did you call your insurer simply to discuss a potential home insurance claim—only to find yourself and your home uninsured shortly thereafter?

In case you haven’t heard, insurance companies track any and all property insurance claims you make, on both your home and vehicles, using a system called CLUE. That stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, which is simply a fancy name for an online insurance reporting system.

Similar to the way companies pull your credit report from one of the three participating credit agencies, insurance companies can pull your CLUE report to help them determine how likely you are to file a claim against your policy.

What’s in your CLUE? Besides general information like your name, date of birth and social security number, it includes information on past, paid claims and, in some states, even inquiries about coverage that don’t result in a claim—yes, just like your credit report.

By sharing claims and inquiry information amongst themselves using the CLUE system, insurers can calculate claims risk when you apply for new insurance and determine whether or not they’d like to do business with you.

If you haven’t seen your CLUE report (and, until now, you had no idea there even was such a thing), we’d advise you take a look at yours and check it for errors. You can order a copy here so you’ll know what you’re facing come time to shop your insurance rates again.

Get a CLUE! You’re entitled to it.

What do Fishermen, Loggers and Pilots have in common?

Give up?

They work at the three most dangerous and deadly occupations in America! That means, if you’re a fisherman, logger or pilot, insurance is likely to cost you more than it costs a worker in any other occupation in the U.S.

When I first heard this statistic, I balked.

“How dangerous can fishing be?” I thought. “How can standing in the water or on a boat trying to hook fish be dangerous?”

I had it all wrong. Fishermen do much more than that. They work long hours on rough seas, in unpredictably bad weather and often in isolation—which makes it difficult to reach them in case of emergency. Together, these three factors make the job the most unsafe profession there is.

When it comes to logging, that one made more sense. It stands to reason that, when you’re in the forest cutting down trees, you stand a fairly good chance of a tree falling on—or at least near you, right? (But if no one was around, would it actually make a sound when it hit the ground? Sorry, that’s a topic for another day!)

Regarding pilots, I could totally understand the danger involved in their jobs, which often depend on clear weather and perfect communication to avoid mishaps. (One bumpy flight and you couldn’t pay me enough to stay in that cockpit!)

Because of the risk involved in these three jobs—which often require workers to perform perfectly in perilous or unpredictable conditions—insurance companies charge them higher life insurance rates than the average person to cover the added risk.

But job function isn’t the only determinant of insurance rates, either.

“Generally, high-risk jobs affect life insurance, but not health premiums,” says Cheryl Randolph, spokeswoman for UnitedHealthcare. ”Health status is much more predictive of medical risk than a high-risk job.”

On the other hand, a healthy person with a safe job would pay lower premiums for individual medical, life and disability insurance than a healthy person with a high-risk job, she says.

If you’re shopping for lower insurance rates, we definitely don’t recommend fishing, logging or flying, to be sure. But other occupations are almost as deadly.

To find out what they are, and how they affect your premiums, read our article on dangerous and deadly jobs now.

That’s right, apparently the lines can get very long at divorce attorneys’ offices at the beginning of each year, as more and more couples decide to call it quits.

Why does this happen? Experts say the biggest reasons are cheating and finances.

It seems that, along with a new start in a new year, the idea is “out with the old, in with the new”—and that includes relationships.

Along with divorce come other life changes too. For instance, joint homes go to one person or get sold, bank accounts get split up, and vehicles get assigned to one person or another.

All these transactions affect lives—but they also affect finances and insurance policies.

If you move following divorce and change jobs, you could face a lapse in health insurance or wind up paying a lot more for COBRA. If you’ve been driving your spouse’s car and he/she gets it in the divorce, your car insurance costs could increase substantially if your car costs more to insure.

If you’re one of the thousands of married people affected by divorce this month, consider the effect your split could have, not only on your family, but also on your finances and insurance policies.

Then get in touch with your insurance agent, who can help minimize the impact on your wallet. You’ll do what you can where you have control, and make setting out on your own a little bit easier.

More Information:

Don’t Divorce Your Insurance Agent