Weight Loss Blog

Researchers in Sweden have discovered a protein that stimulates the formation of fat cells, a finding that could potentially be used to treat obesity, the Karolinska Institute said.

The protein, called TRAP (tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase), “stimulates the formation of new fat cells and can thus precipitate the development of obesity,” the Institute said in a statement.

The research was based on cell cultures and mice studies, and showed that patients with obesity have excessive levels of the protein.

“This protein is potentially useful in the treatment of conditions involving morbid cachexia (weight loss), such as cancer diseases,” professor Goeran Andersson, who led the study, said.

“The discovery can also lead to new ways of treating obesity based on the inhibition of this protein’s effect,” he said.

The study lasted four years and followed 14 obese women, Andersson told AFP.

The news of the research comes just two days after experts in UK raised hope for new obesity treatment.

They said new treatments could be in the pipeline to give obese people a full feeling after eating just a small meal.

Experts at University College London identified two cell proteins that relax the stomach and help it expand to accommodate large meals.

By targeting the protein receptors, they hope to be able to develop drugs which make people feel “full up” quicker. They identified two protein receptors — P2Y1 and P2Y11 — involved in fast and slow relaxation of the gut.

World governments focus too much on fighting terrorism while obesity and other “lifestyle diseases” are killing millions more people, an international conference heard Monday.

Overcoming deadly factors such as poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise should take top priority in the fight against a growing epidemic of preventable chronic disease, legal and health experts said.

Global terrorism was a real threat but posed far less risk than obesity, diabetes and smoking-related illnesses, prominent US professor of health law Lawrence Gostin said at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit here.

“Ever since September 11, we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public,” Gostin told AFP later.

“While we’ve been focusing so much attention on that, we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s killing millions of people around the world, and we’re devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”

The fifth annual conference of the Oxford Health Alliance — co-founded by Oxford University — has brought together world experts from academia, government, business, law, economics and urban planning to promote change.

An estimated 388 million people will die from chronic disease worldwide over the next 10 years, according to World Health Organisation figures quoted by the alliance.

“There’s a political paralysis in dealing with the issue,” said Gostin, an adviser to the US government and a professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities.

He noted that prevention of obesity and its effects had hardly rated a mention in the current campaign for the US presidency.

“Yet the human costs are frightening when we consider that obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an entire generation, resulting in the first reversal in life expectancy since data collecting began in 1900,” he said.

Like terrorism, some passing health threats get major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world’s deaths, the meeting was told.

“It is true that new and re-emerging health threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism and climate change are dramatic and emotive,” said Stig Pramming, the Oxford group’s executive director.

“However, it is preventable chronic disease that will send health systems and economies to the wall.”

The conference is due to end Wednesday with a “Sydney Resolution” calling on governments and big business among others to take action to avert millions of premature deaths due to chronic disease.

“The way we live now is making us sick, it’s making our planet sick and it’s not sustainable,” said Asia-Pacific co-director Ruth Colagiuri.

The Sydney resolution focuses on four key areas, including the need to make towns and cities healthier places in which to live by urban design which promotes walking and cycling and reduces carbon emissions from motor vehicles.

Insufficient physical exercise is a risk factor in many chronic diseases and is estimated to cause 1.9 million deaths worldwide each year, said Tony Capon, professor of health studies at Australia’s Macquarie University.

“We need to build the physical activity back into our lives and it’s not simply about bike paths, it’s about developing an urban habitat that enables people to live healthy lives: ensuring that people can meet most of their daily needs within walking and cycling distance of where they live,” he said.

The resolution also calls for a reduction in sugar, fat and salt content in food, making fresh food affordable and available and increasing global efforts to stop people smoking.

World governments are focussing too much on fighting terrorism while obesity and other “lifestyle diseases” are killing millions more people?

Overcoming deadly factors such as poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise should take top priority in the fight against a growing epidemic of chronic disease, legal and health experts said.

Global terrorism was a real threat but posed far less risk than obesity, type two diabetes and smoking-related illnesses, US law professor Lawrence Gostin said at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit here.

“Ever since September 11 we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next which has really frightened the public,” Gostin told media later.

“While we’ve been focussing so much attention on that we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s killing millions of people around the world and we’re devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”

The fifth annual conference of the Oxford Health Alliance — co-founded by Oxford University — has brought together world experts from academia, government, business, law, economics and urban planning to promote change.

Like terrorism, some passing health threats get major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world’s deaths, the meeting was told.

“It is true that new and re-emerging health threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism and climate change are dramatic and emotive,” said Stig Pramming, the Oxford group’s executive director.

“However, it is preventable chronic disease that will send health systems and economies to the wall.”

The conference is due to end Wednesday with a call on governments and big business among others to take action to avert the millions of premature deaths due to chronic disease.

Now look. Two years ago (!) we had this article published:

Obesity Bigger Threat Than Terrorism?

America’s obesity epidemic will dwarf the threat of terrorism if the nation does not reduce the number of people who are severely overweight, the surgeon general said Wednesday.

“Obesity is the terror within,” Richard Carmona said during a lecture at the University of South Carolina. “Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt.”

Obesity rates have tripled over the past 40 years for children and teens, raising their risk of diabetes and other diseases. For the first time, Carmona said, children are being diagnosed with high blood pressure.

“Where will our soldiers and sailors and airmen come from?” he said. “Where will our policemen and firemen come from if the youngsters today are on a trajectory that says they will be obese, laden with cardiovascular disease, increased cancers and a host of other diseases when they reach adulthood?”

Lowering the nation’s obesity rate depends on changing behaviors, but too many Americans are health illiterate, meaning they cannot understand medical terms and directions from doctors, Carmona said.

The surgeon general offered few specific solutions but said public policy reforms would not be helpful in curbing obesity, explaining that common-sense health decisions cannot be legislated.

Reducing the amount of salt that children eat could provide a short-cut to keeping them slim, British researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found that children who ate less salt drank fewer sugary soft drinks and could reduce their risk of high blood pressure and obesity.

Writing in the journal Hypertension, they said this could lower rates of heart attack and stroke in later life.

“Sugar-sweetened soft drinks are a significant source of calorie intake in children,” said Dr. Feng He of St. George’s University of London.

“It has been shown that sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption is related to obesity in young people,” He added in a statement.

“If children aged 4 to 18 years cut their salt intake by half, there would be a decrease of approximately two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child, so each child would decrease calorie intake by almost 250 kilocalories per week.”

One pound of body weight equals 3,500 calories.

He and colleagues analyzed data from a 1997 national survey of more than 2,000 people between 4 and 18 in Britain. More than 1,600 boys and girls had salt and fluid intake recorded in a diary, with everything they ate and drank weighed.

“We found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank less fluid,” He said. “From our research, we estimated that 1 gram of salt cut from their daily diet would reduce fluid intake by 100 grams per day.”

The children who ate less salt also drank fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks, and He predicted that a 1 gram reduction in salt would reduce sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption by 27 grams a day, after factoring in age, gender, body weight and level of physical activity.

He said parents should check labels, choose low-salt food products and not add salt during cooking and at the table.

“Small reductions in the salt content of 10 percent to 20 percent cannot be detected by the human salt taste receptors,” she said.

According to the American Heart Association, healthy adults should reduce their sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams or 2.3 grams per day. This is about 1 teaspoon of salt.

Americans and Britons consume up to 75 percent of their sodium from processed foods like tomato sauce, soups, canned foods and prepared mixes.

Salt may fuel child obesity

Salt-rich diets could be the key to why some children battle with obesity, University of London researchers say.

In a study of data on 1,600 children, they found that children eating a salty diet tended to drink more, including more fattening, sugary soft drinks.

They reported in journal Hypertension that halving the average daily salt intake of six grams a day could cut 250 calories a week from a child’s diet.

They called for further work by the food industry on reducing salt content.

One in five children in the UK is overweight and there are fears that this will contribute to a rising trend in adult obesity, heart disease and stroke in years to come.

Eating products high in salt tends to make people thirsty and it is known that in adults, a salt-laden diet tends to increase the amount of sugary soft drinks consumed.

First in children

This is the first study to see if the same effect was found in children.

The team from St George’s, University of London, looked at data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, conducted in 1997.

They used a sample of 1,600 four to 18-year-olds who had all had their salt and fluid intake measured precisely.

They found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank less fluid and estimated that one gram of salt cut from a daily diet would reduce fluid intake by 100 grams per day.

Approximately a quarter of those 100 grams would be sugary soft drinks, they predicted.

The researchers estimated that if children cut their salt intake by half - an average reduction of three grams a day - there would be a decrease of approximately two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child.

That, in turn, would decrease each child’s calorie intake by almost 250 calories per week.

They urged parents to check the salt content of their children’s meals and manufacturers to find ways to reduce this content.

They said reductions in the salt content of 10% or 20% cannot be detected by human salt taste receptors and do not cause any “technological or safety problems”.

Professor Graham McGregor, one of the paper’s authors and the chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health, said that while some manufacturers had acted to reduce salt levels in bread and cereals - the main sources of salt for children - there was still plenty left for the industry to do.

“Unfortunately some food specifically targeted at children has to be laced with salt otherwise it would be inedible, because it is made from mechanically-recovered meat,” he said.

“The salt levels in some of these products have been brought virtually up to the level of sea water.

“This is evidence of another, hidden way in which eating too much salt may harm the health of children and the industry needs to do a lot more.”

Label call

Dr Myron Weinberger, from the Indiana University Medical Center, wrote that reductions in salt and soft drink consumption in children, coupled with an increase in physical activity, could help reduce the “scourge of cardiovascular disease” in western society.

A spokesman for the British Heart Foundation said that better food labelling would help parents to choose healthier foods for their families.

“When children regularly swill down salty foods with sugary, calorie-laden soft drinks, it can mean double trouble for their future heart health.

“This report is yet more proof that children must be supported to make healthier food choices to avoid becoming obese or increasing their blood pressure.”

Salty Snacks Mean More Sodas for Kids

Kids who load up on salty meals and snacks get thirsty, and too often they turn to calorie-filled sodas. So maybe cutting back on the salt is a good way to cut the calories. That’s the idea coming from a British study published Wednesday in an American Heart Association journal.

Salt is “a hidden factor in the obesity epidemic,” said Graham MacGregor, a co-author of the study by researchers at St. George’s University of London.

And researchers say all that salt isn’t coming from the salt shaker: About 80 percent comes from manufactured food.

“Most people think that sodium comes from the salt shaker. The salt shaker contributes less than 10 to 15 percent,” said Dr. Myron Weinberger, a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

“Fast foods, for example, are just loaded with sodium. Processed foods are all very high in sodium,” said Weinberger, who wrote an editorial related to the study published in the online journal Hypertension.

Not only could less salt translate to fewer soft drinks and therefore fewer calories, but a modest reduction in salt has already been shown to lower blood pressure, which increases the risk of later-in-life heart attack and stroke, researchers say.

Also, several studies have shown a link between sugary soft drinks and obesity in children.

Reducing salt in manufactured foods can be done gradually, without the public even noticing, said Dr. Feng He, lead author of the study and cardiovascular research fellow at St. George’s. She said a 10 to 20 percent reduction in salt isn’t even detectable.

“It’s important for the food industry to make a reduction,” she said.

The study suggested that cutting in half the amount of salt British children consume — a decrease of about half a teaspoon a day — would lead to an average reduction of about 18 ounces of sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week.

The study was based on diet data from Great Britain’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey. Researchers looked at 1,688 British boys and girls — ages 4 to 18 — over a seven-day period in 1997.

They noted that the amount of salt eaten might be underestimated in the study because it didn’t include salt added during cooking or at the table. The researchers also found that more than half the fluids drunk by the children were soft drinks, and more than half of those were sugar-sweetened.

MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at St. George’s, says the study results should apply to kids in the U.S. as well.

The United Kingdom began a government-led campaign to cut salt consumption in 1996 and researchers say more recent studies show that salt intake has already decreased.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is taking public comment until March 28 on a consumer group’s proposal to restrict the amount of salt in processed foods, among other options. And the American Medical Association has urged the government to require strong labeling of high-salt foods because if salt’s connection to high blood pressure and heart problems.

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Being obese or even overweight may increase a person’s risk of developing up to a dozen different types of cancer, European researchers report in a new study.

Doctors have long suspected a link between weight gain and certain cancers, including colon and breast cancers. But the new study, published Friday in the journal Lancet, suggests it could also increase chances for cancer of the esophagus, thyroid, kidney, uterus and gall bladder, among others.

While the study suggests a link, there is no definitive proof that being fat in itself causes cancer.

“To make the link between cause and effect, we need to tick several boxes,” said Dr. Andrew Renehan, the study’s lead author and senior lecturer at the School of Cancer Studies at the University of Manchester. “This study begins to tick the first two or three boxes, but more research is needed to confirm it.”

The researchers compiled data from 141 studies and considered more types of cancers and more diverse populations than had been done previously. The research covered more than 280,000 cases from North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

The subjects, both overweight and normal weight, were followed for about nine to 15 years, with researchers tracking their body mass index, or BMI — a calculation based on weight and height — and correlating it with incidents of cancer.

In men, an average weight gain of 33 pounds increased the risk of esophageal cancer by 52 percent, thyroid cancer by 33 percent, and colon and kidney cancers each by 24 percent, the research found.

In women, a weight gain of 29 pounds increased the risk of cancer in the uterus and gall bladder by nearly 60 percent, esophagus by 51 percent and kidney by 34 percent, the study said.

The link was weaker for bone and blood cancers, for both men and women.

In Asian populations, there appeared to be a stronger link between increased BMI and breast cancer, the study said.

“This study provides a lot of circumstantial evidence about the dangers of obesity,” said Dr. David Robbins, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, who was not involved in the study. “It also highlights the cancer crisis we face as obesity rates increase worldwide.”

Scientists are unsure how being overweight could make people more susceptible to cancer.

“One of the hypotheses is that the presence of excess fat cells could affect the levels of hormones in your body,” Renehan said. “At a cellular level, that may favor the development of tumors in humans.”

Because many studies have found that fatter people are more likely to get cancer, experts often recommend losing weight to reduce cancer risk.

“The simple message is that, if you manage to keep a healthy body weight, you will have a lower risk of developing cancer,” said Ed Yong, of Cancer Research United Kingdom.

The Lancet study was paid for by British Medical Association, the University of Manchester and the University of Bern, Switzerland. Renehan has consulted for several pharmaceutical companies that make hormone replacements.

Obesity Raises Cancer Risk

The more weight you carry on your body, the greater your odds of developing cancer, British researchers report.

This is true not only of fairly common cancers such as colon and breast, but also of lesser known varieties, including gallbladder. Moreover, the degree of risk differs between men and women and among different ethnic groups, report the authors of a comprehensive new paper appearing in this week’s issue of The Lancet.

“This is a profoundly important issue. Obviously, the obesity epidemic is a huge problem itself, and the relationship to cancer is only one of the many adverse health effects of being overweight and obese,” said Dr. Michael Thun, head of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society. “The evidence has been accumulating now for over 10 years. . . This study tries to provide a quantitative measure of how much the relative risk goes up with each increment, basically jumping from one BMI [body-mass index] category to another.”

Although extra fat has already been identified by research as a risk factor for several different types of cancer, Thun said, “the problem of obesity is so large and so difficult to solve that there’s a very sound reason for ongoing studies of things that have become increasingly well-known, just because it helps the momentum in stimulating approaches that will actually help people maintain a healthy weight.”

Last year, a report issued by the American Institute of Cancer Research and the U.K.-based World Cancer Research Fund concluded that body fat is associated with an increased risk for several different types of cancer including esophageal adenocarcinoma, as well as cancers of the pancreas, colon and rectum, breast (postmenopausal), endometrium and kidney.

Although that report was one of the most comprehensive to date, it did leave some questions unanswered. For instance, are there associations between less common cancers and body weight, and do the associations differ between the sexes and people of different ethnic backgrounds?

The issue is a pressing one, with about two-thirds of adult men and women in the United States overweight or obese. That number is only expected to increase as people continue to eat more and exercise less.

This study, from scientists at the University of Manchester, analyzed 141 articles involving 282,137 cancer cases and 20 different types of malignancies to determine the cancer risk associated with a 5 kilogram-per-meter-squared increase in BMI, roughly the increase that would bump a person from middle-normal weight into overweight.

In men, such an increase in BMI raised the risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma by 52 percent, thyroid cancer by 33 percent, and colon and kidney cancer by 24 percent each.

In women, the same increase in BMI increased the risk of endometrial and gallbladder cancer by 59 percent each, esophageal adenocarcinoma by 51 percent, and kidney cancer by 34 percent.

In men, there were weaker associations between increased BMI and rectal cancer and melanoma. In women, there were weaker associations between increased BMI and postmenopausal breast, pancreatic, thyroid and colon cancers.

In both genders, there were associations between increased BMI and leukemia, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

For colon cancer, the associations were stronger in men than in women (24 percent vs. 9 percent).

There were stronger associations in Asia-Pacific populations between greater BMI and both premenopausal and postmenopausal breast cancers.

Although the main message is still to maintain a healthy weight, this research might indicate earlier screening for certain cancers, said Dr. Greg Cooper, interim chief of the gastroenterology division at Ireland Cancer Center of University Hospitals and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center in Cleveland. “If someone is obese, then lower the threshold for screening,” he said. “One of the cancers they identified is esophageal adenocarcinoma, which is not as common as colon cancer, but it is increasing in incidence. It is thought to be related to reflux, so as a gastroenterologist, if I have a patient who has reflux and is obese, I might lower the threshold for doing an endoscopy. For other cancers like colon cancer, those guidelines are pretty well-established, and this probably wouldn’t change practice.”

Experts aren’t sure why extra fat can lead to malignancies, but changes in the circulating levels of various hormones (insulin, insulin-like growth factors and sex steroids) might explain the link.

Here’s more bad news as the world heads for a smoke-free future: An accompanying commentary from Swedish researchers notes that as people quit smoking (the biggest cause of cancer in developed countries), weight gain may become the main lifestyle factor contributing to new cancers.

British researchers link obesity to more cancers

Obesity can double the risk of several cancers, according to a study published on Friday that for the first time also links being overweight with a number of less common forms of the disease.

The analysis of 144 published studies incorporating some 282,000 men and women also showed that gender can make a difference in the relationship between obesity and some cancers, the researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal.

The findings come after a major report from the World Research Cancer Fund in October showed that excess body fat was likely to cause some cancers, said Andrew Renehan, a cancer specialist at the University of Manchester, who led the study.

“This study has extended that further and reported specifically on 20 different types of cancer,” he said in a telephone interview. “We showed an association with less common cancers that had not been shown before.”

These included blood cancers such as adult leukemia, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for both men and women, he said.

Obesity is a major issue worldwide and also raises the risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart problems. The World Health Organisation classifies around 400 million people as obese.

Renehan and his colleagues looked at what happened to people whose body mass index (BMI) increased from the normal range to overweight or from overweight to obese.

BMI is a calculation of height to weight, and the normal range is usually considered to be 18 to 25, with more than 25 overweight and above 30 obese.

For men, the risk of thyroid cancer rose by a third and went up 24 percent for colon and kidney cancers, the researchers said. In women who went from normal to overweight, the risk of gall bladder cancer rose 59 percent and kidney cancer went up 34 percent.

“Increased BMI is associated with increased risk of common and less common malignancies,” the researchers wrote. “For some cancer types, associations differed between sexes and populations of different ethnic origins.”

The association of cancer and obesity was largely similar across Asia, Europe and North America, though the link between higher body mass index and breast cancer was higher in Asia, the researchers said.

There were also strong differences between men and women for cancers like bowel and kidney cancers. Knowing this kind of information could help scientists focus research on what is exactly causing some of these cancers, Renehan said.

“We suspect there are differences in changes in hormones due to the amount of fat cells in our body, and whether a person is a man or a woman,” he said.

Children lacking enough shut-eye face a greater risk of becoming obese than kids who get a good night’s sleep, according to a study released Thursday.

Each extra hour of sleep cuts a child’s risk of becoming overweight or obese by nine percent, according to an analysis of epidiomogical studies by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

By contrast, children who got the least sleep had a 92 percent higher change of being overweight or obese than children who slept enough, said the study published in the journal Obesity.

“Our analysis of the data shows a clear association between sleep duration and the risk for overweight or obesity in children. The risk declined with more sleep,” said Youfa Wang, a senior author of the study.

“Desirable sleep behavior may be an important low cost means for preventing childhood obesity and should be considered in future intervention studies,” Wang said in a news release.

“Our findings may also have important implications in societies where children do not have adequate sleep due to the pressure for academic excellence and where the prevalence of obesity is rising, such as in many East Asian countries.”

The researchers reviewed 17 published studies on sleep duration and childhood obesity.

Some research recommends that children under five years old sleep 11 hours or more a day, while children age five to 10 should get 10 or more hours of sleep, and children older than 10 should sleep at least nine hours.

Want to lose weight? Try sleeping more

If you want to lose weight, get more sleep. In a new article appearing in the current issue of Obesity Reviews, University of Michigan researcher Michael Sivak presents calculations showing that replacing one hour of inactive wakefulness—such as watching television—with sleep can result in a 6 percent reduction in caloric intake.
“Caloric consumption in a society with readily available food is likely to be approximately proportional to the number of hours of being awake,” said Sivak, head of the Human Factors Division at the U-M Transportation Research Institute. “By replacing one hour of being awake with sleeping, we forgo a significant consumption of food because of the resulting reduction in the opportunity to eat.”

Sivak says that a person who sleeps seven hours a night and consumes 2,500 calories during the remaining 17 hours of the day can cut 147 calories by simply sleeping an extra hour instead of watching TV. He calculated that such a decrease in caloric intake would result in a body-weight reduction of about 14 pounds per year.

“Recent research has suggested that the levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin mediate an association between lack of sleep and weight gain. But this may turn out to be only part of the story,” he said. “The behavioral, non-hormonal relationship between sleep and weight is another possible connection.

“To the extent that a large proportion of the population is both overweight and voluntarily sleep-deprived, replacing some sedentary activity with sleeping might offer a practical behavioral solution for a large segment of the overweight population.”

The brain circuitry that controls appetite might be wired differently in some people, and that could predispose them to obesity, California researchers suggest.

The study was conducted in rats, not humans, and yet it could ultimately lead to novel obesity treatments, said Philip Smith, director of the Office of Obesity Research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

“It is not just about drugs that modify short-term appetite,” he said, “there may be drugs that stimulate development of the appropriate neural pathways. So, it is an exciting, but very early, time in this field.”

Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and his colleagues examined neural circuits emanating from the appetite, hunger and body-weight control center of the brain — the so-called arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (ARH) — in a series of rats bred to be either prone to, or resistant to, obesity.

The team found fewer neural connections projecting from the ARH in obesity-prone animals than in their leaner counterparts. Surprisingly, Bouret said, this deficiency developed very early in life, before the animals became obese, and appeared to extend into adulthood.

“Somehow, these animals are programmed to become obese,” Bouret said. “The obesity is hard-wired into the brain.”

When the researchers then looked at why the brains of obese rats differed from their normal-weight counterparts, they found that the neurons from obesity-prone animals were less responsive to leptin, a hormone that controls the development of these circuits, and which also signals the body’s energy status and controls metabolic rate.

“This paper presumes to say, these animals must be leptin-resistant, and that is why the pathways are not developing,” said Smith.

But that doesn’t mean they are doomed to a life of severe obesity, said Dr. Barbara Kahn, chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. How they live their lives also matters.

“It is important not to ‘blame’ the obese person or imply that he/she is responsible for being obese,” Kahn noted. “Having said that, reasonable, healthy caloric restriction and a safe and sustainable program of physical activity can help limit weight gain and often bring about some degree of weight loss. In addition, healthy eating and regular exercise can reduce the complications of obesity such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”

At the same time, she added, not everyone can wear a size 4.

“There is a certain aspect of genetics that sets somebody in a certain range of possible body weights, and then how that person lives his or her life will determine whether they are at the bottom or top of the range,” she explained.

Human obesity has both genetic and environmental roots. The rats used in this study, like most humans, developed obesity when fed a high-energy diet. On a normal diet, they were heavier than normal rats, but not yet obese.

“This is quite an exciting paper,” said Smith, “because it links more closely to human behavior than most rodent models we have seen.”

The findings also suggest a possible therapeutic approach to combating human obesity. If drugs could be designed to influence the formation of neural circuits during development and targeted to at-risk pregnancies, Smith said, “there is a good likelihood we could have successful interventions that improve the health of the mother, and which have a major impact on disease risk for the infant, during pregnancy.”

A related study from Boston University researchers in the same journal found that bulking up muscle mass can lead to a general metabolic improvement in obese individuals. “Interventions designed to increase skeletal muscle mass in at-risk human populations may prove to be critical weapons in the fight against obesity and obesity-related comorbidities, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension and cancer,” an accompanying editorial stated.

Obesity may be hard-wired in the brain

Obesity may be hard-wired into the brain from birth, according to a new animal study released Tuesday that appears to bolster the notion that some people are more prone to pile on the pounds than others.

The study showed that obese rats had faulty brain wiring that impaired their response to the hunger-suppressing hormone leptin.

In obesity-prone rats, “it seems that appetite and obesity are built into the brain,” said Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

“The neurodevelopmental differences in these animals can be seen as early as the first week,” he said.

“The results show that obesity can be wired into the brain from early life. The three-million-dollar question now is how to get around the problem.”

Leptin plays a central role in fat metabolism. Produced by fat tissue, it acts as a signal to the brain about the body’s energy status.

Its role in weight regulation is still unclear, but what scientists do know is that the brain calibrates the need for food intake based in part on leptin levels.

Previous research had shown that the brains of obesity-prone rats were insensitive to these leptin signals, so the researchers looked for brain abnormalities that could explain this.

They found defects in the brain circuits that relay leptin signals throughout the hypothalamus — the brain’s central switchboard for regulating conditions in the body.

While the rats’ condition might be improved by exercising and eating right, the findings suggest that the propensity to gain weight can’t be reversed, Bouret said.

If the findings are replicated in humans, then those individuals who are genetically predisposed to obesity because of the way their brains are configured would have to be very careful about “diet and energy balance,” said Richard Simerly, another researcher who worked on the study.

The findings also fly in the face of the one-size-fits-all approach that characterizes much of the discussion about weight management and weight loss in the media, said Simerly, who is director of the neuroscience program at the Saban Research Institute at the University of Southern California.

“The message in the media that weight regulation is all a matter of nutrition or lifestyle choices does a disservice to people whose biology predisposes them to obesity,” he said.

The study appears in the February issue of Cell Metabolism.

Obesity and depression often go hand-in-hand in middle-aged women, a new U.S. study found.

The research collected information on the height, weight, dietary and exercise habits, and body image of 4,641 women, ages 40 to 65, enrolled in a health plan. The women also completed a questionnaire used to measure depression symptoms.

Women with clinical depression were more than twice as likely to be obese (a body mass index of 30 or more), and obese women were more than twice as likely to be depressed, the study found.

It also found that women with BMIs of 30 or higher exercised the least, had the poorest body image, and consumed 20 percent more calories than women with lower BMIs.

The link between obesity and depression remained intact even when the researchers factored in marital status, education, tobacco use and antidepressant use.

The study was published in the January/February issue of the journal General Hospital Psychiatry.

It’s likely that depression and obesity fuel one another, said lead author Dr. Gregory Simon, a psychiatrist and researcher at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle.

“When people gain weight, they’re more likely to become depressed, and when they get depressed, they have more trouble losing weight,” he said in a prepared statement.

The stigma of being overweight can damage self-esteem and efforts to lose weight.

“It’s not that these women are clueless. It’s that they’re hopeless,” said Simon, who suggested that if obese women focus on rebuilding their self esteem, it may help them lose weight.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than 19 million people in the United States — 1 in 10 adults — experience depression each year. Women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. In fact, more than 6 million women experience depression each year.

Study finds a clear link between obesity and mood disorders

There is a clear link between obesity and depression, anxiety and other mood disorders, according to a new Group Health Center for Health Studies report.

“People who are overweight or obese are more likely to have anxiety or depression problems. They’re really stigmatized,” said Dr. Gregory Simon, a psychiatrist and researcher at Group Health.

“There had been previous research saying there appeared to be a link between obesity and depression — the results weren’t surprising — but this study made it clearer,” Simon said.

Kathleen Tate once embodied that. A year ago, her body mass index, or BMI, indicated she was on the verge of obesity. She also had a history of depression. But after participating in the Weight Management Program at Swedish Medical Center and making lifestyle changes, she’s now in the normal range. She also feels much better.

“There are so many factors that contribute to why someone might have depression. Weight loss might help, but it’s part of a process,” Tate said. “I think it’s possible to be thin and terribly depressed.”

The findings weren’t surprising to Carol Birch, a nurse practitioner in the Center for Medical Weight Management at Swedish Medical Center. Working with weight management patients for the past three years, she’s learned that obesity and mood disorders are “definitely linked.”

But it’s not always easy to see.

“Patients might not even recognize they’re depressed,” Birch said. “They may be in denial. They might do a lot of work, or mask it. But when tested on a depression scale, it becomes evident. A score of 10-15 (of a possible 63 points) raises a red flag. If the score is in the 30s, they’d better be in counseling.”

Simon was leader of the Group Health study, published in the July Archives of General Psychiatry. He said the team used data from a large national survey of mental disorders conducted by Harvard University between 2001 and 2003.

Simon, who specializes in research on depression and mood disorders, said the survey gave his team information on 9,125 participants to analyze. Average age was 44.8. By applying standard definitions of depression, they could use a participant’s responses to determine anxiety, depression and mood disorders.

Obesity was measured by BMI. His research also found that well-educated obese caucasians were even more likely to be depressed, a likelihood that could be as high as 44 percent.

Do people who are depressed become overweight, or do they become overweight and then depressed? Simon said he’s studying this.

If people lose weight, does depression improve? “We don’t have the answer to that. But it does go both ways, at least if you talk to people — people say they’d be less depressed if they were able to lose weight, for example.”

Birch said one reason white, educated obese people may be more prone to depression is that they set a high standard for achievement. If obesity impinges on their abilities to achieve, it could lead to depression.

She’s also learned that some people aren’t willing to give up their lifestyles, to set aside time to take care of themselves. Only when their health starts to fail will they seek help.

To obese adults already at higher risk for diabetes, heart disease and other life-altering conditions, this study isn’t good news.

“What we believe is that people who are depressed have much more trouble losing weight, changing diet and increasing activity level,” Simon said.

“Since there’s an overlap between obesity and depression, what kind of special programs do we need to develop to help them? That’s a question we’re working on. I can’t say I have the answer.”

But there is a bright note. Simon’s study found that obese people had a lower prevalence of substance abuse disorders.

What are the symptoms of depression?

Doctors continue to learn about how women are affected by depression, but there are some common symptoms. If you’re depressed, you may have some of these symptoms nearly every day, all day, for 2 weeks or longer:

• Feeling sad or crying a lot
• Losing interest or pleasure in things you used to enjoy (including sex)
• Feeling guilty, hopeless or worthless
• Thinking about death or suicide
• Sleeping too much, or not being able to go to sleep or stay asleep
• Losing your appetite and losing weight (or eating too much and gaining weight)
• Feeling very tired or slowed down
• Having trouble paying attention and making decisions
• Having aches and pains that don’t get better with treatment

What causes depression?
Depression seems to be related to a chemical imbalance in the brain that makes it hard for the cells to communicate with one another. Stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one, a divorce or moving (such as leaving home to go to college), may lead to depression. Taking certain medicines, abusing drugs or alcohol, or having other illnesses can also cause depression.

Women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) are more likely to become depressed. Depression is more common a week before a woman’s period and in the weeks after a woman gives birth (this is called postpartum depression). In some women, taking birth control pills may cause symptoms of depression.

Walking can help people lose weight, especially if they use a pedometer to make sure they are going far enough, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

People who added 20 to 40 minutes of walking a day lost a small but steady amount of weight, the team at the University of Michigan found.

“The increase in physical activity can be expected to result in health benefits that are independent of weight loss,” said Dr. Caroline Richardson, who led the study.

“Increasing physical activity reduces the risk of cardiovascular problems, lowers blood pressure and helps dieters maintain lean muscle tissue when they are dieting.”

Writing in the Annals of Family Medicine, Richardson and colleagues said they reviewed nine studies involving 307 men and women. They took part in studies of pedometer use that ranged from four weeks to a year.

The volunteers in all the studies but one lost some weight — about 0.1 pound (0.05 kg) a week on average, Richardson’s team found. She found that the weight loss was “remarkably consistent” across all of the studies.

Over a year this added up to five pounds (2.25 kg). Changing eating habits could help even more, Richardson said.

People were able to add between 2,000 steps per day to more than 4,000 steps per day. For the average person, 2,000 steps equals about a mile.

What is a pedometer?

A pedometer (also known as a Tomish-meter) or step counter is a device, usually portable and electronic, which counts each step a person makes.

Used originally by sports and physical fitness enthusiasts, pedometers are now becoming popular as an everyday exercise measurer and motivator. Often worn on the belt and kept on all day, it can record how many steps the wearer has walked that day, and thus the kilometres/miles (Distance = number of steps x step length). Some pedometers will also record movements other than walking, such as bending to tie one’s shoes, though the most advanced devices record fewer of these ‘false steps’. Step counters can give encouragement to compete with oneself in getting fit and losing weight. A total of 10,000 steps per day (equivalent of 5 miles or 8 km) is recommended by some to be the benchmark for an active lifestyle, though this point is debated among experts. Step counters are being integrated in an increasing number of portable consumer electronic devices such as music players and mobile phones.

Pedometers can be a motivation tool for people wanting to increase their physical activity. Pedometers have been shown in clinical studies to increase physical activity, and reduce blood pressure levels and Body Mass Index. A study published in the Journal of The American Medical Association Nov. 2007 concluded, “The results suggest that the use of a pedometer is associated with significant increases in physical activity and significant decreases in body mass index and blood pressure.”

Multi-function Pedometers
All pedometers count steps, although they may use different methods to do so. These include (in general order of accuracy): piezo-electric accelerometers, a coiled spring mechanism, and a hairspring mechanism. Beyond showing the step total and/or calculating the distance, features abound. The top features are: Calorie estimates, clocks, timers, stopwatches and speed estimators, 7-day memory, pulse rate readers.

Simple Step Counting Pedometers
The simplest pedometers only count your steps and display steps and/or distance. This is all you need to track to keep yourself motivated. Set a goal of distance or steps for each day. The recommended number of steps is 6000 for health, 10,000 for weight loss when you count all steps during the day. For weight loss, an uninterrupted walk each day of 4000-6000 steps is recommended.

Pedometer Accuracy
The current generation of pedometers uses turned pendulum technology, accelerometers, and/or electronics to count your steps. The unit should be accurate in its count when you wear it correctly - you may have to experiment with where to wear it. Distance accuracy depends on setting your stride length correctly.

How to Wear Your Pedometer
A pedometer should be comfortable to wear all day and be held securely by its clip, an extra safety leash is almost required. The display should be easy to read without removing the unit from your waistband. It should be protected so that bumps don’t punch a button and reset the count. It should easy and intuitive to move between functions.

As adult obesity balloons in the United States, being overweight has become less of a health hazard and more of a lifestyle choice, the author of a new book argues.

“Obesity is a natural extension of an advancing economy. As you become a First World economy and you get all these labor-saving devices and low-cost, easily accessible foods, people are going to eat more and exercise less,” health economist Eric Finkelstein told AFP.

In “The Fattening of America”, published this month, Finkelstein says that adult obesity more than doubled in the United States between 1960 and 2004, rising from 13 percent to around 33 percent.

Globally, only Saudi Arabia fares worse than the United States in terms of the percentage of adults with a severe weight problem — 35 percent of people in the oil-rich desert kingdom are classified as obese, the book says, citing data from the World Health Organization and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

With the rising tide of obesity come health problems and an increased burden on the healthcare system and industry.

“But the nasty side-effects of obesity aren’t as nasty as they used to be,” Finkelstein said.

“When you have a first-rate medical system that can cure the diseases that obesity promotes, you no longer need to worry so much about being obese,” he told AFP.

“With our ever-advancing modern medicine there helping to save the day (at least for many people), are government and the media blowing the magnitude of the ‘obesity crisis’ out of proportion?” his book says.

A study in which Finkelstein and colleagues at the RTI International, an independent research institute in North Carolina that works on social and scientific problems, asked overweight, obese and normal weight people to predict their life expectancy came up with a total difference of four years.

Normal weight respondents predicted they would live to 78, the obese to 74, and the overweight 75.5.

Other studies that looked at death data back the conclusion that people who carry excess weight tend to die slightly earlier, the book says, and draws the conclusion that “many individuals are making a conscious decision to engage in a lifestyle that is obesity-promoting.”

“People make choices, and some people will choose a weight that the public health community might be unhappy about. Why should we try to make them thinner?” Finkelstein said.

Linda Gotthelf, a doctor who heads research at Health Management Resources, a private, nationwide firm that specializes in weight loss and management, agreed that Americans now live longer but stressed that quality of life declines with age.

“People are living longer but with more chronic diseases,” Gotthelf told AFP.

“That brings a diminished quality of life, especially for the obese who have more functional limitations as they age and tend to be on multiple medications.”

Obesity is not a choice for Alley English, a 28-year-old mother from Missouri who has struggled with a weight problem all her life.

“If you knew that you could be what society considers normal, why would you not choose to do that?” English told AFP.

“As we get older, life does get more rushed and we do tend to make the easier choices sometimes,” English, who currently weighs 392 pounds (178 kilograms), told AFP.

“But you can’t say if you quit going to the drive-through, exercise more and eat more vegetables, you’ll lose weight. There are so many more factors involved.”

Gotthelf also disagreed that people choose to be obese.

“There are studies in which people have said they would rather lose a limb or be blind than obese. Being obese is not a desire,” she said.

“For many, this is a problem they have struggled with for many years… it gets discouraging after a while,” she said.

“I would not doubt that if you asked obese people if they could push a button and not be obese, close to 100 percent would say they would push the button.”

Finkelstein says he wrote “The Fattening of America” to “encourage discussion of what I understand is probably an uncomfortable position for a lot of people.”

Even if private industry and government take steps to protect society against the costs of obesity, many Americans “will likely continue to choose a diet and exercise regimen that leads to excess weight,” because losing weight requires too many lifestyle sacrifices, his book warns.

Meanwhile, frustrated by years of unsuccessful dieting and weight loss programs, English has opted to join a growing number of Americans who have gastric bypass surgery — hailed in Finkelstein’s book as “the best-known treatment for severe obesity.”

“I have a higher risk of developing diabetes or hypertension if I don’t have the surgery,” English said.

“I don’t care if I end up with a body like whoever-in-the-media thinks I should look like; I just want to be healthy and able to participate in my daughter’s life,” she said.

Obesity and Life Styles: Is it the Hamburger or your House?

In a sustained effort to undermine America’s preference for suburban living and promote land use regulations that force families into higher density housing, anti-suburban activists have attempted to link the suburbs with whatever social or health concerns are in the news.

Several years ago writer Neal Peirce blamed the Columbine murders on sprawl, while others have attempted to link sprawl to the rising incidence of asthma, teen alienation, serial killers, air pollution, high taxes, and, more recently, obesity.

Unlike the other unsupportable allegations, the obesity link has sustained a longer shelf life than the others, and recent reports have received widespread media attention. On October 2, 2003, several of these anti-sprawl advocates will attempt to make their case to Congress in a panel discussion in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

As the articles below demonstrate, the advocate’s case is a very weak one and receives little support from the evidence. But exaggeration and misrepresentation might be the least of their failings.

There is no question that the apparent rise in obesity poses serious health threats, but to claim that the cause is land use patterns, as opposed to… oh say… poor diet, does a grotesque disservice to those at risk of obesity and its related health problems.

By distracting those who need to lose weight for health reasons away from meaningful solutions – a better diet, more exercise – to inconsequential influences that have more to do with advancing questionable social agendas, these misrepresentations will ultimately undermine the nation’s health.

Participating in physical activities in and out of school more than two times a week protects adolescents from becoming overweight young adults, according to new research.

“The message for policy makers is that the failure to offer physical education is ‘penny wise and pound foolish,”‘ study investigator Dr. Robert Wm. Blum from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, told Reuters Health.

“For parents, the evidence is compelling that placing an emphasis on high-energy recreational activity such as biking and roller-blading will benefit their children and are activities that they can do together as a family,” he added.

The study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, involved 3,345 adolescents who reported their school-based and extracurricular physical activities in 1996 when they were in the 8th through 12th grades. Body weight was assessed at this time and again 5 years later.

During the 5-year period, the number of adolescents who were overweight - defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or greater — nearly doubled from about 28 percent to 51 percent, the investigators report. BMI is the ratio between height and weight, which is commonly used to assess an individual’s weight.

“Of 941 overweight adolescents, only 103 (11 percent) transitioned to normal weight as young adults,” the researchers report. Of the 2,404 normal-weight adolescents, 855 (roughly 36 percent) became overweight young adults.

For the entire study population, the likelihood of being an overweight adult was reduced 48 percent by participating extracurricular “wheel-related” activities, such as roller-blading, skateboarding, or bicycling more than 4 times per week and 20 percent by participating in school-based sports activities, such as baseball, softball, basketball, soccer, swimming or football 3 to 4 times per week.

Moreover, for every weekday an adolescent participated in physical education classes, the odds of becoming an overweight adult decreased by 5 percent. Participating in physical education classes everyday decreased the odds of becoming an overweight adult by 28 percent.

“With obesity at epidemic proportions, an intervention which appears to hold as much promise as daily physical education does in maintaining normal weight into adulthood should be given highest priority,” Blum said.

The apparent protective effect of physical activity against becoming overweight was more marked in adolescents who started out at a normal weight, suggesting that physical activity may be a more effective strategy for maintaining normal weight than for losing excess body weight, the researchers point out.

The study results also highlight the importance of preventing a child from becoming overweight in the first place, they add.

Teen Obesity Reaching Epidemic Proportions!

Obesity among teens has become a major epidemic. More teens are overweight now than at any time in history. A January 2000 report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified the single most powerful change teens can make to bring their weight under control. “Of all the ways of tackling this problem, TV reduction appears to be the most effective measure in reducing weight gain in this population,” Dr. William Dietz, Director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, told the CDC Advisory Board. Bike, dance, play ball - have fun being active!

Women need to exercise more to prevent obesity

Researchers think that women should more than double their daily exercise time in order to control their weight. Presently, we are advised to aim for 35 minutes a day// of moderate exercise for health and weight control. But scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now warn that this may not be enough.

They have studied a group of women who reported a tendency to gain weight. Physical inactivity alone accounted for 60 per cent of the weight gain - with food intake becoming a minor factor. But the researchers think that the current guidelines need to be increased. They suggest that 80 minutes a day might be needed, rather than 35, to make a real impact on obesity problems.

Certainly the sedentary lifestyle of the United States plays a big part in the growing national problem of obesity. Rather than thinking of calorie cutting, it may be better to consider how to squeeze more physical activity into your day.