Healthy Diet

Obesity creeps up in US

2008-08-14T00:45:00.001-07:00

Obesity continued to creep up in the United States last year and now affects more than one in four US adults, a US government report showed Friday.In 2005, 23.9 percent of adults in the United States were obese, or had a body mass index greater than 30, while in 2007, the percentage had grown to 25.6 percent, data issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed.

Body mass index is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilos by his or her height squared in meters.

In three states -- Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee -- nearly one in three adults was obese.

Mississippi, which is also the poorest US state, had the highest rate of obesity in the United States, at 32 percent. Colorado had the lowest rate of obesity at 18.7 percent and was the only state in which obesity was running at less than 19 percent.

No state has achieved the official target to bring obesity down to 15 percent of the adult population by 2010, the report showed.

Obesity was highest for non-Hispanic black women, nearly four in 10 of whom were obese.

University graduates were the least likely to be obese -- around 22 percent compared with 29 percent of people who only obtained a high school diploma.

A report issued last year by the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) said the percentage of obsese adults more than doubled in the past 25 years across the United States, growing from 15 percent in 1978-80 to 32 percent in 2003-04.

ADHD children have greater risk of being overweight

2008-08-14T00:43:00.001-07:00

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk for being overweight, regardless of whether or not they are currently receiving medications for the condition.The results of prior research has suggested that the impulsivity and poor behavioral regulation that is common in children with ADHD may promote certain eating patterns that increase the risk of obesity, co-authors Molly E. Waring and Dr. Kate L. Lapane, from Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, note.

To investigate further, the researchers analyzed data from 62,887 children and adolescents included in the 2003-2004 National Survey of Children's Health.

Children with ADHD were identified based the response of the parent to the question: "Has a doctor or health professional ever told you that your child has attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, that is, ADD or ADHD?"

The prevalence of ADD or ADHD was 8.8 percent, the authors report in the journal Pediatrics, and approximately half the affected children were taking medication for the condition.

After accounting for demographic factors as well as depression and anxiety, ADHD patients who were not being treated with medication were 1.5-times more likely to be overweight than children without the disorder. The risk for ADHD among those who were currently receiving medications was only about 0.5-times higher than children without ADHD.

"Future work is needed to better understand the longitudinal and pharmacologic factors that influence the relationship between ADD/ADHD and weight status in children and adolescents," the investigators conclude.

Studies show exercise boon for obesity, diabetes

2008-08-14T00:42:00.001-07:00

Walking a bit more each day can help people control their Type 2 diabetes but obese people trying to keep weight off may need to exercise harder than they had thought, according to a studies published on Monday.Simply walking 45 minutes more each day helped people with diabetes use blood sugar better, Michael Trenell of Britain's Newcastle University and colleagues wrote in the journal Diabetes Care.

"People often find the thought of going to the gym quite daunting, but what we've found is that nearly everyone with diabetes is able to become more active through walking," Trenell said.

The Newcastle team paired 10 Type 2 diabetes patients with people without the condition of similar height, weight and age and asked everybody to walk more than 10,000 steps each day.

Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans showed that people who walked 45 minutes more each day burned about 20 percent more fat -- increasing the ability of the muscles to store sugar and help control diabetes, the researchers said.

"What is exciting about this study is that it provides an immediate way to help control diabetes without any additional drugs," Trenell said.

Diabetes affects an estimated 246 million adults worldwide and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths. Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90 percent of all diabetes cases and is closely linked to obesity and physical inactivity.

Obesity and diabetes both are growing problems as more developing nations adopt a Western lifestyle, something the International Diabetes Federation estimates will propel the number of people with diabetes to 380 million by 2025.

But current exercise guidelines calling for people to get 150 minutes -- 2.5 hours -- each week may not be enough to help the obese keep weight off, John Jakicic of the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

To determine an optimal amount of exercise, the U.S. team enrolled 201 overweight and obese women in a weight loss programme between 1999 and 2003 and assigned them to one of four exercise groups.

After six months, women in all four groups had lost an average of 8 to 10 percent of their weight but many gained it back.

Women assigned to exercise for about an extra hour each day did not gain the weight back, the researchers said. These women were also more likely to stick to healthy diets.

Jakicic recommended that people who want to lose weight and keep it off get at least 4-1/2 hours of exercise a week.

"There is a growing consensus that more exercise may be necessary to enhance long-term weight loss," Jakicic and colleagues wrote.

Obesity not a contraindication to knee replacement

2008-08-14T00:39:00.001-07:00

Obese individuals with arthritic knees should not be denied knee replacement surgery, researchers conclude, based on a new study showing that obese patients benefit from the surgery almost as much as their normal-weight peers.Roughly 55,000 knee replacements are performed every year in England to relieve the pain and disability of knee arthritis, according to the British research team that conducted the study. But in some parts of the country the surgery is offered only to people who are not obese, on the grounds that obesity is itself a risk factor for knee arthritis.

Dr. Cyrus Cooper, at the University of Southampton, and associates monitored the progress of 325 patients for around six years after they had had knee replacement surgery. Their progress was compared with that of 363 "control" patients seen in general medical practices, matched for age and sex, who had not had knee replacements.

At the outset, physical function was markedly worse in the knee replacement patient group than in the control group. However, at follow-up, physical function had improved in the knee replacement patients, while that of controls had worsened.

When the researchers restricted their analysis to participants who were obese, the improvements with knee surgery persisted. In obese patients, physical function increased in surgery patients and deteriorated in controls.

"The long term improvement in physical function that we observed in patients who have undergone (knee replacement surgery) is striking when set against the decline that occurred in (the control group)," Cooper and colleagues say. "These benefits extend to patients who are obese."

"There seems no justification for withholding (knee replacement surgery) from patients who are obese," they conclude.

SOURCE: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, online July 24, 2008

Childcare before kindergarten may promote obesity

2008-08-14T00:34:00.001-07:00

Participation in a childcare program appears to increase the likelihood that a child will be obese when he or she shows up for the first day of kindergarten, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.Moreover, the report indicates that the type of childcare makes a difference. For instance, children who receive care from a relative, friend, or neighbor, held at least occasionally in the child's own home, were more prone to obesity than those who received care at a daycare center or nursery school.

Latino children, however, seemed to be the exception. While they were found to be at greater risk for obesity than kids of other races, they were less likely to become obese when enrolled in a childcare program rather than spending the week with a parent.

The study, conducted by Dr. Erin J. Maher, from Casey Family Programs in Seattle, and colleagues, involved nearly 16,000 first-time kindergartners who had or had not been enrolled in childcare, defined as spending at least 10 hours per week in care not provided by a parent.

Childcare was subdivided into four types: 1) paid or unpaid care by a relative, friend, or neighbor, held at least occasionally at the child's home; 2) paid care by a non-relative family outside the child's home; 3) Head Start; and 4) care at daycare center, nursery school, preschool, or pre-kindergarten. Children were considered to be obese if their weight was in the 95th or higher percentile for height.

Overall, kids in childcare were more likely to obese than children not in childcare. Of the various childcare types, care by a relative, friend, or neighbor was most strongly linked to obesity. Compared with other racial groups, white children were less likely and Latino children more likely to be obese.

"Our research points to the need to better understand how the specific features of childcare environments may promote or protect against the development of obesity," Dr. Maher's team concludes. "This understanding can then lead to the development of targeted interventions to reach children and families in childcare settings."

SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2008.

Lack of REM sleep may raise obesity risk in kids

2008-08-14T00:33:00.001-07:00

Studies have shown that children and teens who fail to get the proper amount of sleep each night are more prone to obesity, and researchers now think it may be linked to a particular stage of sleep.
They said not spending enough time in rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep -- the type that is normally associated with dreaming -- significantly increased the odds of obesity in children and teens.

"Our results demonstrated that the short sleep-obesity association may be attributed to reduced REM sleep," said Dr. Xianchen Liu of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh reported on Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Ultimately, obesity is the byproduct of taking in more calories than the body needs. But Liu and colleagues wanted to see if they could identify any stage of sleep that appeared especially important.

The researchers studied 335 children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 for three consecutive nights. Their sleep was monitored through polysomnography, which measures sleep cycles and stages by recording brain waves, electrical activity of muscles, eye movement, breathing rate, blood pressure, and other variables.

Weight and height were measured to calculate body mass index, a measure of obesity. They found 15 percent were at risk for becoming overweight and 13 were overweight.

When they compared the sleep patterns among these groups, they found children who were overweight slept about 22 minutes less per night than normal-weight children. They also had shorter REM sleep, less eye activity during REM sleep and a longer wait before the first REM period.

After adjusting for other factors, they found one hour less of total sleep doubled the odds of being overweight, and one-hour less of REM sleep tripled the odds.

"Although the precise mechanisms are currently under investigation, the association between short sleep duration and overweight may be attributed to the interaction of behavioral and biological changes as a result of sleep deprivation," Liu and colleagues wrote.

They said sleep loss causes changes in hormone levels that may affect hunger. It also gives a person more time in which to eat, and makes a person sleepy during the day, which may make them less likely to exercise.

Liu said more research is needed to understand changes in the metabolism that occur when children and teens get too little sleep.

They noted that the obesity rate has more than tripled among children aged 6 to 11 years in the past 30 years, and about 17 percent of U.S. adolescents are now overweight or obese.

Given this, the researchers think doctors, schools and families should step in to ensure that children get enough sleep.

Liu suggests parents establish regular bedtime and wake up times at both weekdays and weekends, improve the sleep environment and address any sleep disorders such as sleep apnea that may be keeping children from getting the sleep they need.

Kids Who Sleep Poorly at Risk for Being Overweight

2008-08-14T00:32:00.003-07:00

Getting too little sleep or not spending enough time in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is associated with being overweight among children and teens, a new U.S. study.For three consecutive nights, researchers assessed the sleep patterns of 335 youngsters, aged 7 to 17. They looked at total sleep time, time spent in REM, and time it took to fall asleep. Body-mass index was checked at the start of the study, and 45 participants (13.4 percent) were overweight, while 49 (14.6 percent) were at risk for becoming overweight.

Compared to normal-weight children, those who were overweight slept about 22 minutes less per night and had lower sleep efficiency (percentage of time in bed that a person is asleep), shorter REM sleep, less eye activity during REM sleep, and a longer wait before the first REM period.

After they adjusted for other factors, the researchers concluded that one hour less of total sleep was associated with a twofold increased risk of being overweight. One hour less of REM sleep was associated with a threefold increased risk.

Although the precise mechanisms are currently under investigation, the association between short sleep duration and overweight may be attributed to the interaction of behavioral and biological changes as a result of sleep deprivation, wrote Dr. Xianchen Liu, of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, and colleagues.

They explained that sleep loss causes changes in hormone levels that may affect hunger, and less sleep also means a person has more waking hours in which to eat. Sleep loss also contributes to fatigue the following day, which may lead to less physical activity and fewer calories burned.

Given the fact that the prevalence of overweight among children and adolescents continues to increase and chronic sleep insufficiency becomes more prevalent in modern society, family- and school-based sleep interventions that aim to enhance sleep hygiene and increase sleep duration may have important public health implications for the prevention and intervention of obesity and type 2 diabetes in children, the authors concluded.

"Furthermore, our results demonstrate an important relationship between REM sleep and high BMI and obesity, suggesting that the short sleep-obesity association may be attributed to reduced REM sleep time and decreased activity during REM sleep," they wrote.

The study was published in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Obesity seen protective in cases of heart failure

2008-08-14T00:32:00.001-07:00

Overweight and obese patients with heart failure seem to have a lower risk of dying than their normal-weight counterparts, according to a review of published studies involving more than 28,000 heart failure patients who were followed for an average of nearly three years.There is evidence, Dr. Antigone Oreopoulos told Reuters Health, that a normal body mass index (BMI) "is likely not the ideal BMI" in people with heart failure, which occurs when the heart loses its ability to pump blood efficiently.

Oreopoulos, from University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and associates reviewed nine studies that examined the impact of BMI on mortality. They pooled the data to estimate the risk of death in patients who are underweight, overweight or obese compared to patients with a normal body weight.

According to the researchers, patients who were overweight or obese were less likely to die during follow up compared to their normal-weight peers. Being overweight or obese "remained protective" against death in a "risk-adjusted" analysis.

Heart failure patients who had a normal weight or who were underweight had the highest death rates. "It remains unknown, however, if higher body fat levels are actually the cause of better outcomes in patients with heart failure," the researchers note in the American Heart Journal.

"We believe there is a need for prospective studies to confirm these findings and elucidate potential mechanisms" for the potentially protective effect of increased body weight on heart failure, Oreopoulos and colleagues conclude.

"Our findings," they point out, "are consistent with evidence in other chronic disease populations," including survivors of heart attack and chronic hemodialysis patients, demonstrating lower death rates with higher BMI levels.

SOURCE: American Heart Journal, July 2008.

Britain and France grapple with child obesity problem

2008-08-14T00:31:00.001-07:00

To combat the growing problem of child obesity, a French report Tuesday suggested imposing an anti-obesity tax on sweet and fatty foods, while British health officials want to avoid the label "obese" for very overweight children.The French plan would target foods such as pizzas and hamburgers as well as sodas and alcohol.

Drawn up jointly by the French tax and social affairs inspectorates, the report was handed to Budget Minister Eric Woerth and his counterpart for health Roselyne Bachelot late last month, ministry officials said Tuesday.

According to Les Echos newspaper, it calls for the VAT sales tax rate to be lifted from 5.5 percent to 19.6 percent on all food stuffs considered "too rich, too sweet, too salty and which are not strictly necessary."

Meanwhile, health authorities in Britain rejected criticism of plans to use the word "very overweight" instead of "obese" in letters to the parents of schoolchildren.

Officials said research showed the term obese "shuts people down" and was regarded as "highly offensive."

Instead they have recommended that the alternative term be used for children whose body mass index (BMI) exceeds 30.

The National Obesity Forum accused the government of being "prissy" and "namby pamby" by avoiding the word.

The proposals are designed to tackle the growing problem in Britain of overweight children, but the letters will put the onus on parents to contact their doctors or school nurse if they want further information.

Parents will be informed of the child's height and weight and say whether they are underweight, a healthy weight, overweight or very overweight.

Will Cavendish, director of health and wellbeing at the Department of Health, said there was a danger that parents would not react to the information at all if they received a letter containing the word "obese".

"We have not banned (the word obese) but we have chosen not to use it," he said. "There's no point giving them a letter that doesn't have any impact on their behaviour."

Tam Fry, a board member of the National Obesity Forum, however, said experts in the United States had also suggested banning the term obese but had now decided the word was necessary.

"The Americans have gone back to using the term because it's the kind of shock word that makes parents sit up and take notice. It's a nasty word but by God it should sound alarm bells in parents' minds.

"I find this whole approach from the Department of Health a bit prissy and namby pamby."

Two thirds of French men and half of all women aged 35 to 74 are thought to be overweight, according to a study released in June, while one fifth of all adults are obese.

France has taken steps to combat obesity in children with vending machines banned in schools since 2005.

A national programme in Britain now aims to weigh and measure children at age four to five and again aged 10 to 11, but parents can opt out of the process

Overweight problems seen even in infants

2008-08-14T00:29:00.001-07:00

New research indicates that problems associated with being overweight occur at a much younger age than previously thought.In a study reported in the journal Pediatrics, overweight infants were at increased risk for developmental delays and possibly breathing problems, such as asthma. Moreover, in most cases, parents were unaware of their child's weight problem.

"Although the consequences of infant and childhood excess body weight may seem to manifest in later years, this perception is inaccurate," Dr. Ron Shaoul, from Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and colleagues warn.

"Our findings indicate a need to intervene during these critical years by adopting proper eating habits and active lifestyles," they add.

The findings are based on two studies. The first involved 2139 infants not older than age 2 who were admitted for any reason to the Bnai Zion Medical Center in 2004 and 2005. The second study was community-based and used parental interviews to assess the problems seen in 79 overweight infants and 144 normal-weight infants.

The infants were considered overweight if they had a body mass index (BMI) above the 85th weight-for-height percentile on 2 or more measurements taken at least 3 months part. This means that 85 percent of children their age and gender have a lower BMI, which is a measure of weight in relation to height.

In the first study, the researchers found that infants between the 85th and 94th weight-for-height percentiles actually had fewer hospital admissions and repeat admissions than normal-weight infants. However, higher than expected admission rates were seen in the most overweight infants (95th or higher percentile).

In the second study, overweight infants were more likely than their normal-weight peers to have developmental delays and snoring. There was also evidence that asthma and other breathing problems were more common in overweight infants.

When surveyed, only about 32 percent of mothers with an overweight child believed that their child was overweight.

Parents need to be aware that even infants are at risk for problems related to excess body weight and, therefore, should strive to achieve a normal weight in their young children, Shaoul and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2008.

Clinton honors 43 schools for anti-obesity efforts

2008-08-14T00:28:00.003-07:00

Former President Clinton is honoring 43 schools for their anti-obesity efforts, including one that banished candy from its building and another that offers a student fitness club.In a ceremony Wednesday at his presidential library in Little Rock, the former president planned to recognize the schools from a dozen states for their participation in the Healthy Schools Program, a joint initiative of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association.

"Despite the rising food prices and constrained budgets impacting programs nationally, these schools are using innovative approaches to curb the country's alarming rates of childhood obesity," Clinton said. "Schools around the country are stepping up and making progress."

The schools being honored include Kenly Elementary School in Tampa, Fla., which banished candy from its building.

A fitness club is offered to students at the Pine Hill Middle School in New Jersey, and the staff does yoga twice a week.

The Healthy Schools Program started in 2006 and now includes nearly 3,000 schools and more than 1.66 million students. It provides in-person support to 1,364 schools and aims to boost that number to 8,000 by 2010.

All U.S. adults could be overweight in 40 years

2008-08-14T00:28:00.001-07:00

If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects.The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight.

"Genetically and physiologically, it should be impossible" for all U.S. adults to become overweight, said Dr. Lan Liang of the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of the researchers on the study.

However, she told Reuters Health, the data suggest that if the trends of the past 30 years persist, "that is the direction we're going."

Already, she and her colleagues point out, some groups of U.S. adults have extremely high rates of overweight and obesity; among African- American women, for instance, 78 percent are currently overweight or obese.

The new projections, published in the journal Obesity, are based on government survey data collected between the 1970s and 2004.

If the trends of those years continue, the researchers estimate that 86 percent of American adults will be overweight by 2030, with an obesity rate of 51 percent. By 2048, all U.S. adults could be at least mildly overweight.

Weight problems will be most acute among African-Americans and Mexican- Americans, the study projects. All black women could be overweight by 2034, according to the researchers, as could more than 90 percent of Mexican-American men.

All of this rests on the "big assumption" that the trends of recent decades will march on unabated, Liang acknowledged.

"This is really intended as a wake-up call to show what could happen if nothing changes," she said.

Waistlines aren't the only thing poised to balloon in the future, according to Liang and her colleagues. They estimate that the healthcare costs directly related to excess pounds will double each decade, reaching $957 billion in 2030 -- accounting for one of every six healthcare dollars spent in the

U.S.

Those financial projections are based on Census data and published estimates of the current healthcare costs attributed to excess weight -- and they are probably a "huge underestimate" of what the actual costs will be, Liang said.

The findings highlight a need for widespread efforts to improve Americans' lifestyles and keep their weight in check, according to the researchers. Simply telling people to eat less and exercise more is not enough, Liang noted.

Broader social changes are needed as well, she said -- such as making communities more pedestrian-friendly so that people can walk regularly, or getting the food industry to offer healthier, calorie-conscious choices.

"It really needs to be more than an individual effort," Liang said. "It needs to be a societal effort."

SOURCE: Obesity, online July 24, 2008.

Prostate cancer prognosis worse in obese men

2008-08-14T00:27:00.001-07:00

Prostate cancer diagnosis tends to be delayed and surgical treatment more difficult in obese men than in lean men, according to two studies published Friday.The primary reason for the later diagnosis, and consequently poorer prognosis, seems to be that the PSA test used to screen for prostate cancer is "biased" against obese men, according to researchers.

The problem, they explain, may stem from obese men's larger blood volume, which dilutes their PSA levels. High blood levels of PSA -- or prostate specific antigen - can signal the presence of a prostate tumor.

"We know that obese men tend to have lower PSA values than their normal-weight counterparts, possibly caused by larger blood volumes which dilute their readings," Dr. Stephen J. Freedland, who led the studies, said in a written statement.

"Now we know some of the real implications of this -- that these men are at a disadvantage in terms of prognosis compared to normal-weight men."

Freedland, of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues report their findings online in the journal BJU International.

In one study, the researchers looked at the outcomes of nearly 3,400 prostate cancer patients who had undergone surgical removal of the prostate between 1988 and 2007. Some had had their cancer detected by PSA, while the rest had had it discovered during a digital rectal exam.

Overall, Freedland's team found, obese men were more likely to have more-aggressive tumors and to suffer a cancer recurrence after surgery.

However, the link between weight and disease progression was limited to men treated since 2000, when PSA screening had become the norm.

By contrast, obesity had no effect on the risk of progression for cancers detected by digital rectal exam. The findings support the notion that PSA testing, in particular, confers a bias against obese men, according to Freedland.

In the second study, the researchers found that obese prostate cancer patients tend to have a higher rate of "positive surgical margins" after prostate removal -- which means the odds are higher that some tumor cells were left behind.

"The aggressiveness of obese men's tumors, coupled with the fact that they may be more difficult to remove, is like a double whammy for being obese," Dr. Jayakrishnan Jayachandran, another researcher on the studies, said in a statement.

The findings of both studies, according to Freedland, build up the case for developing alternative prostate cancer screening methods for obese men -- or for lowering the PSA threshold for these patients.

"The least we can do is find a way to level the playing field when it comes to diagnostic tools," Freedland said.

SOURCE: BJU International, online August 8, 2008.

Obese Men Face Twin Threat From Prostate Cancer

2008-08-14T00:25:00.003-07:00

The standard screening test for prostate cancer may not be accurate for obese men, leaving them more vulnerable to the disease, and surgery is less likely to be effective for them, a new pair of studies found."Obese men are more likely to be diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease," said Dr. Stephen Freedland, an associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke University Prostate Center, and an author of one of the studies.

The reason: The blood test that looks for elevated levels of the protein prostate-specific antigen (PSA), indicating a heightened cancer risk, doesn't seem as reliable for obese men, Freedland said.

"Our assumption is that these men have more blood volume, so PSA gets diluted, he said. "By the time obese men get to elevated levels, the cancer is more advanced."

The study, published online Friday in the journal BJU International included nearly 3,400 men who had PSA tests. The researchers found that the risk of an aggressive cancer was doubled in obese men diagnosed because of high PSA levels. No such association was found for obese men diagnosed by a digital rectal examination, in which the physician feels for an abnormally large prostate gland.

Prostate cancer is suspected when the PSA reading is 4 or higher. The current recommendation is for men aged 50 and older to be offered an annual PSA test, with explanations of its possible risks and benefits. A federal preventive medicine committee this week said that PSA screening should not be done for men aged 75 and older because the risks outweigh the benefits.

"I'm not sure that we should check obese men more often," Freedland said. "But we should have a higher [PSA] index of suspicion of what is not normal -- 3.4 rather than 4; for really obese men, 3.2."

The Duke study measured obesity using body-mass index, which is a ratio of weight to height. Obesity is defined as a BMI of 30 or more.

A second report from Duke in the same issue of the journal found that excess weight influenced the outcome of surgery for prostate cancer. Men with a BMI of 35 or higher were nearly 60 percent more likely to have a recurrence of the cancer than thinner men, the study of 1,434 men found.

One reason is "the difficulty of operating on obese men in general," said study author Dr. Jayakrishnan Jayachandran, a urology oncology fellow at the Duke Prostate Cancer Center. "The prostate is a narrow thing to operate on, and when there is a big wad of fat in your way, if the abdominal wall is thick, it becomes a technical issue."

The result is that not all the cancer may be removed, which means a recurrence after time, Jayachandran said. "The only thing we can think of is that when you operate on obese people, you have to be more careful," he said.

The studies results apply to men who might not regard themselves as obese, Freedland said. "We can't forget that when we use the term, we are not just talking about very large men," he said. "A man who is 5 foot 9 and weighs 203 pounds would be considered obese."

Jayachandran added, "We are not screening these obese men effectively and are not doing as good a job surgically as could be done."

Fit and fat: Study shows it's possible

2008-08-14T00:25:00.001-07:00

It may be possible to be both fat and healthy, researchers reported on Monday, for at least half of overweight adults, and close to a third of obese men and women, have normal blood pressure, cholesterol and other measures of heart health.And being lean does not necessarily protect people, either. Close to a quarter of normal-weight U.S. adults in one study had risk factors for heart disease or diabetes.

"We really don't know as much about obesity as we think we do," Judith Wylie-Rosett of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who oversaw the study, said in a telephone interview.

"A considerable proportion of overweight and obese U.S. adults are metabolically healthy, whereas a considerable proportion of normal-weight adults express a clustering of cardiometabolic abnormalities," Wylie-Rosett and Rachel Wildman and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Wylie-Rosett's team looked at data on 5,440 men and women who were examined and filled out questionnaires for the National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys between 1999 and 2004. Most did not exercise very much.

They found just over 51 percent of those who were overweight, and 31.7 percent of those who were obese, had healthy levels of cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure and other measures linked to heart disease.

These measures have been shown in many other studies to predict heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and other heart disease, although this particular study did not look at whether people suffered any of these problems.

OBESE YET HEALTHY

More than 23 percent of those who were at a healthy weight, as measured by body mass index, had two or more unhealthy readings, the researchers found.

"Our study shows you can still be healthy even if you are obese," Wylie-Rosett said.

Her team did not look at people's diets, but she believes the location of body fat is as important as how much there is. Many studies have shown that having visceral fat, in and among the internal organs, may be more dangerous than having fat thighs or buttocks.

But when Wylie-Rosett's team measured waist circumference, a common way to estimate visceral fat, more than 36 percent of the obese people with what should have been dangerously large waists had healthy blood test results.

A second study suggested that the liver may be the key.

Dr. Norbert Stefan and colleagues at the University of Tubingen in Germany closely examined 314 people, using magnetic resonance imaging to look at precisely how much body fat they had and where it was.

They also found that obese men and women could have healthy hearts and arteries and suggested that having fat on the liver may be what makes the difference.

"Altogether, 10 percent of the study population and 25 percent of the obese subjects had a high insulin sensitivity phenotype or 'metabolically benign obesity,"' they wrote in their Archives report.

"Our data suggest that ectopic fat accumulation in the liver may be more important than visceral fat in the determination of such a beneficial phenotype in obesity," they wrote.

"That's an area that we are very intrigued with as well," Wylie-Rosett said," adding: "If you start stuffing people with calories, it is very much like making pate from goose liver."

Geese are often force-fed to make their livers fatty and thus more suitable for pate-making.

Scientists Create Mice Resistant to Obesity

2008-08-14T00:24:00.001-07:00

Researchers have developed a strain of mice resistant to diet-induced obesity.The findings could one day lead to possible drug treatments for obesity in people. They also shed light on the brain circuitry that controls energy homeostasis -- the balance between how much energy (i.e., food) an animal takes in and how quickly it burns that energy.

Dr. Julio Licinio, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, called the research a "technological tour de force."

Dr. Bradford Lowell, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, led the study, which was published online Aug. 10 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

According to lead study author Qingchun Tong, most research into energy homeostasis has involved what scientists call genetically encoded neuropeptides, rather than small molecule neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters "have been postulated to play a very important role in neurocommunication, but in this field, essentially no critical studies have been performed to address this issue," Tong said. "So I set up an experiment to create an animal model in which a particular group of neurons in the brain couldn't release a small neurotransmitter, and by examining those animal models, I could know the function of those molecules."

Tong and Lowell focused on one neurotrasmitter in particular, called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). They developed transgenic, or mutant, mice that lacked the ability to release GABA in a subset of brain cells in the hypothalamus -- the brain region that controls processes such as hunger, thirst and body temperature.

On a normal diet, the normal and mutant mice weighed roughly the same, with mutant mice weighing slightly less. On a high fat diet, however, the mutant mice gained far less weight than the normal mice, even though the two groups ate approximately the same amount of food. The reason: The mutant mice were burning energy at a faster rate, the researchers said.

"We found that the mice without GABA release from AgRP neurons have increased energy expenditure and are resistant to diet-induced obesity," Tong said.

These transgenic mice were also resistant to the effects of the hormone ghrelin, which governs hunger. When normal mice were given ghrelin, their food intake increased. In the mutant mice, however, that effect was dampened, Tong said.

Finally, the researchers shed some light on the brain cell networks controlling energy homeostasis. They found that another group of neurons in the hypothalamus, called pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons, receive the GABA signal from AgRP neurons.

"The function of AgRP neurons is probably to reserve the energy for maintaining life," Tong said. "So if the animal doesn't have enough food, the animal should have some strategy to preserve energy, and this group of neurons, by releasing GABA, restrains energy expenditure to maintain enough energy to survive under the conditions in which food is not readily available."

According to Licinio, these findings underscore the importance of the GABA neurotransmitter in regulating the relationship between food consumed and energy expended. "I think it makes the role of GABA in obesity much more relevant than previously thought," he said.

Of course, as with all animal studies, it remains to be seen whether the findings can be repeated in humans.

Half of overweight adults may be heart-healthy

2008-08-14T00:22:00.001-07:00

You can look great in a swimsuit and still be a heart attack waiting to happen. And you can also be overweight and otherwise healthy. A new study suggests that a surprising number of overweight people — about half — have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, while an equally startling number of trim people suffer from some of the ills associated with obesity.The first national estimate of its kind bolsters the argument that you can be hefty but still healthy, or at least healthier than has been believed.

The results also show that stereotypes about body size can be misleading, and that even "less voluptuous" people can have risk factors commonly associated with obesity, said study author MaryFran Sowers, a University of Michigan obesity researcher.

"We're really talking about taking a look with a very different lens" at weight and health risks, Sowers said.

In the study, about 51 percent of overweight adults, or roughly 36 million people nationwide, had mostly normal levels of blood pressure, cholesterol, blood fats called triglycerides and blood sugar.

Almost one-third of obese adults, or nearly 20 million people, also were in this healthy range, meaning that none or only one of those measures was abnormal.

Yet about a fourth of adults in the recommended-weight range had unhealthy levels of at least two of these measures. That means some 16 million of them are at risk for heart problems.

It's no secret that thin people can develop heart-related problems and that fat people often do not. But that millions defy the stereotypes will come as a surprise to many people, Sowers said.

Even so, there's growing debate about the accuracy of the standard method of calculating whether someone is overweight. Health officials rely on the body mass index, a weight-height ratio that does not distinguish between fat and lean tissue. The limits of that method were highlighted a few years ago when it was reported that the system would put nearly half of NBA players in the overweight category.

A number of experts say waist size is a more accurate way of determining someone's health risks, and the study results support that argument.

Dr. Robert Eckel, a former American Heart Association president and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, said the new research may help dismiss some of the generalizations that are sometimes made about weight and health.

Study co-author Judith Wylie-Rosett emphasized that the study shouldn't send the message "that we don't need to worry about weight." That's because half of overweight people do face elevated risks for heart disease, explained Wylie-Rosett, a nutrition researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

But, for those without elevated risks, losing weight "might be important only from a cosmetic perspective," she said.

To arrive at the estimates, scientists analyzed nationally representative government surveys involving 5,440 people age 20 and over, and extrapolated to calculate nationwide figures.

The new study, appearing in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, used government surveys from 1999 to 2004 that included lab tests and height and weight measurements. Participants reported on habits including smoking and physical activity.

In all weight categories, risk factors for heart problems were generally more common in older people, smokers and inactive people. Among obese people who were 50 to 64, just 20 percent were considered healthy compared with half of younger obese people.

The results underscore how important exercise is for staying healthy, even for people of healthy weight, Wylie-Rosett said.

The authors noted that fat tissue releases hormones and other substances that affect things like blood vessels, cholesterol and blood sugar. The results suggest this interaction varies among overweight and obese people, the authors said.

The results also add to mounting evidence that thick waists are linked with heart risks.

Among people of healthy weight in the study, elevated blood pressure, cholesterol and other factors were more common for people with larger waists or potbellies. This often signals internal fat deposits surrounding abdominal organs, which previous research has shown can be especially risky.

Similarly, among overweight and obese adults, those in the "healthy" category tended to have smaller waists than those with at least two risk factors.

Dr. Lewis Landsberg, a Northwestern University obesity expert, noted that the research didn't look at heart disease, and that not everyone with high risk factors develops heart problems.

Still, he said, the study shows that waist measurements can help assess health.

Obese people can be healthy: study

2008-08-14T00:21:00.001-07:00

Some obese people are in good health and are not predisposed to heart ailments, according to a surprise study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.And yet another study showed that being slim doesn't automatically protect you from heart-related illnesses such as high blood pressure and cholestrol, and diabetes.

In the first study, conducted by Norbert Stefan and a team at the University of Tubingen in Germany, the researchers studied the fat around the internal organs and under the skin of 314 individuals with an average age of 45.

The obese individuals in the study were divided into two groups: those who were resistant to insulin and those who were not. Insulin resistance is a pre-diabetic condition, meaning some symptoms of diabetes are present and progression to full-blown diabetes is likely.

Those who were obese and resistant to insulin had more muscle fat, fat in their livers and thicker carotid-artery walls -- an early sign of artery narrowing, which is a heart-disease risk factor -- than obese individuals without insulin resistance, the study found.

In addition, obese individuals who were not insulin-resistant had no differences in artery-wall thickness from the normal-weight group.

"We provide evidence that a metabolically benign obesity can be identified and that it may protect from insulin resistance and atherosclerosis," the researchers wrote.

The second study carried out by Rachel Wildman at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York examined body weight and cardio-metabolic abnormalities -- including high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides and low levels of so-called good cholesterol -- in 5,440 individuals between 1999 and 2004.

The study found that some obese people are metabolically healthy.

"Obese individuals with no metabolic abnormalities were more likely to be younger, black, more physically active and have smaller waists than those with metabolic risk factors," the authors wrote.

Those of normal weight with health risks were older, less active and had a larger waist than the average population.

Among the US population aged 20 and older, some 23 percent (16 million adults) of normal weight have metabolic abnormalities, while 51 percent (36 million) of overweight adults and 32 percent (19.5 million) of obese adults "were metabolically healthy," the authors wrote.

Clumsy children more likely to become obese adults

2008-08-14T00:17:00.001-07:00

Children with poor hand control and coordination are more likely to become obese adults, researchers said on Wednesday.The finding adds to a growing body of evidence linking poorer cognitive function in childhood to obesity and type 2 diabetes in adults.

A study of thousands of British children found those with the worst cognitive and physical function at the ages of seven and 11 years were far more likely to be obese in later life.

"It's not a question of people who are already overweight becoming clumsy because the majority of these children weren't any heavier than their peers," researcher Scott Montgomery said in a telephone interview.

"It was assumed that all the neurological complications associated with obesity were consequences of obesity itself. This suggests that's not the case."

The findings held true even after adjusting for factors likely to influence the results, such as childhood body mass and family social class, he noted.

What lies behind the link is unclear but Montgomery believes it could be a function of factors such as maternal smoking during pregnancy or lack of exercise in childhood. The latter is important for developing fine motor control.

The new study by experts from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and London's Imperial College is based on more than 11,000 individuals participating in Britain's ongoing National Child Development Study, which began in 1958.

Around 8,000 of them were assessed by teachers at age seven years to identify hand control and clumsiness, and just under 7,000 were tested for hand control and coordination at age 11 by a doctor.

The results were published in the British Medical Journal.

Scientists are finding a surprising number of connections between neurological problems and obesity. Earlier this week, U.S. researchers reported that running reduced the risk not only of heart disease but also of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's -- as well as cancer.

Poor Coordination in Childhood Tied to Adult Obesity

2008-08-14T00:15:00.001-07:00

A lack of physical control and coordination in childhood may be tied to an increased risk of obesity in later life, a new study says.The research, published online at BMJ.com Wednesday, adds to previous studies that found poorer cognitive function in childhood may be linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes in adults.

The findings, based on 11,041 individuals in the ongoing National Child Development Study in Great Britain, showed that children who showed poor hand control, poor coordination, and clumsiness at age 7 in testing were more likely to be obese adults. Those with poorer functioning motor skills at age 11 also tended to be obese at age 33.

Adjusting for factors that may influence the results, such as childhood body mass and family social class, did not change the results. However, the study did not delve into specific biological processes that may explain poorer physical control and coordination in childhood with adult obesity.

"Some early life exposures (such as maternal smoking during pregnancy) or personal characteristics may impair the development of physical control and coordination, as well as increasing the risk of obesity in later life," the authors, from Imperial College London and Orebro University Hospital & Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, wrote.

"Rather than being explained by a single factor, an accumulation throughout life of many associated cultural, personal, and economic exposures is likely to underlie the risks for obesity and some elements of associated neurological function," they concluded.

13 Keys to a Healthy Diet

2008-06-27T20:10:00.001-07:00

Developing healthy eating habits isn't as confusing or as restrictive as many people imagine. The first principle of a healthy diet is simply to eat a wide variety of foods. This is important because different foods make different nutritional contributions.

Secondly, fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes—foods high in complex carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, low in fat, and free of cholesterol—should make up the bulk of the calories you consume. The rest should come from low-fat dairy products, lean meat and poultry, and fish.

You should also try to maintain a balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure—that is, don't eat more food than your body can utilize. Otherwise, you will gain weight. The more active you are, therefore, the more you can eat and still maintain this balance.

Following these three basic steps doesn't mean that you have to give up your favorite foods. As long as your overall diet is balanced and rich in nutrients and fiber, there is nothing wrong with an occasional cheeseburger. Just be sure to limit how frequently you eat such foods, and try to eat small portions of them.

You can also view healthy eating as an opportunity to expand your range of choices by trying foods—especially vegetables, whole grains, or fruits—that you don't normally eat. A healthy diet doesn't have to mean eating foods that are bland or unappealing.

The following basic guidelines are what you need to know to construct a healthy diet.

1 Eat plenty of high-fiber foods—that is, fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains. These are the "good" carbohydrates—nutritious, filling, and relatively low in calories. They should supply the 20 to 30 grams of dietary fiber you need each day, which slows the absorption of carbohydrates, so there’s less effect on insulin and blood sugar, and provides other health benefits as well. Such foods also provide important vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (plant chemicals essential to good health).

2 Make sure to include green, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables—such as broccoli, carrots, cantaloupe, and citrus fruits. The antioxidants and other nutrients in these foods may help protect against developing certain types of cancer and other diseases. Eat five or more servings a day.

3 Limit your intake of sugary foods, refined-grain products such as white bread, and salty snack foods. Sugar, our No.1 additive, is added to a vast array of foods. Just one daily 12-ounce can of soda (160 calories) can add up to 16 pounds over the course of a year. Many sugary foods are also high in fat, so they’re calorie-dense.

4 Cut down on animal fat. It’s rich in saturated fat, which boosts blood cholesterol levels and has other adverse health effects. Choose lean meats, skinless poultry, and nonfat or low-fat or nonfat dairy products.

5 Cut way down on trans fats, supplied by hydrogenated vegetable oils used in most processed foods in the supermarket and in many fast foods.

6 Eat more fish and nuts, which contain healthy unsaturated fats. Substitute olive or canola oil for butter or stick margarine.

7 Keep portions moderate, especially of high-calorie foods. In recent years serving sizes have ballooned, particularly in restaurants. Choose a starter instead of an entrée, split a dish with a friend, and don’t order supersized anything.

8 Keep your cholesterol intake below 300 milligrams per day. Cholesterol is found only in animal products, such as meats, poultry, dairy products, and egg yolks.

9 Eat a variety of foods. Don't try to fill your nutrient requirements by eating the same foods day in, day out. It is possible that not every essential nutrient has been identified, and so eating a wide assortment of foods helps to ensure that you will get all the necessary nutrients. In addition, this will limit your exposure to any pesticides or toxic substances that may be present in one particular food.

10 Maintain an adequate calcium intake. Calcium is essential for strong bones and teeth. Get your calcium from low-fat sources, such as skim milk and low-fat yogurt. If you can't get the optimal amount from foods, take supplements.

11 Try to get your vitamins and minerals from foods, not from supplements. Supplements cannot substitute for a healthy diet, which supplies nutrients and other compounds besides vitamins and minerals. Foods also provide the "synergy" that many nutrients require to be efficiently used in the body.

12 Maintain a desirable weight. Balance energy (calorie) intake with energy output. Exercise and other physical activity are essential.

13 If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation. That is one drink a day for women, two a day for men. A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits. Excess alcohol consumption leads to a variety of health problems. And alcoholic beverages can add many calories to your diet without supplying nutrients.

source: wellnessletter.com

Tips for a Healthy Diet

2008-06-27T20:02:00.001-07:00

Healthy eating is not about strict nutrition philosophies, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible – all which can be achieved by learning some nutrition basics and incorporating them in a way that works for you.

By developing your own plan for healthy eating, you’ll be able to expand your range of healthy choices to include a variety of delicious. Using guidelines and tips for creating and maintaining a satisfying, healthy diet, you can learn how to approach food in a smarter, healthier way.

Healthy eating begins with learning how to “eat smart”. It's not just what you eat, but how you eat. Paying attention to what you eat and choosing foods that are both nourishing and enjoyable helps support an overall healthy diet.

* Take time to chew your food: Chew your food slowly, savoring every bite. We tend to rush though our meals, forgetting to actually taste the flavors and feel the textures of what is in our mouths. Reconnect with the joy of eating.
* Avoid stress while eating: When we are stressed, our digestion can be compromised, causing problems like colitis and heartburn. Avoid eating while working, driving, arguing, or watching TV (especially disturbing programs or the news). Try taking some deep breaths prior to beginning your meal, or light candles and play soothing music to create a relaxing atmosphere.
* Listen to your body: Ask yourself if you are really hungry, and stop eating when you feel full. It actually takes a few minutes for your brain to tell your body that it has had enough food, so eat slowly. Eating just enough to satisfy your hunger will help you remain alert, relaxed and feeling your best, rather than stuffing yourself into a “food coma”!
* Eat early, eat often: Starting your day with a healthy breakfast can jumpstart your metabolism, and eating the majority of your daily caloric allotment early in the day gives your body time to work those calories off. Also, eating small, healthy meals throughout the day, rather than the standard three large meals, can help keep your metabolism going and ward off snack attacks.

source:helpguide.org

Mood hormone may affect fat, U.S. study finds

2008-06-16T20:40:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A brain chemical strongly linked to mood and appetite may also directly affect fat gain, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

They said levels of serotonin, the nerve-signaling chemical targeted by many antidepressants, may also direct the body to put down fat regardless of how much food is eaten.

"It may be one reason diets fail," metabolism expert Kaveh Ashrafi of the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

The findings, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, could lead to better diet drugs and treatments for diseases like diabetes.

Serotonin may help the body decide whether to burn off excess calories, or store them as fat, Ashrafi said.

He worked with roundworms for his experiment but said the findings may relate to humans. "These worms, although they are microscopic, they have around 20,000 genes ... and if you compare them side by side they are about 50 percent similar to us," he said.

Genes controlling appetite, fat storage and metabolism are especially similar, he said. The tiny worms can be manipulated to see changes to their metabolism, appetite and weight gain.

"It has been known for a long time that increasing serotonin causes fat reduction," Ashrafi said.

"At the molecular level we are trying to understand what is the mechanism that allows that to happen. What we discovered in the worm is that those mechanisms can be separated from the mechanisms that mediate the effects of serotonin on appetite."

The research found serotonin levels affected the worms' appetite, but they also affected how much fat the worms accumulated, and this was via a separate process.

If the worms detect a food shortage, their metabolisms shift and they store more fat. This could explain why some people get fat more easily than others -- and why dieting can cause more weight gain later.

"Different people may have similar diets, may have similar rates of physical activity, but may have very different body weights," Ashrafi said. "Appetite is only part of it."

But for now the remedy for excess body fat remains obvious. "Nothing in our study says that good nutrition and physical activity are not good for you," Ashrafi said.

Simply raising serotonin levels can have serious side-effects. The diet drug fenfluramine, which has the effect of raising serotonin levels, was pulled off the market in 1997 after it caused sometimes deadly heart valve damage.

Source: news.yahoo.com

Eating Habits Not Sole Cause of Thinness or Obesity

2008-06-16T20:35:00.001-07:00

WEDNESDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- Your nerves, rather than your eating habits, may have a more direct role in whether you are fat or thin, according to new research.

A study on worms shows that serotonin levels in the nervous system influence feeding and fat. Serotonin, a neurotransmitter, also acts independently to control eating and what your body does with those calories once they've been consumed, the study said.

"It says that the nervous system is a key regulator coordinating all energy-related processes through distinct molecular pathways," Kaveh Ashrafi, of the University of California, San Francisco, said in a prepared statement. "The nervous system makes a decision about its state leading to effects on behavior, reproduction, growth and metabolism. These outputs are related, but they are not consequences of each other. It's not that feeding isn't important, but the neural control of fat is distinct from feeding."

Ashrafi said that given serotonin's ancient evolutionary origins, you can apply what's learned from the worms to humans.

"From a clinical perspective, this may mean you could develop therapeutic strategies to manipulate fat metabolism independently of what you eat," he said. "Now, the focus is primarily on feeding behavior. As important as that is, it's only part of the story. If the logic of the system is conserved across species, a strategy that focuses solely on behavior can only go so far. It may be one reason diets fail."

The findings were published in the June issue of Cell Metabolism.

At its most basic level, fat regulation is the balance between energy intake and expenditure; however, Ashrafi said the physiology is very complicated.

In the worms, serotonin affected feeding by involving nerve receptors not normally required for fat control. The byproducts of the signaling process ended up affecting the control of feeding behavior, Ashrafi said.

In the worms and in mammals, high serotonin levels are associated with fat reduction, while low serotonin levels lead to fat accumulation, the researchers noted. However, in the worms, when serotonin goes up, the worms desire to eat increases even as fat melts away. But in humans, high serotonin leads people to eat less and shed fat.

Serotonin's effects on fat and eating habits in the worms fit the nerve messenger's role as a sensory gauge of nutrient availability, the researchers said. When resources are scarce, worms build up their fat reserves and switch metabolic gears to save energy and direct nutrients to fat stores.

Ashrafi said serotonin's role in balancing energy across species leads him to believe that "human counterparts of feeding-independent fat regulatory genes identified in our study may similarly regulate energy balance."

'Standard' Glucose Test May Be Wrong One for Obese Children

2008-06-16T20:30:00.001-07:00

SUNDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- The current standard screening test for prediabetes in children often fails to detect the condition, Canadian researchers contend.

Ironically, the findings are from a study group of 172 obese children -- ages 5 to 17 -- who joined a program to help them slim down to a healthy weight.

The standard diabetes test for children is the fasting plasma (blood) glucose test, but it identified almost three times fewer children with diabetes than the glucose stress test, also called the oral glucose tolerance test. The glucose stress test takes longer, because blood is taken from the patient after fasting and again two hours after drinking a sugary solution.

Using the fasting blood glucose test, the researchers found that only 8 percent of the children in the study met the diagnostic criteria for prediabetes. But the glucose stress test indicated that 25 percent of the children had prediabetes.

"A large proportion of the children with prediabetes would not have had their condition recognized," lead author Dr. Katherine Morrison, of the pediatrics department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, said in a prepared statement.

The researchers also found the fasting blood glucose test identified metabolic syndrome in only 5.2 percent of the children, while the glucose stress test detected metabolic syndrome in 12.8 percent of the children. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors (including high blood sugar) for diabetes and heart disease.

The findings were expected to be presented over the weekend at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Francisco.

"Prediabetes and metabolic syndrome are common in obese children but are not readily identified with the currently recommended test. They require a glucose stress test," Morrison said.

Prediabetes and metabolic syndrome often cause no obvious symptoms, she added. Early detection is important, because changes in diet, regular exercise and moderate weight loss can help prevent or delay diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Added time, inconvenience and cost are among the reasons why the glucose stress test isn't typically used in children.

"But this research suggests that the recommended test for screening obese children for prediabetes and metabolic syndrome should be changed," Morrison said.

The Cookie Diet

2008-06-01T01:01:00.001-07:00

A "Cookie Diet" refers to a diet based on a specially crafted cookie that helps to suppress appetite.

The term "Cookie Diet" has been the subject of a legal battle between two companies that claim to own the rights to the phrase. Those companies are Smart for Life, and Dr Sanford Seigal.

UPDATE July 2007 (Dr Sanford won a preliminary injunction with regard to the Cookie Diet trademark - Smart for Life has been ordered to stop using the name Cookie Diet).

Dr. Seigal first experimented with a cookie formula in 1975. He believe that - for many people - obesity was caused by a faulty thyroid gland.

The basic idea is to consume 6 cookies per day along with a single meal at dinner time. The dinner should be high in lean protein.

Some critics claim a cookie-diet is far too low in calories and is unsustainable.

Source:http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2005/05/26/the_cookie_diet.php

Can You Lose Weight on a Cookie Diet?

2008-06-01T00:55:00.001-07:00

Dr. Sanford Siegal makes a weight-loss offer that sounds hard to refuse: the Cookie Diet, a pound-shedding program that he says has helped thousands of his patients drop an average of 15 pounds per month.

The key is a carefully crafted cookie recipe, which suppresses hunger, paired with very specific dinner menu, said Siegal of Siegal Medical Group in Miami.

"On this diet, you have one meal only: dinner," Siegal said. "The dinner consists of 6 ounces of chicken, turkey, fish or seafood."

Along with the lean meat choices, the diet allows one cup of vegetables with dinner. Red meats are discouraged because of their high fat content. The rest of the diet consists of exactly six hunger-suppressing cookies per day, which are baked in Siegal's own bakery in Miami and available only to patients in Siegal's clinics (five in Florida, and one in Montreal.)

The cookies are not for breakfast or for lunch, but rather for whenever the dieter is hungry, though they must eat six a day. The six cookies, plus the one dinner, adds up to 800 calories. Dieters should also consume eight glasses of liquid a day, which includes coffee and tea, Siegal says.

Too Few Calories?

Critics say the diet's requirement of 800 calories a day is too low, and that it lacks nutritional staples that give us the vitamins and minerals we need.

"It's really just another fad diet that will hook people in with the gimmick of being able to eat cookies all day," said Amy Campbell, a nutrition and diabetes educator at the Joslin Clinic in Boston. "While this sounds appealing, a closer look at the details reveals that this is not a nutritious eating plan at all."

The 800 calories a day is below that which is recommended for safe and effective weight loss, and the diet is woefully lacking in fruits and vegetables, as well as calcium, vitamin D4 and fiber, she said.

Siegal says that there have been no problems with the diet in terms of patient safety, and that it is supplemented with vitamins.

Unlike diet pills designed to suppress your appetite, the cookies do not have drugs in them, Siegal said. Instead, the cookies contain amino-acids in the form of hunger-suppressing proteins: oats, rice, whole wheat flour, bran.

"We've worked with this mixture over the years to the point it works quite well as an appetite suppressant," Siegal said. "And it enables someone to eat an 800-calories-a-day diet and not get hungry."

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125395

Lifestyle change key for obesity surgery success

2008-05-15T06:52:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Anyone thinking about having
weight loss surgery should be sure to do their homework
beforehand, and must understand they need to dramatically
change the way they eat for the surgery to be successful,
advises the head of the U.S. government agency responsible for
research on health care quality and patient safety.

"People who succeed and lose weight and keep it off eat
very, very differently," Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville,
Maryland, told Reuters Health. "Essentially, you've got to eat
a whole lot less."

Clancy has written about the realities of operations to
promote weight loss, known as bariatric surgery, in the latest
issues of Nursing for Women's Health and Health for Women, both
published by the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and
Neonatal Nurses.

Bariatric surgery has skyrocketed in popularity, Clancy
noted in an interview, but just a fraction of people who could
benefit most from the surgery have gotten it. According to
AHRQ, evidence for the procedure's benefits is strongest for
people with body mass indexes (BMIs) of 40 or higher, or
individuals with BMIs of 35 or greater who have a serious
medical condition, such as diabetes or severe sleep apnea.

Nevertheless, she added, the surgery "is not risk free, and
I think it's really important for all people, women and men, to
know about the risks and to be very clear about what they're
getting into."

For example, Clancy said, 7 percent of people who undergo
the surgery need to be rehospitalized for complications. Four
out of 10 will develop complications within 6 months of the
surgery. These complications include nausea, cramps and
vomiting due to overeating.

People should also seek out a surgeon and health care team
they can communicate with effectively, because post-surgical
follow-up care is just as important as the procedure itself,
Clancy added. If you don't "click," or you feel your surgeon
isn't hearing your concerns, she advised, look elsewhere.

People may want to seek out bariatric surgery programs
designated as Centers of Excellence by the American Society for
Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (http://www.asbs.org/), Clancy
suggested.

Finally, she said, people need to find out before having
the surgery whether or not their insurer covers it. Some will
require documentation that a person has made a serious effort
to lose weight by other means before they will pay for the
procedure.

SOURCE: Nursing for Women's Health, February/March 2008.

School nutrition policy can prevent obesity

2008-05-15T06:50:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Philadelphia schools that cut
out soda, revamped snack selections and took other measures to
prevent childhood obesity were able to halve the odds of
students becoming overweight by sixth grade, a study has found.

Among fourth-graders at five schools that instituted the
new nutrition policy, 7.5 percent became overweight over the
next 2 years, compared with 15 percent of students at five city
schools that did not make the changes, researchers report in
the journal Pediatrics.

The findings show that a comprehensive approach to battling
childhood obesity in schools can make a significant difference,
according to lead researcher Dr. Gary D. Foster of Temple
University.

Schools have been at the center of the controversy over
what to do about U.S. children's rising rates of overweight and
obesity. Critics have pointed to vending machines, sugary "a la
carte" items in school cafeterias, and reductions in gym class
as part of the problem.

At the same time, schools are considered the ideal place
for children to learn healthy eating and exercise habits, and
various school-based programs have been developed with that
aim. The results have been mixed, however.

For their study, Foster and his colleagues evaluated a
program developed by a non-profit community group called the
Food Trust. Ten schools enrolled in the study; half were
randomly assigned to adopt the nutrition program, while the
other half served as a comparison group.

Schools in the program made an array of changes. They
replaced soda with water, low-fat milk and 100-percent fruit
juice, and rid vending machines and cafeterias of snacks that
did not meet certain nutrition criteria. They educated students
on how diet and exercise affect their health, and gave them
raffle tickets for bikes and other prizes to reward them for
choosing healthy snacks.

The schools also got parents involved through meetings and
nutrition workshops that encouraged them to give their kids
more fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods.

Among the 1,349 students Foster's team followed from fourth
to sixth grade. As mentioned, there was about a 50 percent
reduction in the incidence (new cases) of overweight at the end
of 2 years among the children attending the program schools,
while no changes were seen among the children attending the
schools without a program.

The prevalence (total number) of overweight children also
declined during the study period in the program group. However,
no differences in the prevalence of obesity were seen between
the program group and the comparison group.

The results, Foster told Reuters Health, underscore the
benefits of schools having a comprehensive nutrition program,
rather than taking only individual measures -- like removing
vending machines, for instance.

He and his colleagues also stress that the urban schools in
this study had largely low-income, minority student populations
-- children who are at particularly high risk of obesity. Black
children appeared to particularly benefit from the nutrition
policy.

In the sixth grade, the study found, African-American
children in these schools were 41 percent less likely to be
overweight than African Americans in the comparison schools.

Despite the success, Foster's team writes, the fact that
7.5 percent of children in the program schools still became
overweight shows that even more needs to be done.

They say that obesity-prevention programs should start
before fourth grade, and possibly include a broader range of
measures -- such as devoting more time to gym class and
enlisting the corner stores near schools to offer healthier
snack options.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, April 2008.

Dad's early obesity tied to liver disease in kids

2008-05-15T06:48:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Having a father who becomes
obese at a relatively young age may increase a person's risk of
developing serious liver problems, a new study shows.

Individuals whose fathers were obese before age 45 were
more likely than those whose parents were not obese to have
high levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in their blood,
an enzyme that signals liver injury, Dr. Rohit Loomba of the
National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and
colleagues found.

High ALT levels in the general population can be associated
with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, an obesity-related
condition, Loomba and his team say. One severe, progressive
form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is nonalcoholic
steatohepatitis, which can lead to cirrhosis and even liver
cancer, they note in the medical journal Gastroenterology.

To investigate whether parental obesity might be related to
high ALT levels, as well as levels of another enzyme related to
liver damage, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), the researchers
looked at measurements of both enzymes in 1,732 men and women
participating in the Framingham Heart Study.

The researchers divided study participants into three
groups: people whose parents became obese unusually early
(before age 41 for women and before age 45 for men), those with
parents who became obese later on, and those with parents who
were never obese.

Having a father with early-onset obesity increased a
person's likelihood of having elevated ALT levels, regardless
of their own weight, the researchers found. But there was no
link between maternal obesity and ALT levels, and no
relationship at all between parental obesity and AST levels.

Developing a condition like obesity early can indicate
genetic susceptibility to that condition, the researchers note
in their report. The findings suggest that genes that promote
early-onset obesity could also influence ALT levels, they add.

"These results support the need for further studies to
establish whether individuals with early-onset parental obesity
and elevated serum ALT levels are at a higher risk for
developing progressive liver disease such as nonalcoholic
steatohepatitis," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: Gastroenterology, April 2008.

Metabolic Syndrome Triggered by Overeating, Not Obesity

2008-05-15T06:47:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- Overeating, not the obesity
it causes, is the actual cause of metabolic syndrome, suggests a study
with mice by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center at Dallas.

Metabolic syndrome is a collection of health factors that increase the
risk of developing insulin resistance, fatty liver, heart disease and type
2 diabetes.

This study was among the first to propose that weight gain is an early
symptom, not a direct cause, of metabolic syndrome, the researchers
said.

"Most people today think that obesity itself causes metabolic
syndrome," senior author Dr. Roger Unger, professor of internal medicine,
said in a prepared statement. "We're ingrained to think obesity is the
cause of all health problems, when, in fact, it is the spillover of fat
into organs other than fat cells that damages these organs, such as the
heart and the liver. Depositing fatty molecules in fat cells where they
belong actually delays that harmful spillover."

In this study, Under and his colleagues compared normal mice to mice
that were genetically altered to prevent their fat cells from expanding.
Both groups of mice were overfed.

The normal mice got fat but didn't develop signs of metabolic syndrome
until after about seven weeks of overeating. The genetically altered mice
stayed slim but became seriously ill within a few weeks and displayed
evidence of severe heart problems and major increases in blood sugar
levels eight weeks before minimal heart problems developed in the normal
mice, the researchers said.

The genetically altered mice showed significant damage to heart cells
and to the insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. They also got sick
quicker, because the extra calories they consumed weren't stored in fat
cells, but rather in other tissues, the researchers said.

The study was published online in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.

Canadian cancer survivors obese and inactive

2008-05-15T06:43:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Cancer survivors in Canada are more
likely to be obese and less likely to exercise than the rest of
the population -- putting themselves at risk of having their
cancers come back, researchers said on Monday.

The trends, likely to be seen in cancer survivors around
the world, suggest patients need help and support in staying
active and keeping the weight off, said Kerry Courneya of the
University of Alberta in Edmonton, who led the study.

"It's a challenge for all of us to eat properly and
exercise, and it may be especially challenging for cancer
survivors who have been through difficult treatments and may
have lingering health issues," Courneya said in a statement.

"But eating well and exercising are two of the best things
we can do for our mental and physical health, even in trying
times. Rest is rarely the best medicine for any health
condition."

Courneya and colleagues analyzed data from a 2005 survey of
more than 114,000 adults.

Fewer than 22 percent of former cancer patients described
themselves as physically active. This compares with 25 percent
of the general Canadian population, they reported in the
journal Cancer.

They also found that 18 percent of cancer survivors were
medically obese, compared to 15 percent of the general
population, and 34 percent were overweight.

Many cancers are linked with obesity and a lack of
exercise.

"These findings tell us that we need to look at ways to
better support cancer survivors to become more active and to
maintain a healthy body weight," Courneya said.

"We know that physical inactivity and obesity are risk
factors for developing cancer. These are also risk factors for
the recurrence of cancer. Lifestyle is just as important after
diagnosis."

The researchers defined someone as physically active if
they walked at least an hour a day or did the equivalent in
swimming, cycling or some other activity. Inactive people
walked or exercised less than 30 minutes a day.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Todd Eastham)

Many Cancer Survivors Are Overweight and Sedentary

2008-05-15T06:40:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- A healthy lifestyle may help
cancer survivors prevent recurrence of the disease and live longer, yet
cancer survivors have rates of obesity and physical inactivity similar to
those of the general population, according to new research.

The study, published in the June 1 issue of Cancer, found that
less than one-quarter of cancer survivors were regularly physically
active, and more than 18 percent were obese.

"We thought this might be a time when people would be particularly
motivated to exercise and control weight. But, a cancer diagnosis and
treatment didn't seem to stimulate behavior change," said the study's lead
author, Kerry Courneya, a professor and Canada Research Chair at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

What's troubling is that maintaining a healthy weight and getting
regular physical exercise may be even more crucial for cancer survivors
than it is for the general public. Some studies have suggested that
physical activity and losing weight may help prevent cancer recurrence and
improve survival odds.

Additionally, some research suggests that exercise can help reduce
fatigue, improve physical functioning and improve quality of life for some
cancer survivors.

For the study, Courneya and his colleagues gathered data from the
Canadian Community Health Survey. This survey contains information based
on interviews of more than 114,000 people in Canada. Details of cancer
history, weight, height and physical activity were all supplied by the
respondents.

General population statistics for Canada find that 37 percent of people
are overweight, and 22 percent are obese, according to background
information in the study.

Fewer than 22 percent of cancer survivors reported being physically
active. The lowest rates of physical activity were found among colorectal
cancer survivors, breast cancer survivors and female survivors of
melanoma.

Thirty-four percent of cancer survivors were overweight, and almost one
in five was obese.

Obese breast cancer survivors were only about half as likely to be
physically active as obese women who hadn't had cancer, a finding that's
particularly worrisome, because poor outcomes in breast cancer have been
associated with obesity and the often accompanying sedentary lifestyle.

"We really didn't know which way the research would go. Cancer
survivors may be more motivated at the time of their diagnosis to make
changes, but others point out that it's a very stressful time that can
take a toll and lead to the opposite effect," Courneya said.

Kevin Stein, director of Quality of Life Research at the American
Cancer Society, said, "This is an important finding to underscore the fact
that cancer survivors need to pay attention to their health. You've
dodged a bullet for the time being, but cancer survivors are actually at
an increased risk for a number of health conditions, including cancer
recurrence.

"There is a teachable moment when someone is diagnosed. It's the
perfect opportunity to say, 'We all need to eat healthy and exercise, but
it's even more important for you as a cancer survivor,' " he said.

Courneya added: "This is something they can do for themselves to help
beat cancer and improve quality of life. The cancer community needs to get
more involved in the promotion of healthy lifestyles in cancer patients.
Maybe a program something like cardiac rehabilitation. The cancer
community's been slower to realize the importance of lifestyle changes
after cancer diagnosis."

Obesity, smoking cuts many US women's life expectancy: study

2008-05-15T06:38:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) -
Life expectancy has declined for many women in the United States, largely due to smoking-related diseases and obesity, a study published Tuesday showed.

Nearly one in five US women saw the number of years they are expected
to live decline or hold steady, starting in the 1980s, showed the joint
study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington.

The study looked at data from more than 2,000 county "units" between 1959 and 2001.

In around 1,000 of those counties -- mainly poor, rural areas -- life
expectancy for women dropped starting in the 1980s, "primarily because
of chronic diseases related to smoking, overweight and obesity, and high blood pressure," according to the study.

In the United States as a whole, in contrast, life expectancy for women
rose by more than six years and for men by more than seven years during
the same period, it showed.

"There is now evidence that there are large parts of the population in
the United States whose health has been getting worse for about two
decades," Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health at
the Harvard School of Public Health, and lead author of the study, said
in a statement.

Worst affected by the downturn in longevity were the south -- the region hardest hit by poverty, according to the US Census Bureau -- the Appalachians, southern parts of the Midwest and areas of Texas.

Men in the same areas also saw a drop in life expectancy, but numbers
were less alarming than among women -- only four percent -- and the
fall was attributed to different causes, mainly HIV/AIDS and homicide.

"Life expectancy decline is something that has traditionally been
considered a sign that the health and social systems have failed, as
has been the case in parts of Africa and Eastern Europe," said the
study's co-author Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

"The fact that this is happening to a large number of Americans should be a sign that the US health system needs serious rethinking," he added.

Obesity, low birthweight mar health of kids

2008-05-15T06:36:00.001-07:00

CHICAGO (Reuters) -
Rising obesity rates and a large
percentage of children born with low birthweight are dragging
down the overall health of American children in their first
decade of life, according to a report tracking the health and
well-being of young children in the United States.

While U.S. children overall have seen improvements in their
well-being in recent years, American children aged 6 to 11 are
four times more likely to be obese than similarly aged children
in the 1960s, the report found.

The report, led by researchers at Duke University in North
Carolina and the Foundation for Child Development, a private
advocacy group, looked at the well-being of children in early
childhood, those from birth to age five, and middle childhood,
or those aged 6 to 11, from 1994 to 2006.

The researchers found obesity among children in middle
childhood is nearly four times more common than in children of
the same age in a national survey in 1960s. For children aged 2
to 5, it is three times higher.

"These are dramatic increases in the prevalence of
overweight children in American society from one generation to
the next," the researchers wrote. "The importance of this trend
for the health and well-being of children is difficult to
exaggerate."

They said overweight children have greater risks of type 2
diabetes, and often have elevated risk factors associated with
heart disease, such as high cholesterol and high blood
pressure.

They also found that the percentage of babies born with low
birthweight rose 12.3 percent from 1994 to 2005, an increase
they said was likely tied to delayed childbearing among working
mothers and an increased use of fertility drugs.

Low birthweight has been linked in large studies to a
higher risk of developmental and learning problems and to lower
academic achievement. It also has been linked with higher rates
of chronic health conditions.

Other trends were more positive.

The researchers found significant improvements in the
mortality rates of children, with the most dramatic improvement
for children aged 1 to 4. Death rates among these children fell
to 29.4 deaths in 100,000 in 2005, compared with 42.9 deaths
per 100,000 in 1994.

For those aged 5 to 9, rates of death fell 27 percent to
14.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2005.

The researchers cite a host of contributing factors,
ranging from better health care and nutrition to car safety
seats.

The report also noted a dramatic 84 percent drop in the
rates of lead poisoning among children aged 0 to 6. Lead
poisoning can result in physical, neurological and cognitive
problems.

Still, many children remain at risk for moderate levels of
lead in their blood should continue to be monitored, they said.

Obesity and low birthweight mar health of kids

2008-05-15T06:28:00.001-07:00

They said overweight children have greater risks of type-2
diabetes, and often have elevated risk factors associated with
heart disease, such as high cholesterol and high blood
pressure.

They also found that the percentage of babies born with low
birthweights rose 12.3 percent from 1994 to 2005, an increase
they said was likely tied to delayed childbearing among working
mothers and an increased use of fertility drugs.

Other trends were more positive.

For those aged 5 to 9, rates of death fell 27 percent to
14.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2005.

The researchers cite a host of contributing factors,
ranging from better health care and nutrition to car safety
seats.

The report also noted a dramatic 84 percent drop in the
rates of lead poisoning among children aged 0 to 6. Lead
poisoning can result in physical, neurological and cognitive
problems.

Still, many children remain at risk for moderate levels of
lead in their blood should continue to be monitored, they said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, Editing by Maggie Fox and
Cynthia Osterman)

Overweight warning: More than exercise needed

2008-05-15T06:23:00.001-07:00

"Even high quantities of physical activity are unlikely to
fully reverse the risk of coronary heart disease in overweight
and obese women without concurrent weight loss," Dr. Amy
Weinstein and colleagues at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center reported.

"Regardless of body weight, (the findings) highlight the
importance of counseling all women to participate in increasing
amounts of regular physical activity and maintaining a healthy
weight to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease," they
concluded.

The study, appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine,
was based on information from a study of nearly 39,000 women
that began in 1992 and traced a number of health issues.

The researchers said 34 percent of the women in the study
were physically active based on government guidelines, 31
percent were overweight and 18 percent were obese.

In the end, 948 women were diagnosed with heart disease.
Active women with normal weight had the lowest risk of
developing heart problems while there was a slightly higher
risk for those with normal weight who were not active.

The risk was next highest for active women who were either
overweight or obese, and highest for similar women who were
inactive.

Fat cells produce chemicals that can speed up hardening of
the arteries and increase inflammation, the researchers said,
harming blood vessels, while physical activity makes for
healthier blood vessels and reduces the risk of blood clots.

(Reporting by Michael Conlon; editing by Maggie Fox and
Bill Trott)

source:news.yahoo.com

Gastric Bypass May Also Relieve Low Back Pain

2008-05-15T06:20:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- Obese people who underwent surgery
that reduced the amount of food they could ingest not only lost weight,
they also lost some of their lower back pain, according to a new report.

Thirty-eight morbidly obese patients with low back pain who underwent
gastric bypass surgery reported that their pain decreased by an average of
about 44 percent six months after surgery, according to researchers at the
University of Southern California. The average amount of individual
weight loss among the group of 30 women and eight men was about 85 pounds.

"This study provides evidence that substantial weight reduction
following bariatric surgery results in moderate reductions in pre-existing
back pain within six months of weight loss. While this initial research
is promising, larger long-term trials are needed to prove the efficacy of
this treatment," Dr. Paul Khoueir said in a prepared statement.

Khoueir was expected to present the findings in Chicago April 29 at the
annual meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

According to recent statistics, more than one-third of U.S. adults --
more than 72 million people -- were obese in 2005-2006. An estimated 75
percent to 85 percent of all Americans will experience some form of back
pain during their lifetime.

Obese people are known to have a higher rate of hip and knee arthritis,
but little is known about the extra weight's effect on lumbar spinal
degeneration. While obese patients with back pain are frequently advised
to lose weight, the association between these medical conditions remains
unproven.

source:news.yahoo.com

Asthma attacks worsened by obesity

2008-05-15T06:18:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
In asthma patients, dynamic
hyperinflation, following a test measure airway
hypersensitivity, is greater in obese individuals than in their
nonobese counterparts, which helps explain why asthma is
perceived to be more severe in patients with a higher body mass
index (BMI), investigators in New Zealand report.

A BMI is the ratio between height and weight, and is used
to classify people as underweight, overweight or normal weight.

"The greater dynamic hyperinflation means that obese
individuals lose the ability to inhale as deeply or exhale as
fully as normal weight individuals," Dr. D. Robin Taylor
explains in an American Thoracic Society statement.

Taylor's team at the University of Otago in Dunedin studied
the changes in airway expansion and lung volume that occur with
acute constriction of the bronchial tubes in a group of 30
adult women with asthma. Ten women each were classified as
normal weight, overweight, or obese, and lung volumes were
measured.

The degree of bronchial constriction following the airway
sensitivity test did not vary by group, the team reports in the
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The
only significant difference among the subjects was a decrease
in vital capacity that significantly corresponded with
increasing BMI.

Lung volume measurements also showed that the volume of air
retained in the lung following exhalation was significantly
higher as BMI increased, while the amount of air that could be
inhaled was lower.

These variations "were significantly greater in relation to
BMI" after taking into account the effects of "airway
hyperresponsiveness, the severity of airflow obstruction, and
lung volume measurements, indicating the effect of BMI was an
independent one," the investigators note, meaning that BMI
alone was associated with the severity of asthma.

This puts obese individuals at greater disadvantage due to
enhanced gas trapping, they point out, a significant
contributor to difficulty in breathing.

Taylor and his associates also noted that conventional lung
function tests "may have limitations when used to evaluate
symptoms in obese patients with asthma, with the potential for
misinterpretation" in the absence of lung volume measurements.

source:news.yahoo.com

Special Diet Can Ease Epileptic Seizures in Kids

2008-05-15T06:15:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- The "ketogenic" diet, which
features high levels of fat, low levels of carbohydrates and controlled
protein intake, helps control and prevent seizures in children with
drug-resistant epilepsy, a new study finds.

The trial is the first randomized controlled study to confirm that the
ketogenic diet -- widely used since the 1920s -- is effective against
epilepsy, the British researchers said.

Experts believe that the regimen's high fat and restricted carbohydrate
content mimics the biochemical response to starvation, when compounds
called ketone bodies (rather than sugar) provide the main source of energy
for the brain.

Ketone bodies are byproducts produced when fatty acids are broken down
for energy in the liver and kidneys. They are used as energy sources in
the heart and brain. In the brain, ketone bodies are a crucial source of
energy when a person fasts.

This University College London study included 145 children, aged 2 to
16, who suffered seizures at least once a day or more than seven seizures
per week. These patients hadn't responded to treatment with at least two
epileptic drugs, and hadn't previously been placed on the ketogenic
diet.

Baseline information about the children's seizures was first recorded.
Seventy-three of the children started the ketogenic diet immediately,
while the other 72 started it after a three-month delay. The delay group
acted as a control group during the study. Complete data was obtained from
54 children in the diet group and 49 children in the control group.

The overall number of seizures in the diet group declined by more than
38 percent, while seizures in the control group increased by 36.9 percent,
the researchers report. The study found that 28 of the 54 children who
completed three months in the diet group had a greater than 50 percent
reduction in seizures, compared to four of 49 children in the control
group. Five children in the diet group had more than 90 percent fewer
seizures. None of the children in the control group experienced that kind
of improvement.

The study appears in the current online edition of The Lancet
Neurology and will appear in the June print issue.

"We have shown that the diet has efficacy and should be included in the
management of children who have drug-resistant epilepsy. However, the diet
is not without possible side effects, which should be considered alongside
the risk-benefit of other treatments when planning the management of such
children," the study authors wrote.

More information is needed about the long-term effects of the ketogenic
diet, such as changes in blood fat concentrations and ketosis, Dr. Max
Wiznitzer, of Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, wrote
in an accompanying comment article.

"Better identification of epilepsies that benefit from starting early
on the ketogenic diet and comparisons between the choices of ketogenic
diet are needed," he wrote.

news.yahoo.com

Obesity May Worsen Impact of Asthma

2008-05-15T06:14:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- A study of women with a wide
range of body-mass indexes (BMIs) found that obesity may worsen the impact
of asthma and also mask its severity in standard tests.

"We have demonstrated significant differences in the changes in
respiratory function that occur with asthmatic bronchoconstriction in
relation to obesity," principal investigator Dr. D. Robin Taylor, of the
University of Otago in New Zealand, said in a prepared statement.

The study also found that simple spirometry couldn't determine the
level of pulmonary dysfunction in obese people with asthma.

The findings were published in the first issue for May of the
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. It's
the first prospective study to find a significant comparative difference
between obese and non-obese people in how the lungs and airways respond to
a simulated asthma attack.

The researchers said it establishes a direct link between obesity and
the development of dynamic hyperinflation -- air breathed into the lungs
can't be expelled. This often occurs with acute asthma, but is more
frequent in obese people.

The study included 30 asthmatic women who were divided into three
groups based on their BMI: normal weight, overweight and obese. All the
women breathed nebulized methacholine to induce an asthma-like attack and
were then assessed for changes in lung function, including functional
residual capacity (FRC -- how much air remained in the lungs after
exhalation) and inspiratory capacity (IC -- how much air could be inhaled
on the next breath).

"After the methacholine challenge, the amount of bronchoconstriction
was identical for each of the three groups, but the changes in FRC and IC
were greatest in the obese group. This indicated to us that greater
dynamic hyperinflation was occurring among obese individuals," Taylor
said.

The greater a woman's BMI, the higher her FRC and the lower her IC.

"This means that among women with greater BMI, an asthma-like episode
has the potential to cause greater breathing difficulties than in
non-obese women. The greater dynamic hyperinflation means that obese
individuals lose the ability to inhale as deeply or exhale as fully as
normal weight individuals," Taylor said.

The findings suggest fundamental differences in the way that obese
people with asthma may experience shortness of breath.

"We know that asthma in obese subjects is more likely to persist and is
more likely to be perceived to be severe. These individuals often require
more treatment to achieve asthma control. Our study provides an insight
into why this might be happening -- the same asthma trigger produces a
greater effect in obese individuals," Taylor said.

More research is needed to "confirm that the differences in dynamic
hyperinflation between obese and non-obese asthmatics are sufficient to
explain the differences in symptoms between the two groups. Our study was
not large enough to do this," Taylor said.

source:news.yahoo.com

High-fat, low-carb diet helps kids with epilepsy

2008-05-15T06:05:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
The results of a study provide
strong evidence that a diet high in fat and low in
carbohydrates -- a so-called "ketogenic diet" -- can help
control seizures in children with stubborn epilepsy that does
not respond well to drug therapy.

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder characterized by
recurrent seizures when the normal working of the brain is
interrupted. A ketogenic diet has been widely used since the
1920s to help control hard-to-treat seizures in children.

In their study, Dr. Elizabeth G. Neal, from University
College London, and colleagues randomly assigned a group of
children who were having at least seven epileptic fits per week
despite anti-epileptic drug therapy, to a standard diet or a
ketogenic one, which is typically high in fats and very low in
carbohydrates.

After three months, children on the ketogenic diet had more
than one third fewer seizures, while seizure frequency
increased in children on the standard diet, the researchers
report in the Lancet Neurology medical journal.

A greater than 50 percent drop off in seizure frequency was
noted in 38 percent of children on the ketogenic diet compared
with just 6 percent of children on the standard diet.

This study confirms that a ketogenic diet is safe and
effective in children with drug-resistant epilepsy, the
investigators conclude.

The most common side effects with the ketogenic diet were
constipation, vomiting, lack of energy, and hunger, Neal and
colleagues note.

In a written commentary, Dr. Max Wiznitzer, from the
Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, notes that
some questions still remain regarding ketogenic diets for
childhood epilepsy. Among these are the long-term effects, the
identification of epilepsies that benefit from early initiation
of such a diet, and the mechanism by which the diet produces
its anti-seizure effect.

SOURCE: Lancet Neurology, online May 3, 2008.

High-fat, low-carb diet helps kids with epilepsy

2008-05-15T06:01:00.001-07:00

A greater than 50 percent drop off in seizure frequency was
noted in 38 percent of children on the ketogenic diet compared
with just 6 percent of children on the standard diet.

This study confirms that a ketogenic diet is safe and
effective in children with drug-resistant epilepsy, the
investigators conclude.

The most common side effects with the ketogenic diet were
constipation, vomiting, lack of energy, and hunger, Neal and
colleagues note.

SOURCE: Lancet Neurology, online May 3, 2008.

Obese moms-to-be have longer pregnancies

2008-05-15T05:57:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Pregnant women who are
overweight or obese in the first trimester of pregnancy and
those who have a greater change in body weight during pregnancy
are more apt to have lengthier pregnancies and more
complications, according to results of a new study.

Dr. Fiona C. Denison, of the University of Edinburgh, UK,
and colleagues analyzed data from the Swedish Medical Birth
Register on women who gave birth between 1998 and 2002.

Out of 143,519 pregnancies, 6.8 percent were delivered
"postdate" -- defined as longer than 42 weeks. A normal
pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

Compared with women with normal body mass indexes (BMIs),
more women with higher BMIs during the first trimester, as well
as those with greater weight gain during pregnancy, had
longer-than-normal pregnancies.

Being overweight or obese during the first trimester was
also associated with a lower chance of spontaneous delivery at
term and being obese was associated with a higher risk of
stillbirth, pregnancy-related (gestational) diabetes and need
for cesarean delivery.

"Maternal obesity poses a significant risk to maternal and
fetal health during pregnancy, and our study confirms the
findings of others that obesity is associated with significant
complications including stillbirth, gestational diabetes,
pregnancy-induced hypertension and cesarean section," Denison's
team concludes.

"If a healthy lifestyle including physical activity and
healthy eating, which are more common in underweight women,
were advocated more strongly for the obese obstetric
population," they suggest, "then obstetric outcomes might be
improved."

source:news.yahoo.com

Calling all carbs: Dietitian hired to arrest officer obesity

2008-05-15T05:51:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES - Rana Parker tells pudgy police they have the right to
remain chubby, but it can and will be used against them on the streets
of Los Angeles.
The dietitian lays down the law for recruits, veterans and top brass,
letting them know that eating right can help them do a better job and
could even save their lives.

"I joke with them that I'm not the food police, that I'm just here
to give them information, education and hopefully give them motivation
to help themselves," she said.

While overweight officers aren't unique to Los Angeles, the police
department believes it's the first to hire a full-time diet coach.
Parker joined in July, leaving behind decidedly less macho clients at
Head Start, the federal aid program for children.

Faced with a need for more officers in recent years, the LAPD
briefly relaxed body fat limits from a maximum of 22 percent for men
and 30 percent for women, drawing recruits who mirrored a plumper
American public.

By targeting recruits, Parker is trying to instill good eating
habits before the rigors of the field make it difficult to find time
for balanced meals. She's provided one-on-one counseling to about 90
recruits, taught a nutrition course to about 500 others and made
presentations to more than 400 officers.

Though Parker's met some resistance to her belt-tightening measures, she's also found followers.

Recruit Ashley Goodroe has dropped four dress sizes since they
started working together in September. Goodroe said the lessons she's
learned include giving up sugary fruit punch and regularly eating
breakfast. The hardest part was cutting back on the fat-laden weekly
meal that takes her home to Georgia: fried pork chops, collard greens and corn bread.

"I feel skinny," Goodroe, 23, said with a laugh. "I actually had to get my uniforms fitted again."

Doughnuts may be the punch line for many cop jokes, but they're not
the problem, Parker said. Long hours and the on-the-go nature of police
work make it hard to find time to eat well and stay in shape, she said.

"They may be sitting in their car and all of a sudden they need to
go for a sprint, which might end in a fight as well," Parker said.
"They need to be in good shape so their body can handle that kind of stress."

But officers who don't plan their meals are reduced to nutritional
bottom-feeding: drive-thru burgers, microwave burritos and greasy
slices of pizza.

Parker believes officers can better take a bite out of crime if they
aren't hungry on their shifts. She encourages stashing energy bars,
fruit and peanut butter sandwiches in squad cars and desks, to stave
off hunger when getting a full meal is hard.

Fit officers are more confident, project strength and give the
department a good image, she added. A suspect may think twice about
trying to outrun a physically fit officer.

Kevin Sommers, national chairman of safety and technology for the
Fraternal Order of Police, applauded the LAPD for recognizing diet as
an important issue.

"For the longest time in law enforcement we trained our people in
policing, but we didn't teach our people about how to maintain their
mental and physical well-being," he said.

Francisco Rubio Jr., a 30-year-old recruit, said diabetes and high
cholesterol run in his family. But it was the recent death of a
40-year-old friend, an officer who had a heart attack on the job, that
really drove home the need to get fit.

With Parker's guidance and a regimen that replaces sweets with fresh
oranges and strawberries, Rubio has dropped from 195 to 175 pounds. He
vows to be wary of the fatty food that lurks around every corner.

"What catches our eyes unless we discipline ourselves is pizza,
hamburgers — all the food that's out there that's easy-access," Rubio
said. "Now I tend to look at it as a heart attack waiting to happen."

Source:news.yahoo.com

Obesity-Related Inflammation Boosts Heart Risks

2008-05-15T05:49:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- Obesity causes prolonged
inflammation of heart tissue that in turn boosts heart failure risk,
according to a U.S. study of almost 7,000 people.

The latest findings from the Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis
(MESA) are believed to provide the first large scale of evidence of such a
link and give the estimated 72 million obese American adults another
reason to change their lifestyle.

"The biological effects of obesity on the heart are profound. Even if
obese people feel otherwise healthy, there are measurable and early
chemical signs of damage to their heart, beyond the well-known
implications for diabetes and high blood pressure," senior study
investigator Dr. Joao Lima, a professor of medicine and radiology at the
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute, said
in a prepared statement.

There is "now even more reason for (obese people) to lose weight,
increase their physical activity and improve their eating habits," Lima
said.

He and his colleagues tracked the development of heart failure in an
ethnically diverse group of nearly 7,000 people, ages 45 to 84, who
enrolled in the MESA study, starting in 2000. Of the 79 participants
who've developed congestive heart failure so far, 35 (44 percent) were
physically obese (body mass index of 30 or greater).

On average, obese participants were found to have higher blood levels
of key immune system proteins involved in inflammation (interleukin 6,
C-reactive protein, and fibrinogen) than non-obese participants. A near
doubling of average interleukin 6 levels alone was associated with an 84
percent increased risk of heart failure.

"Our results showed that when the effects of other known disease risk
factors -- including race, age, sex, diabetes, high blood pressure,
smoking, family history and blood cholesterol levels -- were statistically
removed from the analysis, inflammatory chemicals in the blood of obese
participants stood out as key predictors of who got heart failure," Lima
said.

He added that doctors "need to monitor their obese patients for early
signs of inflammation in the heart and to use this information in
determining how aggressively to treat the condition."

Lima and colleagues also found a link between inflammation and
metabolic syndrome, which doubles a person's chances of developing heart
failure. Metabolic syndrome is a collection of risk factors -- obesity,
high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose levels, excess abdominal fat,
and abnormal cholesterol levels -- that increase the risk of heart disease
and diabetes.

The study was published in the May 6 issue of the Journal of the
American College of Cardiology. The MESA study was expected to
continue tracking patients through 2012.

source:news.yahoo.com

Common gene variants linked to obesity

2008-05-15T05:46:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Researchers have identified new
genetic variants that influence the risk of obesity and insulin
resistance, a precursor to diabetes, according to findings from
two studies published online this week.

In the first of the two genome-wide association studies, a
research team headed by Dr. Ruth J. F. Loos, from Addenbrooke's
Hospital in Cambridge UK, analyzed data from 16,876 people of
European descent.

The investigators not only confirmed prior research linking
variants in the FTO gene with obesity, but they also identified
a strong association with genetic variants near the MC4R gene.
The MC4R gene regulates energy levels in the body by
influencing how much we eat and how much energy we expend or
conserve. Mutations in this gene are the most common genetic
cause of severe obesity that runs in families.

The findings by Loos and colleagues, which were later
confirmed in 60,352 adults and 5988 children, showed that the
presence of the MC4R risk variant increased the odds that a
child would be obese by up to 30 percent. An analysis of data
from 660 families revealed that "over transmission" of the risk
variant was common among obese offspring.

"Several groups had shown that rare, highly disruptive
variants in the MC4R gene were responsible for very severe,
genetic forms of obesity: this collaboration (by many
international groups) has uncovered more common variants that
affect more people," Loos said in a statement.

In the second study, an investigation of 318,237 single
letter changes, or SNPs, in the DNA of over 14,000 subjects of
Indian Asian and European descent, Dr. Jaspal S. Kooner, from
Imperial College London, and colleagues linked a gene sequence
variant near the MC4R gene with increased waist circumference
and a tendency to become insulin resistant, which can lead to
type 2 diabetes.

Two copies of the risk variant added roughly 2 cm to waist
circumference and increased insulin resistance by about 10
percent, the results show.

"A better understanding of the genes behind problems such
as diabetes and cardiovascular disease means that we will be in
a good position to identify people whose genetic inheritance
makes them most susceptible," Kooner said in a written
statement.

"We can't change their genetic inheritance. But we can
focus on preventative measures, including life-style factors
such as diet and exercise, and identifying new drug targets to
help reduce the burden of disease," Kooner added.

source:news.yahoo.com

;

Weight-loss drugs may harm developing brain: study

2008-05-15T05:42:00.001-07:00

CHICAGO (Reuters) -
A drug from a new class of weight-loss
treatments disrupted wiring needed for brain development in
young mice, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday, raising
concerns about using such medications in children.

Mark Bear and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology studied the effects of a chemical that suppresses
appetite by blocking cannabinoid receptors in the brain, the
same brain mechanisms that make people hungry when they smoke
marijuana.

"I think that the cautionary note is that these mechanisms
play an important role in ... brain development," said Bear,
whose study appears in the journal Neuron.

Sanofi-Aventis' weight-loss pill rimonabant, also known as
Zimulti and sold under the brand name Acomplia in Europe, is
the first in this new class of drugs. A U.S. expert panel
rejected it last June because of fears it might trigger
suicidal thoughts.

Other drugmakers, including Merck & Co Inc, are working on
similar drugs.

Bear's team at MIT was hoping to gain insight into how the
brain adapts and rewires itself through learned experiences.
This so-called plasticity is central to the development of
neurons in the brain of children and young animals.

Bear said these cannabinoid receptors are known to regulate
signals between neurons, and his team wanted to see if they
would have an effect on plasticity in these young mice.

They were specifically testing learning in the visual
cortex of the mouse, a part of the brain that processes
information gathered from what they see.

ADAPTING TO CHANGE

Their experiments tested how well the animals adapted if
one eye was closed.

The researchers did not use rimonabant in the study.
Instead, they used a chemical analog or copy -- in this case a
drug available for laboratory use known as AM 251.

When they gave the mice AM 251 to block their cannabinoid
receptors, the animals still behaved as if both eyes were open.
This suggested the visual cortex was not adapting as it should.

"Our finding of a profound disruption of cortical
plasticity in juvenile mice treated with AM 251 suggests
caution is advised in the use of such compounds in children,"
the researchers wrote.

Bear said the finding is similar to the situation with many
drugs.

"You have to weigh the benefits against the risks. If the
benefit is related more to vanity than morbidity, I don't think
the risks are tolerable," he said.

Sanofi-Aventis spokeswoman Julissa Viana said rimonabant is
not approved for use in children.

"At this point in time it is approved for use in adults who
are overweight and obese with cardiovascular risk factors," she
said. "We don't encourage its use in children and it has not
been studied nor is it indicated for use in children."

The finding is the latest blow for rimonabant, which once
was predicted to be a multibillion-dollar seller.

A study last month of the drug in obese heart patients
found more than 40 percent of patients who took the drug
developed psychiatric problems.

But last month the drugmaker Sanofi said it still believes
Acomplia can be a winner and reiterated plans to submit the
drug worldwide as a treatment for type 2 diabetes in 2009.

U.S. obesity rates alarmingly high

2008-05-15T05:41:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
New research shows "alarming
levels" of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States,
principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest
University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health.
The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity
exacts on the heart and blood vessels.

"The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further
gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on
cardiovascular disease mortality (death)," Burke and colleagues
warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the
Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or "MESA" study,
researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African
American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one
third to one half were obese.

Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the
study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese,
suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not
considered "inevitable."

The investigators also found that obese adults, compared
with normal-weight adults, had higher rates of high blood
pressure (up to more than twice as high), abnormal lipids (two-
to three-fold higher), and diabetes, despite a "huge number"
being on costly medications to lower blood pressure and lipid
levels and control diabetes, Burke said.

"As the obesity numbers increase further, we will spend an
even larger amount of health care dollars just treating risk
factors," Burke said.

Obese adults also had more silent vascular disease (blood
vessel disease that causes no symptoms); they had more
atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and thicker heart
walls, even after adjusting for "traditional" risk factors like
high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

Given the higher amount of silent blood vessel disease with
obesity, Burke said "one could worry that this will cause us to
reverse our 50-year decline in cardiovascular disease mortality
due to the obesity epidemic." This will likely be accompanied
by an increase in diabetes, other heart disease risk factors,
and silent disease - "on top of the aging of the baby boom
generation."

"Our findings support the imperative to redouble our
efforts to assist in increasing healthy behaviors and to
remove...barriers to maintaining a healthy weight," Burke and
colleagues conclude.

Drugs Alone Don't Lower Heart Disease Risks for Overweight Americans

2008-05-15T05:28:00.001-07:00

(HealthDay News) -- Daily doses of statins and
blood pressure medications will not be enough to prevent heart disease
among the ever-growing number of Baby Boomers who are overweight or obese,
a new study suggests.

The simple truth, experts say, is that pounds must also be shed to keep
cardiovascular trouble away.

"There is a debate out there about whether this generation is going to
live as long as their parents, and the truth is they probably won't," said
study author Dr. Gregory L. Burke, director of the division of public
health sciences at Wake Forest University School of medicine in
Winston-Salem, NC.

"My ultimate worry is that we've seen a 50-year decline in
cardiovascular disease mortality, but if you begin to look at recent
trends, it's beginning to plateau," he added. "And my fear is that because
of the increase in obesity we're going to begin to see a reversal of that
trend where heart disease rates begin to go up."

The research involving 6,814 men and women aged 45 to 84 revealed an
even greater prevalence of overweight and obesity than shown in similar
studies done five years earlier. Depending on the demographic group,
between 60 percent and 85 percent of the participants were overweight and
between 30 percent and 50 percent were obese, the federally funded study
found. The obesity epidemic is more likely environmentally than
genetically driven, Burke said. The differences between the weights of
white, black and Hispanic Americans are no longer as meaningful, he
stressed. Only Chinese-Americans have significantly less obesity (5
percent) than other ethnic groups.

A decade ago, experts thought the heart-related risks of obesity could
be counterbalanced by the treatment of risk factors such as high
cholesterol and glucose intolerance, Burke explained. People thought that,
"Gosh, all we need to do is treat those risk factors and we can ameliorate
the effects of obesity. So, our study looked at whether that is indeed
true," he added.

It isn't, said Burke, noting that this is where his study breaks new
ground. There is a relationship between less obvious, subclinical
cardiovascular disease markers, such as the thickening of the walls of the
carotid artery, and obesity, he explained. Even though the overweight and
obese people studied hadn't had heart attacks they did show various
markers that are predictors of future cardiovascular events, Burke added.
This is was true despite the high number of people who were taking
medications for the well-known triad of risk factors of high cholesterol,
diabetes and high blood pressure.

Lona Sandon, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said
that the findings show that "many of the people who were obese were being
treated with various medications, but they still were not improving to the
point where they were decreasing their risk."

The American mentality is that "if I just take those pills, I'll be
OK," said Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the
University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. The study "kind of says
you have to make some changes, some lifestyle changes and some food
changes, to lead to a healthier weight."

Sandon added that even greater emphasis needs to be placed on
prevention. "It's easier to prevent with an hour of exercise a day than
correct with three hours of exercise a day," she noted. "Hopefully [the
study] can be some kind of a wake-up call to tell us we need to do
something more than hand out a prescription."

Tackle obesity like smoking: researcher

2008-05-15T05:27:00.001-07:00

GENEVA (Reuters) -
Tackling the global obesity epidemic
will require governments to take similar action to that many
used to curb smoking, a top researcher said on Wednesday.

This could include regulations that restrict how companies
market "junk" food to children and requirements for schools to
serve healthy meals, said Professor Boyd Swinburn, a public
health researcher who works with the World Health Organisation.

"The brakes on the obesity epidemic need to be policy-led
and governments need to take centre stage," Swinburn, a
researcher at Deakin University in Australia, told Reuters at
the 2008 European Congress on Obesity.

"Governments have to lead the way they did with the tobacco
epidemic. We need hard-hitting messages."

Action is urgent because, aside from sub-Saharan Africa,
nearly every country has suffered a dramatic rise in the number
of obese people in the past 30 years. That increase has likely
been a tripling in many industrialized nations, he said.

The World Health Organisation classifies around 400 million
people around the world as obese, 20 million of them children
under the age of five.

Obesity raises the risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes
and heart problems, and is a problem that is piling pressure on
already overburdened national health systems.

Swinburn says the food industry has largely driven the
epidemic with a stream of processed products that are cheaper
and better-tasting but filled with unhealthy ingredients.

Lack of physical fitness and exercise, while important,
have played only a small role in explaining why the number of
obese people has soared in recent decades, he said.

"Commercial drivers around food have been the biggest
influence over the past 30 years," he said. "The product, the
price, the promotion and the placement has changed
dramatically.

Swinburn urged governments to introduce policies similar to
those taken against smoking. These have included tightly
controlled marketing to children and regulations warning of the
dangers of smoking on cigarette packages.

Obesity is persistent despite people being increasingly
aware of the risks of being overweight, demonstrating the
problem requires direct government intervention, he said.

"Governments have a number of ways to influence the
behaviors of a population," Swinburn said.

Among anti-obesity measures taken, New York has banned
artery-clogging trans-fats from city restaurants and is forcing
fast-food chains to display calorie counts on their menu
boards.

Britain plans to spend 75 million pounds ($145 million) on
a campaign encouraging healthy lifestyles as part of a wider
anti-obesity strategy including compulsory cooking lessons for
children and the promotion of exercise.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Robert Woodward)

Research links common chemicals to obesity

2008-05-15T05:17:00.001-07:00

GENEVA (Reuters) -
Exposure in the womb to common chemicals
used to make everything from plastic bottles to pizza box
liners may program a person to become obese later in life, U.S.
researchers said on Wednesday.

Their studies of mice showed animals exposed to even tiny
amounts of the chemicals during development were fatter when
they grew older compared with mice not exposed to the
compounds, they told the 2008 European Congress on Obesity.

"We are talking about an exposure at very low levels for a
finite time during development," said Jerry Heindel of the U.S.
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

"The fact that it is such a sensitive period, it may be
altering the tissue and making people more susceptible to
obesity."

The World Health Organization estimates some 400 million
people are obese, a problem that raises the risk of conditions
like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Previous studies have linked these chemicals -- also found
in water pipes -- to cancer and reproductive problems,
prompting a number of countries and U.S. states to consider
potential bans or limits of the compounds, the researchers
said.

One of the chemicals is called Bisphenol A, found in
polycarbonate plastics. Past research has suggested it leaches
from plastic food and drink containers.

A team at Tufts University in the United States showed that
female mice whose mothers were exposed to this chemical early
in pregnancy gained more weight in adulthood even though they
ate the same amount of food and were as active as other mice.

A similar effect occurred with perfluorooctanoic acid -- a
greaseproofing agent used in products such as microwave popcorn
bags. These animals were unusually small at birth then became
overweight later in life.

"One of the problems we are finding is we don't know where
all these chemicals are," said Suzanne Fenton, a research
biologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose
research focused on perfluorooctanoic acid.

The chemicals appear to disrupt the endocrine system by
altering gene and metabolic function involved in weight gain,
said Bruce Blumberg, a University of California biologist.

The result is the offspring store fat cells more
efficiently, which makes them gain weight, he said. Blumberg
studied tributylin, a chemical used in boat paint, plastic food
wrap and as a fungicide on crops.

The findings suggest some people may be programmed to
obesity before birth and underscore the need to identify
biomarkers scientists can use to identify people at risk, the
researchers said.

"We are calling this an emerging hypothesis," Heindel said.
"Most of the data is in animals and we want to develop some
biomarkers that could be used in humans.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Unilever says new milkshake helps control appetite

2008-05-15T05:09:00.001-07:00

GENEVA (Reuters) -
A new weight loss drink that tastes like
a milkshake significantly reduces appetite and could soon join
Unilever's $400 million Slim-Fast weight-loss brand, the
company's researchers said on Wednesday.

A study showed that the drink, which works by trapping gas
in foods to make people feel full, worked even better than the
company's Slim-Fast weight-loss drink, they said.

The researchers, who presented their findings at the 2008
European Congress on Obesity, said the company has patented the
technology.

"The technology is now available for the brand to use in
future formats," said David Mela, a Unilever nutritionist who
worked on the study. "The food maintains the bulk, much of
which is air that helps you maintain that full feeling."

Obesity is a big problem and big business. About 400
million people are classified as obese, putting them at higher
risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart diseases,
according to the World Health Organization.

This has in part spurred companies like Unilever, Kraft
Foods, General Mills, Sara Lee and others to turn to healthier
products with a whole range of so-called health and wellness
foods.

"If you look at western populations, a (large number) of
adults are overweight," said Gert Meijer, an executive at
Unilever's research and development division. "In terms of the
amount of people who might be interested in this product, it
could be huge."

In the Unilever study, the researchers tested their
milkshake on 24 volunteers who were given either the new drink
or a serving of regular Slim-Fast at breakfast.

People who had the milkshake reported that they were
significantly fuller when asked at different intervals over a
four-hour time period. The researchers found that a half-sized
serving of the milkshake also suppressed hunger.

"We are clearly talking about hours," said Sergei Melnikov,
a physical chemist who helped develop the technology. "It is an
effect that lasts for an hour or two or longer."

The milkshake is designed to trap gas in the food after
consumption, preventing it from dissolving in the mouth as
happens with foods like whipped cream, and cutting appetite.

To do this the team engineered the fats, proteins and
fibers in the food until reaching the right mix to trap the gas
-- a technology that might appear in other Unilever foods, the
researchers said.

"I would say this is not limited to liquids," Melnikov
said. "It could be used in other food forms."

(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

Obesity may start as early as baby's bottle: researchers

2008-05-15T05:06:00.001-07:00

GENEVA (AFP) - Early exposure to chemicals used in the making of
products such as baby bottles or plastic food wraps may lead to
obesity, according to new research presented Wednesday.

Three separate studies presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Geneva found that mice which were exposed during early development to chemicals used in products such as plastic food containers or even boat paint tended to become fat later in life.

The findings could change how obesity is viewed and dealt with, according to an expert on the subject.

Jerry Heindel from the United States National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences said: "If these findings are proven to be
true in humans, then the focus must change from losing weight as adults
to prevention of weight gain during development, through reducing the
exposure to such substances."

In one study, female mice whose mothers were exposed to bisphenol A --
commonly used in plastic good containers and bottles -- were found to
grow up into fat mice.

Food intake and activity levels were no different between the mice who
became fat and those that did not, according to the study by Beverly
Rubin from the US Tufts University.

Another study found that pregnant mice which were exposed to the
chemical perfluorooctanoic acid -- used as a greaseproofing agent in
products such as microwave popcorn bags -- had mice which were unusually small at birth but then became overweight as adults.

Suzanne Fenton from the US Environmental Protection Agency, who
conducted the research, pointed out that the effect is only seen when
low doses are applied.

This indicates that different doses may "trigger health problems in the
body by various mechanisms or that the high doses cause more serious
problems, and potentially mask the abnormal weight gain", she said.

A third study found that when pregnant mice were treated with doses of
tributylin that is comparable to that found in humans, a genetic
programme would be triggered in their offspring, causing them to become
fat as adults.

Tributylin is a chemical used in plastic food wrap and as a fungicide.

"Developmental exposure is probably more serious than adult exposure
because the data with other such exposures suggest that the pro-obesity
reprogramming is irreversible, which means you will spend your life
fighting weight gain," said Bruce Blumberg from the University of California at Irvine who conducted the research.

The World Health Organization has estimated that over 700 million people would be obese by 2015.

The European Conference on Obesity is meeting in Geneva from May 14-17.

Eating Your Way to a Sturdy Heart

2008-05-14T00:04:00.001-07:00

MOST people think heart-healthy living
involves sacrifice. Give up your favorite foods. Break a sweat. Lose
weight. But some of the best things you can do for your heart do not
involve deprivation or medication. Simple and even pleasurable changes
in the foods you eat can rival medication in terms of the benefit to
your heart.

“Almost everyone has something they can do in their diet or activity that will impact their risk of heart disease,” said Dr. Graham Colditz, adjunct professor of epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s not about taking anything to the extremes of major deprivation, extreme marathon running or becoming a vegetarian.”

Even so, many people are not getting the message. While doctors still advise patients to diet, exercise and stop smoking, the medical community has adopted an almost singular focus on cholesterol-lowering
drugs as the fastest and best way to battle heart disease. Americans
spend $18 billion a year on cholesterol-reducing drugs, making them the
nation’s biggest-selling class of drugs.

Clearly, drug
treatments have played a role in the health of American hearts. Since
1950, age-adjusted death rates from cardiovascular disease have dropped
60 percent, a statistic praised by government health officials.

Average blood pressure
and cholesterol levels are dropping, partly because of drug treatments.
But drugs don’t get all the credit. A sharp drop in smoking has had a
huge impact on heart health. And major changes in diet have also played
a role. Surveys of the food supply suggest that consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol has decreased since the early 1900s. Medical care has also improved.

But an important lesson from the last 50 years is that when it comes to
improving heart health, it is important to look beyond the medicine
cabinet.

Just a few small changes — eating more fish,
vegetables, nuts and fiber — can have a major impact on your risk for
heart problems. For some people, drinking moderate amounts of wine may
offer additional benefits. Even a 55-year-old man who is about 20
pounds overweight and does not exercise regularly will have a
heart-disease risk far below average if he regularly consumes fish,
nuts, fiber and vegetables and drinks moderate amounts of wine.

It’s hard to believe that such simple food changes can make a
meaningful difference, but data from hundreds of studies show they can.

For instance, a review of nearly 100 studies evaluating various
cholesterol-lowering agents and diets showed just how potent fish can
be as a heart protector. In studies of people who consume diets rich in
omega-3 fatty acids like those found in fish, heart risk was 23 percent
lower compared with a control group. The 2005 review appeared in The
Archives of Internal Medicine.

The same report also reviewed
studies of statin use and showed a 13 percent lower heart risk. Because
it was not a head-to-head comparison, it cannot be concluded that
eating fish is better than using statins. But the results clearly show
the powerful effect of fish in the diet.

Many studies of fish
consumption and heart health are based on observation of Eskimos and
people in Mediterranean regions. And random clinical trials have shown
that consuming omega-3 fatty acids can reduce heart attacks and
cardiovascular death. These fatty acids can also slow the progress of atherosclerosis in coronary patients, according to the American Heart Association.

Several
studies now show that regular consumption of omega-3s from a variety of
sources, including fish, nuts and soybean oil, can lower cardiovascular
risk as much as 60 percent, according to a 2006 review in The American
Journal of Cardiology.

It doesn’t take much fish. Doctors
recommend eating it, particularly fatty kinds like mackerel, lake
trout, herring, sardines, albacore tuna and salmon, just twice a week.

People
worry about exposure to mercury and toxins from fish, but experts say
that for middle-age and older men and postmenopausal women, the
benefits of fish far outweigh the risks of exposure to environmental
pollutants.

The data on increasing consumption of fiber-rich
foods, vegetables and nuts is also compelling. A 2001 report in
Nutrition Reviews concluded that eating just a handful of nuts (about
three to four tablespoons) five times a week can reduce risk of
coronary artery disease between 25 and 40 percent.

And while
everyone knows it is good to eat your vegetables, many people do not
realize how easy it really is to consume five to nine servings of
fruits and vegetables a day. Just having a salad of leafy greens (two
cups) with tomatoes and half a cup of broccoli, for instance, totals
four servings. If you had juice with breakfast, you’re already up to
five by lunchtime.

Whether to add alcohol to your daily diet is
more controversial. Increasingly, studies support the idea that
drinking a small amount each day — no more than one to two servings —
is better for you than not drinking. Large observational studies show
that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can lower the risk of dying
in a given year by about 25 percent, compared with those who rarely
drink. But it’s not true for everyone. Excessive use of alcohol can
lead to addiction, traffic accidents and potentially fatal medical
problems.

Even small amounts of alcohol can increase risk for certain health worries, like breast and colon cancer.
Although those risks are generally offset by the extra heart benefits,
some people may decide it is not worth it. Much of the research on
alcohol’s benefit comes from studies that observe people over time
rather than from controlled clinical trials, which are more reliable.
So while there is a strong association with moderate alcohol
consumption and better health, the results are not conclusive.

Making
better food choices won’t always produce obvious results, like weight
loss. But substituting fish for red meat, high-fiber foods for
processed pastries and eating more vegetables may push more fattening
foods off your plate, and at the least, prevent weight gain. Add a
half-hour walk after dinner and you have gone a long way toward
lowering heart risk.

What Have You Done for Your Heart Health Lately?

2008-05-13T23:43:00.001-07:00

(ARA) - If you have a family history of what's often
referred to as "The Silent Killer," you owe it to yourself to take
steps to protect your health. Cardiovascular disease is expected to
claim nearly a half million lives this year, once again making it the
number one cause of death in the United States according the American
Heart Association.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says
the best thing you can do for your heart is to live a healthy lifestyle
- which means eating a balanced diet, maintaining a healthy weight,
exercising regularly, quitting smoking, or better yet not starting at
all, and managing stress. But the area where you can make the most
impact is through what you choose to eat.

A healthy diet is
described as one that is nutritious and well-balanced, low in saturated
fat, cholesterol and salt, and high in whole grains, fruits, vegetables
and the Omega 3 fatty acids. Here's how such a diet can benefit your
heart health:

* Limiting how much saturated and trans fat you
eat reduces your blood cholesterol and lowers your risk of coronary
artery disease.

* Whole grains play a role in regulating blood pressure and heart health.

*
Vegetables and fruits are good sources of vitamins and minerals, and
they are low in calories and rich in dietary fiber. A diet high in
soluble fiber, the kind found in fruits and vegetables, can help lower
your cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease. Vegetables and
fruits also contain substances found in plants that may help prevent
cardiovascular disease.

* Omega-3 fatty acids, found in foods
such as some fish (salmon, tuna, herring and sardines), walnuts,
flaxseeds and soybeans and their oils, have many potential beneficial
effects, including decreasing triglycerides, lowering blood pressure,
reducing blood clotting, enhancing immune function and reducing the
risk of sudden cardiac death by decreasing the risk of abnormal heart
rhythms.

In recent years concerns over contaminants, like
mercury and PCBs, in the best source of Omega-3, fatty fish, have led
the health conscious in search of alternatives. That's where fish oil
supplements come in. Purity's Omega Berry Fish Oil formula, for example, is made with highly purified pharmaceutical grade fish oil so you don't have to worry about contaminants.

Two
soft gels, the recommended daily dose, contain 650 milligrams of EPA
and 500 milligrams of DHA. Evidence from several studies has suggested
that getting adequate amounts of these two nutrients, whether from fish
or fish oil supplements, lowers triglycerides, slows the buildup of
plaque in the arteries, lowers blood pressure slightly, and reduces the
risk of death, heart attack, dangerous abnormal hearth rhythms and
strokes in people with heart disease. Each capsule also contains 20
milligrams of a proprietary Berry Blend which in addition to giving the
capsules a great taste, offers antioxidants and phyto-nutrients that
benefit brain function and the heart.

Try a FREE bottle today (pay only $4.95 for shipping) by clicking here. Purity Products, a trusted leader in the nutrition industry for over 12 years, guarantees you will be satisfied.

Copyright © 2008, ARAnet, Inc.

Is soy a safe way to energize your body?

2008-05-13T23:40:00.001-07:00

What's one to make of it?

Soy, which comes in many forms and is derived from soybeans, has long
had the reputation of being a near perfect health food – offering loads
of protein with little calories and fat. For years, the government and
nutritionists have praised soy, pointing to the health of Asian
populations where soy is a diet staple.

When soy started hitting the mainstream, it was reportedly supposed to
lower cholesterol, alleviate menopause symptoms, even help prevent
cancer.

But soy has its detractors, too. Some nutritionists complain not only
are soy's benefits overstated, but there are also plenty of drawbacks
as well. They say a diet laden with soy can impact fertility, affect
the thyroid and even cause heart problems.

Critics also point out that the type of soy Americans eat is
different from that of Asia, which is mostly fermented forms such as
tempeh and miso. Much of the soy consumed in the United States is both
highly processed and made from genetically modified soy beans. The
upshot: Even though Asian populations don't seem to suffer any ill
effects from soy, like reduced fertility, that doesn't necessarily
translate to U.S. consumers.

So what's a lover of soy – which is in everything from edamame
to soy milk to Boca burgers – to make of it all? Is it time to put soy
on the shelf with the seemingly ever-expanding list of shouldn't-eat
foods?

Not necessarily.

As in all things, the truth lies between the two extremes, said Joan
Rupp, a professor of nutrition at San Diego State University.

While there have been some animal studies that have found such side
effects as reduced fertility and thyroid issues, those problems have
not been established in any long-term human studies. As far as the
current research goes, Rupp said, it supports the belief that a diet
with moderate soy consumption is both safe and healthy because
substituting animal protein for plant protein is always a good way to
cut saturated fat from your diet. Still, eating soy is not the health
panacea that some might envision.

“There's a place for soy, but you don't want to go overboard
with it,” she said. “Everyone is always looking for that magic pill in
terms of their health. From what it looks like now, soy isn't going to
be it.”

Still not sure what to make of soy? Here's a rundown of some of its potential benefits and drawbacks.

Does soy lower cholesterol?

Sure, but not by much. Studies have found that a soy-rich
diet can reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol between 3 percent and 6 percent.
Those with extremely high cholesterol may benefit the most. Just
remember that overloading on soy, consuming beyond the recommended
limit of 25 grams a day, won't bring your cholesterol down any further.

Does soy reduce fertility?

Not so far as we know, say most nutritionists, physicians
and researchers. They point to Asian populations where there are no
such fertility problems. Still, a recent Harvard study found that men
who eat approximately half a serving of soy did experience a reduced
sperm count. But many studies have found no conclusive evidence that
soy causes fertility problems in humans although there have been some
issues in animal studies. Soy does have phytoestrogen, a plant form of
the female hormone estrogen, but the American Academy of Pediatrics
says it is not worried about the hormonal effects on children.

Is soy-based baby formula dangerous?

The American Academy of Pediatrics says no. Still, there's
no real reason to use soy formula instead of formula derived from cow's
milk, said Dr. Frank Greer, who recently studied the soy formula issue
for the organization.

Does soy help with menopause symptoms?

Maybe, a little bit. According to the National Institutes
of Health, some studies suggest that soy supplements may reduce hot
flashes in women after menopause. However, the results have been
inconsistent.

Does soy help prevent breast cancer?

It might if soy consumption begins at a very young age but
the science is inconclusive. That goes for prostate cancer, too. But
nutritionists and physicians say women who have breast cancer should be
careful of eating soy because of the estrogen component. As the NIH
puts it, women at risk of developing hormone-sensitive conditions such
as breast cancer or ovarian cancer should consult with their doctor
about their soy intake.

Does soy help prevent heart disease?

Since it lowers a person's cholesterol, it can. Still,
soy's overall heart benefits are in question. The American Heart
Association has scaled back its earlier recommendation of a soy-rich
diet because of the limited benefit in preventing heart disease. One
study of male mice genetically programmed to develop heart disease
found that those with a soy-rich diet were more prone to heart failure
than those on a dairy diet. Typical caveat: It's still unclear if that
study has any relevance for humans.

source:http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/health/20080513-9999-1c13soym.html

Children's health under scrutiny

2008-05-13T23:35:00.001-07:00

PARENTS interested in treatment options for a range of childhood illnesses will be able to attend a seminar later this month.

Organiser
Erina osteopath Wally Johnston said there was a growing recognition
worldwide that diagnosis of childhood neuro-biological disorders were
increasing at an alarming rate.

He said research showed one in 120 children in Australia were diagnosed with autism.

Dr
Johnston said the prevalance of childhood illnesses over the past 20
years had risen substantially autism was up 1500 per cent, attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, was up 500 per cent, allergies
up 700 per cent and asthma up 300 per cent.

"Focusing treatment on underlying causes is key," Dr Johnston said.

The
seminar's speakers will discuss treatments that use biomedicine an
integration of digestive health, diet, nutritional medicine and
detoxing.

Nicole Avard, who practices at Wyoming, will talk about
biomedical intervention, while naturopath and author Michael Sichel, of
the Fountaindale clinic at Chittaway Bay, will speak on removing toxins
like heavy metals, chemicals and germs from the body.

Fran
Sheffield will present the theory and application of homeopathy with
specific references to how it helps children recover from autism, ADHD,
learning delays, chronic illness and related auto-immune problems.

Finally, nurse and biomedical consultant Karen Wheelright will look at diet.

The Mindd Foundation will hold the seminar on May 31 at the Erina Centre, Erina Fair, between 10.30am and 3pm. Entry is $45.

source:http://www.expressadvocate.com.au/article/2008/05/14/5954_news.html