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Apr 07
Abdominal obesity increased more than 65 percent among boys and almost 70 percent among girls between 1988 and 2004. The finding of growing girth is significant because abdominal obesity has emerged as a better predictor of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes risk than the more commonly used Body Mass Index, a weight to height ratio that can sometimes be misleading.
As the first nationally representative study to document the increase in children’s belly fat, the study in today’s Pediatrics paints a bleak picture for these children who have a higher risk of heart disease, adult-onset diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The good news is that, for children and adolescents, the health effects are often reversible through improved lifestyle for weight loss.
“Kids, teens and adults who have early stages of atherosclerosis in their arteries can have a healthy cardiovascular system again,” said Stephen Cook, M.D., an assistant professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Golisano Children’s Hospital at Strong and an author of the study about childhood abdominal obesity. “Older adults who have plaque build up have a much harder battle, especially if the plaque has calcified.”
Measuring waist circumference is not a “vital sign” normally taken in a visit to the doctor. A BMI is commonly calculated at a well visit, but there are limitations to those measurements. A very muscular person may register a high BMI score, even if he is very healthy and has an average waist circumference. On the flip side, a sedentary child may not register a very high BMI score, but if he carries a lot of fat around his middle, he may be at a higher risk for health problems than other children with the same BMI score.
Cook said there is no gold standard yet for how waist circumference should be measured and no consensus yet on the cut-off point for abdominal obesity. However, he added, the study should be a warning for physicians and parents to limit sedentary activities, such as TV and computer time, and to teach and model healthy eating and exercise behaviors; childhood obesity is a serious and growing problem – perhaps even more than people already believe.
Although increases in Body Mass Index scores have raised concerns about
“Those increases only grow more alarming as you tease out specific age groups over longer periods of time,” Cook said. “For example, between the 1988-1994 data and the 1999-2004 data, the largest relative increase in the prevalence of abdominal obesity occurred among 2- to 5-year old boys – 84 percent – and 18- to 19-year-old girls – 126 percent.”
Mar 28
People with a bulging waistline in mid-life could face a higher risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s in the senior years, a new study shows.
Previous research has shown that having an apple-shaped body increases the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease, but this is the first time it has been linked to dementia and Alzheimer’s.
In the study, which was published Wednesday by the journal Neurology, people who were both obese and had a large belly were three times more likely to be diagnosed with dementia in later years than those of normal weight and belly size. The risk of dementia nearly doubled in those who were a healthy weight but still had a bulging waist, suggesting that fat accumulated around the midline is particularly unhealthy for the brain.
“The take-home message from this study is that one should not only be concerned about their weight but where they carry their fat,” said Rachel Whitmer, the lead author of the study and a research scientist with Kaiser Permanente’s division of research in Oakland, Calif.
The findings are particularly concerning in light of the rise in obesity rates in the United States, Whitmer said. More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese and about half have abdominal obesity.
On the upside
“But the good news,” Whitmer added, “is that you can do something about it.” The type of fat that collects around the abdominal region is easy to accumulate but also easy to get rid of, she said.
Lenore Launer, chief of the neuroepidemiology division at the National Institute of Aging, said it’s too early to conclude that abdominal fat is a direct cause of dementia.
“These findings are an indicator that something is happening in the brain and more research needs to be done looking at the role obesity is playing in brain health when people get older,” Launer said.
In the study, Whitmer’s team followed up on 6,583 men and women who had their waists measured between 1964 and 1973, when they were between 40 and 45 years old. The measurement used, known as sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD), is the height of the belly taken while a person is lying down and is considered a good indicator of abdominal fat.
A SAD of 9.8 inches or more is considered a large belly. Using medical records, the researchers found that between 1994 to 2006, when the study participants were between 73 and 87 years old, 1,049 had been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Those who were both obese and had a large belly back in their 40s were 3.6 times more likely to be diagnosed later with dementia than those who’d had a healthy weight and belly size. Those who were a healthy weight but still had a large belly were 1.9 times more likely to develop dementia.
Source: MSN
Mar 16
When it comes to dieting, most of us are willing to resort to a trick or two to help us curb
our appetite and eat less — drinking water to fill up when we’re hungry, for example, or opting for artificial sweeteners instead of sugar to get the same satisfying sweetness without the offending calories. But new research suggests that the body is not so easily fooled, and that sugar substitutes are no key to weight loss — perhaps helping to explain why, despite a plethora of low-calorie food and drink, Americans are heavier than ever.
In a series of experiments, scientists at Purdue University compared weight gain and eating habits in rats whose diets were supplemented with sweetened food containing either zero-calorie saccharin or sugar. The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings: Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — mostly in the form of fat — than animals eating yogurt flavored with glucose, a natural, high-calorie sweetener. It’s a continuation of work the Purdue group began in 2004, when they reported that animals consuming saccharin-sweetened liquids and snacks tended to eat more than animals fed high-calorie, sweetened foods. The new study, say the scientists, offers stronger evidence that how we eat may depend on automatic, conditioned responses to food that are beyond our control.
What they mean is that like Pavlov’s dog, trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, animals are similarly trained to anticipate lots of calories when they taste something sweet — in nature, sweet foods are usually loaded with calories. When an animal eats a saccharin-flavored food with no calories, however — disrupting the sweetness and calorie link — the animal tends to eat more and gain more weight, the new study shows. The study was even able to document at the physiological level that animals given artificial sweeteners responded differently to their food than those eating high-calorie sweetened foods. The sugar-fed rats, for example, showed the expected uptick in core body temperature at mealtime, corresponding to their anticipation of a bolus of calories that they would need to start burning off — a sort of metabolic revving of the energy engines. The saccharin-fed animals, on the other hand, showed no such rise in temperature. “The animals that had the artificial sweetener appear to have a different anticipatory response,” says Susan Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University and a co-author of the study. “They don’t anticipate as many calories arriving.” The net result is a more sluggish metabolism that stores, rather than burns, incoming excess calories.
Swithers stops short of saying that the animals in her study were compelled to overeat to compensate for phantom calories. But she says that the study does suggest artificial sweeteners somehow disrupt the body’s ability to regulate incoming calories. “It’s still a bit of a mystery why they are overeating, but we definitely have evidence that the animals getting artificially sweetened yogurt end up eating more calories than the ones getting calorically sweetened yogurt.”
Though it’s premature to generalize based on animal results that the same phenomena would hold true in people, Swithers says, she notes that other human studies have already shown a similar effect. A University of Texas Health Science Center survey in 2005 found that people who drink diet soft drinks may actually gain weight; in that study, for every can of diet soda people consumed each day, there was a 41% increased risk of being overweight. So even though her findings were in animals, says Swithers, they could lead to a better understanding of how the human body responds to food, and explain why eating low-calorie foods doesn’t always lead to weight loss. “There is lots of evidence that we learn about the consequences about eating food,” she says. “And we have physiological responses to food that are conditioned.”
So does that mean you should ditch the artificial sweeteners and welcome sugar back into your life? Not exactly. Excess sugar in the diet can lead to diabetes and heart disease, even independent of its effect on weight. But it’s worth remembering that when it comes to counting calories, it’s not just the ones you eat that you have to worry about. The calories you give up matter too, and they may very well reappear in that extra helping of pasta or dessert that your body demands. Your body may actually be keeping better count than you are.
Source: www.time.com
Mar 03
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City will issue 1,000 new permits for mobile fruit and vegetable stands in its latest drive against obesity and unhealthiness among its residents.
The City Council voted on Wednesday to issue the new permits for low-income
neighborhoods, saying a scarcity of fresh produce has led to high rates of obesity and other health problems.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said underserved New Yorkers would have better access to fresh produce as early as this spring.
“The communities in our city where obesity and diabetes continues to skyrocket are the same communities that lack even the most basic access to fresh fruits and vegetables,” Quinn said.
The United States’ biggest city has taken the lead on pushing for healthier habits. It banned artery-clogging trans-fats from city restaurants in 2006, outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants in 2003, and will soon force fast-food chains to display calorie counts on their menu boards.
