To coincide with World Salt Awareness Week (Feb 1-7), Professor Garry Jennings speaks to The Age about the dangers of hidden salt in our diet.

Baker IDI’s Professor David Dunstan speaks to the Wall Street Journal about the results of his recent research published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation. Professor Dunstan’s research found for the first time a link between television viewing time and mortality.

Peter Meikle speaks to Channel 10 news about the life-saving test he has developed to predict heart attacks.

Professor Mark Febbraio speaks to Tony Eastley on ABC radio about recent research which has found that thinking about food can cause muscles to store energy. These findings may lead to a drug treatment for obesity.

Diabetes is one of the greatest threats to public and economic health. Professor Paul Zimmet and Dr Alex Brown comment in the Sydney Morning Herald on the alarming rate at which Diabetes is affecting our indigenous community.

Dr Alex Brown, head of the Centre for Indigenous Vascular and Diabetes Research speaks to the ABC about the prevalence and causes of cardiovascular disease amongst aboriginal males.

Professor Paul Zimmet speaks to ABC about Baker IDI's commitment to improving the health of Indigenous Australian's and the Institute's role in organising a symposium designed to build capacity amongst local health care workers to improve prevention and enhance treatment protocols.

Professor Garry Jennings comments on the Government's workplace health check program, designed to identify the early stages of chronic disease.

Dr Alex Brown speaks to ABC about the issues surrounding the challenge of preventing and effectively managing diabetes and cardiovascular disease within the Aboriginal community.

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Australia will nearly double over the next 40 years and many Australians with the disease now fail to manage their condition properly, a new study has found.

A researcher from Melbourne's Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute has shown that modern medical treatment, including lifestyle changes and the latest drugs, has just as good preventative power as the surgical fix - at less risk to the patient and one-third to one-eighth the price.

Nutritionist Dr Peter Clifton of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Adelaide believes socioeconomic factors, not work hours, play the biggest role in childhood diet and exercise.

Professor Paul Zimmet Director, International Research, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute and Member, Preventative Health Taskforce speaks with Paul Barclay about childhood obesity.

Professor Murray Esler and Professor Simon Stewart speak with Dr Sally Cockburn about blood pressure on 3AWs Talking Health program.

A STUDY has found we're spending 70 per cent of our day sitting down - and it's making us fat and raising our risk of diabetes and heart disease.

A Biomedical scientist who pioneered new ways of treating heart failure, stress and high blood pressure was last night awarded Victoria's top science prize.

This year's Victoria Prize has been won by Professor Murray Esler, a leading Melbourne heart and brain specialist who established the link between stress and heart attacks.

Born and raised in Wonthaggi, 37 year-old Dr Sharyn Fitzgerald is set to become the first Australian woman to run a marathon in Antarctica.

Nearly 90,000 Australians will suffer a heart attack or serious chest pain this year, costing the economy about $18 billion in lost productivity and treatment, a report says.

Every heart attack this year will cost Australia an average of $281,000 and each chest pain event an average of $74,000, including the value of healthy life lost.

Almost 90,000 Australians will suffer a heart attack or serious chest pain this year, sending an estimated $18 billion jolt through the economy.

Interactive sports video games such as the Nintendo Wii are better for children than conventional computer games, but do not tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity, British research shows.

Sedentary behavior is becoming an important component of the exercise and health equation. There is new evidence that prolonged, unbroken sitting time is related to people's risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to a lecture presented today at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) in Seattle

Ties between medical research institutes and universities are likely to become more common, according to Garry Jennings of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Research Institute. Professor Jennings, who directs the Baker, said institutes were feeling pressure.

Kinglake and Marysville should be rebuilt as "fat-proof" towns, a leading Victorian heart disease researcher believes.

It has to stop somewhere, like the pointer on a weighing machine, but the obesity rate in Australia continues to climb, past all reason and common sense, approaching epidemic proportions. Irrespective of existing methods of education and preventative control, people are still putting on weight and are becoming progressively unhealthier.

In a ground-breaking campaign, sanofi-aventis will donate 25 cents to Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute for every packet of Plavix sold this year in retail pharmacies. We expect that this will result in a donation of around $500,000 during 2009 to support our vital research into cardiovascular disease and diabetes and preventative health programs.

New research will investigate whether Victorians have slip-slop-slapped themselves into ill health.

His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al-Qassimi, Member of the Supreme Council, Ruler of Sharjah and the Supreme President of the University of Sharjah, signed today a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the International Diabetes Institute and Baker Heart Research Institute

Staff at a city entertainment venue were the first in Geelong to have a workplace health check-up as part of a new State Government initiative.

Melbourne's Baker Institute, renowned for heart and diabetes research, lending its name to a commercial drug in return for royalties is unprecedented and commercially savvy. It is also transparent and comes without scientific strings.

A leading Australian independent research institute is lending its name to an international drug company's promotion of a blood thinning drug, in exchange for 25c a packet sold.

That Australia is in recession has been accepted at an official level only recently, but industry has been affected by the global economic downturn for some time.

The sources of commercial funding for medical research in Australia are in a "precarious" state.

The Mauritian Health Ministry will conduct a national survey on non-communicable diseases among its citizens this year, official sources said here on Saturday.

A chance discovery in the laboratories at Melbourne's Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute could lead to a new treatment that will mean longer lives and better health for type 2 diabetes sufferers.

Melbourne doctors have found a ground-breaking method to turn off the ticking time bomb of high blood pressure.

Australian scientists have developed a world-first technique that offers to revolutionise the treatment of people with high blood pressure, the cause of many deadly conditions.

Half of type 2 diabetics may be waking dangerously dozens of times a night and forgetting to breathe without knowing it.

Uncontrolled diabetes can lead to many related health conditions like heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and circulation problems.

The effect of excessive alcohol on Brett Stewart's Type 1 diabetes may be used as a defence against allegations he sexually abused a 17-year-old woman.

There is an event at Cruden farm tomorrow in support of the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute. A lot of the team will be there for Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's hundredth birthday.

The obesity epidemic has forced Ambulance Victoria to buy new heavy-duty vehicles, as schools and airlines are ordering wider seats.

Bushfire survivors are at risk of heart attack after enduring weeks of extreme stress and higher than normal blood pressure.

Interview with Assoc Prof John Dixon, Monash Uni School of Primary Healthcare. Monash and Deakin Uni scientists and the Baker Heart And Diabetes Institution have found the cheapest way in the long run to manage Type II diabetes is in fact gastric band surgery.

Gastric banding is the cheapest, as well as the most effective, treatment for diabetes in obese people, Australian research has found. But experts have warned that people should not leap into surgery without considering possible side effects.

Several papers published in a special online edition of the journal Stroke focus on factors influencing women's risk for stroke during childbearing years.

Sitting down is about to join smoking and junk food on the list of vices that increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Human cells can ‘remember’ and reproduce the effect of a poor diet on the body, perhaps helping explain why obesity and some diseases run in families for generations.

Scientists in Sydney and Melbourne have produced results that could silence the current debate about exactly how fat molecules clog up muscle cells, making them less responsive to insulin.

Eating that chocolate bar can not only give you those love handles, but also predispose your kids to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular problems, for Melbourne scientists have found that fatness is passed via genes.

Human genes remember a sugar hit for two weeks, with prolonged poor eating habits capable of permanently altering DNA, Australian researchers have found.

Fat parents are condemning their children to obesity and disease.

For Hamilton artist Danny McDonald, showing the world what is inside him is just part of what he loves to do: combine science and art.

Had you been an older person with high blood pressure as late as the 1980s, you would have found yourself given medication and told not to exert yourself, to avoid excitement, and importantly, avoid strenuous activity.

Channel Nine's, A Current Affair interviews Murray Esler from Baker IDI Orthostatic Intolerance sufferer Brianna Canny.

The 21 year old Wangaratta woman is planning to raise public awareness of a rare heart condition that has left her fatigued and prone to fainting, and before the correct diagnosis of dysautonomia was made two years ago, treatment had been almost useless.

A WORLD-first test to identify people who will suffer heart disease years before they die of a heart attack is being developed in Melbourne.

Karlheinz Peter from the Atherothrombosis & Vascular laboratory speaks on an ABC breakfast radio show about his groundbreaking test to screen for atherosclerotic heart disease.

In medical research (and, as they say, in comedy) timing is surely everything. Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute last month announced the establishment of a new research facility to be based in Adelaide, as part of our efforts to co-ordinate and consolidate our health research efforts in Australia. Our timing was fortuitous.

Heart failure patients in Soweto, South Africa, are more likely to be middle-aged and female compared to patients in Western nations, researchers report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Spending our way out of national strife, a notion delivered in the shape of the Federal Government's $10 billion bailout package, was met with broad support.

A third of type one diabetics dice with danger by skipping insulin injections to shed weight, an Australian study has found.

Congratulations to the Millennium Award and Veritel Fellowship winners A/Prof Assam El-Osta, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes and Prof Mark Febbraio, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes.

Researchers have discovered a molecular "train carriage" that plays a key role in transporting glucose into cells, a finding that may help with developing type 2 diabetes treatments.

Thomas Kossmann — the renowned, now seemingly disgraced, former director of trauma surgery at The Alfred hospital — is fighting a bloody battle of his own these days, his career a wreck of high-speed highway collision proportions.

The CSIRO Food Futures Flagship has developed an automated instrument for accurately predicting glycemic index (GI) and resistant starch (RS) in food products.

More than 1.5 million Australians suffer from diabetes yet half of them do not even know they have got it.

David Dunstion talks health with 3AW health expert and GP Dr Sally Cockburn.

As medical research funding is increased slightly to $357.3 million, medical researchers have downplayed traditional rivalries in pursuit of greater collaboration.

City of Yarra and several other municipalities are following the lead of five bayside councils, which recently moved to clamp down on boot camps that operate on beaches and foreshore parks.

Motorcycling Australia staff members have dusted of their bicycles and ridden into work as part of the 2008 National Ride to Work Day.

Baker IDI Director, Professor Garry Jennings today welcomed Minister Roxon's announcement of more than $357 million of funding for health and medical research.

A new study demonstrates that the embryonic mouse heart has an astounding capacity to regenerate, a phenomenon previously observed only in non-mammalian species.

How healthy are our pollies? The morning of Tuesday October 14, South Australian Health Minister John Hill and his parliamentary colleagues found out when they checked their BMI, blood pressure and blood glucose levels by participating in a free, comprehensive health check offered by the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute.

Nucleus Network Limited won the Governor of the Victorian Export Award for Innovation Excellence in addition to winning the Emerging Exporter Category.

Baker IDI has some important links to South Australia and is seeking to expand on these with the opening of a new research presence in Adelaide to complement our facility in Alice Springs.

Diversity is alive and well in the university sector and it’s most obvious in the pay scales of general staff. A new survey reveals that there is up to 17 per cent difference in the salaries on offer in Australian universities in a single HEW band.

A research organisation working to reduce heart disease and diabetes in the Indigenous population hopes its new centre in Alice Springs will be up and running by the middle of next year.

Medical researchers have raised fears they will be locked out of the new $11 billion Education Investment Fund with no guarantee of assistance from the health budget.

As director of one of Australia's largest and most productive health and medical research institutes, I am disappointed by the Cutler review's lack of recognition for independent medical research and its focus on the university sector as the natural home of valuable research.

In the Sept 22nd edition of biobytes Hema Bashyam (Journal of Experimental Medicine) joins us in the studio to discuss long term cardiovascular risk from short term sugar highs in diabetes (El-Osta et al., JEM)

Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research today announced 21 new international scientific research projects and major scientific conferences that will receive $5.37 million from the International Science Linkages Competitive Grants scheme.

The Brumby Government has provided $25.7 million to Victoria’s 13 major independent medical research institutes to support their day to day operations in 2008-09.

Interactive sports video games such as the Nintendo Wii are better for children than conventional computer games, but do not tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity, British research shows. Associate Professor David Dunstan, head of the physical activity lab at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, said he was not surprised by the findings.

A report on the long-term consequences of Australia’s expanding waistline on cardiovascular disease.

Australia is the world's most overweight nation, ahead of the notoriously supersized Americans, according to a new study. The report shows nine million Australian adults are fatter than they should be.

Dispensing with the office chair could deliver the same health benefits as a brisk 100-minute walk, a Melbourne public health expert says.

Victorian workers will be offered free health tests as the State Government moves to tackle an obesity epidemic described by Premier John Brumby as a challenge "as big as climate change".

Workers will receive health checks, including tests on their body mass and diabetes risk, as part of a $100 million State Government plan to fight obesity.

Those do-or-die moments in the AFL grand final are enough to give devotees a heart attack — literally. While most AFL fans spend a highly charged 100 minutes of game play with their hearts in their mouths, the stress of close matches can put some at real risk of ending up with their hearts in arrest, according to cardiac specialists.

They conclude: The combination of common preventable risk factors and late clinical presentations -- especially heart failure - represents a particular challenge to improve primary and secondary prevention strategies to not only reduce the number of new cases of cardiovascular disease but also improve health outcomes for those with pre-established disease.

Australians know heart disease is the number one killer, but nearly a third of those at risk are not taking action to avoid it, a study shows.

Diet and exercise remain the healthiest, and least risky, ways to lose weight.

Sitting down is about to join smoking and junk food on the list of vices that increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease. New Australian research shows that half-an-hour in the gym will not make up for the waist-expanding damage caused by spending the rest of the day sitting.

A new therapy for type 2 diabetes. Download video clip.

People who suffered severe stress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 suffered up to three times the normal rate of heart attacks two years later - just from watching the events on television.

Getting the recommended 30 minutes or more of exercise a day may not be enough to prevent obesity and diabetes if it is followed by hours sitting behind a desk.

A breakthrough in the treatment of cancer and an unexpected finding about the life span of blood clotting cells have led Victorian scientist Dr Kylie Mason to be awarded the prestigious 2009 Premier's Award for Public Health and Medical Research.