domingo, 2 de noviembre de 2014

Fat and Dumb: New Crash Test Dummies Will Be Made Obese

Humanetics, one of the world’s largest producers of crash test dummies, will soon be producing a morbidly obese cousin to the healthy-sized original.

The new dummy will weigh 273 lbs (as opposed to the 167 lbs of the current model) and have a BMI of 35.

The new dummy is being manufactured in response to a statistic that says obese passengers are 78% more likely to be fatally injured in an accident.

They’re also 100% more likely to want secret milkshake compartments with three feet long straws for easy access.

Read more: www.gearfuse.com

lunes, 30 de junio de 2014

Plastics Linked to Obesity

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical compound that is used to make polycarbonate resin, a component of many plastics including food and beverage containers. Scientists recently examined the association between BPA concentration and body mass outcomes in children, and published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This study examined 2,838 American children ages 6 to 19 who were randomly selected in the 2003-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They found that the children in the bottom 25 percent of BPA exposure were only half as likely to be obese as the other children.

The article concludes that, “Urinary BPA concentration was significantly associated with obesity in . . . children and adolescents.”

Presently, two-thirds of Americans are overweight and/or obese. This study showed a direct correlation with BPA exposure and obesity in children and adolescents. BPA is found in nearly all canned foods, and was found in plastic cups and baby bottles until the FDA recently banned those uses.

BPA is actually stored in fat tissue, and has been shown to have hormonal (estrogenic) effects in the body. Studies show that it is associated with weight gain in rats.

However, obesity is not the only problem linked to BPA. Animal studies have also shown that BPA exposure increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, miscarriages, breast and prostate cancer, reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, and neurological disorders.

You can minimize your exposure to BPA by limiting your ingestion of canned foods and bottled water.

Read more: www.newsmaxhealth.com

miércoles, 18 de junio de 2014

Michelle Obama: I Couldn't feed my kids right- even with a Harvard Degree

In an interview with MSN.com, First Lady Michelle Obama explained she used to struggle to feed her kids right—even though she received an education from Harvard and Princeton.

“Before coming to the White House, I struggled, as a working parent with a traveling, busy husband, to figure out how to feed my kids healthy, and I didn’t get it right,” she explained, sharing a story about her children’s doctor who pulled her aside to talk about her family diet.

“I thought to myself, if a Princeton and Harvard-educated professional woman doesn’t know how to adequately feed her kids, then what are other parents going through who don’t have access to the information I have?” she recalled.

Her personal struggle helped her launch her mission to address childhood obesity, she explains, especially passing a law requiring schools to provide healthier meals for kids.

The First Lady recommended that schools make decisions for children because their parents struggle to feed their children well.

“It’s so important for our schools to make the hard calls for our kids, because parents are struggling enough at home,” she said, pointing out that schools would simply feed children sweet cereal, chocolate milk, donuts, burgers, and fries.

Obama added that parents and school administrators needed to stop worrying about what their kids want to eat and encourage them to act like adults.

“It is our job as adults to make sure that our kids eat what they need, not what they want,” she said. “I struggle with that in my own life, and I tell you, if I let my kids dictate what we have for dinner every day, it would be French fries, chips, and candy, but we don’t run our households like that, and we can’t run our schools like that.”

Instead of rolling back the national school mandates, the First Lady explained that schools just needed more help making healthy food taste better.

“What we need to do is lend a hand to the schools that are struggling, not roll back the standards and say, 'Oh, well. The kids don’t like it so let them eat cake,'” she insisted. “We can’t afford to do that."

Read more.- breitbart.com

martes, 27 de mayo de 2014

Coca-Cola accused of 'obscene' hypocrisy in £20 million 'anti-obesity' drive

Coca-Cola has been accused of using a £20 million anti-obesity drive to distract attention from its contribution to Britain's obesity epidemic.
The drinks giant plans to pour millions into fitness programme called Coca-Cola Zero ParkLives, offering thousands of free sessions and coaching for families across 70 parks in England.

But the announcement immediately attracted criticism from nutrition campaigners who have labelled the scheme "obscene".

Dr Aseem Malhotra, cardiologist and science director for the Action on Sugar campaign group, told The Daily Telegraph: "I think this is a really disingenuous stunt. They are trying to deflect attention from their own part in creating an obesity epidemic, which has been fuelled almost entirely by rising calorie consumption."

Dr Malhotra added the programme was "obscene" because it encouraged such companies to associate themselves with active lifestyles.

Critics have cited warnings from Public Health England that soft drinks and fruit juices packed with sugar are creating an obesity epidemic, especially among young people.

A report commissioned by the National Diet and Nutrition Survey earlier this month found that those aged between four and 18 months are consuming around 40% more sugar than is recommended.

The findings also suggested that soft drinks like Coca-Cola contributed to 30% of sugar intake of those aged between 11 and 18.

But the company has insisted that is playing a part in tackling obesity in Britain, arguing that 40% of sales now come from 'zero calorie' versions of the drink.

Coca-Cola's general manager Jon Woods stressed the company was refusing to shy away from obesity and refused to accept blame for the epidemic.
 




domingo, 25 de mayo de 2014

Always Hungry? Here’s Why

For most of the last century, our understanding of the cause of obesity has been based on immutable physical law. Specifically, it’s the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. When it comes to body weight, this means that calorie intake minus calorie expenditure equals calories stored. Surrounded by tempting foods, we overeat, consuming more calories than we can burn off, and the excess is deposited as fat. The simple solution is to exert willpower and eat less.

The problem is that this advice doesn’t work, at least not for most people over the long term. In other words, your New Year’s resolution to lose weight probably won’t last through the spring, let alone affect how you look in a swimsuit in July. More of us than ever are obese, despite an incessant focus on calorie balance by the government, nutrition organizations and the food industry.

But what if we’ve confused cause and effect? What if it’s not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat?

The more calories we lock away in fat tissue, the fewer there are circulating in the bloodstream to satisfy the body’s requirements. If we look at it this way, it’s a distribution problem: We have an abundance of calories, but they’re in the wrong place. As a result, the body needs to increase its intake. We get hungrier because we’re getting fatter.

It’s like edema, a common medical condition in which fluid leaks from blood vessels into surrounding tissues. No matter how much water they drink, people with edema may experience unquenchable thirst because the fluid doesn’t stay in the blood, where it’s needed. Similarly, when fat cells suck up too much fuel, calories from food promote the growth of fat tissue instead of serving the energy needs of the body, provoking overeating in all but the most disciplined individuals.

We discuss this hypothesis in an article just published in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. According to this alternative view, factors in the environment have triggered fat cells in our bodies to take in and store excessive amounts of glucose and other calorie-rich compounds. Since fewer calories are available to fuel metabolism, the brain tells the body to increase calorie intake (we feel hungry) and save energy (our metabolism slows down). Eating more solves this problem temporarily but also accelerates weight gain. Cutting calories reverses the weight gain for a short while, making us think we have control over our body weight, but predictably increases hunger and slows metabolism even more.

Consider fever as another analogy. A cold bath will lower body temperature temporarily, but also set off biological responses — like shivering and constriction of blood vessels — that work to heat the body up again. In a sense, the conventional view of obesity as a problem of calorie balance is like conceptualizing fever as a problem of heat balance; technically not wrong, but not very helpful, because it ignores the apparent underlying biological driver of weight gain.
Continue reading the main story

This is why diets that rely on consciously reducing calories don’t usually work. Only one in six overweight and obese adults in a nationwide survey reports ever having maintained a 10 percent weight loss for at least a year. (Even this relatively modest accomplishment may be exaggerated, because people tend to overestimate their successes in self-reported surveys.) In studies by Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel of Columbia and colleagues, when lean and obese research subjects were underfed in order to make them lose 10 to 20 percent of their weight, their hunger increased and metabolism plummeted. Conversely, overfeeding sped up metabolism.

For both over- and under-eating, these responses tend to push weight back to where it started — prompting some obesity researchers to think in terms of a body weight “set point” that seems to be predetermined by our genes.

Read more.- nytimes.com

lunes, 19 de mayo de 2014

What Causes Obesity?

A team of academic cardiologists published a paper in the April 15, 2014 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, one of the world's most prestigious cardiology journals, entitled "Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease."

One of their conclusions is that: "Progressive declines in physical activity over five decades have occurred and have progressively caused the obesity epidemic." They support this conclusion with data showing that energy expenditure at work and doing household chores has decreased significantly over the last 50 years.

We burn fewer calories on the job and in household chores, and this decrease in caloric expenditure has not been matched by a decrease in caloric intake.

Humans, like every other animal on earth, adjust our energy intake to match our energy expenditure. In his wonderful myth-smashing book Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes points out that tailors on average consume 2,500 calories and lumberjacks 4,500.

How could it be otherwise? Imagine an animal in which energy intake and energy expenditure are truly independent of one another. Maintaining a normal weight then becomes a matter of chance. But living organisms must be efficient to survive, and energy balance is at the very heart of this efficient functioning.

That's why it seldom works to tell someone who wants to lose weight to just increase energy expenditure. Just run around the block every morning before work and keep everything else the same and you'll lose weight. It's impossible to keep everything the same. The energy expenditure causes energy depletion, and our brains through a complex cascade of hormones cause us to be hungry and to eat. Even if one can resist the hunger, and most of the time this semi-starvation state cannot be resisted indefinitely, our bodies have other ways of matching energy supply and energy demand.

Use up all of your available energy on that run around the block and your body will find other ways to lower energy consumption, like turning down the little furnaces in your cells a bit or decreasing mental activity. You might not even feel the slight drop in temperature or the slowed brain functioning.

If these academic cardiologists are right and the energy we burn from work and household chores has dropped and we haven't increased our energy demands in other areas, a well-functioning organism should decrease its caloric intake automatically. That's how we do it with thirst and that's how we are supposed to do it with hunger.

Read more.- huffingtorpost.com

martes, 8 de abril de 2014

Father's Obesity May Be A Risk Factor For Autism

With diagnoses of autism rising at staggering rates, the hunt for its causes continues, often with frustratingly inconclusive results. A study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics adds yet another potential culprit to an already long list: the obesity of the father.

Researchers tracked more than 90,000 Norwegian children to determine whether maternal prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) or paternal BMI were associated with diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. While the mothers' weight did not have any correlation with whether children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, paternal obesity did — children of obese fathers were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with autism compared with those whose fathers were a normal weight.

If that sounds surprising to you, it was to the researchers as well, who noted in their report:

Our finding came as a surprise because we had expected maternal obesity to be the most prominent risk factor. Maternal obesity was also associated with an increased risk of both autistic disorder and Asperger disorder in unadjusted analyses, but the increase was substantially attenuated by adjustment for paternal BMI.

In other words, while maternal obesity studied alone may appear to increase the risk of autism spectrum disorders in their children, that association goes away when you account for the father's weight.

Read more: mindbodygreen.com

lunes, 31 de marzo de 2014

Poor sleep predicting obese adolescents risk of heart disease and diabetes

Obese adolescents not getting enough sleep? A study in today's The Journal of Pediatrics, shows they could be increasing their risk for developing diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Lack of sleep and obesity have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adults and young children.

However, the association is not as clear in adolescents, an age group known for lack of adequate sleep, and with an obesity and overweight prevalence of 30 percent in the United States.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and Baylor University studied 37 obese adolescents, ages 11-17. Their risk factors for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, such as fasting cholesterol and blood sugar, waist circumference, body mass index, and blood pressure, were measured to create a continuous cardiometabolic risk score.

The adolescents were fitted with a physical activity monitor, worn 24 hours a day for seven days to measure typical patterns of physical activity and sleep.

One-third of the participants met the minimum recommendation of being physically active at least 60 minutes a day. Most participants slept approximately seven hours each night, usually waking up at least once. Only five of the participants met the minimal recommended eight and a half hours of sleep per night.

Even after controlling for factors that may impact cardiometabolic risk, like BMI and physical activity, low levels of sleep remained a significant predictor of cardiometabolic risk in obese teens.

This shows that even among those already considered at risk for cardiometabolic disease, in this case obese teens' decreased sleep duration was predictive of increased cardiometabolic risk. The study cannot determine whether lack of sleep causes cardiometabolic disease or if obesity, or other factors cause sleep disturbances.

"However, the strong association between sleep duration and cardiometabolic risk score independent of the effects of body composition and physical activity suggest a potential influence of sleep duration on cardiometabolic health in obese adolescents," says lead author Heidi IglayReger, Ph.D., supervisor of the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center.

These data provide evidence that objective sleep assessment may be a useful screening tool to identify at-risk adolescents.

Future studies are needed to determine if improving sleep duration would decrease the risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases.

Read more: diabetescare.net

miércoles, 26 de marzo de 2014

Fat? Michelin Will Cut Your Pay

If you’re overweight or suffer from a disease like high blood pressure, you don’t want to work at Michelin North America.

If your waistline is larger than the tire manufacturer deems acceptable, or if you suffer from chronic hypertension, you’ll be charged $1,000 more for health care coverage. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the company plans to monitor employees’ Body Mass Indices, blood pressure, glucose levels, triglycerides, and waist sizes. If your waist size is larger than 35 inches for women, or 40 inches for men, or if other metrics fall outside of the “acceptable” range, penalties kick in.

Michelin is far from the only company considering adding penalties; indeed, a survey indicated that six in 10 employers may impose penalties on employees who fail to meet arbitrary fitness criteria.

Companies say that programs like Michelin’s are required to force employees to be healthier — in other words, by charging someone extra for having the temerity to  be sick or outside of accepted norms for weight, employers will make everyone healthier. They add that incentive programs simply don’t work as well as penalties to motivate employees’ behavior.

Perhaps, if there was strong evidence that obesity was something that people could easily control, there would be merit to this, but as studies have repeatedly shown, this is simply not the case. Once a person is overweight, both body and mind fight any effort to lose weight. Indeed, over 99 percent of diets fail over a five-year period. This means that if an employee happens to be fat, they are extremely unlikely to lose weight no matter how hard they work, no matter how much willpower they show. Essentially, Michelin is planning to institute a $1,000 per year penalty that cannot be eliminated.

The same is true for people with hypertension. There are many different factors that can cause high blood pressure, and not all of them can be easily controlled. A person can’t work their way to better blood pressure; indeed, charging an employee $1,000 because of their stress-induced hypertension is hardly likely to make the problem go away.

It is certainly understandable that Michelin would want healthier employees, even if rising health care costs weren’t the driving factor behind it. Unfortunately, Michelin appears ready to embrace a policy that will punish its workers without improving health. Instead, it’s likely to stigmatize workers. Obesity’s cause is not gluttony, but genetics. It’s exacerbated by weird causes, like what kind of bacteria are in your gut. Punishing people who retain weight more than others is not going to make anyone healthier. Neither is punishing people for diseases like hypertension, or for the predisposition to diabetes.

Read more: care2.com

miércoles, 19 de marzo de 2014

Diet Drinks and Body Weight

Overweight and obese adults who drink diet beverages take in more calories from solid foods—especially snacks—than those who drink sugary beverages, according to a new study. The findings raise questions about using diet drinks for weight control in heavier adults.

Excess weight can raise your risk for many health problems, including type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Many people use diet drinks to help control their weight. But studies of how these beverages affect weight control have had mixed results.

To examine the link between diet drinks and calories, NIH-funded scientists looked at data on nearly 24,000 adults. The researchers found that about 10% of healthy-weight adults drank diet beverages, compared to about 20% of over-weight and obese adults.

Healthy-weight adults who drank diet beverages ate less food and fewer total calories on a typical day than those who drank sugared beverages.

Among adults who were over-weight or obese, total calorie intake was similar between those who drank diet or sugary beverages. Heavier adults who drank diet beverages tended to eat more calories in the form of solid foods.

Taking a look at solid-food intake, the scientists found that obese adults who consumed diet drinks ate significantly more calories per day in salty snacks and sweet snacks than those who drank sugared beverages.

“The results suggest that overweight and obese adults looking to lose or maintain their weight—who have already made the switch from sugary to diet beverages—may need to look carefully at other components of their solid-food diet,” says study coauthor Dr. Sara N. Bleich at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

jueves, 13 de marzo de 2014

Medical emergency motivates couple to lose 538 pounds

At work one day, IT consultant Justin Shelton suddenly began to feel ill. A few hours later, he was in the emergency room, and doctors told him he might have a kidney infection.

They just needed to run a scan to confirm the diagnosis.

The next words were a cold reality check: The imaging machine could not support his weight.

"They told me, 'We think you have a kidney infection, but we can't confirm for sure, so we're just going to treat it aggressively and hope that's what it is,' " Shelton said.

He was 25 years old and weighed 592 pounds.

Two years earlier, Justin's wife, Lauren Shelton, had had her own medical scare; her gallbladder had to be removed because of weight-related complications. At her heaviest, Lauren weighed 341 pounds.

Their size made everyday tasks difficult, too. Years ago, Lauren was on a plane, and the seat belt wouldn't buckle. She was mortified and tried to hide from the flight attendants that she didn't fit into the seat.

Both Lauren and Justin had been asked not to get on rides at a theme park because of their size.
Couple lost a combined 500 pounds

But Justin's trip to the emergency room was the final straw. The Jefferson City, Tennessee, couple realized something needed to change.

How she lost 100 pounds: Hard work

Luckily for Justin, doctors were right and able to treat his kidney infection without the scan. "It made me think, 'What if it was something else? What if it was more serious? What would I have done then?' " Justin said.
 
Wife loses 100 lbs., stuns Army hubby

So in February 2012, the couple began a 19-month journey to take control of their health.

Early struggles

"I was always bigger than the other kids, but the pounds really started packing on during high school and continued to do so over the next several years," Lauren wrote on her blog, OvercomingO.com.

For Justin, it was a knee injury at age 13 that kept him from playing sports. The exercise went away, bad eating habits continued, and his weight got out of control.

The Sheltons met online seven years ago, and their relationship revolved around their eating habits. They would go out to eat and indulge in one unhealthy meal after another.

They knew that in order to get healthy, they needed someone to steer them in the right direction. So they sought help from a weight-loss management program at a local medical school.

A physician's assistant gave them guidelines on what they should and should not be eating, and on the amount of exercise they needed.

Justin and Lauren started their new exercise routine by doing simple activities such as walking around the park and swimming. In late 2012, they joined a gym.

"We go to the gym five to six days a week and take one day off and try to do something fun and active like hiking or swimming," Lauren said.

The couple also started using a smartphone app to track the calories they consumed. In the beginning, they ate at restaurants only on special occasions and prepared all meals at home.

Lauren found recipes for healthier versions of the foods they loved. Their diet primarily consists of lean meats with lots of fruits and vegetables. Even today, everything they eat goes into a food journal.

The weight came off quickly at the beginning. Justin lost 25 pounds and Lauren lost 30 pounds during the first month alone. They tried to keep the weight loss steady after that, knowing they couldn't expect to see such a big number month after month without being disappointed.

Weekly weigh-ins helped them track their progress.

"We have graphs that show our weight loss through an app. It helps us stay motivated and get through the hard weeks," Justin said.

In just 19 months, Justin dropped 362 pounds and Lauren lost 176, for a total of 538 pounds.

'Nobody is perfect'

As they begin to move into the maintenance phase of their diet, the couple has allowed themselves to indulge once in a while. They now have what they call their Special Sunday Meal, where they will cook something they don't typically have during the week.

"This Sunday, we may have grilled turkey burgers on a whole-wheat bun with some oven-baked potatoes," Lauren said. "Typically, we do not have starches very often and do not keep breads in the house."

They still give in to cravings from time to time. Lauren says she has a sweet tooth, but she controls cravings by distracting herself with activities such as walks or naps.

What keeps her on track is understanding that "No matter how many times you slipped or messed up, you just have to start over, and eventually you'll get there," she said. "You have to stay positive and remind yourself that you're human and nobody is perfect."

Even though they've managed to lose a substantial amount of weight -- Lauren went from a size 32 dress to a size 12, and Justin went from size 58 pants to a size 36 -- the couple struggles with the psychological side effects of such a massive physical change.

Self-image has been an obstacle for both Lauren and Justin. They admit to having moments when they still see themselves as the obese people they used to be.

Read more: cnn.com

martes, 4 de marzo de 2014

Major step in preventing type 2 diabetes

An international team led by researchers at the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), both Harvard affiliates, has identified mutations in a gene that can reduce the risk of individuals developing type 2 diabetes, even in people who have risk factors such as obesity and old age.

The results focus the search for developing novel therapeutic strategies for type 2 diabetes: If a drug can be developed that mimics the protective effect of these mutations, it could open up new ways of preventing this devastating disease.

Type 2 diabetes affects more than 300 million people worldwide and is rising rapidly in prevalence. Lifestyle changes and existing medicines slow the progression of the disease, but many patients are inadequately served by current treatments. The first step to developing a new therapy is discovering and validating a “drug target” — a human protein that, if activated or inhibited, results in prevention and treatment of the disease.

The current study breaks new ground in type 2 diabetes research and guides future therapeutic development in this disease. In the study, researchers describe the genetic analysis of 150,000 patients showing that rare mutations in a gene called SLC30A8 reduce risk of type 2 diabetes by 65 percent. The results were seen in patients from multiple ethnic groups, suggesting that a drug that mimics the effect of these mutations might have broad utility around the globe. The protein encoded by SLC30A8 had previously been shown to play an important role in the insulin-secreting beta cells of the pancreas, and a common variant in that gene was known to slightly influence the risk of type 2 diabetes. However, it was previously unclear whether inhibiting or activating the protein would be the best strategy for reducing disease risk — and how large an effect could be expected.

“This work underscores that human genetics is not just a tool for understanding biology: It can also powerfully inform drug discovery by addressing one of the most challenging and important questions — knowing which targets to go after,” said co-senior author David Altshuler, deputy director and chief academic officer at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a Harvard Medical School professor at MGH.

The Nature Genetics study grew from a research partnership that started in 2009 involving the Broad Institute, MGH, Pfizer Inc., and Lund University Diabetes Centre in Sweden, which set out to find mutations that reduce a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes. The research team selected people with severe risk factors for diabetes, such as advanced age and obesity, who never developed the disease and in fact had normal blood sugar levels. They focused on a set of genes previously identified as playing a role in type 2 diabetes and used next-generation sequencing (then a new technology) to search for rare mutations.

The team identified a genetic mutation that appeared to abolish function of the SLC30A8 gene and that was enriched in nondiabetic individuals studied in Sweden and Finland. The protection was surprising, because studies in mice had suggested that mutations in SLC30A8 might have the opposite effect — increasing rather than decreasing risk of type 2 diabetes. However, because this particular genetic variation was exceedingly rare outside of Finland, it proved difficult to obtain additional evidence to corroborate the initial discovery by the Broad/MGH/Pfizer/Lund team.

Read more: harvard.edu




domingo, 23 de febrero de 2014

The foods that make you look tired

1. Salt

While some salt in your diet is necessary, foods with a high salt content tend to dehydrate you, drying out your skin and making you look much more tired than you actually are. Opt for a low sodium alternative, and look for foods that are flavored with other spices and herbs instead of salt.
 
2. Artificial Sweetener

Regular sugar promotes inflammation, but artificial sweetener can be just as bad, if not worse, when it comes to making you look puffy. Artificial sweeteners contain aspartame, which is an artificial sweetener associated with joint pain, and it can also make you crave more sugar. Sugar is a dangerous cycle to get into. Choose foods with natural sugars, like fruit, to avoid looking puffy.
 
3. Alcohol

Anything more than one glass of wine with dinner can seriously dehydrate you, making you look dried out and soaking up any glow that your skin may have had. If you can’t avoid alcohol altogether, try alternating drinks between an alcoholic beverage and water so that you don’t entirely dehydrate yourself.
 
4. Anything Fried

Onion rings, French fries and deep friend Oreos are your skin’s worst enemies. These foods are packed with oil and trans fats, meaning they’ll clog arteries and stiffen blood cells, making your skin look dull and tired. Plus, these foods tend to pack on the pounds and essentially destroy the inside of your body, so they really shouldn’t be in your diet at all.
 
5. Carbohydrates

We’re not saying you have to go on the Atkins, no-carb diet, but an excess of carbohydrates (which is common in many women’s diets) can damage the collagen in your skin. This means that your skin won’t look as plump and healthy, and in turn you’ll look much more tired. Plus, if you’re eating an overload of carbohydrates, you’ll not only look tired, but you’ll also feel tired. Switch out a sandwich for a salad twice a week, and add a double dose of vegetables to your dinner instead of making a carbohydrate side (like rice or bread).
 
6. Doughtnuts

Fried and sugary, doughnuts are a bad idea all around when it comes to healthy eating choices, especially if you’re eating them for breakfast. Switch out a donut for a plain yogurt flavored with natural honey and almonds to give your body a healthy start that will make you look much more awake.
 
7. Candy

Loads of sugar with no dietary benefits, the sugar in candy will give you an insulin spike, followed by a quick drop, which will make you super tired. Besides just making you feel tired, though, candy will also make you look tired, giving you puffy bags under your eyes. If you’re going to have candy, stick to a fun size package, and avoid the king size packages at all costs.
 
8. Red Meat

You don’t have to become a vegetarian, but eating red meat more than once a week has been linked to an increase in wrinkles, caused by the carnitine compound in red meat that hardens blood vessel walls. If you don’t want to cut out red meat entirely, try to stick to a rule of eating it no more than once a week.
 
9. Processed Cold Cuts

The preservatives in cold cut meats are known to cause inflammation in the skin, making you look sallow and tired. Opt for fresh cuts from the deli instead, and cut back on how many cold cuts you eat in general.
 
10. Spicy Foods

Good for the metabolism, not ideal for the skin, spicy foods can cause skin to be irritated, causing uneven skin tone and dilated blood vessels. This makes the skin less clear and a bit older, which will in turn make you look more tired. If a food comes in mild or spicy options, go for the mild choice whenever you can.

Read more: healthdigezt.com

lunes, 17 de febrero de 2014

Does obesity reshape our sense of taste?

Obesity may alter the way we taste at the most fundamental level: by changing how our tongues react to different foods.

In a Nov. 13 study in the journal PLOS ONE, University at Buffalo biologists report that being severely overweight impaired the ability of mice to detect sweets.

Compared with slimmer counterparts, the plump mice had fewer taste cells that responded to sweet stimuli. What’s more, the cells that did respond to sweetness reacted relatively weakly.

The findings peel back a new layer of the mystery of how obesity alters our relationship to food.

“Studies have shown that obesity can lead to alterations in the brain, as well as the nerves that control the peripheral taste system, but no one had ever looked at the cells on the tongue that make contact with food,” said lead scientist Kathryn Medler, PhD, UB associate professor of biological sciences.

“What we see is that even at this level — at the first step in the taste pathway — the taste receptor cells themselves are affected by obesity,” Medler said. “The obese mice have fewer taste cells that respond to sweet stimuli, and they don’t respond as well.”

The research matters because taste plays an important role in regulating appetite: what we eat, and how much we consume.

How an inability to detect sweetness might encourage weight gain is unclear, but past research has shown that obese people yearn for sweet and savory foods though they may not taste these flavors as well as thinner people.

Medler said it’s possible that trouble detecting sweetness may lead obese mice to eat more than their leaner counterparts to get the same payoff.

Learning more about the connection between taste, appetite and obesity is important, she said, because it could lead to new methods for encouraging healthy eating.

“If we understand how these taste cells are affected and how we can get these cells back to normal, it could lead to new treatments,” Medler said. “These cells are out on your tongue and are more accessible than cells in other parts of your body, like your brain.”

The new PLOS ONE study compared 25 normal mice to 25 of their littermates who were fed a high-fat diet and became obese.

To measure the animals' response to different tastes, the research team looked at a process called calcium signaling. When cells “recognize” a certain taste, there is a temporary increase in the calcium levels inside the cells, and the scientists measured this change.

The results: Taste cells from the obese mice responded more weakly not only to sweetness but, surprisingly, to bitterness as well. Taste cells from both groups of animals reacted similarly to umami, a flavor associated with savory and meaty foods.

Medler’s co-authors on the study were former UB graduate student Amanda Maliphol and former UB undergraduate Deborah Garth.

Read more: buffalo.edu

domingo, 16 de febrero de 2014

Should Sugary Drinks Come With a Warning Label?

If one California lawmaker has his way, the following warning label will accompany sodas and sugary drinks sold in the state:

"STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay".

 State Sen. William Monning (D) announced the proposal on Thursday, arguing that the warning should be on any drinks with added sweeteners that have 75 or more calories in every 12 ounces.

Check out more on the proposal at FoxNews.com.

On Happening Now this afternoon, Sunday Housecall host Dr. David Samadi said he is totally in favor of the warning label. He argued that labels on cigarettes and heightened awareness efforts have helped people to stop smoking.

Samadi said he's not sure if these warning labels will have the same effect, but called it a "good step." He argues that "something's gotta give" in the United States, pointing out that an addiction to sugar is fueling the obesity problem.

foxnewsinsider.com


jueves, 13 de febrero de 2014

Diet soda = diabetes soda

If you’re fueling up on french fries and spending a lot of time parked on the couch, don’t expect diet soda to save you. Downing calorie-free pop could have the unappetizing consequence of increasing your risk of developing diabetes, according to a new study published in the journal Diabetes Care.

THE DETAILS: Researchers looked at people’s diet soda consumption between the years 2000 and 2002, and then screened them for type 2 diabetes between 2002 and 2007, as part of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or MESA, an investigation involving more than 6,800 people between 45 and 84 years old. People who drank at least one diet soda a day at the beginning of the study had a 67 percent higher relative risk of type 2 diabetes compared with the people who drank none. Zero-calorie soda also increased the risk of metabolic syndrome—a group of risk factors linked to obesity that increase your chances of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke—by 36 percent.

WHAT IT MEANS: Sipping diet soda to avoid calories sounds like a good idea, but in the real world it tends to come along with other behaviors that may endanger your health. This study didn’t look at the possible cause between the association of diabetes and diet soda, but the lead author has a pretty good idea why this happens. “Although our data did not clearly support this theory, I suspect that persons drinking diet soda are likely eating other foods that elevate risk of metabolic disorders,” says lead study author Jennifer Nettleton, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas School of Public Health, in Houston. “People drinking diet soda are likely to miscalculate the amount of caloric savings, thus over-consuming other foods, resulting in greater overall energy consumption.”

Here’s how to avoid health problems that come in a calorie-free can:

• Water yourself! Hands down, the best thing you can drink is water. Although this study didn’t find a link between sugar-sweetened soda and diabetes as many other studies have, Nettleton says that’s not a reason for diet drinkers to go back to sugar-swamped beverages. Water should be your drink of choice. Beyond that, check the Beverage Guidance Panel’s tiered system to help you make the healthiest choices.

• Look at the whole picture. If diabetes is a real threat to you, chances are your entire problem isn’t coming from a soda can or bottle, but rather a slew of factors. To keep your blood sugar steady, eat a balanced diet with as little refined sugar as possible (replace processed foods with whole, organic vegetables and fruits), cut out soda and sweetened juices containing little real fruit juice, and get more active, even if that means walking in 10-minute spurts several times a day. Make lots of small changes you can stick to, rather than a single dramatic one. “Lifestyle changes must be moderate and sustainable, and focus on all aspects of diet—not just single food and beverage entities—and include physical activity and stress management,” says Nettleton. “Too many marketing gimmicks exist that suggest there is a single ‘panacea’ to prevent obesity and its related morbidities. This simply isn’t the case.”

rodalenews.com

martes, 11 de febrero de 2014

TVs, Computers, and Cars May Be Spreading Obesity in Developing Nations

The increasing number of people in developing nations who own televisions, computers and cars might explain rising rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes in those countries, a new study suggests.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 150,000 adults in nearly 110,000 households in 17 countries where people had high, medium and low incomes.

High-income nations included Canada, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates; upper-middle-income countries included Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa and Turkey; lower-middle-income countries included China, Colombia, and Iran; and low-income countries included Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

Seventy-eight percent of households had at least one TV, 34 percent had a computer and 32 percent had a car, according to the study, which was published Feb. 10 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In low-income nations, people in homes with all three items did 31 percent less physical activity and 21 percent more sitting compared with those who owned none of the devices. They also had larger waist sizes.

In high-income countries, there was no link between owning these items and obesity and diabetes rates. The association, however, was strong in low-income nations, where the obesity rate was 14.5 percent in homes with all three devices and 3.4 percent in homes with none. The diabetes rate was 11.7 percent in homes with all three items and 4.7 percent in homes with none.

“Although we found a significant positive association between owning household devices and obesity or diabetes in low-income countries, we were unable to detect a relationship in the high-income [countries],” study author Dr. Scott Lear, of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, said in a journal news release.

It’s likely that the negative health impacts of these three consumer products have already occurred in richer countries, and this is reflected in their already high rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes, Lear said.

Although the study linked owning televisions, computers and cars to higher obesity and diabetes rates, it did not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

More information: health.com



lunes, 20 de enero de 2014

Eating tree nuts tied to lowered obesity risk

A new U.S. study adds to growing evidence that nuts - once considered too fattening to be healthy - may in fact help keep weight down, in addition to offering other health benefits.

Researchers found that study participants who ate the most tree nuts - such as almonds, Brazil nuts, pistachios and walnuts - were between 37 and 46 percent less likely to be obese than those who ate the fewest tree nuts.

People who ate the most nuts were also less likely to have a suite of risk factors known as metabolic syndrome, which is tied to increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.

"This is another study that shows there is an association between eating nuts and not being obese and having less tendency to have metabolic syndrome," Dr. Joan Sabaté told Reuters Health.

Sabaté is the study's senior author from Loma Linda University in California.

The study, which was published online in PLOS ONE, was partially funded through a grant from the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation (INC NREF).

In another recent study, also funded by INC NREF, researchers found that people who reported eating the most nuts were less likely to die over a 24-year period than those who ate the fewest nuts.

While such evidence can't show that nuts cause the differences seen between people who love them and those who pass them by, there are reasons to believe nuts provide a direct benefit, Sabaté said.

For example, nuts are high in unsaturated fat, which is known as a "good" fat compared to the saturated fat found in animal products. The high protein content of nuts may also lead people to feel fuller and eat less unhealthy foods. They also contain of host of other nutrients and plant chemicals that are beneficial to health, Sabaté said.

For the new study, the researchers used data on the diets of 803 Seventh-day Adventist men and women in the U.S. who were already enrolled in another study.

Overall, those who ate a lot of tree nuts - about 16 grams (half an ounce) per day - were just a little over normal weight, on average, compared to those who ate few or no nuts and were seriously overweight or obese.

A normal body mass index (BMI) - a measure of weight in relation to height - for an adult falls between 18.5 and 24.9, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overweight people have BMIs between 25 and 29.9 and a BMI of 30 or more is considered obese.

People in the study who ate the most nuts averaged BMIs of about 27 while those who ate the least - less than 5 grams of tree nuts per day - averaged BMIs of 29 to 30.

The researchers also found that one third of the participants in the study had metabolic syndrome, which is defined as having three or more conditions associated with heart disease and diabetes risk. (Those include being obese, having high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and having a large waistline).

For every one-ounce serving of tree nuts consumed per week, however, a person's risk of having metabolic syndrome dropped by 7 percent.

Jeffrey Blumberg, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Boston who was not involved in the new research, said it is consistent with a number of previous studies showing that including nuts in one's diet is beneficial.

"It really is at a point now where I think there is a large body of evidence and is - I would even say - a consensus of nuts being a healthful food choice if consumed in reasonable amounts," Blumberg said.

reuters.com