Food safety

Calif. lawmaker plans hearings on soda-obesity link

2009-09-17T13:10:00.001-07:00

Sen. Alex Padilla, who led a campaign requiring big restaurant chains to disclose calories in meals, said on Thursday he planned to hold hearings in November on the link between soda consumption and obesity.

The announcement from Padilla � who chairs the California Senate's Select Committee on Obesity and Diabetes � coincides with the release of a study that shows nearly two-thirds of children aged 12 to 17 gulp down at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily.

According to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, 62 percent of children aged 12 to 17, and 41 percent of children aged 2 to 11, drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage a day.

"I don't think that most parents truly appreciate the role soda pop has in causing weight gain," Padilla said. "It is unfortunate that soda is actually cheaper than milk and even bottled water in many instances."

Padilla said California needs to do more to educate the public about the health effects of drinking too much soda and to consider its options for reducing soda consumption among children.

California was the first state to pass menu labeling rules and has been among the pioneers of public health initiatives such as bans on artery-clogging trans-fats in restaurant cuisine and on soda sales in public schools.

Experts say the U.S. obesity epidemic has turned into a public health crisis and overweight adolescents are starting to suffer problems that used to plague mainly middle-aged adults � early heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

SHARP CUTBACK RECOMMENDED

The American Heart Association in August took on the $115 billion soft drink industry, recommending that Americans cut back dramatically on sugar and singling out soft drinks as the top source of "discretionary" sugar calories.

The group said women should eat no more than 100 calories of added processed sugar per day, or six teaspoons (25 grams), while most men should keep it to just 150 calories or nine teaspoons (37.5 grams).

To put that in perspective, one 12-ounce (355-millilitre) can of soda can contain as much as 13 teaspoons (54.6 grams) of sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

That's more than half the total 22 teaspoons (90 grams) or 355 calories of added sugar consumed by the average American each day, according to a 2004 government survey.

Being overweight costs, experts say.

Obesity-related diseases account for nearly 10 percent of all medical spending in the United States, or an estimated $147 billion annually. Health experts increasingly are calling for taxes on soft drinks and other sweetened beverages to offset medical costs and fund public health efforts.

"If we are serious about curbing the obesity epidemic, we have to start with the biggest culprit," said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

A strongly worded report on child obesity released earlier this month recommended that state and local governments tax junk food and soft drinks, give tax breaks to grocery stores that open in blighted neighborhoods and build bike trails. Some public health experts would like to see tax proceeds used to make fresh fruits and vegetables more affordable.

The American Beverage Association has opposed efforts to tax soda and other beverages and says it provides a wide variety of beverage choices, including drinks with zero calories.

"If our goal is to address obesity, then educating consumers about the importance of balancing calories consumed from all foods and beverages with the calories expended through physical activity is what matters � not demonizing any one particular food," the group said in a statement on Thursday.

An industry group called Americans Against Food Taxes � whose backers include soft drink maker PepsiCo Inc, the American Beverage Association, the Corn Refiners Association and McDonald's Corp � is running anti-soda tax advertisements on television, radio and on the Internet.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham, Bernard Orr)

Anxious Kids at Risk for Obesity in Adulthood

2009-09-15T12:52:00.001-07:00

TUESDAY, Sept. 15 (HealthDay News) � Children with emotional
difficulties have a greater risk of becoming obese in adulthood, new
research has found.

In the study, published online Sept. 11 in the journal BMC
Medicine, researchers from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental
Psychiatry Center at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London,
examined data from about 6,500 members of the 1970 British Birth Cohort
Study.

Participants in the 1970 study had been assessed when they were 10
years old for emotional problems, self-perceptions and their body-mass
index (BMI), a height-to-weight ratio. They reported their BMI again at
age 30.

The researchers found that children with a lower self-esteem, those who
felt less in control of their lives and those who were often worried were
more likely to gain weight over the next two decades.

It was also noted that girls were more affected by these factors than
boys, the study authors pointed out in a news release from the journal's
publisher.

The findings also suggested that childhood emotional problems may be
another factor that can lead to excess weight, according to the
researchers.

"While we cannot say that childhood emotional problems cause obesity in
later life, we can certainly say they play a role, along with factors such
as parental BMI, diet and exercise," study co-author Andrew Ternouth said
in the news release.

Early intervention for children suffering from low self-esteem, anxiety
or other emotional challenges could help improve their chances of being
healthy later in life, the researchers added.

"Given the growing problem with childhood obesity in many western
societies, these findings are particularly important," the authors
concluded. "They may offer hope in the battle to control the current
obesity epidemic."

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more information on
obesity.

Curbing Obesity Epidemic Key to Health Care Reform: Experts

2009-09-11T12:14:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthDay News) � A diverse alliance of payer,
provider and consumer organizations, girded by two former U.S. Surgeons
General, on Wednesday urged policymakers to address the nation's obesity
epidemic as part of federal health care reform legislation.

"At this critical juncture where we're dealing with health-care
transformation, we want to make sure that the federal government and our
elected leaders recognize the importance of including approaches to
obesity that are evidence-based and proven within their legislative
strategy," former Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona told reporters
during a media briefing.

Carmona serves as the health and wellness chairperson of the Strategies
to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance, whose steering committee
includes the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association and
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of
Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, among other public and private
organizations.

The alliance is funded by drug makers Sanofi-Aventis U.S. L.L.C. and
Amylin Pharmaceuticals.

Former Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, whose 2001 report on obesity
recognized the problem as an "epidemic," emphasized the need to invest in
health promotion and disease prevention, particularly for the health of
the nation's youth.

"We are in essence addicting our children to sedentary lifestyles;
we're addicting them to high-salt, high-sweet, high-fat diets," he said,
"and then we pay for it later on when they come to us with cancer, heart
disease, [and] diabetes."

America's weight problem is pervasive. Two-thirds of the population is
now overweight and obese, according to the CDC, and as many as 72 million
adults are considered obese. In fact, obesity rates have doubled for
adults and tripled for children since 1980.

People often see obesity as a personal failure, explained Christine C.
Ferguson, director of the alliance and a research professor at George
Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, in
Washington, D.C. "The result is the problem has gotten worse and worse,
and more and more expensive."

Obesity accounts for 9.1 percent of annual health-care spending in the
United States, or nearly $150 billion annually, according to a study in a
recent issue of Health Affairs.

To help arrest the epidemic, the alliance urges policymakers to include
four specific elements in health reform:

Recognize proven clinical interventions. Studies demonstrate, for
example, that shedding just 5 percent to 10 percent of body weight can
lower the risk of heart disease and other chronic conditions.

Enhance the use of preventive services. The U.S. Preventive Services
Task Force recommends obesity screening for all adults, yet studies show
height and weight data often is not recorded during an office visit.

Foster community programs and polices that encourage and support
healthy lifestyles. A community might design public spaces that
accommodate walkers and bikers, for example, or sponsor a farmer's market
to make fresh produce available to local residents.

Coordinate research efforts to improve the quality of care, show
which interventions work in various settings and translate science into
practice.

Morgan Downey, the alliance's policy adviser, noted one positive aspect
of health reform proposals from the House of Representatives and Senate
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee: They eliminate the worry
that overweight Americans might not be able to obtain health insurance
coverage because of preexisting health conditions.

"Just the removal of that language really frees up individuals who are
overweight or obese to have access to health insurance," he said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on overweight and
obesity in the United States.

US to unleash "Wild Things" to fight childhood obesity

2009-09-10T12:14:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) -
The US Department of Health and Human Services is poised to unleash characters from Maurice Sendak's classic "Where the Wild Things Are" to help fight childhood overweight and obesity.

New TV, radio, print, outdoor and Internet ads featuring characters and scenes from the film "Where the Wild Things Are", which is due to be released in cinemas next month, will be distributed this week to media around the United States.

The campaign promotes the benefits of physical exercise and encourages children to start their own 'Wild Rumpus' � just as "Where the Wild Things Are" hero Max did in the book � by making time every day for play.

The ads continue a collaborative effort against obesity by the Ad Council and Health Department which was launched in 2005 and has already featured characters from "Shrek" as well as American football players urging children to "be a player" and be physically active for an hour a day.

A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that nearly 32 percent of US children were overweight and 16 percent were obese.

The obesity rate tripled between 1980-1999, creating an epidemic blamed on a poor diet heavy on fat and sugar with little consumption of fruits and fresh vegetables and lack of exercise, the report in JAMA said.

Obese children are at a higher risk of developing heart disease, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. They are also more likely to become obese adults.

Obama open to 'sin tax' on fizzy drinks to stem obesity

2009-09-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) -
President Barack Obama hinted he could support a "sin tax" on fizzy drinks to help lower high rates of US obesity, but admitted it would be an uphill battle against corporate and economic interests.

"I actually think it's an idea that we should be exploring," Obama said in the forthcoming issue of Men's Health, regarding potential taxes levied on soft drinks such as colas and other sugar-filled products.

"There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that's been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else," he said in excerpts released ahead of the magazine's mid-September publication.

The president � reported to be one of the fittest US commanders-in-chief in decades � stressed that "obviously there is resistance on Capitol Hill to those kinds of sin taxes.

"Legislators from certain states that produce sugar or corn syrup are sensitive to anything that might reduce demand for those products," he said.

In addition, "people's attitude is that they don't necessarily want Big Brother telling them what to eat or drink, and I understand that," Obama added.

"It is true, though, that if you wanted to make a big impact on people?s health in this country, reducing things like soda consumption would be helpful."

His comments come just six weeks after US health experts told a national conference on obesity in Washington that a significant portion of increased caloric intake in recent decades can be directly attributed to soft drinks and other sugared foods and drinks.

The president is currently embroiled in the most compelling domestic priority of his presidency, a reform of the US health care system.

Obama, who said he works out nearly every day in order to clear his head and reduce stress, described himself as "a healthy eater" with low blood pressure.

He keeps a bowl of apples in the Oval Office. "It was our first step toward health reform," he said.

Two-thirds of American adults are obese or overweight and obesity-related illnesses cost the United States nearly 150 billion dollars a year, health officials were told at the July conference.

Doctors' Efforts to Fight Childhood Obesity Not Working

2009-09-04T12:30:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, Sept. 4 (HealthDay News) � Researchers are recommending that
officials in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia rethink their
efforts to combat obesity in children because the current strategies �
emphasizing healthy diets and exercise � aren't working.

In a study released online Sept. 4 in BMJ, Australian
researchers followed more than 250 overweight and mildly obese Australian
children who visited their general practitioners between 2005 and 2006. A
total of 139 were given counseling over three months about changing their
eating habits and increasing exercise; the other 119 did not get such
counseling.

Parents said the kids who received counseling drank fewer soft drinks,
but they didn't eat more fruit or vegetables or less fat, and they didn't
lose significant amounts of weight.

The researchers reported that brief, physician-led intervention
produced no long-term improvement in body mass index, physical activity or
nutrition habits.

The counseling isn't harmful, the study authors noted, but it doesn't
seem to work and is expensive.

"Resources may be better divided between primary prevention at the
community and population levels, and enhancement of clinical treatment
options for children with established obesity," the researchers
concluded.

More information

For more on childhood obesity, go to U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The Social Side of Obesity: You Are Who You Eat With

2009-09-03T12:26:00.001-07:00

Sending your kids back to lunch-lady land this fall? Careful, your child's dining mates may be upping his chances of packing on the pounds. A study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that how much tweens and teens eat can be influenced by how much their friends weigh.
In the study, 130 kids ages 9 to 15 were allowed to snack as much as they wanted while hanging out with a friend or with a peer they did not know. All the kids ate more when they were with a friend than with a stranger. But the overweight children ate the most when paired with an overweight friend - an average of 300 more calories than when they spent time with leaner friends. The research also found that friendship itself makes the appetite grow stronger: when overweight kids ate with similar-weight kids who were already their pals, they threw back an extra 250 calories than they did with chubby kids they had just met. (See a special report on the science of appetite.)
Lead researcher and clinical psychologist Sarah-Jeanne Salvy says her research demonstrates an eye-opening social theory: obesity can be contagious.
Really, an "obesity bug"? In 2007, Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis and his colleagues analyzed 32 years' worth of data from an interconnected social network of 12,000 adults, and found that a person's chances of becoming obese increased by 37% if a spouse had become obese, 40% if a sibling had and 57% if a friend had.
Socializing with overweight people can change what we perceive as the norm; it raises our tolerance for obesity both in others and in ourselves. It's also about letting your hair down. Past research has shown that adults tend to eat more around friends and family than they do with strangers. They shed their inhibitions about how it looks when they go back for thirds or order the alfredo sauce instead of the marinara.
Finally, there's the idea that we just like to hang with people that are like ourselves. Cornell food sociologist Jeffrey Sobal explains that "especially among two overweight people, there's a sort of permission-giving going on. We're encouraging each other to eat more."
Salvy, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, refers to this phenomenon as a sort of feedback effect. Conversely, she suggests, overweight diners are more likely to tone down how much they eat in front of skinny people to avoid the stigma of overeating.
When it comes to holding back, though, there's nothing like the opposite sex to curb our appetites, at least when we're single. In a study to be published in the October issue of Appetite, researchers at Montreal's McGill University secretly observed 460 college students eating in the campus cafeterias. They found that when a woman was with a man, she ate about 100 calories less than when she was with a woman. The more men present in larger eating groups, the fewer calories a woman had on her tray. Women ate roughly 100 fewer calories for each man at the table. But there was no such effect on men. And women who only ate with other women tended to slightly increase their calorie quotient.
The study's author Meredith Young, a cognitive psychologist, says the social comfort of a same-sex lunch partner probably makes a difference here - but evolutionary instincts are also at play. The women are using food as a signal of attractiveness. "In past studies, when you compare the exact same woman either eating a meatball sub or a dainty salad, people find the salad eater more alluring and more desirable as a friend." Young thinks that men, on the other hand, are probably focused on spending more money on the food instead of eating it because evolutionary biology says part of male sex appeal lies in the financial wealth they bring to the table.
For parents who are less worried about subconscious dating rituals and more worried about overweight kids influencing their own, the answer isn't to encourage ditching fat friends. Shaming kids about their own bodies might drive them to social isolation, a much worse place to be, according to Salvy. Her previous research found that overweight teens eat an average of 400 calories more when they're alone compared to when they're with friends of any weight group.
Dr. Marc Jacobson, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Task Force on Obesity, says the best thing to do is to model healthy eating and exercise habits yourself; research shows it's more effective than just talking about losing weight. So pack a healthy, satisfying lunch, but "focus more on making your home as healthy as you can," he says.
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View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com: Laugh and the World Laughs With You: How Happiness Spreads How America's Children Packed On the Pounds Study: Obesity is Contagious Obesity Is Contagious, Study Finds Child Obesity Rate Levels Off

Key Protein May Link Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Woes

2009-09-01T12:37:00.001-07:00

TUESDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) � Researchers say they know
why obesity leads to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a finding that
may help experts target therapies to limit the health impact of being very
overweight.

A Japanese team discovered a protein that causes ongoing, low-grade
inflammation within fat tissues, which contributes to the health
consequences that come with obesity, said Yuichi Oike of Kumamoto
University in Japan.

The report appears in the Sept. 2 issue of Cell Metabolism.

The culprit Oike's team identifies is a fat-derived protein called
angiopoietin-like protein 2, or Angptl2. In mice, Angptl2 levels are
elevated in fat tissue. Those levels increase even more in the
oxygen-deprived conditions typically found within obese fat tissue.

Higher Angptl2 levels are also found in the blood of people with higher
body mass index and insulin levels.

Obese mice lacking Angptl2 show less inflammation in their fat tissue
and are less insulin resistant, the researchers report. Likewise,
otherwise healthy mice made to have higher than normal Angptl2 levels in
their fat tissue develop inflammation and insulin resistance.

Angptl2 starts an inflammatory cascade, causing blood vessels to
remodel and attracting immune cells called macrophages, they note.

The researchers concluded that Angptl2 is a new molecular target that
could be used to improve the diagnosis and treatment of obesity and
related metabolic diseases.

More information

Learn more about obesity from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention here.

Carrot-toting tourists making Arizona burros obese

2009-08-31T12:41:00.001-07:00

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - There is an epidemic in an old gold mining town in western Arizona: The wild burros that roam the town's single street are overweight, with rolls of fat on their necks and big, full bellies. But don't blame them. They'll eat anything.
It's the half million tourists who visit tiny Oatman each year. They're the ones who have been feeding these critters carrots, hay or anything else, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management says.
The agency, which manages the burros, has launched a campaign it hopes will eventually steer the burros back into the desert to forage for grass and shrubs � and get them back into shape.
"The town has really encouraged burros to be down there; it's part of the draw of Oatman," said Roger Oyler, the program lead for wild horses and burros at the BLM in Phoenix. "We want to try to work with them to have burros around town, but we don't want the people feeding them."
Oatman attracts tourists wanting to see the honeymoon spot of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard and ogle the wild burros. The town of about 120 also boasts staged shootouts, tour bus holdups and shotgun weddings in a throwback to the Wild West.
The dozen burros that roam the street lined with antique, craft and gift shops are descendants of domesticated donkeys that miners released when the federal government shut down the gold mines after World War II.
"If it weren't for the burros, the rest of us wouldn't be here," says Jerry Love, who has worn many hats at the local chamber of commerce.
The BLM acknowledges that its campaign to stop feeding the burros will be a hard sell but likens it to when Yellowstone National Park told visitors there to stop feeding the bears. "As the feed is diminished over time, I think they'll start wandering out and remember what's out there for dinner," Oyler said.
Oatman storekeepers have been asked to stop feeding the burros or providing the treats the animals are so accustomed to. The BLM also has drafted scripts for gunfighters and shop owners that tell tourists quite bluntly that the burros are fat and are being loved to death.
Some slogans that could end up on posters or signs around town include, "No Diet-Busting Cubes or Carrots � Please!" "Keep Oatman Burros Happy and Healthy � No Extra Food," and "Give Burros Care, not Carrots."
The BLM says the burros that don't come into town are a lot healthier and don't have behavioral problems or pain caused by their hooves growing to a thickness that makes it hard for them to walk. "It's a matter of educating the public, but it's not going to happen overnight," Love said. "We don't want to discourage people from coming here because they can't feed the burros."
Love believes that the burros will roam the town regardless of whether they are hand-fed by tourists, but he said he doubts that all tourists will heed the BLM's message.
"BLM is certainly not going to put a carrot cop up here to make sure that nobody feeds the burros," he said. "They don't have the funding nor the manpower."
Jolene Brown, who owns Amargosa Toads, understands the premise of not feeding the animals, but said to cut them off completely from food is wrong.
The animals have been demanding, lately, kicking in the door to her gift shop and chewing at the door panel and on books because they're not getting the food they're used to, she said.
"I'm sure they can learn to forage, but people come from the entire world to feed the burros," said Brown, who refers to herself as the burros' grandma. "I don't agree to feed wild animals at all, but if they have been fed their whole lives, how can you take that away?"
If the burros are unable to fend for themselves and become too skinny, Oyler said the BLM has the option of rounding them up and putting them up for adoption.

In serious debt? You're also more likely obese

2009-08-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
People who are heavily in debt are more likely to be heavy themselves, too, according to new research from Germany.

"Overindebted" people - defined as those who would find it impossible to pay off debts in a reasonable time frame � were about twice as likely to be overweight as the general population. They were more than 2.5 times as likely to be obese, Eva Muenster of the University of Mainz and her colleagues found.

European countries, as well as the United States, have seen a sharp rise in the percentage of people who are overindebted, Muenster and her team say. Estimates are that 3 million households - 7.6 percent - of German households fit into the "over-indebted" criteria.

Socioeconomic status is clearly linked to health, the researchers add, but techniques now used to measure it don't take debt into account. To investigate how debt might affect health, they surveyed 949 people who were receiving counseling for debt and insolvency at centers in two German states, comparing them to 8,318 people who participated in a 2003 telephone health survey and were considered to represent a slice of the general population that was not indebted.

The indebted individuals were younger, less educated, and less wealthy, and were also more likely to be depressed, overweight, or obese, the researchers found. About 11 percent of the general population was obese, compared to 25 percent of the indebted group. The indebted individuals were also more likely to smoke every day.

After taking these factors into account, Muenster and her colleagues found that being overindebted was associated with a 1.97-fold greater likelihood of being overweight, and a 2.56-fold greater risk of obesity.

Psychological factors could contribute to the greater risk of being overweight or obese among indebted people, Muenster and her team note, who may eat to cope with stress and depression. Healthy foods may be less affordable for them, the researchers add, while "energy-dense food such as sweets or fatty snacks are often less expensive compared to food with lower energy density such as fruit or vegetables."

The findings don't rule out the possibility that overweight or obese people are more likely to get into debt because they have a tougher time finding a job or make less money than slimmer people, the researchers note.

Muenster and her colleagues conclude by calling for investigators looking at socioeconomic status and health to include indebtedness in their analyses, along with standard measures like income and education.

SOURCE: BMC Public Health, online August 7, 2009.

New fat-fighting drug has anti-diabetes action too

2009-08-28T12:26:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Researchers searching for a cure for obesity said on Thursday they have developed a drug that not only makes mice lose weight, but reverses diabetes and lowers their cholesterol, too.

The drug, which they have dubbed fatostatin, stops the body from making fat, instead releasing the energy from food. They hope it may lead to a pill that would fight obesity, diabetes and cholesterol, all at once.

Writing in the journal Chemistry and Biology, Salih Wakil of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Motonari Uesugi of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues said the drug interferes with a suite of genes turned on by overeating.

"Here, we are tackling the basics," Wakil said in a telephone interview. "I think that is what excited us."

Scientists are painfully aware that drugs that can make mice thin do nothing of the sort in humans. A hormone called leptin can make rats and mice drop weight almost miraculously but does little or nothing for an obese person, for instance.

But Wakil, whose team has patented the drug and is looking for a drug company to partner with, hopes this drug may be different. "I am very, very optimistic," he said.

Fatostatin is a small molecule, meaning it has the potential to be absorbed in pill form.

It works on so-called sterol regulatory element binding proteins or SREBPs, which are transcription factors that activate genes involved in making cholesterol and fatty acids.

"Fatostatin blocked increases in body weight, blood glucose, and hepatic (liver) fat accumulation in (genetically) obese mice, even under uncontrolled food intake," the researchers wrote.

Genetic tests showed the drug affected 63 different genes.

The idea of interfering with SREBP is not new. GlaxSmithKline has been working on a new-generation cholesterol drug that uses this pathway.

After four weeks, mice injected with fatostatin weighed 12 percent less and had 70 percent lower blood sugar levels, the researchers wrote.

Now they plan to test rats and rabbits, Wakil said.

The drug also had effects on prostate cancer cells they said � something that may help explain links between prostate cancer and obesity.

Obese People Have 'Severe Brain Degeneration'

2009-08-25T12:30:00.001-07:00

A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than
normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the
brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years.

The results, based on brain scans of 94 people in their 70s, represent "severe brain degeneration," said Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology.

"That's a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive
reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer's and other
diseases that attack the brain," said Thompson. "But you can greatly
reduce your risk for Alzheimer's, if you can eat healthily and keep
your weight under control."

The findings are detailed in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

Obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. It's also been shown to reduce sexual activity.

More than 300 million worldwide are now classified as obese,
according to the World Health Organization. Another billion are
overweight. The main cause, experts say: bad diet, including an increased reliance on highly processed foods.

Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal
lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the
anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions),
hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the
researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain
loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised
of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe).

"The brains of obese
people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean,
and in overweight people looked 8 years older," Thompson said.

Obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight
in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI over
25 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of over 30 as obese.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging, National
Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for
Research Resources, and the American Heart Association.

10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp
Never Too Late: 5 Bad Habits You Should Still Quit
More Obesity News & Information

Original Story: Obese People Have 'Severe Brain Degeneration'
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Obesity Tied to Prostate Cancer Recurrence

2009-08-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) � Obesity increases the risk of
prostate cancer recurrence in both black and white men, says a U.S. study
that challenges previous research suggesting obesity may be more
significant for black men.

"Not so. Obesity leads to worse cancer in both groups," study senior
author Dr. Stephen Freedland, an associate professor of urology and
pathology at the Duke University Medical Center Prostate Center, said in a
news release from the school.

Freedland and study author Dr. Jayakrishnan Jayachandran, a urology
oncology fellow, examined the medical records of 1,415 prostate cancer
patients who had undergone a radical prostatectomy. They found that race
had no influence on the relationship between obesity and the
aggressiveness of the cancer.

"We found that higher BMI [body-mass index] was associated with
significantly increased risk of cancer recurrence for both blacks and
whites," Jayachandran said in the news release.

The reason why obesity increases the risk of prostate cancer recurrence
isn't clear, but altered hormone levels might play a role.

"Obesity is associated with more estrogen and less testosterone, and it
may be that lower testosterone promotes more aggressive tumors as recent
studies have suggested," Jayachandran said.

Other obesity-related changes in the production of hormones, such as
insulin, insulin-like growth factor or leptin, may also be involved in the
development of more aggressive prostate cancer.

"This is something we simply do not understand, but we are actively
studying all of these factors," Jayachandran said.

The study appears in the current issue of Cancer.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about prostate cancer.

Adult video gamers often overweight, depressed

2009-08-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Teens aren't the only ones glued to the video game console. According to a new survey, the average video gamer in the U.S. today is 35 years old � and not all that healthy physically or emotionally.

According to the survey released this week, the typical adult video game player is overweight, introverted and may be a little bit depressed.

The Internet-based survey involved adults aged 19 to 90 years old from the Seattle-Tacoma area, who were asked various questions about their health, as well as their media habits.

Of the 552 respondents (ages 19 to 90 years), 249 - a little more than 45 percent - identified themselves as video-game players � the majority of them men (56 percent).

In a report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Dr. James B. Weaver III, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and colleagues say they found "measurable" associations between playing video games and health risks.

"As hypothesized," the researchers report, a higher body weight and a greater number of "poor mental health days" differentiated adult video gamers from non-gamers.

Men who said they played video games weighed more and used the Internet more than men who did not play video games, the survey showed.

Women who reported playing video games reported greater levels of depression and poorer overall health than non-gamers.

Adult video gamers also seemed less outgoing, or extroverted, and less social and assertive than non-gamers, consistent with prior research in adolescent video game enthusiasts that tied video game playing to sedentary habits, weight issues and mental health concerns.

Adult video gamers of both sexes relied more on the Internet for social support than non-gamers, which supports prior research suggesting that adult video game players may "sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games."

Weaver and colleagues suggest that video gaming for adults may be a form of "digital self-medication." Women, in particular, may immerse themselves in brain-engaging digital environments as a means of self-distraction; "in short, they literally 'take their minds off' their worries while playing a video game," the investigators note.

What drives men to the video game console is likely to be different.

In a commentary published with the survey results, Dr. Brian A. Primack of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine applauds Weaver and his team for "reminding us that video games are currently popular not only among young people but also among adults."

The greatest challenge, Primack contends, will be maintaining balance.

He asks: "How do we simultaneously help the public steer away from imitation playlike activities, harness the potentially positive aspects of video games and keep in perspective the overall place of video games in our society?"

Powerful gaming industry giants, warns Primack, "will successfully tout the potential health-related benefits of products they develop. But who will be left to remind us that � for children and adults alike � Hide-And-Seek and Freeze Tag are still probably what we need most?"

SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, October 2009.

Overweight friends eat more when they dine together

2009-08-19T12:33:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Overweight children and teenagers may eat more when they have a snack with an overweight friend rather than a thinner peer, a new study suggests.

In a study of 9- to 15-year-olds, researchers found that all kids, regardless of their weight, tended to eat more when they had the chance to snack with a friend than when they were with a peer they did not know.

But the biggest calorie intakes were seen when an overweight child snacked with an overweight friend.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, highlight the role of friends' influence in how much kids eat � and, possibly, in their weight control.

It's not surprising that children eat more when they are with friends instead of strangers, according to lead researcher Dr. Sarah-Jean Salvy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The same pattern has been found in adults, Salvy told Reuters Health in an email. This, she explained, may be partly because people are more self-conscious around strangers, and partly because friends act as "permission-givers."

"They set the norm for what is appropriate to do, or in this case eat," Salvy said.

For the study, Salvy and her colleagues had 23 overweight and 42 normal-weight children and teens spend 45 minutes with either a friend or an unfamiliar peer. Each pair was given games, puzzles and books for entertainment, along with bowls of chips, cookies, carrots and grapes.

Overall, the researchers found, pairs of friends downed more calories than did unacquainted pairs. And overweight friends consumed the most � 738 calories, on average, versus 444 calories when an overweight child was paired with normal-weight friend.

Normal-weight kids consumed an average of about 500 calories when paired with a friend, regardless of the friend's weight.

Salvy noted that a recent study of adults found that people were more likely to gain weight over three decades if their same-sex friends were overweight or obese � suggesting a role for "social influence" in body weight.

When it comes to children and teens, it's known that many follow their friends' lead in deciding whether to smoke or drink. The current findings, Salvy said, suggest that kids' eating habits are also "largely determined by their social network."

The good side of that, according to Salvy, is that helping one child make healthy changes may end up influencing his or her friends as well. She said her research interest now is to see whether there is in fact such a "contagion effect" on friends' eating habits.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, August 2009.

Rate of severe childhood obesity up sharply in U.S.

2009-08-12T12:51:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
The rate of severe obesity among U.S. children and teenagers more than tripled over the past three decades, a new study finds.

Using data from a long-running government health survey, researchers found that as of 2004, nearly 4 percent of 2- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. were severely obese.

That was up more than three-fold from 1976, and more than 70 percent from 1994, the researchers report in the journal Academic Pediatrics.

"Children are not only becoming obese, but becoming severely obese, which impacts their overall health," lead researcher Dr. Joseph A. Skelton, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said in a news release from the university.

"These findings," he added, "reinforce the fact that medically-based programs to treat obesity are needed throughout the United States and insurance companies should be encouraged to cover this care."

The study also found that minority and lower-income children are at particular risk of severe obesity � which, in children and teenagers, is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) in the 99th percentile for one's age and gender.

In the most recent survey, which included 12,000 2- to 19-year-olds from across the U.S., nearly 6 percent of African-American children and teens were severely obese, as were roughly 5 percent of Mexican- Americans. That compared with 3 percent of their white peers.

In contrast, less than 1 percent of Mexican-American children and less than 2 percent of black children were severely obese in the 1970s survey.

When it came to family income, the latest survey data show that just over 4 percent of relatively lower-income children were severely obese, versus 2.5 percent of those from higher-income families.

The findings underscore a central obstacle in tackling childhood obesity, Skelton and his colleagues note: The children who are most affected also generally have the greatest difficulty getting good healthcare.

"No simple answers exist," the researchers write, pointing out that along with better access to healthcare, there also need to be broader efforts to improve the diets and lifestyle habits of U.S. children.

SOURCE: Academic Pediatrics, September 2009.

Obese Texas man hides gun between rolls of fat

2009-08-09T12:47:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) -
An obese prisoner in Harris County, Texas has been charged with illegal possession of a firearm after he was discovered to be hiding a 9mm pistol in between his rolls of fat, local media reported Saturday.

George Vera, who weighs around 500 pounds (225 kilograms) was originally arrested last week for selling counterfeit CDs, according to the Houston Chronicle newspaper.

A police spokesman told the Chronicle that Vera was searched three times over the course of his arrest and booking at the jail but managed to conceal the handgun with his rolls of fat until it was discovered in the shower.

Vera has been charged with possession of an illegal weapon in a correctional facility, which carries a penalty of two to 10 years in prison, but is currently free on bail of 10,000 dollars.

Obese TX inmate hides gun in his flabs of fat

2009-08-08T12:45:00.001-07:00

HOUSTON - An obese inmate in Texas has been charged after officials learned he had a gun hidden under flabs of his own flesh.
Twenty-five-year-old George Vera was charged with possession of a firearm in a correctional facility after he told a guard at the Harris County Jail about the unloaded 9mm pistol. The Houston Chronicle reported Thursday that Vera was originally arrested on charges of selling illegal copies of compact discs.
The 500-pound man was searched during his arrest and again at a city jail and the county jail, but officers never found the weapon in his rolls of skin. Vera admitted having the gun during a shower break at the county jail.
___ Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com

More Kids Becoming Severely Obese

2009-08-02T12:45:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, July 31 (HealthDay News) � In the hindmost 25 years, rates
of rigorous babyhood corpulence in the United States be obsessed tripled, putting
increasing numbers of children at danger representing diabetes and Colloq ticker sickness,
says a new learn.

Researchers looked at National Health and Nutrition Survey facts on
12,384 youths, ages 2 to 19 years, and establish that the prevalency of harsh
plumpness increased from 0.8 percent in the interval from 1976 to 1980 to 3.8
percent in 1999 to 2004. Severe tubbiness correlates to a body heap guide
that's identical to or greater than the 99th percentile championing lifetime and
gender.

The discovery could intend that 2.7 million children in the United States
are acutely fat, the researchers said.

Black and Mexican-American children had the largest increases in rigorous
chubbiness, along with children in families drop down the desire even. For
case, the portion of seriously overweight Mexican-American children rose
from 0.9 percent to 5.2 percent.

The researchers also create that a third of badly fat children had
metabolic syndrome, a assembly of peril factors for diabetes, blow and send
assail. The jeopardy factors embody high blood force, cholesterol and
insulin levels.

The read appears online in Academic Pediatrics.

"Children are not lone enhancing fleshy but beautifying dangerously gross,
which impacts their sum condition," Dr. Joseph Skelton, an grossness authority
at Brenner Children's Hospital, bit of Wake Forest University Baptist
Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., and conduct originator of the con, said
in a tidings let go from the center.

"These findings reinforce the actuality that medically based programs to
handle embonpoint are needed during the United States, and assurance
companies should be encouraged to defend this anxiety," Skelton said.

More knowing

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers tips to aid children continue a satisfactorily heaviness.

Many Overweight Kids Not Getting a Good Night's Sleep

2009-06-04T10:12:00.001-07:00

WEDNESDAY, June 3 (HealthDay News) � Children with chubby
bellies are more likely to have sleep-disordered breathing, a condition
that's associated with behavioral problems, hyperactivity and difficulty
staying awake at school, new research shows.

In the study, researchers examined 700 children between the ages of 5
and 12 randomly chosen from 18 public elementary schools in Pennsylvania.
Each child had a physical exam and was monitored for nine hours at a sleep
laboratory using polysomnography, which measures brain electrical
activity, heart activity, airflow, respiration and oxygen saturation
during sleep.

About 25 percent of children had mild sleep-disordered breathing and
1.2 percent had moderate sleep-disordered breathing, defined as five or
more breathing pauses per hour. More than 15 percent had primary snoring,
the researchers found.

Those with sleep-disordered breathing tended to have a larger body-mass
index and a higher waist circumference relative to their peers. Unlike in
adults, a large neck circumference was not a predictor of sleep-disordered
breathing in children, the study authors note in their report in the June
issue of SLEEP.

Until recently, enlarged tonsils or adenoids were believed to cause
most sleep-disordered breathing in children, but the study found no link
between tonsil size and disordered breathing, according to a news release
from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).

Instead, obesity may be playing the greater role, said study author
Edward O. Bixler, of Penn State University College of Medicine.

"Risk factors for sleep-disordered breathing in children are complex
and include metabolic, inflammatory and anatomic factors," Bixler said in
the news release. "Because sleep-disordered breathing in children is not
just the outcome of anatomical abnormalities, treatment strategies should
consider alternative options, such as weight loss and correction of nasal
problems."

Sleep-disordered breathing can range from mild to severe, according to
information from the AASM. Mild cases might be marked by persistent
snoring due to nasal anatomic features such as chronic sinusitis, rhinitis
and nasal drain. Severe cases may include obstructive sleep apnea, a
potentially dangerous condition in which breathing repeatedly starts and
stops throughout the night. Each pause typically lasts from 10 to 20
seconds and can occur 20 to 30 times per hour.

While children tend to have milder forms of sleep-disordered breathing
than adults, they can suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.

Older children were more likely to have moderately disordered
breathing. Two percent of children between the ages of 9 and 12 years had
moderate sleep-disordered breathing, compared with only 0.2 percent of
children between 5 and 8, the news release notes.

Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when soft tissue in the back of the
throat collapses and blocks the airway during sleep. In children, loud
snoring, obvious pauses in breathing and gasping for breath are warning
signs. Parents often notice that the child seems to be working hard to
breathe during sleep, according to the AASM.

More information

Find out more about obstructive sleep apnea and sleep breathing
disorders in children at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Weight-Loss Surgery Options Compared in Super-Obese

2009-06-03T10:18:00.001-07:00

TUESDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) � A technique called duodenal
switch surgery may be more effective than gastric bypass surgery for
patients with obesity-related medical problems such as high cholesterol,
diabetes and high blood pressure, according to a U.S. study that included
350 super-obese patients who were more than 200 pounds heavier than their
ideal body weight.

The findings were presented Monday at Digestive Disease Week 2009 in
Chicago.

In gastric bypass surgery, surgeons create a small gastric pouch that's
separate from the rest of the stomach, but with duodenal switch surgery,
the stomach is reshaped into a long narrow tube and the small intestine is
reconfigured to reduce calorie absorption, according to a Digestive
Disease Week news release.

In their new study, Dr. Vivek N. Prachand, an assistant professor of
surgery at the University of Chicago, and colleagues looked at the rates
of resolution of obesity-related diseases (whether patients were able to
stop taking medications to treat their conditions) three years after
either duodenal switch or gastric bypass surgery.

The rates of resolution for duodenal switch and gastric bypass were:
diabetes, 100 percent vs. 60 percent; high blood pressure, 68 percent vs.
38.6 percent; high cholesterol, 72 percent vs. 26 percent; acid reflux;
48.5 percent vs. 76.9 percent, the study authors found.

In previous research, Prachand's team showed that super-obese patients
who underwent duodenal switch surgery had better weight loss than those
who had gastric bypass surgery. They believed that the greater weight loss
among duodenal switch patients may explain why they had higher rates of
resolution of obesity-related diseases. But this new study didn't find a
link between amount of weight loss and resolution of obesity-related
conditions, which suggests that other mechanisms besides weight loss may
be at work.

The researchers also noted that reduced absorption of calories in
duodenal switch surgery patients can lead to vitamin/nutrition
deficiencies and, possibly, malnutrition.

"The effort to better manage the potential vitamin and nutritional
deficiencies associated with duodenal switch surgery is worthwhile because
it appears that the duodenal switch surgery is more successful in terms of
weight loss and resolution of significant obesity-related disease for
super-obese patients," Prachand said in the news release.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases has more about weight loss surgery.

Australia mulls public funds for obesity surgery

2009-06-02T10:19:00.001-07:00

SYDNEY (AFP) -
An Australian parliamentary committee has recommended boosting public funding for obesity surgery to tackle a growing problem which has left nearly two-thirds of the country overweight.

The committee said operations such as lap band surgery � a reversible procedure to reduce the stomach's capacity � should be made more widely available to help people with extreme cases of weight gain.

"It's hard to access and we know that there is immediate improvement in obesity when surgery is performed," committee chair Labor MP Steve Georganas said, according to ABC News.

"We're not saying that this is for everyone � this is only for people who are morbidly obese."

The recommendation was among 20 made by the House of Representatives Health Committee. Georganas said obesity cost the economy eight billion Australian dollars (6.48 billion US) last year.

Better food labelling and public health campaigns were also suggested as ways to trim the Australian waistline.

Official figures last month showed one-quarter of Australians are obese with another 37 percent classified as overweight.

International studies consistently rank Australia among the fattest countries in the world, with the nation's Baker Heart Institute in 2008 suggesting it faced a "fat bomb" outranking even that of the United States.

With weight-loss surgery, type of insurance counts

2009-06-01T10:01:00.001-07:00

CHICAGO (Reuters) -
People with private health insurance lose more weight after having weight-loss surgery than those covered by the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, U.S. researchers said Monday.

Medicare patients tend to weigh more before having gastric bypass surgery, they said, and are more likely to be depressed, have high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol and sleep apnea.

For them to succeed, they may need extra exercise and nutrition support, they said.

"Gastric bypass surgery is very successful so we should work to ensure that everyone has the same chance at success," said Dr. John Morton of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who presented his findings at the Digestive Disease Week meeting in Chicago.

Gastric bypass surgery is becoming an increasingly popular treatment for obesity. It works by altering the digestive tract to reduce the volume of food that can be eaten and digested.

Large insurance companies and Medicare, the federal health plan for 44 million elderly and disabled Americans, help pay for the surgery � which costs from $15,000 to $35,000 � in severely obese people.

For the study, Morton and colleagues collected data on 750 gastric bypass patients with private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, a state-federal insurance program for the poor.

A year after surgery, all patients had significant weight loss, but the private insurance patients lost more, Morton said in a telephone briefing.

"The Medicare group lost 57 percent of its excess weight, but in comparison with the private insurance group, this was much less, with the private insurance group losing about 82 percent of their extra weight," he said.

The Medicare group had slightly higher complication rates, but there were no deaths from any of the operations.

Morton said patients in the Medicare group had the biggest reductions in levels of low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol that causes heart disease.

They also had bigger improvements in fasting insulin, a measure of diabetes severity.

Morton said patients in the Medicare group started out much heavier than other patients, with average body mass index scores of nearly 50, putting them in the so-called super-obese category.

Body mass index, or BMI, is a formula that takes into account a person's height and weight. A BMI of 30 is considered obese. People with a BMI of 40 to 49 are considered morbidly obese, while those with a BMI of 50 or higher are considered super obese.

Morton said the study shows that some Medicare patients are starting with more profound disadvantages, and may need more support.

He said morbid obesity is the leading public health crisis in the United States, and bariatric surgery is the only effective treatment for many patients.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

Weight Guidelines Toughened for Obese Mothers-to-Be

2009-05-29T09:33:00.001-07:00

The Institute of Medicine (IOM), the nation's most influential medical advisory group, has updated its guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy for the first time since 1990.
The revised recommendations, released May 28, which also include the first advice regarding exercise during pregnancy, reflect new data on prenatal health as well as several recent shifts in the obstetric landscape - pregnant women in the U.S. are now older, more likely to deliver multiple births and ethnically more diverse than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But far and away, the IOM's greatest new concern is the increased population of overweight and obese mothers-to-be. (Watch TIME's video "How to Lose Hundreds of Pounds.")
For centuries, one of the greatest dangers pregnant women faced was not gaining enough weight to adequately nourish a healthy baby. To protect against malnutrition and, in some cases, a strong societal pressure to stay thin, doctors - and grandmothers - everywhere routinely urged expecting mothers to eat, eat, eat.
Times have changed. Today, nearly two-thirds of American women of childbearing age are overweight, and one-third qualify as obese. An abundance of research suggests that weight gain before and during pregnancy increases the risk of several serious health complications for both mother and child, including diabetes, hypertension and birth defects.
"Increasingly, we saw the weight women were gaining was going outside the established guidelines, either below or above them," says Kathleen Rasmussen, a professor of nutrition at Cornell University and the chair of the committee that wrote the IOM report. "That suggested a need to re-examine them." (Watch a video on fitness gadgets.)
For most women - including those who are underweight, normal weight or even overweight at conception - the guidelines remain unchanged from the original 1990 standards: women with a healthy body mass index, or BMI (a ratio of height and weight used to define obesity), of 18 to 25 are advised to gain 25 to 35 pounds during pregnancy. Overweight women with a BMI of 25 to 29.5 should gain less, up to 25 pounds; underweight women, with BMIs below 18.5, should gain more, up to 40 pounds.
The recommendations include new, specific guidelines for obese women, including those who have a BMI of 30 or higher at conception. These mothers-to-be are advised to limit their weight gain to 11 to 20 pounds. The standards also suggest for the first time that pregnant women may safely exercise up to 30 minutes a day throughout their entire pregnancy, barring any complications.
Failing to adhere to the IOM's recommendations could increase health risks for both mother and child, Rasmussen says. Women who do not gain enough weight during pregnancy face an increased risk of stunted fetal growth and preterm delivery. But more commonly, women put on too many extra pounds: approximately 40% of normal-weight and 60% of overweight women gained excessive weight during pregnancy, according to a study published in March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; one-fourth of obese women gained more than 35 pounds, the recommended limit for women of healthy weight. (Watch TIME's video "Uninsured Again.")
Studies have linked obesity and rapid weight gain during pregnancy to a higher risk of gestational diabetes and hypertension in the mother. And because most women fail to shed all their pregnancy fat, the additional weight can lead to an increased risk of postpartum obesity, along with elevated risks of heart disease and stroke. Babies delivered by obese women tend to be born bigger, earlier and by Cesarean section. And many studies suggest that a mother's gestational obesity predicts later weight problems in her offspring. One recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School found that among nearly 12,000 children and teenagers, those whose mothers gained more than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy were 42% more likely to be obese by the time they were 9 to 14 years old.
Rasmussen emphasizes that physicians must do more to counsel individual patients about diet and exercise both before and after conception. "Traditionally, these guidelines concentrated on what was healthiest for the baby," Rasmussen says. "Here, we've spent much more time looking at both the mother's and the baby's well-being."
But the new recommendations should be applied only to American patients, the IOM says. Although the guidelines use globally accepted BMI cutoffs determined by the World Health Organization to define pre-pregnancy obesity, the weight-gain recommendations may not be appropriate for women in other countries, who are shorter or thinner or have inadequate prenatal care.
Some American doctors think the IOM, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, could have gone even further in its recommendations for overweight women. Dr. Raul Artal, a professor of obstetrics at St. Louis University's School of Medicine, believes that more attention needs to be paid to the long-term health risks of maternal obesity for both mother and child, and that these concerns are far more important than any gestational weight-gain chart. Artal runs a clinic specializing in obese and overweight pregnancies and has found that, under the close guidance of dietitians and physicians, about half of his oversize patients put on little to no weight and deliver healthy, normal-weight babies. "Obesity leads to lifelong problems that this committee still fails to recognize the full importance of," he says. "They remain much more concerned about not-sufficient weight gain."
Still, Artal applauds the updated guidelines, which he calls an "excellent review of all the relevant research" and which are more accommodating of individual patients. "The reality is that no two pregnancies are alike, so flexibility is important," Artal says. These days, it seems, the age-old advice for mothers-to-be to "eat for two" no longer applies.
See pictures of what makes you eat more food.
See nine kid foods to avoid.
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com: Weight Guidelines Toughened for Obese Mothers-to-Be

Experts Urge Less Weight Gain for Obese Women in Pregnancy

2009-05-28T09:25:00.001-07:00

THURSDAY, May 28 (HealthDay News) � Obese moms-to-be should
limit their weight gain during pregnancy to between 11 and 20 pounds to
safeguard their health and that of their baby, according to newly updated
expert guidelines.

That level of gestational weight gain is about half whats recommended
for normal-weight pregnant women and reflects the concern over the rising
number of obese expectant mothers in the United States.

The new guidelines � the first since 1990 � were issued jointly May
28 by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

"We looked at a balance of maternal outcomes related to weight gain in
pregnancy and issues related to the outcome for the fetus and neonate,"
explained Dr. Patrick M. Catalano, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology
at Case Western Reserve University and a member of the committee that
wrote the new guidelines.

"There is good evidence that the amount of gestational weight gain for
an obese woman can be related to the risk of needing a cesarean delivery
and retention of weight gain after pregnancy, which puts the woman at
further risk in future pregnancies," Catalano said.

Doctors typically define overweight as a body mass index (BMI) of
between 25 and 30 and obesity as a BMI of 30 and above. BMI is based on
weight and height; for example, a 5-foot-6-inch tall woman weighing
between 115 and 154 pounds would have a BMI in the normal range.

But children born to overweight or obese moms face a rise in risk for
preterm birth or being larger than normal at delivery, with extra fat,
Catalano noted. Babies born large can suffer stuck shoulders and broken
collar bones, experts say, and are prone to overweight or obesity and type
2 diabetes later in life. And an overly large newborn poses risks for the
mother at delivery, including vaginal tearing, bleeding and often the need
for a cesarean section.

Infants born overweight also face higher odds for health problems such
as heart disease and diabetes. Children born prematurely can suffer from
impaired mental and physical development.

On the other end of the spectrum, the report's authors noted, women who
are underweight during their pregnancy raise their babies' odds for
stunted fetal growth and preterm delivery.

So, according to the new guidelines, maintaining a normal body weight
and gaining only the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy is the
best way to lower risks to both mother and child.

Specifically, the guidelines urge that:

Normal-weight women � those with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 � should gain
25 to 35 pounds during pregnancy.

Underweight women �those with a BMI less than 18.5 � should gain 28
to 40 pounds during pregnancy.

Overweight women should gain 15 to 25 pounds.

Obese women should gain only 11 to 20 pounds.

The last recommendation marks a change from the 1990 guidelines, which
recommended that obese mothers-to-be gain at least 15 pounds during
pregnancy.

The report's authors were also concerned with the mother's weight at
conception. Almost two-thirds of American women of childbearing age are
overweight and almost one-third are obese, the report notes. The committee
recommended, therefore, that women try to reach a normal BMI before
conception and then gain the appropriate amount of weight during their
pregnancy.

The committee also recommends that doctors provide diet and exercise
counseling to women before conception so that women can achieve a normal
BMI before becoming pregnant. In addition, prenatal care should focus on
keeping weight gain within recommended guidelines.

Putting on excess pounds during pregnancy is becoming common: According
to a study published in November in Obstetrics & Gynecology,
nearly one in five pregnant American women now surpass recommended levels
of weight gain during their pregnancies.

So, following the new guidelines "can be beneficial to both you and the
baby," Catalano said. "The closer to a normal weight that you can be
before you get pregnant is to your advantage and also to your baby's
advantage because we know that your pre-pregnancy weight is a very
important variable for these outcomes as well as the weight gain in
pregnancy."

Dr. Michael Katz, senior vice president for research and global
programs at the March of Dimes, a sponsor of the report, was dubious about
the impact of the new guidelines long term.

"Pregnant women are very concerned about the outcome so they respond to
recommendations, but they don't last very long," Katz said. "Obesity and
overweight is a chronic situation. If a woman is overweight, she should
adjust her weight first, then become pregnant. And one hopes, they would
keep their weight in check subsequently, but that's unlikely."

Losing weight and keeping it off is a lifetime commitment, Katz noted.
Being underweight is also a problem, "but obesity is by far the most
prevalent and most serious problem," he said.

More information

The March of Dimes has more on weight
gain during pregnancy.

Hardened Arteries Threaten Obese, Diabetic Youth

2009-05-27T09:24:00.001-07:00

TUESDAY, May 26 (HealthDay News) � An examination of the neck
arteries of today's obese or diabetic young people bodes ill for their
future health, researchers report.

The walls of these carotid arteries, which carry blood to the brain,
showed a thickening and stiffness known to increase the risk of future
strokes, heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems, according to a
report to be published in the June 9 issue of Circulation.

"Since the 1980s, there has been a major increase in obesity in our
youth," said Dr. Elaine Urbina, director of preventive cardiology at
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, associate professor of
pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati and lead author of the report.
"This could be the first generation of Americans that has a shorter life
expectancy than its parents," she said.

In the study, Urbina and her team used ultrasound to assess the carotid
arteries of a few hundred young people (average age 18) � 182 who were
lean, 128 diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (often tied to obesity), and 136
classified as obese because their weight-for-height was above the 95th
percentile. "It was one of the larger studies of carotid thickness in
adolescents," Urbina said.

The researchers looked at the thickness of the intima, one of the
layers of tissue that line the arteries.

"If you have diabetes, the intima is thicker than if you don't have
diabetes," Urbina said. "If you are obese, the artery is also thicker.
Stiff carotids are linked to heart attacks as well as strokes, because if
you are having a buildup of plaque in the arteries that lead to the brain,
you probably are having a buildup in the coronary arteries as well."

Plaque is the term for the fatty deposits that can increase in size and
thickness until they limit or totally block normal blood flow.

The young people who were obese or had diabetes were more likely to
have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as higher blood
pressure and high levels of blood fats such as cholesterol, the study
found. But those factors did not account for the significant changes in
artery structure and function, the researchers said.

According to Urbina, the detection of unhealthy artery changes in
young, obese or diabetic people "demonstrates the need for research in
this area."

One expert said the findings reinforce prior research.

"This is more evidence that obesity is not good for young people," said
Dr. Robert H. Eckel, professor of physiology and biophysics at the
University of Colorado, a spokesman for the American Heart Association.
However, it's not clear from the study how damaging obesity might be in
these young people, Eckel said.

"How important [the findings are] in terms of what is to follow is not
clear," he said, noting that the consequences for adult health of obesity
in childhood are not set in stone.

"There can be intervention to modify risk, not necessarily to reduce
obesity but to control blood pressure and blood lipids more aggressively.
I would like to see further studies that follow these young people with
and without intervention for 10 years," Eckel said.

In the meantime, rising childhood obesity is now a troubling fact of
life for doctors who see young patients, Urbina added. A kilogram equals
2.2 pounds, and "at least once a month, I see a child who weighs more in
kilograms than I weigh in pounds," she said. "Yesterday, I saw that in an
11-year-old."

The child and youth obesity problem is an issue for schools as well as
parents, Urbina said. Schools must play a role, because "80 percent of the
calories children consume are outside the control of parents," she said,
and also because schools often do not emphasize physical activities that
can help prevent excess weight gain.

"We need better nutrition and better after-school programs," she
said.

More information

There's more on obesity in the United States at the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among Obese Diabetics, Sleep Apnea May Be Common

2009-05-22T09:05:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, May 22 (HealthDay News) � People who are obese and have
type 2 diabetes often have undiagnosed sleep apnea as well, a new study
has found.

In fact, of the 306 participants in the study, about 87 percent were
found to have sleep apnea but had never been diagnosed with the disorder.
The findings appear in the June issue of Diabetes Care.

People in the study, all obese and all with type 2 diabetes, had
participated in a sleep study and answered questions about sleep apnea
symptoms such as snoring and daytime sleepiness.

More than 30 percent of the study participants had 16 to 20 episodes
per hour in which their breathing would stop during sleep, and 22 percent
had more than 30 episodes an hour, which is considered severe sleep apnea,
according to the researchers.

Most of those who were undiagnosed also had a larger waist
circumference, which the researchers found to be significantly associated
with sleep apnea, as is higher body-mass index (BMI).

"The high prevalence of undiagnosed and, therefore, untreated sleep
apnea among obese patients with diabetes constitutes a serious public
health problem," study author Gary D. Foster, director of the Center for
Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, said in a school news
release.

Sleep apnea increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, according
to the release.

"Doctors who have obese patients with type 2 diabetes need to be aware
of the possibility of sleep apnea, even if no symptoms are present,
especially in cases where the patient has a high BMI or waist
circumference," Foster said.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about sleep apnea.

Overweight Moms More Likely to Have Asthmatic Kids

2009-05-19T09:14:00.001-07:00

TUESDAY, May 19 (HealthDay News) � A mother's weight may have
lasting effects not just on her own health but on the respiratory health
of her children as well.

"Children with asthmatic parents are at an increased risk of asthma if
the mother is overweight before pregnancy," said H.A. Smit, head of the
department of prevention and health services research at the National
Institute of Public Health and Environment in the Netherlands.

In fact, Smith and his fellow researchers found that the risk of asthma
is 65 percent higher among the offspring of overweight mothers if one or
both of the child's parents have a history of the disease.

Smit was to present the findings Tuesday at the American Thoracic
Society's annual meeting in San Diego.

As many as 20 million Americans have been diagnosed with asthma, about
9 million of them children, according to the American Academy of Allergy,
Asthma & Immunology. Despite advances in treatment, asthma is still
responsible for about 5,000 deaths each year in the United States, it
says.

Not all children born to parents with asthma go on to develop the
airway disease. That happens about 40 percent of the time, the academy
reports.

Because the exact causes of asthma are not clear, researchers have
looked at a number of factors that might contribute to its development,
including maternal smoking, the child's environment and more.

Smit's study sought to assess whether a mother's weight before
pregnancy could affect a child's risk for asthma. The study included
nearly 4,000 children, who were followed from birth to 8 years of age.

The mothers in the study averaged 30 years old, and almost 21 percent
were overweight � which the researchers defined as have a body mass index
higher than 25 � before becoming pregnant.

Children were considered to have asthma if their parents reported that
they'd had at least one attack of wheezing or shortness of breath or had
needed inhaled corticosteroids in the previous year. About 14 percent of
the children had asthma by age 8.

The researchers adjusted the data to account for confounding factors,
such as maternal education, mode of delivery, maternal smoking during
pregnancy, duration of breast-feeding, birth weight and the child's
current weight, according to Smit.

Although they found no association between maternal weight in children
born to parents without asthma, children born to parents with asthma who
also had an overweight mother had a 65 percent increased risk of
developing asthma.

Though the study was not designed to determine why being overweight
might affect a child's risk for asthma, Smit theorized that inflammation
could be the connection between the conditions. That's because obesity can
encourage inflammation, and inflammation is at the root of asthma.

Dr. Jennifer Appleyard, chief of allergy and immunology at St. John
Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, said that "we don't know exactly
what causes or contributes to asthma, but it does look like there are some
things that occur in utero that could affect the child later."

But, she said, it may not be the fact that mothers are overweight. It
could be something that they're eating that's affecting their children.
It's just not clear from this study, she said, adding that that more
research needs to be done.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more on the
causes of asthma.

Productivity Takes a Hit From Obesity, Diabetes

2009-05-13T07:49:00.001-07:00

WEDNESDAY, May 13 (HealthDay News) � Obese workers with diabetes
are less productive than their normal-weight co-workers, says a U.S.
study.

Researchers surveyed 7,338 working adults about missed work time,
reduced work effectiveness and impairment of daily activities. The results
showed that people who were obese and had type 2 diabetes lost 11 percent
to 15 percent of work time (about 5.9 hours a week) because of health
problems, compared with 9 percent of work time (about 3.6 hours a week)
lost by normal-weight people.

The survey also found that obese people with type 2 diabetes reported
impairment during 20 percent to 34 percent of their daily activities, such
as taking care of children, shopping and exercising.

The findings are in the May/June issue of the American Journal of
Health Promotion.

"From an employer's perspective, this study provides evidence that
workplace wellness programs that include weight loss and weight management
would be beneficial for obese employees with or at risk for diabetes,"
Kathleen Fox, president of Strategic Healthcare Solutions and a co-author
of the study, said in a news release from the Center for the Advancement
of Health.

The study supports previously published research that found "the
heavier people are, the most lost productivity at work," Anne Wolf, an
instructor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, who
specializes in researching the economic effects of obesity, said in the
news release. This study was different, she said, in that it found an
independent effect of diabetes on worker productivity.

"Employers who spend money in a lifestyle intervention will find their
investment returned to them in the form of increased productivity and
reduced absenteeism," Wolf said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases outlines the health risks of being overweight.

Obesity May Raise Kids' Allergy Risk

2009-05-09T07:39:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) � Obese children and teens are at
increased risk for allergies, especially food allergies, say U.S.
researchers.

The study authors analyzed data from 4,111 participants, aged 2 to 19,
who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and
found that obese children and teens were 26 percent more likely to have
any kind of allergy, and 59 percent more likely to have a food allergy,
than their normal-weight peers.

"We found a positive association between obesity and allergies," senior
author Dr. Darryl Zeldin, acting clinical director at the U.S. National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), said in an institute
news release. "While the results from this study are interesting, they do
not prove that obesity causes allergies. More research is needed to
further investigate this potential link."

The study is in the May issue of The Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology.

"Given that the prevalence of both obesity and allergic disease has
increased among children over the last several decades, it is important to
understand and, if possible, prevent these epidemics," lead author Cynthia
M. Visness, a scientist at Rho Federal Systems Division Inc., in Chapel
Hill, N.C., said in the news release.

"Seeing a possible link between obesity and allergies provides
additional motivation for undertaking the challenge of reducing childhood
obesity," added Linda Birnbaum, NIEHS director.

More information

The Nemours Foundation has more about children and allergies.

Study blames over-eating, not poor exercise for US obesity

2009-05-08T07:39:00.001-07:00

AMSTERDAM (AFP) -
Over-eating, not a lack of exercise, is to blame for the American obesity epidemic, a new study claimed Friday, warning that physical activity could not fully compensate for excess calories.

"There is no evidence that a marked reduction in physical activity has been a contributor to this epidemic in the United States," study leader Boyd Swinburn told AFP on the sidelines of an international obesity conference in Amsterdam, where the research was unveiled.

"The increase in energy intake... virtually explained all of the weight gain."

Swinburn, a professor at the health faculty of Australia's Deakin University, said American children had grown on average four kilogrammes (nine pounds) heavier over the past three decades with adults putting on an extra eight kgs (17 pounds).

The study calculated what Americans should weigh today based on their current, higher food intake, and comparing this to their actual weight.

If they weighed more than projected, this would suggest a drop in physical activity.

In fact, researchers found that American adults weighed less than could be expected from their diet, "which means that if anything over that period of time, the adults had been increasing their physical activity, not decreasing," said Swinburn.

Among children, the tests yielded a 100 percent match, leading researchers to conclude that changes in physical activity had had no impact whatsoever on America's children growing fatter.

The findings would "probably be similar" for other developed countries, Swinburn said.

For the US population to return to its leaner, 1970s self, children would have to cut their intake by about 350 calories a day � equal to one can of fizzy drink and a small portion of French fries, and adults by about 500 calories � the equivalent of a Big Mac burger.

Alternatively, children would have to walk for an extra two-and-a-half hours a day, and adults for nearly two hours, said Swinburn.

"Getting everybody to walk an extra two hours a day is not really a feasible option for countering the epidemic," he said.

"We need to limit our expectations of what an increase in physical activity can achieve."

Swinburn stressed that the findings did not seek to negate the value of physical activity for weight control and overall health.

"But if we want to influence the underlying drivers (behind obesity), we have to have our eye much more on the energy intake side than on the physical activity side."

In short, Americans must eat less, he said.

The World Health Organisation estimates that in 2005, about 1.6 billion adults were overweight, of which at least 400 million were obese.

The conference was organised by the European Association for the Study of Obesity.

Obesity, arthritis affects women in later years

2009-05-06T07:23:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Disabilities related to obesity and arthritis decrease women's quality of life during their senior years, according to research presented Saturday at the American Geriatrics Society's annual meeting in Chicago.

"While women tend to live longer than men, this study shows that they are at greater risk of living with disability and much of the excess disability is attributable to higher rates of obesity and arthritis," Dr. Heather Whitson from Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina who presented the study, noted in a statement.

Among 5,888 men and women older than 65 years enrolled in the Cardiovascular Health Study, Whitson and her colleagues found that women suffered up to two and a half times more disabilities than men of the same age. Higher rates of obesity and arthritis among these women explained up to 48 percent of the gender gap in disability.

"This is important because it suggests that women's tendency to pack on extra pounds in their child-bearing and peri-menopausal years translates into loss of independence in their old age," Whitson added. "Preventing weight gain in young to middle-aged women may decrease disability burden in later years."

Dr. Harvey Jay Cohen, the study's lead investigator and director of Duke's Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, said: "The findings of our study are more troubling when you consider the increasing rates of obesity among women. We need to help women make better decisions earlier in life."

In addition to obesity and arthritis, the study team found the women were much more likely than men to fracture a bone and suffer from vision problems and bronchitis. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to have emphysema, heart disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, diabetes and hearing problems. They were also more likely to have trouble walking due to narrowed leg arteries.

Researchers say that the next step is to see whether older women with disabilities related to obesity or arthritis regain function if they lose weight and get their arthritis pain under control.

Australia may pay for obesity surgery: report

2009-05-05T07:14:00.000-07:00

MELBOURNE (AFP) -
Australia is considering government-funded lap-band surgery to curb rising rates of obesity, it was reported.

The plan would see taxpayers pick up the bill for the surgery, which involves attaching a band around the entrance to the stomach so patients feel full after eating only a little food, the Herald Sun newspaper reported.

It said a parliamentary inquiry was set to back the move next week after hearing evidence that the surgery could help obese patients lose up to 60 percent of their body weight.

The plan would reduce the burden placed on the public health system through weight-related conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, the newspaper reported.

It said the plan was to make the surgery available to those who could not lose weight through any other method.

More than a third of Australia's 21 million strong population are estimated to be overweight or obese, according to recent figures.

International studies consistently rank Australia among the fattest countries in the world, with the nation's Baker Heart Institute in 2008 suggesting it faced a "fat bomb" outranking even that in the United States.

Emergency services have introduced special "mega-lift" ambulances in New South Wales state capable of handling patients weighing more than 180 kilograms (400 pounds).

Undertakers also say they are stocking massive coffins, while consumer authorities are considering upgrading standards on everything from toilets to child car booster seats so they can handle heavier loads.

Obese Children More Likely to Suffer Lower Body Injuries

2009-05-02T06:24:00.001-07:00

SATURDAY, May 2 (HealthDay News) � The bones and muscles of the
lower body appear to be more vulnerable to injury in obese children than
their lighter peers, a new study suggests.

The study analyzed the weight and injuries of kids who visited a
children's hospital's emergency department over a three-year period.
Sprains, such as to the ankle or leg, were the most common lower body
injuries, and sent more than 23,000 children to the emergency department
at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center between 2005 and early
2008.

"Because obese patients have an increased body mass and force, they are
more likely to twist or roll on a lower extremity and cause injury than
the non-obese children. Other injuries that the patients experienced were
fractures and lacerations," study lead author Dr. Wendy Pomerantz, an
emergency medicine physician at the hospital, said in a hospital news
release.

About one-sixth of the children visiting the hospital's emergency
department for injuries during that time were obese, according to the
study, scheduled to be presented Saturday in Baltimore at the annual
meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies.

Pomerantz noted that obesity is likely to also lengthen a child's
recovery time from an injury, as the added weight and stress to the body
can cause more damage.

Exercise and diet, she said, remain the best ways to combat the growing
obesity epidemic in the world. "Parents of an obese child who want the
child to exercise but [are] afraid of the child getting injured should
work with a specialist to get a tailored diet and exercise regimen to help
them lose weight," Pomerantz said.

Obesity in children also increases their risk of developing type 2
diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other factors that
raise their chances of developing cardiovascular disease, according to
information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about childhood obesity.

Obesity Surgery Complications on the Decline

2009-04-30T06:25:00.001-07:00

WEDNESDAY, April 29 (HealthDay News) � Obesity surgery-related
complications in the United States declined 21 percent between 2001 and
2006, and payments to hospitals for obesity surgery decreased by as much
as 13 percent, partly because there were fewer patient readmissions due to
complications, a new study reports.

The findings from a study by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research
and Quality are based on an analysis of more than 9,500 patients under age
65 who had obesity surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, at 652
hospitals between 2001 and 2002 and between 2005 and 2006.

The researchers found that the complication rate among obesity surgery
patients dropped from 24 percent to about 15 percent. Contributing to that
decrease were declines in post-surgical infection rates (58 percent
lower), abdominal hernias, staple leakage, respiratory failure and
pneumonia (29 percent to 50 percent lower).

There was little change in rates of other complications such as ulcers,
dumping (involuntary vomiting or defecation), hemorrhage, wound
re-opening, deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, heart attack and
stroke, the researchers noted.

Between 2001 and 2006, hospital payments for obesity surgery as a whole
fell from $29,563 to $27,905. Payments for patients who experienced
complications declined from $41,807 to $38,175, and from $80,001 to
$69,960 for those who had to be readmitted to hospital because of
complications, according to the study in the May issue of the journal
Medical Care.

Among the other findings:

Complications fell even though there were more older and sicker
patients having obesity surgery. During the study period, the proportion
of patients over age 50 having obesity surgery increased from 28 percent
to 44 percent, and the average number of underlying illnesses � such as
diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep apnea � in bariatric surgery
patients more than doubled.

The six-month post-surgical death rate remained at about 0.5 percent
during the study period.

Hospital readmissions due to complications fell from 10 percent to 7
percent, and complication-caused, same-day hospital outpatient visits fell
from 15 percent to 13 percent.

The researchers said three main factors are behind the decline in
complications and costs among obesity surgery patients: increased use of
laparoscopy, which allows surgeons to operate through small incisions;
increased use of banding procedures without gastric bypass, such as
vertical-banded gastroplasty and lap band; and increased surgeon
experience.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases has more about bariatric surgery.

Obesity becoming U.S. civil rights issue for some

2009-04-28T06:28:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Kate Harding has spent most of her life on one diet or another, losing weight but always gaining it back. Determined to improve her quality of life, she joined a fast-growing group of anti-dieting activists promoting overweight people's civil rights.

Launching an anti-dieting blog called Shapely Prose, Harding and other fat-acceptance advocates online � calling themselves the fat-o-sphere � are also educating one another about how to improve overweight people's health.

She and other bloggers with names like FatChicksRule and Big Liberty say society's "war on obesity" makes overweight people hate their bodies and suffer from low self-esteem.

"Being fat doesn't make me lazy or stupid or morally suspect," said Harding, 34, of Chicago, who also has written a book, "Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere."

"The message we're promoting is health at every size."

Her blog entries criticize dieting obsessions and ponder coverage of weight issues in the mainstream media.

Since launching her blog, Harding, who says she is 5 foot 2 inches tall and about 195 pounds (88 kg), says her body image has improved. But she admits wearing a bathing suit in public "can still throw me for a bit of a loop."

Fat-acceptance advocates are starting to organize to promote anti-bias laws, encourage tolerance in health care and the workplace and help retailers recognize the profit potential of catering to plus-size customers.

"People are just beginning to think about being empowered," said Lynn McAfee, director of medical advocacy at the nonprofit Council on Size and Weight Discrimination.

"The emphasis has just been 'lose weight and everything will be fine,' and it's becoming really clear that people aren't losing weight," she said. "So we want to shift the emphasis to making us as healthy as we can be at whatever weight we are."

Activists say the movement is beginning to amass some victories, from larger seat belts in cars to a decision by the Supreme Court in Canada that obese and disabled people traveling on airplanes can't be forced to buy a second seat.

The Fox television network is developing a reality show featuring "average looking" people called "More to Love," billed as a "dating show for the rest of us."

The National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance, a civil rights group formed in 1969, has found new life as fat-acceptance advocates gain force online.

There are now more than 50 fat-acceptance blogs and more than a dozen books promoting the idea, from Linda Bacon's "Health at Every Size" to Wendy Shanker's "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life." There are even romance novels featuring plus-sized characters with names like "Dangerous Curves Ahead."

But the dominant view remains that overweight people should be focused on losing weight.

Some two-thirds of Americans are considered overweight or obese. Cities across the country have declared wars on obesity, calling it a costly public health crisis that increases the risk of heart disease, type two diabetes and certain cancers.

Obesity-related health care cost upward of $100 billion a year, research shows.

PERVASIVE DISCRIMINATION

There are no U.S. laws prohibiting weight discrimination, and only one state, Michigan, has an anti-weight bias law. Legislatures in Massachusetts and Nevada have taken up size-bias bills, but similar efforts have failed in recent years.

Weight discrimination is pervasive, said Rebecca Puhl, director of research at Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

An "obesity wage penalty" � larger employees getting paid less regardless of job performance � is widespread, and research shows overweight people are less likely to land a job or be promoted than a non-obese worker, she said.

"We do need to fight obesity, but not obese people," said Puhl. "Individuals ... who are discriminated against because of their weight are more likely to engage in unhealthy eating behaviors and avoidance of physical activity."

Anecdotal evidence also suggests overweight people avoid trips to the doctor out of fear of being mocked.

According to NAAFA, about 70 percent of overweight and obese women have experienced bias from doctors. Others complain of being turned down by health-insurance companies.

Bloggers in the fat-o-sphere track cases of discrimination they say go uncovered in the mainstream media.

Just recently, United Airlines, a unit of UAL Corp, said it will require obese passengers bumped from full flights to purchase two seats on a subsequent flight. That would match the policies of other carriers, including Continental, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines.

SEXY AT ANY SIZE

Deb Malkin, 39, considers herself a fat-acceptance advocate but leaves the political battles to others.

Instead, in what she describes as a labor of love, Malkin has opened ReDress, a plus-sized vintage clothing boutique in New York's Brooklyn borough.

Housed in an airy 3,000 square-foot (280 square meter) space, ReDress sells frilly dresses, formal gowns and jeans, all in size 14 and up.

One recent afternoon, shoppers carried armloads of clothing to spacious dressing rooms, while sales assistants compared the comfort of ReDress to the more typical shopping humiliations of plus-sized consumers.

"There's a whole indy fashion world that we don't have access to," said Malkin. "I think women just come in here and are so excited."

Bevin Branlandingham, who considers herself a fat activist, has worked in Malkin's store since it opened in November.

Sorting through lingerie, a frock from the 1960s and a colorful size 22 dress by Calvin Klein, Branlandingham said she likes to help women overcome hatred of their bodies.

Branlandingham, who is partial to dresses with plunging neck lines, says she discourages women from buying so-called goal outfits that are too small and instead pick out things that flatter their figures.

"I feel like my life's mission is to make the world safer for people to love themselves no matter what their differences," she said.

Obesity May Hide Fetal Abnormalities on Ultrasounds

2009-04-23T05:43:00.001-07:00

WEDNESDAY, April 22 (HealthDay News) � Overweight and obese
women are less likely to receive an accurate reading from ultrasound
screenings aimed at identifying fetal abnormalities, new research
reveals.

Such screenings also seem to be less effective among women who are
diabetic prior to their pregnancy.

"We were asking the question, 'Are birth defects less likely to be
detectable with prenatal ultrasound in women who are overweight or obese,
compared with women of normal body-mass index,'" explained study author
Dr. Jodi S. Dashe, who works in the department of obstetrics &
gynecology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in
Dallas.

After analyzing more than 10,000 standard ultrasound exams � the most
common exam for low-risk pregnancies � as well as more than 1,000
specialized ultrasound exams for high-risk pregnancies, Dashe found, "that
the detection of fetuses with major birth defects dropped significantly as
maternal body-mass index [BMI] increased: a difference of at least 20
percent when women of normal body-mass index were compared with obese
women."

The findings are to be published in the May issue of Obstetrics
& Gynecology.

To explore the degree to which ultrasound results are sensitive to BMI,
the study authors looked at a total of 12,200 ultrasounds previously
performed at the medical center between 2003 and 2007, among women
entering their 18th to 24th week of pregnancy.

The majority of both standard-risk and high-risk pregnant women were
Hispanic (about 87 percent), with about 10 percent participants being
black and 2 percent being white.

Stacking ultrasound results up against both the mother's BMI and infant
discharge records, the research team noted the 20 percent weight-linked
plunge in ultrasound effectiveness. That translated into a significant
rise in risk that a child would be born with a major birth defect despite
the fetus having appeared normal during an ultrasound.

For example, the specific risk for incorrectly receiving a "normal"
ultrasound reading rose from just one in every 250 women with normal BMI
to one among every 100 obese women.

Apart from the BMI effect, the authors also found that among cases
deemed to face a particularly high risk for fetal abnormalities prior to
undergoing a screening, ultrasound mistakes were more likely to occur
among women who had been diabetic prior to their pregnancy than among
women with other high-risk indications.

In fact, diabetic women were found to experience only a 38 percent
success rate in spotting fetal abnormalities via ultrasound, compared to
the 88 percent success rate experienced among women burdened with other
sorts of high-risk factors.

One expert said that patient obesity is only one of the challenges
obstetricians deal with when reading an ultrasound.

"It isn't that ultrasounds are unreliable, but that with some types of
patients it is certainly more difficult to visualize fetal anomalies,"
said Dr. Catherine Y. Spong, chief of the pregnancy and perinatology
branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development in Bethesda, Md.

"When I'm doing an ultrasound I'm trying to get as much information as
I can about the baby," she explained. "And some people are easier to do an
ultrasound on than others. For example, if someone has a lot of scarring
inside the tissue is thicker, and that can make the imaging more
difficult. And if people are obese � including women with diabetes, who
are not uncommonly overweight � you're going to have to look through a
lot more tissue, and that makes it more difficult to image."

Dashe and her colleagues noted that American women with normal BMI now
constitute a minority of the country's pregnant population, so these
screening problems could have "broad implications."

"Based on our findings, we would suggest that counseling be modified to
reflect the limitations of ultrasound in women who are overweight or
obese," she said. The researchers also advise that more research be
conducted to examine the particular risk for screening problems observed
among diabetic women.

Spong agreed. "This difficulty presents itself while there has been a
dramatic increase across the U.S. in terms of obesity and morbid obesity
among reproductive-age women," she said. "So this study provides
physicians with some data on what the difficulty truly is."

More information

For more on ultrasounds during pregnancy, go to the March
of Dimes.

CORRECTED: Hospital label no guarantee of better weight surgery

2009-04-21T12:32:00.001-07:00

(Corrects death rate in paragraph 8 to 0.17 from from 1.7 percent)

* Bariatric surgery "centers for excellence" not better

* Complication rates comparable with other hospitals

* Separate study looks at benefits for super obese

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Despite the fancy label, hospitals designated bariatric surgery "centers of excellence" have as many deaths and complications from the weight-loss procedure as others, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

The extra cost and effort required by hospitals to earn such a designation might not be worth it, they said.

"Designation as a bariatric surgery center of excellence does not ensure better outcomes," Dr. Edward Livingston of the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Archives of Surgery, said in a statement.

Bariatric surgery is becoming an increasingly popular treatment for obesity. It works by altering the digestive tract to reduce the volume of food that can be eaten and digested.

A separate study in the same journal looked at the benefits of the surgery in severely obese patients.

Large insurance companies and Medicare, the federal health plan for 44 million elderly and disabled Americans, help pay for the surgery � which costs from $15,000 to $35,000 � in severely obese people. And many payers, including Medicare, require the procedures to be done at hospital designated as a bariatric center of excellence.

Livingston wanted to see if patients at these centers actually got better care. He analyzed 2005 data on 19,363 patients who had bariatric surgery, including 5,420 patients whose surgery was performed at a center of excellence.

He found that 0.17 percent of bariatric surgery patients treated at a center of excellence died and 6.3 percent developed complications. That compared with a death rate of 0.09 and a complication rate of 6.4 percent at hospitals without a center of excellence designation.

Because a "center of excellence" designation requires hospitals to hire extra staff, they are costlier to run, yet these "extra expenses associated with center of excellence designation may not be warranted," Livingston wrote.

A separate study in the same journal looked at the effects of gastric bypass surgery in two groups of severely obese patients: the morbidly obese � those with a body mass index of 40 to 49 � and the super obese � those with a body mass index of 50 or higher.

Body mass index, or BMI, is a formula that takes into account a person's height and weight. A BMI of 30 is considered obese, while a BMI of 25 to 30 is considered overweight.

Dr. Michel Suter of Hopital du Chablais in Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues studied 492 morbidly obese patients and 133 super obese patients treated with gastric bypass between 1999 and 2006.

They found that while the super obese patients lost more weight (37.3 percent of their body weight) than the morbidly obese patients (34.7 percent of their body weight), fewer than half of the super obese got down to being merely overweight six years after the surgery, compared with more than 90 percent of the morbidly obese patients.

Despite these differences, they said improvements in quality of life and other health measures were similar in both groups. Previous studies have found obese people who have weight-loss surgery are less likely to die from heart disease, diabetes and cancer than obese people who do not.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

Hospital label no guarantee of better weight surgery

2009-04-21T05:51:00.001-07:00

CHICAGO (Reuters) -
Despite the fancy label, hospitals designated bariatric surgery "centers of excellence" have as many deaths and complications from the weight-loss procedure as others, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

The extra cost and effort required by hospitals to earn such a designation might not be worth it, they said.

"Designation as a bariatric surgery center of excellence does not ensure better outcomes," Dr. Edward Livingston of the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Archives of Surgery, said in a statement.

Bariatric surgery is becoming an increasingly popular treatment for obesity. It works by altering the digestive tract to reduce the volume of food that can be eaten and digested.

A separate study in the same journal looked at the benefits of the surgery in severely obese patients.

Large insurance companies and Medicare, the federal health plan for 44 million elderly and disabled Americans, help pay for the surgery � which costs from $15,000 to $35,000 � in severely obese people. And many payers, including Medicare, require the procedures to be done at hospital designated as a bariatric center of excellence.

Livingston wanted to see if patients at these centers actually got better care. He analyzed 2005 data on 19,363 patients who had bariatric surgery, including 5,420 patients whose surgery was performed at a center of excellence.

He found that 1.7 percent of bariatric surgery patients treated at a center of excellence died and 6.3 percent developed complications. That compared with a death rate of .09 and a complication rate of 6.4 percent at hospitals without a center of excellence designation.

Because a "center of excellence" designation requires hospitals to hire extra staff, they are costlier to run, yet these "extra expenses associated with center of excellence designation may not be warranted," Livingston wrote.

A separate study in the same journal looked at the effects of gastric bypass surgery in two groups of severely obese patients: the morbidly obese � those with a body mass index of 40 to 49 � and the super obese � those with a body mass index of 50 or higher.

Body mass index, or BMI, is a formula that takes into account a person's height and weight. A BMI of 30 is considered obese, while a BMI of 25 to 30 is considered overweight.

Dr. Michel Suter of Hopital du Chablais in Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues studied 492 morbidly obese patients and 133 super obese patients treated with gastric bypass between 1999 and 2006.

They found that while the super obese patients lost more weight (37.3 percent of their body weight) than the morbidly obese patients (34.7 percent of their body weight), fewer than half of the super obese got down to being merely overweight six years after the surgery, compared with more than 90 percent of the morbidly obese patients.

Despite these differences, they said improvements in quality of life and other health measures were similar in both groups. Previous studies have found obese people who have weight-loss surgery are less likely to die from heart disease, diabetes and cancer than obese people who do not.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

Obese young adults risk disability later

2009-04-17T05:33:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
People who are overweight or obese in young adulthood and middle-age are at elevated risk of being disabled in their later years, a new study suggests.

The study, of more than 2,800 U.S. adults in their 70s, found that those who were overweight or obese at any point in adulthood had an increased risk of developing problems with walking and climbing stairs.

What's more, the longer a person had been overweight, the greater his or her risk of mobility limitations, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The findings underscore the importance of preventing excessive weight gain early in life, according to lead researcher Dr. Denise Houston, an assistant professor of gerontology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"The data suggest that interventions to prevent overweight and obesity in young and middle-aged adults may be useful in preventing or delaying the onset of mobility limitations later in life," Houston said in a news release from the university.

Excess pounds can contribute to later-life disability by creating wear-and-tear in the joints or raising the risks of chronic health problems like heart disease and diabetes. People who become overweight at an early age, Houston and her colleagues note, may be habitually sedentary. That, in turn, leads to poorer fitness and weaker muscles, making them more vulnerable to disability later in life.

The findings are based on 2,845 adults in their 70s who were followed over seven years. At the outset, participants were asked to recall their weight at the ages of 25 and 50, and the researchers measured their current weight.

Overall, the study found, women who'd been overweight at all three time points were nearly three times more likely to develop a mobility limitation than their counterparts who'd been normal-weight throughout adulthood. Among men, the risk was increased by 61 percent.

The researchers also found that the risk of disability was elevated among participants who were normal-weight in their 70s but had been overweight earlier in life.

However, Houston explained, this may be because weight loss in older adults is often the result of poor health.

The findings are important, the researcher said, because the elderly population in the U.S. is growing � as is the obesity rate.

"Over the past couple of decades there has been a trend toward declining rates of physical disability in older adults," Houston said.

"However," she added, "the dramatic increase in overweight and obesity in the United States may reverse these declines and may lead to an increase in physical disability among future generations of older adults."

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, April 15, 2009.

United Air to charge obese double on full flights

2009-04-16T05:32:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -
United Airlines, a unit of UAL Corp, will require obese passengers bumped from full flights to purchase two seats on a subsequent flight, matching the policy of some other carriers.

The change brings the Chicago-based in line with eight other airlines including Continental, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest, United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said on Wednesday.

"Last year we had 700 complaints from passengers who had to share their seats," she said.

Under the new policy, obese passengers � defined as unable to lower the arm rest and buckle a seat belt with one extension belt � will still be reaccommodated, at no extra charge, to two empty seats if there is space available.

If, however, the airplane is full, they will be bumped from the flight and may have to purchase a second ticket, at the same price as the original fare, Urbanski said.

If the bumped passenger chooses to cancel the trip, the ticket will be refunded with no additional charge.

The policy is effective immediately.

(Reporting by Deena Beasley; Editing by Richard Chang)

Cut out soda to fight childhood obesity

2009-04-15T05:32:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Replacing sugar-laden drinks with water has a dramatic impact on the amount of calories kids consume and may help in the fight against childhood obesity, researchers report.

"The key observation is that when kids substitute sugar-sweetened beverages with water, there is a significant decline in total energy intake without any compensatory increase in the consumption of other beverages or food," Dr. Y. Claire Wang from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in New York, told Reuters Health.

Since kids consume a large amount of these "empty calories" nowadays (10 to 15 percent of their daily intake), she added, substituting calorie-free beverages "is a simple and effective way of eliminating the excess calories while improving the diet quality."

Sugar-sweetened beverages "should be viewed as treats, not necessities, and water is a perfect substitute for the purpose of thirst-quenching," Wang said.

Wang and colleagues analyzed diet data from the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Survey of 3098 children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 years.

They found that substituting sugar-sweetened beverages with water was associated with significant reductions in total calories consumed. Each 1 percent drop in sugar-sweetened drinks was associated with a 6.6 drop in calories consumed, and this reduction was not filled by increases in other food or beverages.

Wang and colleagues estimate that replacing all sugary drinks with water could cut out an average of 235 calories out of kids' diets each day.

Since the late 1970s, consumption of sugary drinks by children and adolescents has increased "substantially," and is thought to be "an important contributing factor to obesity," the researchers point out in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

"Replacing these liquid calories with calorie-free beverage alternatives therefore represents a key strategy to eliminate excess calories and to prevent obesity in childhood," they conclude.

"Brown fat" may help adults lose weight

2009-04-10T03:31:00.001-07:00

BOSTON (Reuters) -
A sparse form of fat that helps keep newborns warm is more common in adults than previously thought and that discovery that could lead to a new way to lose weight, researchers said on Wednesday.

Once activated by cold temperatures, so-called brown fat burns calories faster than regular fat. It is normally so dormant in adults that there has been debate over how much adults have or whether they have it at all.

In three studies in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report finding brown fat in most adults and discovering they can detect it by exposing people to cold. In some cases, adults who had more active areas of brown fat were thinner.

The hope is that if a way can be found to activate this brown fat and get the body to make more of it, people could burn off extra calories without additional exercise.

"Fifty grams of maximally activated brown fat accounts for 20 percent of your resting energy expenditure," Dr. Aaron Cypress of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who led one of the studies, said in an interview. "If you add that up, that's 400 or 500 calories per day.

"Practically speaking, we have a great potential to have a new treatment in our armamentarium against diabetes and obesity."

Dr. Kirsi Virtanen of the University of Turku in Finland and colleagues used positron emission tomography, known as PET scans, to find active brown fat deposits in five volunteers and also took little plugs of both types of fat. Brown fat became more active when the volunteers were cold, they reported.

"If the brown adipose tissue in this example were fully activated, it would burn an amount of energy equivalent to approximately 4.1 kg (9 pounds) of adipose tissue over the course of a year," researchers wrote.

OBESE PEOPLE HAVE LESS

A team at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands found obese men had less brown fat than lean men.

"Taken together, these studies point to a potential 'natural' intervention to stimulate energy expenditure: turn down the heat and burn calories (and reduce the carbon footprint in the process)," Dr. Francesco Celi of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease in Bethesda, Maryland wrote in a commentary.

But Celi cautioned that the vision may be oversimplified.

Cypress said scientists must first find a way to activate brown fat and, perhaps, even persuade the body to make more of it. In addition, the new studies did not directly test whether activating this fat would make people lose weight.

Celi said further research may reveal that even if brown fat is activated, the body may find a way to compensate by getting people to eat more.

"If you think about it, if you eat three donuts, you hit that calorie count right there," Cypress said.

"Using brown fat to treat obesity has been talked about for 30 or 40 years," he said. "But people essentially gave up on it. Many said it didn't exist in adult human beings and many said it didn't have any connection to obesity and weight at all. What these studies show is that virtually every adult human being has functional brown fat in them."

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)

Fire and ambulance recruits frequently overweight

2009-03-29T21:02:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
A new learn suggests that numerous youthful recruits representing fire and ambulance services are overweight and already be obsessed danger factors championing Colloq ticker sickness � a difficulty that poses a intimidation to communal safeness, researchers condition.

In a read of 370 candidates for Massachusetts firefighter and ambulance services, the researchers establish that 77 percent of the teenage recruits were either overweight or fat, based on body heap guide (BMI).

BMI is a amount of heaviness in relationship to altitude, and it is feasible for men who are powerful, but not overweight, to descend into the "overweight" BMI eminence.

However, the con create, overweight recruits were not a customarily attack bunch. Compared with their criterion-avoirdupois peers, they had higher blood force, higher cholesterol, higher triglycerides (a class of blood fat) and performed less satisfactorily on aptness tests.

"These findings are muscular evidence against the same false in the crisis responder community that multitudinous of their members own BMIs in the overweight and obese ranges merely on the basis of increased muscle heap," elder researcher Dr. Stefanos N. Kales respected in a written assertion.

"Even in these adolescent recruits," he added, "we documented a extremely mighty fellowship between surplusage BMI and an increased cardiovascular peril outline."

Kales and his colleagues at Harvard University and Boston University School of Medicine account the findings in the magazine Obesity.

For the memorize, the researchers reviewed medical exam records for 370 mostly masculine recruits for exigency responder services. All had passed their services' least requirements, so the burn the midnight oil assembly included those recruits most likely to get a labour, according to the researchers.

Overall, 44 percent of the recruits were overweight and single-third were fleshy. While all of the custom-mass recruits met the lowest appropriateness even on employ tests, 42 percent of gross recruits did not. Obese and overweight candidates also tended to keep higher send rates after a 3-instant movement test.

These results � coupled with the higher cholesterol, triglyceride and blood compression levels � all propose that overweight danger responders visage greater individual condition risks on the employment. On summit of that, their fitness problems could place their coworkers and the community at jeopardy, Kales warns.

"These professionals execute greatly psychologically and physically stressful toil and are consequently at high hazard for cardiovascular events," he said. "Sudden incapacitation during accountability puts these dilemma responders, as sufficiently as their colleagues and the common, in danger."

Kales and his colleagues advance making BMI a "imperative coin" on difficulty responders' medical exams. Keeping press personnel in form, they pen, may order multiple approaches � including nutrition teaching, compulsory employ during effort hours and journal "consequential" neat and suitability testing.

SOURCE: Obesity, online March 19, 2009.

Bill Clinton, Health Groups to Tackle Childhood Obesity

2009-02-21T13:46:00.001-08:00

THURSDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) � In what they called a "feature
agreement," former President Bill Clinton and the American Heart
Association announced Thursday the start of a nationwide first move or movement on
babyhood corpulence, aimed at getting up to 6 million American kids covered
forroutine visits to both first anxiety physicians and dietitians.

"I believe we desire the children of America to grasp, No. 1, that we crave
them to be satisfactorily, we desire them to flourish up fit, and we long for them to
start at current," Clinton told reporters at his basis's headquarters in New
York City.

The new collaboration, which Clinton called "a genuinely big deal or section exterior," links
medical organizations be fond of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the
American Dietetic Association with assurance companies such as Aetna,
WellPoint, Blue Cross of North Carolina and of Massachusetts and concealed
companies approve of PepsiCo, Owens Corning and Paychex. This, Clinton said, is
"the first period our three stakeholders be obsessed or in ownership of approach together to gear
babyhood plumpness in a comprehensive manner."

The contemporary conduct aims to speaking the tubbiness-associate healthcare
needs of almost 1 million children in the program's important year, close
reimbursing doctors and registered dietitians representing providing condition be anxious
and in-deepness nutritional counseling to kids on an continuing base. In
adding, participating companies desire proffer their employees access to the
break stir's benefits. The initial uniting want also offer parents
academic and nutritional knowing on tackling boyhood or girlhood chubbiness.

The planned coverage is place down to ratchet up to approaching 6.2 million
children (25 percent of all overweight American children) beside the end of
three years.

Observing that millions of American families merely don't comprehend where to
rotate championing aid on their child's heaviness issues � or fair can't own the means the
assist when they discover it � Clinton said he hoped that the single initiative
would talk what for numerous parents is "somewhere between a difficulty and a
nightmare."

The uncommon action, called the "Alliance Healthcare Initiative," is the
latest risk of The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, created in 2005
next to the AHA and the William J. Clinton Foundation. In 2006, the Alliance
helped lead an covenant amongst pliant quaff manufacturers that
established sweetener, calorie and fat guidelines, and circumscribed the selling of
sodas in uncomplicated, central, and high schools attended close to 35 million
American students.

For his bit, AHA president Dr. Tim Gardner described the different
initiative as "a extremely important instant" and single that is needed as the
country's medical organized entire becomes increasingly burdened alongside grossness-interconnected
costs amid growing pecuniary pine for.

He respected that the handle fitness bother costs for the treatment of
children who are already overweight or overweight currently tops $14 billion
annually, and, sum, embonpoint costs the condition an estimated $117 billion
annually in both healthcare costs and gone productivity.

"We're here today because there is an rotundity widespread in this
land," Gardner said. "One in three teens in this situation are overweight
or fat."

And, he added, "there's a danger that this producing longing be the chief
in our account to keep a shorter lifespan than their parents."

More data
For additional facts on childhood nutrition, the American Heart Association.

Obesity may lift migraine danger, U.S. learn finds

2009-02-15T23:42:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Obesity may lift the danger of getting migraines, the latest condition difficulty to be associated with being much too heavy, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

People ages 20 to 55 who were fat � either close a amount of belly overweight or using the criterion body heap guide based on a individual's altitude and heaviness � were more likely to account migraines or other rigorous headaches, they said.

Thirty-seven percent of women with abdominal corpulence as decided beside waist circumference reported experiencing such headaches, compared to 29 percent of non-fat women.

For men, 20 percent with abdominal plumpness reported migraines against 16 percent who did not be obsessed or in ownership of abdominal tubbiness.

The findings were based on facts from 22,000 people in a big U.S. regulation fitness examine.

"Now we order to look at, satisfactorily, if people misplace avoirdupois can we scientifically affirm that it helps headaches," Dr. Lee Peterlin of Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, single of the researchers, said in a handset appointment.

"We grasp that studies own shown that employ and action helps with humour. So it's not illogical to believe that it may genuinely better migraine," said Peterlin, whose findings desire be presented at an upcoming engagement of the American Academy of Neurology in Seattle.

Migraines are harsh headaches that also may embody nausea, vomiting and sensitiveness to illumination and sound. They are more same in women and frequently sprint in families.

They assail circular 30 million people in the United States, or 10 percent of the people, according to the National Headache Foundation. These headaches happen most regularly between the ages of 20 and 45, the assembly said.

The learn establish that after lifetime 55, the increased peril of migraines representing fleshy people was no longer current.

The researchers sought to elucidate the bind between migraines and chubbiness after former studies had produced conflicting findings.

Obesity also raises the jeopardy of the most daily form of diabetes, high blood force, Colloq ticker sickness, blow, some forms of cancer, arthritis, doze apnea and other conditions.

(Editing next to Xavier Briand)

Obesity can mingle up teen pregnancy

2009-02-05T23:28:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Obesity has been linked to higher odds of some pregnancy complications, and a new learn shows that the risks attach to teenagers as satisfactorily as adults.

In a read of teenage first-period mothers who gave childbirth at single urban medical centre, researchers establish that fat girls were at greater danger of developing diabetes during pregnancy or requiring a cesarean part during apportionment.

In the over, some of the chief concerns with teenage gravid mothers be obsessed or in ownership of been their inclination toward needy nutrition and inadequate heaviness get during pregnancy.

However, the increasing measure of teen corpulence may "authorization a exchange in our centre to embody risks associated specifically with plumpness," the researchers account in the magazine Obstetrics & Gynecology.

For the con, Dr. Sina Haeri of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and colleagues reviewed the records of 458 teenagers who gave delivering at lone Washington, D.C., health centre above four years. Most of the mothers were African American.

Overall, the memorize create, girls who were overweight before pregnancy were four times more likely than their criterion-avoirdupois counterparts to bring exterior or forth gestational diabetes � a form of diabetes that arises during pregnancy and raises a female's peril of developing class 2 diabetes later on.

Obese girls were also circular four times more liable to order a C-division deliverance, which echoes findings from studies of adult women. The high C-department pace is especially concerning in youthful girls, Haeri and her colleagues note, stated their higher jeopardy of pole-operative problems, such as infection.

The findings, according to the researchers, underscore the meaning of preventing teen tubbiness, and highlight a demand representing investigation into the optimal mass range championing parturient teenagers.

SOURCE: Obstetrics & Gynecology, February 2009.

Problems Tied to Obesity Also Seem to Affect Sleep

2009-01-25T01:41:00.001-08:00

FRIDAY, Jan. 23 (HealthDay News) � Three conditions frequently linked
to corpulence be obsessed or in ownership of also been tied independently to doze apnea, new studies
display.

Insulin opposition, the movement forward or forward movement of liver sickness, and living a
less-than-demanding existence were all establish to be associated with the same
breathing disarray, regardless of people's heaviness, according to reports
published in the February outflow of the American Journal of Respiratory
and Critical Care Medicine.

A John Hopkins University learn create a powerful bind between insulin
defiance � the body's incapacity to metabolize glucose � and
-disordered breathing (SDB), pauses or other abnormalities in
breathing while sleeping.

"What our investigation tells us is that SDB is characterized close multiple
physiological deficits that grow the predisposition representing class 2
diabetes mellitus," read chief Dr. Naresh Punjabi, an associate
professor of medication and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine, said in an American Thoracic Society tidings let go.

Another Hopkins con fellowship that fat people with extensive-everlasting
uneven hypoxia, the desire of oxygen that occurs during obstructive
grip or have a zizz apnea (OSA), showed liver issues in proportion to the strictness of
the catch forty winks confusion.

"We hypothesize that rigorous plumpness, per se, acts as a first hit in
the advance of liver affliction, inducing hepatic steatosis, whereas the
nearness of the extended-established discontinuous hypoxemia that regularly characterizes
OSA acts as a succeeding cuff," conduct researcher Dr. Vsevolod Y. Polotsky, of
the Johns Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center, said in the identical talk
free. "The hypoxic emphasis of OSA may escort oxidative force in the
livers of patients with harsh tubbiness, important to more
irritation."

Enzyme levels and other findings, though, propose that chubbiness and
sleep apnea are not completely tied to each other, he said, faculty that
each condition ought be dealt with separately to also speaking the
complications of both.

"Our facts advance that patients with OSA and rigorous nocturnal
hypoxemia should be screened championing liver ailment, and, conversely, patients
with liver malady should be screened for OSA," Polotsky said.

The third memorize place down up that excessive sitting or set during the
daytime causes a fluid move in the legs during sleep that may own a rõle in
the happening of sleep apnea.

When people prevaricate down to sleep, solving that has been retained in the
legs during the sunlight gets redistributed to the higher remains, Dr. T. Douglas
Bradley, professor of medicament and chairman of the Centre for Sleep
Medicine and Circadian Biology at the University of Toronto, explained in
the information liberate. "It is, consequently, likely that some of the displaced
spirits power reach the neck and predispose single to loftier airway
constriction," he said.

The researchers form these changes in people who were seated but
not overweight and who they suspected had obstructive sleep apnea � a
discovery that power aid explain why 40 percent of people with the
breathing chaos are not fat and why employ without avoirdupois deprivation
appears to cut sleep apnea issues in some people.

"An important involvement of our observations is that sitting living
may predispose to OSA, not lone beside promoting grossness but also next to causing
dependent ichor collecting in the legs, which can change position rostrally to the
neck overnight," Bradley said.

More knowing

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has more circular sleep apnea.

Wallace and Gromit aid to contend corpulence

2009-01-02T09:47:00.001-08:00

LONDON (AFP) -
The regulation launched a function to contend the country's expanding waistlines on Friday with a cartoon close the Oscar-engaging animators of Wallace and Gromit to hammer dwelling-location the communication.

The TV adverts beside Nick Park's Aardman Animations featuring plasticine figures is the centrepiece of the Change4Life push to cut the 9,000 immature deaths linked to corpulence in Britain every year.

The campaign, which includes 75 million pounds of command marketing currency above three years, and back from 33 companies, aims to opposite the foretell that next to 2050 up to 90 percent of today's children desire be overweight or fat.

"Change4Life has a carping hungriness, we are irritating to build a lifestyle mutiny on a big flake, something which no authority has attempted before," said communal condition cleric Dawn Primarolo.

Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said people were increasingly unknowing of the risks of on-eating and desire of action.

"The investigation we undertook representing this action showed that lone six percent of people accepted the links between plumpness, overweight and adverse fitness effects," he said.

The first brightly coloured Nick Park advert shows first gentleman evolving from a huntsman assembly his own food to a seated lifestyle in face of the TV earlier he is shocked into attractive employ close to illustrations of overweight pumping about the body.

The campaign warfare cry is "Eat satisfactorily, move more, living longer".

Weight deprivation surgery improves sex object in men

2009-01-01T09:42:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Sexual dysfunction that commonly occurs in morbidly fat men improves after heaviness deprivation surgery, according to a new learn.

"Sexual dysfunction should be considered single of the numerous potentially reversible complications of corpulence," the read side concludes.

Dr. Ramsey M. Dallal, from Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia, and colleagues lagging the degree to which 97 morbidly overweight men suffered from sex dysfunction and then analyzed the exchange in reproductive object after material avoirdupois bereavement following gastric avoid surgery.

Before surgery, the morbidly fat men had significantly drop genital aim related to that of a before published allusion command assembly of men once surgery, the investigators account.

After losing an intend of two thirds of their surplusage mass, men adept important improvements in procreative or procreant employ, with the amount of tonnage need predicting the even of betterment.

"We approximate that a gentleman who is morbidly fleshy has the identical position of sex dysfunction as a nonobese male circular 20 years older," the investigators description. "Sexual rõle or rõle improves in substance after gastric avoid surgery to a regular that reaches or approaches lifetime-based norms."

"Sexual raison d'étre is an heavy standpoint to property of existence and is at current satisfactorily documented to be a reversible condition," Dallal explained.

"We are interested in examining progenitive accountability in females, as sufficiently as agreement the device of plumpness-associate propagative dysfunction," Dallal added.

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Surgeons, December 2008.

Obese men be obsessed or in ownership of worse sperm property than leaner men

2008-12-31T09:48:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Obese men are more than three times as likely to be obsessed or in ownership of little sperm counts compared with their criterion-heaviness peers, a learn exterior this month in the magazine Fertility and Sterility shows.

The heaviest men were also at triple the danger of having a squat listing up or away of progressively motile sperm � sperm that swim advance in a direct mark, Dr. Ahmad O. Hammoud of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and colleagues establish.

"There is a powerful relationship between overweight and corpulence and altered sperm parameters," Hammoud and his side pen. Future studies should look at this relationship above period, they condition, as satisfactorily as how avoirdupois deprivation power assail sperm characteristics.

There has been some evidence that plumpness may debilitate fertility in men, the researchers note, while increased body fat can current to drop testosterone levels and higher estrogen levels. To enquire or inquire into how remains heap guide (BMI) affects sperm property, they evaluated 390 men who sought infertility treatment with their partners on a 2-year interval.

Twenty-four percent of the men were custom mass, 43 percent were overweight, and 33 percent were overweight. Overall, 10.5 percent had little sperm counts.

The prevalency of microscopic sperm counts rose as BMI increased; fat men were 3.3 times more liable to own stubby sperm counts than average-tonnage men. The peril of having a stumpy numeral of progressively moveable sperm also rose with BMI; fleshy men were 3.4 times more expected than conventional-Dialect heft men to keep a dwarfed progressively non-stationary sperm calculate. Obese men were also 1.6 times more likely than overweight or same-weight men to have a high portion of abnormally shaped sperm.

While there was a tendency toward increasing likelihood of erectile dysfunction with increasing BMI, the relationship wasn't statistically important. However, the researchers note, other studies have create that tubbiness is associated with a greater jeopardy of feebleness.

The actuality that the read was done amongst men seeking infertility treatment makes it likely that the con assembly had worse sperm attribute than the people at big, Hammoud and colleagues dot outdoors. Nevertheless, they combine, the correlation of needy sperm characteristic and increased BMI in the common populace is likely like.

SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, December 2008.

Gastric Bypass Halts Diabetes in Obese Teens

2008-12-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

MONDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) � Obese teenagers who be obsessed or in ownership of
gastric avoid surgery not lone misplace heaviness but perceive their class 2 diabetes
vanish, a new learn finds.

Also called bariatric surgery, the manner works close limiting the magnitude
of the abdomen and thereby reducing the amount of food single can dine. In
this read, researchers second-hand the Roux-en-Y method, which involves placing
an adjustable band to bit away most of the belly. The ribbon limits how
much nutriment the body absorbs.

"Previous studies own shown repeated forgiveness of category 2 diabetes in
adults following bariatric surgery, but until at current, no investigation had been
done to furnish knowing circular outcomes of adolescent diabetics who are
considering surgical avoirdupois deprivation," said conduct researcher Dr. Thomas H.
Inge, an associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Cincinnati
Children's Hospital Medical Center.

"Our con establish that, in most cases, teens can misplace lone-third of their
mass and approach exterior diabetes medications with pardon of their diabetes
lone year after avoid surgery. This is certainly not the case representing like
diabetic teenage patients who did not suffer surgery," Inge respected.

The account is published in the January outflow of Pediatrics.

For the memorize, Inge's assembly looked at 78 teens with classification 2 diabetes.
Eleven patients underwent gastric circumvent surgery, while the other 67
patients received same anxiety championing their diabetes.

For the teens who had surgery, not unwed did they keep an intend 34
percent reduction in their tonnage, but their diabetes went into deliverance.
Teens that did not have surgery proverb an customary Dialect heft bereavement of less than
two pounds and quiet needed their diabetes medication.

"In adding to the evocative weight need and kind 2 diabetes results,
patients undergoing the gastric avoid surgery also showed important
betterment in blood force, insulin, glucose, cholesterol and
triglyceride levels," Inge said.

Type 2 diabetes takes a big ring on the remains, and the earlier it
starts, the more of an collision it can have, Inge explained.

"These beforehand surgical investigating findings propose that diabetes may not
be a diagnosis kids have to living with for the repose of their lives," Inge
said. "They may not have to visage diabetic retinopathy, advancing
coronary Colloq ticker sickness and renal failing. In actuality, there is agreeable justification to
be optimistic about their days or period to come cardiovascular condition."

"If you are a sort 2 diabetic and morbidly fat, gastric skirt
surgery should be considered in the treatment pathway," Inge added.

Dr. David L. Katz, chairman of the Prevention Research Center at Yale
University School of Medicine, thinks that while surgery is effective it
does not deal or section outdoors with the fountain-head of the corpulence widespread amongst teens.

"Bariatric surgery is distinctly effective in treating rigorous plumpness,
preventing and reversing genre 2 diabetes, and regular extending survival when
applied to adults," Katz said. "That almost identical benefits ensue when the
conduct is applied to adolescents is heavy, but beside no means
surprising."

Despite the good or happy result or outcome of surgery, these results should be viewed with
caution, Katz said.

"A great and growing proportion of all children and adolescents are
matter to tubbiness, and its complications," Katz said. "Surgery can
moderate those complications, but can we genuinely condone ushering more and
more youthful people because of the OR doors for a larger surgical course to
affix what policies and programs that help healthful eating and custom
action could have prevented in the first location?"

Gastric move or get circular surgery is an fruitful hindmost spa for harsh chubbiness
in adolescence, as in adulthood, Katz said. "But a rearmost retirement it should
be, and we should do all we can to cut the order for this action next to
combating the base causes of grossness in our fellowship."

More data

For more on gastric digression surgery, the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases.

Low demise measure after corpulence surgery in Sweden

2008-12-26T09:52:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Death rates before long after anti-corpulence or "bariatric" surgery in Sweden are little, statistics display.

"Most published series are from high-amount authority centers," according to conduct investigator Dr. Richard Marsk from Danderyd Hospital, Stockholm. "We be obsessed or in ownership of shown that bariatric surgery can be performed with squat mortality on a nationwide even."

Marsk and colleagues assessed deaths from any fountain-head after heaviness deprivation surgery in Sweden using facts from 14,768 bariatric procedures conducted between 1980 and 2005.

The beforehand pole-surgery demise measure ranged from 0.2 percent at 30 days to 0.3 percent at 90 days, they account, with a 1-year cumulative decease pace of 0.5 percent.

The 1-year cumulative disappearing gait adjusted representing lifetime was higher championing men (1.1 percent) than for women (0.4 percent) and higher for patients older than duration 50 (1.2 percent) than for patients younger than extent of being 50 (0.4 percent).

Including the complete move or come after or next-up interval, the age-adjusted expiring rapidity was twice as lofty for men (100 per 10,000 persons per year) than for women (50 per 10,000 persons per year).

"I accept that the increased mortality seen amongst men is due to increased preoperative co-ailing sickness and also later referral to surgery, such that men to a greater greatness own established cardiovascular affliction at the period of surgery," Marsk said.

"Further studies are needed to explain this in filled," he added.

Cumulative mortality did not disjoin between patients having first surgery or "revisional" surgery, the researchers note.

The most same causes of end during the first year after avoirdupois bereavement surgery were non-Colloq ticker associate, the investigators description, whereas the most daily causes of late death were send assail and cancer.

SOURCE: Annals of Surgery, November 2008.

Fast food + close by schools = fat kids

2008-12-24T09:41:00.001-08:00

CHICAGO (Reuters) -
Youth who learn fair a little advance from a quick-food manner out dine fewer fruit and vegetables, quaff more soda and are more likely to be fat than students at other schools, according to investigation published Tuesday.

The read, which implicated more than 500,000 adolescents at central schools and high schools in California, lends new tinder to a growing answer against the fleet-nutriment producing as studies propose they current to the rising corpulence widespread in the United States.

"We've basically discovered that kids who are thriving to a institution that is close a armada-aliment restaurant be obsessed or in ownership of a higher pose of being overweight and overweight than kids who are at a kindergarten that is not close by a quick-nutriment restaurant," said Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University in California, whose con appears in the American Journal of Public Health.

U.S. childhood plumpness rates own tripled since 1980, although they leveled away this decade. The regulation says 32 percent of U.S. children are overweight and 16 percent are fat.

Consumer groups keep pushed representing laws such as July's halt on initial brisk-existence restaurants in decided Los Angeles neighborhoods, while the food make frequently maintains that a desire of employ is more to discover flaw with.

The researchers said it is not as till or until now unclouded whether their results attach to other parts of the United States, and this should be premeditated more.

But their memorize adds to former investigating showing that abstain-food restaurants be inclined or disposed to be clustered nigh schools.

"We are genuinely making a uniting between move famished food nearness to schools and tubbiness," Davis said in a handset appointment.

"Students who were exposed to close at hand deny oneself food have a higher even of body heap guide � they weigh more. They are more liable to be overweight and fleshy," he said.

For the burn the midnight oil, Davis and colleagues examined the relationship between diet-food restaurants located within single half mile of schools and chubbiness amongst centre and lofty nursery primary or grammar or less important or high institute students in California.

They took heaviness and dietary knowing from a statewide college examine between 2002 and 2005 and crucifix referenced the facts with a database of summit starve food chains located in or into the area or locality each university.

"Overall, our patterns are agreeing with the concept that fast food within reach schools affects students' eating habits, overweight and grossness," Davis and colleagues wrote.

They also establish that students whose schools were located near-fast food restaurants lunch fewer servings of vegetables and fruits, and imbibe afar more soda than students at schools not located near fast-food restaurants.

The lucubrate could not arrange why fast-food restaurants near schools have such an collision, but Davis said it expected goes satisfactorily beyond access to burgers, fries and tacos.

"A not far-exterior or -away fast-food restaurant is actually a hangout location championing people to mix," Davis said.

(Editing near Anthony Boadle)

Even a Little Overweight, Inactivity Hurts the Heart

2008-12-23T09:47:00.001-08:00

MONDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) � Even a hardly or barely any additional pounds and
fair a little passiveness or passivity increased the danger of Colloq ticker failing in a larger
learn of American doctors.

"What this read shows is that regular overweight men who are not fat
be obsessed or in ownership of an grow in send default peril," said Dr. Satish Kenchaiah, conduct
originator of a account on the discovery in the Dec. 23 outflow of
Circulation.

As representing employ, "even a microscopic amount of bodily action appears to
decrease the jeopardy of heart non-execution," said Kenchaiah, who did the investigation
as a epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and is at current
at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

The con has followed more than 21,000 doctors championing two decades,
measuring amongst other factors the power of overweight and corporeal
repositioning on happening of heart remissness, the advancing deprivation of adeptness
to force blood, which is frequently a prelude to greater coronary events.

Outright corpulence, defined as a body-heap guide of 30 or above, has extensive
been known as a hazard constituent for heart failure. The new description concentrated
on men who were borderline overweight, with a remains-heap directory of 25 to
29.9.

About 5 percent of the doctors were overweight, and 40 percent were
overweight, when the memorize began. Adjusting for other chance factors such as
high blood force and lofty cholesterol, the burn the midnight oil establish a 49 percent
increased frequency of heart failure in overweight men compared to those
with a remains-mountain listing of 25 or less. Incidence of heart failure was 180
percent for the fat men compared to the leaner ones.

It was the identical narrative for corporal move. "Men who betrothed in
fleshly energy anywhere from single to three times a month had an 18
percent reduction in heart failure gamble," Kenchaiah said. "For those who
were demanding five to seven times a week, the reduction was 36 percent. The
more you employ, the more reduction you accomplish."

The fellowship of flat or level least incarnate vim with reduced risk
could be explained as an indicator of agreeable habits in common, he said. "It
is feasible that they own a healthier lifestyle in dominant," Kenchaiah
said.

The lucubrate create that doctors who rarely or at no period exercised were older,
smoked cigarettes more regularly, and were more likely to keep elevated blood
compression or diabetes.

"This initial story reinforces what we've said in the over," said Dr.
Gerald Fletcher, a preventative cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in
Jacksonville, Fla. "Not being fleshy but being overweight is definitely a
risk constituent for heart failure."

While Fletcher said he would have liked a more decisive needle of
carnal life � the article described it as merely breaking a perspire �
he said the study showed again that "energetic apply makes the
differentiation. The more you do, the higher it is for you."

Two-thirds of Americans have surplusage carcass heaviness, and lone circular 30
percent drill regularly, Kenchaiah said. About 660,000 single cases of
heart failure are diagnosed each year in the United States, he said, and
80 percent of the men and 75 percent of the women elderly 65 and older who
are diagnosed with heart failure misplace lone's existence within eight years.

More knowing

Heart failure and its treatment are described close the American Heart Association.

For the Obese, Holiday Tables Serve Platefuls of Doubt

2008-12-20T10:05:00.001-08:00

SATURDAY, Dec. 20 (HealthDay News) � The period away interval can be
especially firm representing overweight or fat people as they strive to
command their eating habits and handle with extensively held misconceptions,
according to a Duke University authority.

"Social situations build people put hand on self-aware circular what they be dressed or clothed in
and what they dine to the dot where they perceive they're being judged championing
every morsel that touches their lips," Martin Binks, chairman of
behavioral condition at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, said in a
university tidings let go.

"Some of the favourite misconceptions about corpulence are that people carry
it on themselves, and that they look advance to the holidays so they can
lunch more," he said.

In actuality, overweight and overweight people are frequently highly-strung and troubled
during the break period because they're fearful they don't be obsessed or in ownership of the
willpower to discontinue the numerous temptations. Some place a collection of action into
avoiding communal gatherings or decided foods or eating triggers, and others
condition they can faculty the judgmental attitudes of other people.

"Even if they aren't being judged, they rotate or exchange or change into so self-awake that
they believe they are," said Binks, who respected that the extreme centre on food
during the holidays compounds the challenges faced close overweight and fat
people.

He offered advice on how overweight or fleshy people can grasp the
holidays without feel badly or putting too much force on
themselves:

Indulge in the inner anima of the holidays, not the eating. Focus on
spending stretch with friends and family.

When faced with nutriment seductive, employ section command. If it's a
alcove food and you breakfast a bite more than criterion, it won't damage your heaviness
deprivation striving as extensive as you get risk in on line the next daytime.

If you're doing the gathering compass, pay out spell socializing, not eating.
Put something on your serving dish and make put into practice or operation of it as a prop.

Make a determine to discover exterior what you genuinely hungriness for in existence and
what you're looking for that you can't come across in aliment.

More knowing

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlines how to
own a satisfactorily interval occasion.

Childhood Obesity May Cause Thyroid Problems

2008-12-19T10:08:00.001-08:00

THURSDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) � Childhood corpulence may exchange
the form and object of the thyroid gland, an device in the neck that
releases hormones critical to metabolism.

Studies be obsessed or in ownership of establish that thyroid disorders can conduct to plumpness, but a
new Italian learn suggests that tubbiness may fountain-head thyroid dysfunction in
some cases.

"Our read shows that alterations in thyroid aim and shape are
same in fat children, and we may own uncovered the bind," con
originator Dr. Giorgio Radetti, of the Regional Hospital of Bolzano, said in
an Endocrine Society tidings let go. "We create an fellowship between body
heap and thyroid hormone levels, which suggests that overweight surplusage may keep a
rõle in thyroid fabric modification."

Radetti and his colleagues evaluated 186 overweight and fat children
representing almost three years. The children's thyroid hormone levels and thyroid
antibodies were lagging, and they underwent a thyroid ultrasound. Thyroid
antibodies are current in people with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an
autoimmune sickness of the thyroid in which inoculated organized entire T-cells assail
the thyroid. Ultrasound results from 73 of the children were suggestive of
Hashimoto's affliction, but none of them showed thyroid antibodies.

"The ultrasound findings are a morsel mystifying," Radetti said. "However,
the findings do propose the being of a little-degree irritation condition,
which has been known to delineate chubbiness."

The memorize was published in the December outflow of The Journal of
Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Radetti said that thyroid employ has been shown to come or go back to criterion
after heaviness deprivation, which means it may be feasible to opposite thyroid
abnormalities detected on an ultrasound. However, it's not known whether
persisting thyroid abnormalities in fleshy children could movement into
extensive-everlasting thyroid ailment in beforehand adulthood. More investigation is needed to
answer these questions, he said.

More knowing

The American Thyroid Association has more circular the thyroid.

Study Finds Molecular Link Between Obesity, Hypertension

2008-12-18T10:09:00.001-08:00

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 17 (HealthDay News) � Most people grasp that
fat individuals be inclined or disposed to be obsessed or in ownership of high blood force, but at current British
researchers own identified the molecular pathway that could explain that
bind.

In findings published in the Dec. 17 online outflow of the New England
Journal of Medicine, Sadaf Farooqi, of the University of Cambridge,
and her colleagues demonstrated that signaling because of the melanocortin-4
receptor (MC4R) helps to adjust blood compression in humans.

Farooqi and her side premeditated blood pressure in 46 overweight individuals who
were missing single duplication of the MC4R gene, and compared them to 30 fat
individuals who had two criterion copies of the gene. Individuals in the
MC4R-deficient people tended to keep a little drop blood pressure
values than did the command assembly (123/73 vs. 131/79), and less
hypertension sum.

"The people where the MC4R gene is not working correctly genuinely were
protected from lofty blood pressure," Farooqi explained.

As it turns exterior, these individuals appeared to have what Farooqi called
"impaired Often sound," which is that self-acting bit of the highly-strung
organized entire that controls the styled "contend or flying" answer to emphasis,
and which clearly mediates this defensive outcome.

One standpoint of the autonomic excitable organization, representing case , involves the
grow in Colloq ticker measure that accompanies waking. In both learn populations,
the send pace while sleeping was identical and increased upon waking. But
the magnitude of the swell in the two groups differed, with MC4R-lacking
individuals' heart gait increasing less than command individuals.

Next, Farooqi teamed up with scientists at Eli Lilly, the
pharmaceutical companionship, to test an MC4R agonist � an assumed
place together that works close inducing signaling on account of the MC4R receptor. The
medication is in happening as a possible anti-corpulence medication, though this
read was not assessing its consequence on heaviness deprivation. Instead, the line-up
looked at the medication's consequence on blood pressure in 28 fleshy individuals
(none of whom were MC4R-defective).

What they observed was an acute, section-dependent enlarge in blood
pressure upon medicament treatment, Farooqi said. "So, basically what this means
is that both our own facts on the patients with the MC4R gene difficulty, and
the knowing from Lilly giving the pharmaceutical, display that this gene is important in
controlling blood pressure."

Most people, of footpath, are not missing the MC4R gene. What normally
happens in gross individuals, Farooqi explained, is this: "As people get
avoirdupois, they build more corpulent. And your obese produces a hormone called leptin,
and levels of leptin then dilate. Leptin then circulates in the
bloodstream and goes to the brains, where it triggers MC4R, which then
triggers the sympathetic to or toward set, and drives up your blood pressure."

Dr. Daniel Marks, of the Oregon Health & Science University in
Portland, said, "It is a satisfactorily-done con and teaches us something circular
the basic physiology of blood pressure adjustment in humans."

Yet Marks also cautioned that MC4R is not likely the lone bond
between plumpness and blood pressure.

"There's a differentiation between being statistically heavy and
clinically momentous," he said. "Those are two different issues, and I
believe the departing of clinical meaning is quiet comely unrecognized
here."

Dr. George Bakris, of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of
Medicine, called the memorize a "actually big deal or part outdoors."

"I imagine this newspaper is thriving to rotate or exchange or change into a genuine measure," Bakris said,
"because it is the first period this friendly of characterization has been done
in such a extremely unmixed manner and provides a method of identifying people who may
not have a blood pressure bother, regular though they may have a mass
query."

Bakris suggested that MC4R antagonists � drugs that labour beside blocking
MC4R � could discover employ as anti-hypertensive medications.

"I in person expect that's the most consequential part of this tabloid,"
Bakris said, "is if you extend the self-consciousness, you cut sympathetic
note, blood pressure desire move down, and if you don't have any side effects
associated with it, that would be great."

MC4R, Marks explained, is lone of five melanocortin receptors in the
intellect; these proteins modify epidermis coloration and force, amongst other
things. But MC4R regulates body tonnage, "and it does that next to altering both
crave and energetics of your remains � your basal metabolic rapidity," at
least partly via the sympathetic delicate group.

MC4R deficiency is the most same genetic disarray causing tubbiness,
Farooqi said; it accounts championing 6 percent of individuals with beforehand-attack
chubbiness and 2.5 percent of heavy adults.

More data

For more on hypertension, the American Heart Association.

Obesity danger power rotate teens away smoking

2008-12-17T10:14:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Telling teenage would-be smokers that lighting up may build them fat down the manner may be a more effective obstacle than harping on the risks of Colloq ticker sickness and cancer from smoking, hints investigation published in the latest outflow of the American Journal of Public Health.

In a learn, Finnish researchers establish that smoking during adolescence strongly predicted the happening of abdominal corpulence in adulthood, amongst both men and women.

In certain, they create that girls who smoked at least 10 cigarettes daily during adolescence had a 3.4-centimeter larger waistline as youthful adults, on intend, than did girls who had at no period smoked.

Smoking during adolescence also increased a female's odds of being heavy in common later in existence, not fair having a big waistline. Girls who smoked at least 10 cigarettes circadian during adolescence were twice as likely to rotate or exchange or change into overweight as nonsmokers.

The findings main stem from a extensive-name move or come after or next-up read of almost 4300 Finnish twins born between 1975 and 1979. About 50 percent of the men and women had not ever smoked and 12 percent had smoked during adolescence. By the interval they were in their beforehand 20s, circular 24 percent of men and 11 percent of women were overweight.

In comments to Reuters Health, con skull Dr. Suoma E. Saarni, from University of Helsinki, told Reuters Health that smoking in adolescence "seems to predispose" the smoker to a great waistline, free of condition habits and parents body heaviness (i.e., a teenage individual's genetic predisposition to being overweight or overweight).

"And most absorbing," said Saarni, the clear bind between smoking during adolescence and being ponderous later on was self-governing of the adolescent human's own remains avoirdupois � faculty that those who were big smokers had greater waist circumference regular within the identical remains heap guide (BMI) levels as their non-smokers peers.

This investigating, Saarni added, "gives a utensil" to highlight the risks of smoking to adolescents and prepubescent adults "close showing the ailing outcome on the carcass form." This can be an important bar, "because customarily pubescent people discover cardiovascular affliction and class 2 diabetes or even cancer so afar risks that they be obsessed or in ownership of extremely little collision on ones smoking behavior."

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, January 2009.

Genetic Variants Tied to Obesity

2008-12-15T10:13:00.001-08:00

MONDAY, Dec. 15 (HealthDay News) � Certain people fair may be
meant to be fat, based on the discovery of six additional genetic
variants tied to people with higher body heap guide, a new learn says.

The read close an supranational consortium, published online Dec. 14 in
Nature Genetics, adds to former investigation that linked two other
genetic variants to corpulence.

"One of the absorbing things is that the genes close by these variants
are all demanding in the central highly-strung organized entire, suggesting that inherited
change in crave adjustment may be obsessed or in ownership of something to do with people's
predisposition to plumpness," con chief Dr. Joel Hirschhorn of Children's
Hospital Boston and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, said in a tidings
let go issued beside some of the consortium participants.

The memorize, next to the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits
(GIANT) consortium, concluded that each single known alternative had a
little but cumulative outcome on a individual's BMI, a proportion of heaviness to
altitude. In all, it added up to an intend of 10 pounds in those with most
of the variants, compared to those with the fewest. However, Hirschhorn
said the researchers may own establish lone a few of maybe hundreds of
genetic regions that made such microscopic contributions to unwed's avoirdupois, and
more studies would be needed to uncover them all.

"As we learn more circular what some of the genes in these regions do, we
desire that these discoveries power propose routes to initial therapies representing
tubbiness," junction first originator of the burn the midnight oil, Dr. Elizabeth Speliotes of
Massachusetts General Hospital, said in the talk free.

Previous studies in families or twins keep create that genetics account
championing up to 70 percent of BMI changing in the common people.

The World Health Association estimates that more than 1 billion adults
worldwide are overweight, with at least 300 million of them classified as
overweight (having a BMI of 30 or above).

More knowing

The American Heart Association has more about remains heap directory.

Study finds six new gene mutations linked to corpulence

2008-12-14T10:19:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Researchers be obsessed or in ownership of identified six new gene mutations linked to corpulence and said on Sunday they dot to ways the brains and highly-strung organized entire command eating and metabolism.

"Today's findings are a larger movement advance in agreement how the human body regulates heaviness," Dr. Alan Guttmacher, Acting chairman of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said in a assertion.

"This learn essentially doubles in single cut or hit or deal a blow to down descend the numeral of known and replicated genetic factors contributing to plumpness as a communal condition difficulty," added Dr. Kari Stefansson, Chief Executive Officer of deCODE Genetics of Iceland and lone of the researchers.

The supranational side analyzed 300,000 lone-character mutations in the genetic regulation known as unwed nucleotide polymorohisms or SNPs in more than 30,000 people from Iceland, the Netherlands and the United States.

They crucifix-checked their findings in 40,000 people from Denmark and the United states.

They establish variations in six genes � TMEM18, KCTD15, GNPDA2, SH2B1, MTCH2 and NEGR1 � were strongly associated with a altitude-to-avoirdupois proportion known as remains heap guide or BMI.

"Today's findings are a greater move important in contract how the anthropoid remains regulates mass," said Guttmacher, whose fellowship, individual of the National Institutes of Health, helped furnish and behaviour the read.

"One of the most notable aspects of these discoveries is that most of these initial danger factors are close genes that adjust processes in the intellect," added Stefansson, whose companionship hopes to vend genetic tests based on such discoveries.

"This suggests that as we labour to bring exterior or forth higher means of combating tubbiness, including using these discoveries as the first step in developing single drugs, we order to centre on the adjustment of crave at least as much as on the metabolic factors of how the carcass uses and stores energy," Stefansson said.

"These uncommon variants may mark to valuable different medication targets," he added.

Nearly a third of U.S. adults are considered fat with a BMI of 30 or more. Obesity is associated with more than 100,000 deaths each year in the U.S. people and trends are like in numerous other countries.

"We grasp that environmental factors, such as rider, amuse oneself a rõle in chubbiness, but this investigation more provides evidence that genetic change plays a important part in an separate's predisposition to grossness," said the genome organizing's Dr. Eric Green.

(Reporting close by Maggie Fox; editing beside Todd Eastham)

Kids with corpulence-linked gene be fond of fattening foods

2008-12-11T10:37:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK - Scientists may be obsessed or in ownership of figured exterior single justification some people reach representing the french fries as an alternative or a substitute of an apple. It could be a gene that's been linked to an increased danger of corpulence. A learn of children establish those with a same change of the gene be inclined or disposed to gorge high-calorie foods. They ate 100 additional calories per food, which above the extensive name can place on heaviness, said Colin Palmer, who led the read at the University of Dundee in Scotland.
The findings don't intend that everyone with that form of the gene desire dine too much and rotate or exchange or change into fat, he said. They fair power own a inclination to lunch more fattening foods.
"It's quiet your choice," he said. "This gene desire not build you overweight if you do not binge."
Palmer said the results back the theory that babyhood plumpness today could be connected to the widespread availability and little charge of lofty-calorie foods. The investigation is published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Last year, scientists discovered the gene, named FTO, was linked to tubbiness but they didn't grasp why. Most of the other genes thinking to assail body avoirdupois power crave.
Palmer and his colleagues wanted to comprehend if the FTO gene also had to do with eating behavior, or whether it implicated how the remains burns calories. They premeditated on 2,700 Scottish children ages 4 to 10 and position a assembly of them because of broad tests.
Nearly two-thirds of the children had at least lone duplication of the gene alternative, circular the identical proportion create in hindmost year's con of mostly snow-snowy Europeans. That memorize fellowship that those with lone copy of the gene modification had a 30 percent increased peril of chubbiness, and carriers of two copies had almost a 70 percent increased jeopardy.
The gene changing is also place down up in other populations; the frequency in Chinese is about half that of Europeans.
After confirming the grossness bind in the larger Scottish assemblage, the researchers examined 97 of the children. They took a numeral of measurements, including remains overweight and metabolic measure.
The children were stated three meals at institution to value their eating behavior. The repast included a mingle of fruits and vegetables, ham, cheese, potato chips, chocolate candies and bread rolls.
The researchers form that children with the gene alteration showed no differentiation in metabolic rates, levels of bodily action or the amount of food eaten.
"The lone item we could discover was the actuality that they were eating much richer foods," said Palmer.
On design, those with the gene altering ate 100 calories more than those without it.
Dr. Rudolph Leibel, an embonpoint researcher at Columbia University in New York, said getting agreeable measurements of how much someone eats is firm, but the Scottish burn the midnight oil did it in a closely controlled manner.
He said the overeating may be driven more close the order championing calories than a favourite for fatty foods. Fat is equitable a adequate method to get those added calories.
"Bite for bite, there are more calories in a Big Mac than there are in an apple," said Leibel, who wrote an Brit chief that accompanies the lucubrate in the magazine.
A late study in the Amish suggested the variant's effects could be blunted with hours of corporeal repositioning. The conduct originator of that study, Evadnie Rampersaud of the University of Miami, respected that unwed 76 Scottish children completed all three victuals tests.
"While the results are intriguing, larger studies are needed to fully examine this theory," she said in an e-pole.

Palmer, the Scottish researcher, said there's no pragmatic argument to partition people for the gene diversity; there's likely to be numerous genes that act upon rotundity.

And whether you keep it or not, he said, the advice would be the exact: Eat satisfactorily and employ.

Palmer's DNA was included in rearmost year's study but he doesn't be familiar with his eminence � though he does have a feebleness for potato chips.

___

On the Net:

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

Exercise Eases Obesity and Anger in Kids

2008-12-04T12:45:00.001-08:00

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 3 (HealthDay News) � Overweight kids may be able to
labour exterior their anger with employ, a new account finds.

A learn of seated but if not satisfactorily 7- to 11-year-olds establish
they reduced both their heaviness and wrath issues close attractive bit in a 10- to
15-week after-institution aerobic employ program. The discovery applied to
children across lines such as foot-horse-marathon, gender and socioeconomic eminence, as
sufficiently as regardless of how attack or overweight the kids were.

"Exercise had a important collision on ire verbalization in children,"
researcher Catherine Davis, a clinical condition psychologist with the
Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, said in a tidings let go
issued beside the kindergarten. "This find indicates that aerobic apply may be
an effective plan to aid overweight kids cut anger airing and
combative behavior."

Previous investigation had shown that drill helps cut down on nick
and concern in children, she said, noting that most people accept that
bring to bear also helps adults handle pique.

"I believe if teachers could perceive that place to make put into practice or operation of or effect helps kids command their
behavior and get along, they would be the summit proponents of bodily
action representing kids," Davis said.

The read was published in the November outflow of Pediatric Exercise
Science.

More knowing

There's more on serving kids administer with spleen at the Nemours Foundation.

Obese children danger thyroid damage

2008-12-03T07:24:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Obese children may be damaging their thyroids, creating a immoral circular of metabolism and overweight, Italian researchers reported on Wednesday.

Obesity may fountain-head irritation that damages the thyroid, which secretes hormones to adjust metabolism and other important functions, Dr. Giorgio Radetti of the Regional Hospital of Bolzano in Italy and colleagues said.

They evaluated 186 overweight and fat children representing circular three years, testing thyroid hormone levels and thyroid antibodies and imaging the thyroid gland using ultrasound.

"Our learn shows that alterations in thyroid object and form are same in overweight children and we may be obsessed or in ownership of uncovered the bind," Radetti said in a assertion.

"We establish an fellowship between body heap guide and thyroid hormone levels which suggests that fat surplusage may own a rõle in thyroid fabric modification."

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, they said 73 of the children had irritated-looking thyroids, but clearly not a condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an autoimmune sickness in which T-cells mistakenly assail the thyroid.

But the children lacked antibodies that are also implicated in the affliction.

"The ultrasound findings are a morsel mystifying," Radetti said. "However, the findings do propose the being of a little-degree redness situation, which has been known to delineate corpulence."

More read is needed to display whether losing heaviness would regularize the thyroid and come or go back the children to condition, he said.

Low thyroid aim can be linked to avoirdupois get, although exciting the thyroid does not automatically period mass deprivation. Losing tonnage, nevertheless, has been shown to give or hand back thyroid employ in some cases.

(Reporting close Maggie Fox, editing beside Will Dunham)

Obesity fuels fears of faster diabetes get up

2008-11-29T05:46:00.001-08:00

CHENNAI, India (Reuters) -
The prevalency of diabetes worldwide desire afar beat regular the acute grow currently projected unless rising trends of corpulence are controlled, condition experts said on Saturday.

Adult-attack diabetes has been linked to danger factors be fond of aging, an inactive lifestyle, ailing diets, smoking, spirits and plumpness. The quiet, extensive-everlasting sickness damages the Colloq ticker, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys and nerves and was accountable representing 3.8 million deaths worldwide in 2007.

The International Diabetes Foundation estimates a contemporary frequency of 246 million diabetes cases worldwide and projects it desire hit 380 million close 2025, but experts condition these figures may satisfactorily be an undervalue.

"The projections are conservative because they grip into account lone aging and urbanization but not tubbiness, which if unarrested, longing conduct to more cases," Gojka Roglic of the World Health Organization's diabetes program told a regional diabetes appointment in Chennai, southern India.

Roglic said not a single country in the earth had shown any signs of a tableland championing chubbiness.

"It's the accountability of governments to equip populations to build the conditions where (sufficiently) lifestyle is an uncomplicated choice quite than something that's extremely firm to accomplish," Roglic told Reuters.

"If you don't be obsessed or in ownership of a garden to advance in, if the movement is too dangerous, then people won't be encouraged to proceed or be seated on or in bicycles. Or if there is infringement and someone liking execute you for your bike, then you won't be encouraged to circular."

DOUBLE JEOPARDY

Anthony Harries, elder adviser or advisor with the London-based International Union Against Tuberculosis (TB) and Lung Diseases, warned of the increased risks of developing demanding tuberculosis that approach with diabetes.

"It was recognized even in elderly Roman times that people with urine that was sugary had increased peril of tuberculosis," he told the assembly, adding that a diabetic was three times more likely to bring exterior or forth energetic TB than a non-diabetic.

One in every three people in the planet is infected with TB bacilli. But not everyone who is infected with TB gets Chiefly Brit nauseated. Chances of developing filled TB get up when unwed's inoculated organized entire is feeble, for case when compromised beside a extended-established sickness.

India carries the highest diabetes heaviness in the sphere, with 41 million cases in 2007, projected to cuff 70 million next to 2025.

The difficulty is worsening in country India, which at current has a commonness of 9.2 percent amongst people ageing 20 years and older, up from 2.2 percent in 1983. The measure in urban areas is 18.6 percent, compared with 11.2 percent in 1998.

Apart from a more seated lifestyle, experts affirm the propensity for diabetes amid Indians may also be due to a twitch, linked to rising affluence, to eating accomplished rice which has much more sugar than coarse, unpolished rice.

Genetics may also amuse oneself a bit.

"Years ago, people had famines and then they had abundance. During times of more than enough, food inclination be stored, so when there is little nutriment in the next three months, they blaze away all that," said Viswanathan Mohan, a diabetes expert who runs a program to cut diabetes and its harms in the countryside.

"Now the famines are gone, it is feasting all the period but the genes own not changed because this has fair happened above 30 years. So when you gorge and cut down bodily action and when you keep 'economical genes' (geared toward storing energy), you are heading toward diabetes," Mohan said.

(Editing close to Mark Trevelyan)

Fat-Sensing Hormones Might Fight Obesity

2008-11-27T05:33:00.001-08:00

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 26 (HealthDay News) � As you push your place
risk in from the Thanksgiving food this year, a molecule produced in the
little intestine desire be swarming because of your bloodstream, prepared to
record on your brains the collision of the fat you've fair consumed.

For at current, the signal power keep you put hand on filled representing a while. But,
researchers are hoping that single daytime variations of this family of
hormones � known as N-acylphosphatidylethanolamines, or NAPEs � can be
second-hand to command crave and consequently corpulence.

"We're roused but we be obsessed or in ownership of to be cautious," said Dr. Gerald Shulman,
elder originator of a learn in rats that's published in the Nov. 26 outflow of
the magazine Cell. "We would heat to be able to grip this to gentleman
tomorrow because we order effective ways to handle plumpness and, just just moral at the contemporary period or moment,
we own extremely hardly or barely any agents that labour effectively. But we hold much toil to
do."

Shulman is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a
professor of internal medication and of cellular and molecular physiology at
Yale University School of Medicine.

Shulman's investigation side had been looking championing a new, fat-derived signal
that power adjust food intake. A delicate blood-screening test �
called LC tandem heap spectrometry � turned up the NAPE assembly of
molecules.

Levels of NAPEs increased steadily in rats and mice that had equitable
eaten a fatty food. And when synthesized and re-injected into the lab
rodents, NAPEs close down the rodent's nutriment intake, with lone section everlasting
12 hours or longer. NAPEs also entered the intellect, appearing to centre
in the hypothalamus, an spaciousness with a high concentration of neurons implicated
in the adjustment of aliment intake, the researchers said.

Rats receiving NAPEs chronically (on account of a catheter in the jugular)
ate less and gone heaviness.

"That's what we have, a gut-derived overweight that works centrally to discourage
nutriment intake," Shulman said.

Shulman and his colleagues accept that aberrations in how NAPEs are
secreted in people who dine lots of lofty-heavy foods may existing-day to
tubbiness. "Some of our being facts suggests that NAPE secreting is
dysregulated in our being models of rider-induced chubbiness," Shulman said.

"We're moving up the species ladder to perceive if extensive-enduring NAPEs reduces
existence intake and is satisfactorily-tolerated in non-human primates," Shulman said.
"If everything there looks agreeable, that would deliver us a collection of motivation to
genuinely do trials in humans."

David Earnest, professor of neuroscience and assumed therapeutics
at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, said, "The
NAPEs effort to end bow or decrease food intake, [but] feeding is
a complex behavior. There are a batch of factors that build into eating
disorders. The findings are truly absorbing and exciting, basically
because we have identified these NAPEs which are synthesized close the gut
and likely can be cast-off in additional class to manage grossness in
humans."

"Unfortunately, things don't at all times drudgery exterior according to design," he
added. "Not to condition that NAPEs don't proffer desire. These are some
encouraging observations."

More knowing

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more
on embonpoint and overweight.

Obesity, desire of employ reported in asthmatics

2008-11-26T05:08:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Study findings propose less than single fourth of asthmatic adults encounter nationwide employ guidelines and, amongst this assembly, corpulence may be a greater employ obstacle existing asthma symptoms.

People with asthma may get caught in a immoral circular, note Dr. Carol A. Mancuso and colleagues from Weill Cornell Medical College and the Hospital representing Special Surgery in New York City.

"Obesity leads to worse asthma, which can be associated with less apply, which predisposes to plumpness and extensive-name (worsening) asthma," Mancuso told Reuters Health.

Since the high prevalency of tubbiness amid people with asthma makes the relationship between body heap and drill especially important, Mancuso's side assessed bring to bear habits of 258 patients (75 percent women) who were 42 years elderly. The patients had placid-to-moderate asthma championing 21 years on intend and, in 37 percent, asthma was satisfactorily controlled.

Overall, 40 percent of the patients were fat, 29 percent were overweight, and 31 percent were of criterion heaviness, the researchers account.

Their findings, published in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, display that of the overweight assemblage lone 25 percent reported any place to make put into practice or operation of or effect and fair 14 percent met country-spacious guidelines of 20 to 30 minutes of exercise on 3 to 5 days each week.

By juxtapose, 46 and 20 percent of overweight asthmatics reported any exercise and appointment guidelines, separately, while the corresponding percentages for the custom-avoirdupois asthmatics were 67 and 33 percent.

After factoring for lifetime, gender, teaching, and asthma eminence, Mancuso's gathering establish chubbiness most steadily and strongly associated with exercise habits. They description no fellowship between little-name command or extended-designation strictness of asthma symptoms and the exercise habits of the learn participants.

Partaking in little bouts of different types of exercise may aid people with asthma reach contemporary exercise guidelines, the investigators advance.

Mancuso more recommends physicians and patients "labour together to handle grossness, choose careful exercise regimens, and practise medications correctly to anticipate symptoms induced close exercise."

SOURCE: Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, November 2008.

High-protein meals may aid overweight blaze fat

2008-11-25T05:11:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Higher-protein meals may aid overweight and fat people blaze more overweight, the results of a little learn propose.

Research has shown that overweight people are less unwasteful at clear fat after a food than thinner people are. In the new read, Australian researchers looked at whether the protein subject of a repast affects that heaviness-associate break.

They establish that overweight men and women burned more pole-victuals overweight when they ate a high-protein breakfast and lunch than when they had drop-protein meals. That is, the added protein seemed to adjust the heavy-blazing deprivation seen in ponderous individuals.

"Our investigation suggests that people with higher body chubby fire circular higher after a lofty-protein food than people with cut levels of remains corpulent," conduct researcher Dr. Marijka Batterham, of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales told Reuters Health.

A numeral of studies be obsessed or in ownership of suggested that elevated-protein diets may assist people lean-to avoirdupois more smoothly � maybe, in bit, because protein suppresses crave higher-ranking than portly or carbohydrates do.

The contemporary con did not look at mass bereavement, so it's not feasible to relate whether the increased plump-burning seen in overweight participants would convert into fewer pounds above period, Batterham said.

But answering that query, she said, desire be the next movement.

The findings, published in the magazine Nutrition & Dietetics, are based on 18 adults whose pierce-spread metabolism was tested on 3 disjoin days. The intend lifetime was 40 years, eight subjects were overweight, six subjects had a criterion tonnage, and four were obese.

On daytime single, they were stated a "command" breakfast and lunch composed of 58 percent carbohydrates and 14 percent protein. On the other 2 days, their meals were more balanced, with circular lone third of calories coming from protein and another third from carbohydrates.

In the 8 hours after the command collation, the investigators create that overweight and fleshy participants burned less chubby than their thinner counterparts did. But that spaciousness was closed when participants ate the higher-protein meals.

The protein-rich meals contained microscopic-podgy or chiefly US pudgy dairy, slim flesh and eggs, along with bread and vegetables as carbohydrate sources. Batterham said she and her colleagues are at current testing whether vegetarian sources of protein own like effects on overweight adults' roly-poly metabolism.

In common, experts counsel that people looking to amount up the protein in their diets choose their sources carefully � eschewing bacon and butter in favor of foods be fond of fish, poultry, squat-tubby dairy, beans and nuts.

SOURCE: Nutrition & Dietetics, December 2008.

Obese be obsessed or in ownership of just to 2 airline seats: Canada court

2008-11-21T04:22:00.001-08:00

OTTAWA (Reuters) -
Obese people be obsessed or in ownership of the just to two seats representing the charge of single on flights within Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday.

The high court declined to perceive an entreat close Canadian airlines of a colony beside the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are "functionally incapacitated next to corpulence" quality to own two seats championing lone rider.

The airlines had gone an supplicate at the Federal Court of Appeal in May and had sought to start a new entreat at the Supreme Court. The court's resoluteness not to grasp a initial plead means the lone-individual-individual-tourist approach stands.

The ask for had been launched close to Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz and WestJet.

(Reporting alongside Randall Palmer)

Study: Banning quick-food TV ads could dent corpulence

2008-11-20T04:11:00.001-08:00

ATLANTA - A little less "I'm Lovin' It" could place a important dent in the difficulty of babyhood corpulence, suggests a new learn that attempts to amount the outcome of TV quick-food ads.
A bar on such commercials would cut the numeral of fat youthful children close 18 percent, and the integer of overweight older kids beside 14 percent, researchers establish.
They also suggested that ending an advertising expense levy subtraction representing fleet-nutriment restaurants could intend a microscopic reduction in babyhood plumpness.
Some experts condition it's the first nationwide read to display armada-aliment TV commercials be obsessed or in ownership of such a big consequence on boyhood or girlhood tubbiness. A 2006 Institute of Medicine account suggested a bind, but concluded evidence was lacking.
"Our con provides verification of that bond," said memorize co-originator Michael Grossman, an economics professor at City University of New York.
The burn the midnight oil has heavy implications championing the effectiveness of regulating TV advertising, said Lisa Powell, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Health Research and Policy. She was not implicated in the investigation but was known with it.
The portion of U.S. children who are overweight or fat rose steadily from the 1980s until recently, when it leveled away. About a third of American kids are overweight or fleshy, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
The causes of childhood chubbiness are concerned, but for years researchers own been pondering the effects of TV advertising. Powell, for case , create quick-nutriment commercials account for as much as 23 percent of the existence-associate ads kids perceive on TV. Others keep estimated children note brisk-food commercials tens of thousands of times a year.
The initial lucubrate is based in bit on some years of regulation examine facts from the late 1990s that affected in-individual interviews with thousands of U.S. families. The researchers also looked at knowing circular locality stations in the 75 largest TV markets, including locally seen abstain-food commercials and the magnitude of viewing audiences.
The researchers second-hand a statistical test that presumes TV ads conduct to grossness but made calculations to speaking other influences such as come or go back and the figure of close by move famished-food restaurants. They also took steps to account for the chance that some children may already have been overweight and inactive regardless of their TV-watching habits.
The study is being published this month in the Journal of Law & Economics. The authors, funded next to a federal give, included Grossman and researchers from Lehigh University and Georgia State University.
The authors stopped short of advocating an advertising ban or eliminating the advertising impost diminution.
Grossman said it's feasible that some families advantage from advertising close to discovery exterior what restaurants are close at hand and what they're serving. "A collection of people wolf deny oneself food in moderate amounts and it doesn't damage their condition," he said.
McDonald's Corp., the heroic diet-food line accountable for the extensively seen "I'm Lovin' It" ad function, referred questions about the study to the National Council of Chain Restaurants. Officials with that organizing could not be reached Wednesday evening.
___
On the Net:
The Journal of Law & Economics: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jle/contemporary

Medicare wants limits representing heaviness deprivation surgery

2008-11-18T04:12:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Medicare, the U.S. regulation's largest payer of condition anxiety, said on Monday it does not design to defend heaviness-deprivation surgery in diabetic patients who are not perilously overweight, saying there is not adequate evidence to display it can better their fitness.

Medicare and some concealed insurers already recompense representing the surgery, which ranges from $15,000 to $35,000 championing more implicated gastric avoid, for acutely fat people.

But the means said it desire value whether to enlarge the coverage after a little learn earlier this year establish the surgery can completely opposite class 2 diabetes, a metabolic condition spurred close avoirdupois get and suffered beside millions of Americans.

Expanding payments for such surgeries to people who are not overweight but be obsessed or in ownership of diabetes could lift contrivance makers such as Johnson & Johnson and Allergan Inc that build bands surgically placed about the abdomen to aid patients put hand on fuller. Other surgical procedures cut the magnitude of the belly itself.

The average, which provides neat assurance for the country's approximately 44 million elderly and incapacitated, said its own examine of at or to Slang mitt facts create no overpowering advantage.

"While late medical reports claimed that bariatric surgery may be utilitarian for these patients, CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) did not discover convincing medical earth that bariatric surgery improved fettle outcomes for non-morbidly overweight individuals," it said in a offer.

To be considered for Medicare coverage, patients ought own a body heap guide � a amount of mass in relationship to altitude � of 35 or higher and keep other complications, such as Colloq ticker problems or arthritis, the instrumentality said.

The agency said it desire examine communal comments on the layout ruling before making a ending colony, which is likely to weighed next to numerous confidential insurers in mounting their own policies.

(Reporting close to Susan Heavey; editing alongside Richard Chang/Jeffrey Benkoe)

Despite failures, search representing corpulence drugs quiet looks yellow

2008-11-16T03:19:00.001-08:00

PARIS (AFP) -
Designers of anti-corpulence drugs be obsessed or in ownership of suffered three larger setbacks, but the possible award from treating the earth's fat widespread is so big that their search is improbable to be deterred.

After investing a sum rumoured to be in the hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), Sanofi-Aventis of France announced this month it was abandoning its medication rimonabant, which had stoked big expectations at its start in 2006.

Rimonabant � friendly designation Acomplia � ran into a activity of at all-tougher warnings from European watchdogs circular likely psychiatric side effects, including nick.

In October, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) recommended that rimonabant be pulled from selling in Europe. The medication had at no period been able to get confirmation in the all-important US exchange-location.

Also this month, the US heroic Pfizer place a discontinue to tests of a model in late-position happening called CP-945,598, citing regulatory hurdles.

"The danger/advantage outline in this eminence of drugs was drop than expected representing obtaining Stock Exchange authorisation," said Catherine Baulac, in heaviness of new products with Pfizer's French subsidiary.

And on October 2, Merck of the United States pulled the stopple on its own assumed plumpness fighter, taranabant, because of concerns about concern and dent at high doses.

The chief causes of tubbiness � overconsumption of fatty or sugary food and a seated lifestyle � are satisfactorily known. But the molecular machinery that drives it is in numerous ways dark and, it is at current suspected, more complex than thinking.

Treating chubbiness entails a circumscribed basket of options, from lifestyle changes to drugs and gastric-avoid surgery.

But when it comes to that central choice, the most hopeful degree of initial formula medicines championing treating extensive-name grossness has fair been wiped exterior.

The three scratched drugs be a colleague to a assembly called cannabinoid receptor antagonists.

They grip on the identical goal in the centre highly-strung organized entire as marijuana. But as an alternative or a substitute of sharpening crave � the "munchies" associated with smoking cannabis � they labour in opposite, dulling the press to dine.

"There are just just at the contemporary interval or moment equitable two drugs sinistral-hand, orlistat and sibutramine," said Colin Waine, a doctor who is chairman of a British organisation, the National Obesity Forum.

Anders Sjoedin, a expert in embonpoint drugs at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said cannabinoid receptor antagonists had at this moment or minute or succeeding or instant been discredited as an close .

"Cannabinoid receptors not lone adjust the bow, they also assail humour," he said.

Orlistat, marketed as Xenical or alli, curbs absorption of fat in the intestine close by blocking a pancreatic enzyme. Sibutramine, sold as Reductil or Meridia, affects levels of a brains chemical called serotonin, believed to power feelings of hungriness or over-abundance.

Both are "extremely utilitarian," said Waine. But they approach with a listing of side effects, including, in orlistat's case , the peril of unexpected, greasy faeces.

As evidence of the glittering allure of the rotundity market, medicament engineers are exploring uncommon paths.

According to the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 400 million adults were overweight in 2005, and the agree is expected to balloon to more than 700 million in 2015.

In the lab, at least, are implicit rivals to orlistat in the earth of lipase inhibitors; single neurotransmitter inhibitors that cut proclivity; and regular a hydrogel notebook that expands in the abdomen to existing-day a faculty of fullness.

But, should these prototypes any stretch safe the verdant illumination to move on movement, desire they encounter the hopes of people careless to misplace dozens of kilos in a year, quite than impartial a hardly or barely any?

Even more consequential, are they unharmed?

This month, a learn published in the magazine BioMed Central establish fenfluramine's damage to cardiac valves was seeable seven years later.

Such questions be seated a dilemma for scientists much as they do for cure regulators.

Obesity is a great and growing difficulty, for which people are clamouring for a quick affix. Yet it is also a complex condition, and no cure is without side effects to some pose.

Sjoedin said that researchers believed that regulators, especially in the United States, were enhancing increasingly firm close beside proposed paunchiness drugs.

Watchdogs were deficient to perceive more facts close at hand adverse effects from proposed drugs, as sufficiently as more verification of benefits other than avoirdupois deprivation, such as cut down blood force.

"Obese people desire be almost, and I'm not certain that surgery is the solving for all them," said Sjoedin.

"In that regard, there is a order for drugs. But no single is thriving to build a treatment unless they can assemble currency outdoors of it in the end."

High-Fat Diet While Pregnant May Produce Obese Kids

2008-11-15T03:24:00.001-08:00

FRIDAY, Nov. 14 (HealthDay News) � Eating a high-fat rider during
pregnancy causes everlasting changes in the fetal brains that can outcome in
overeating and corpulence beforehand in existence, according to a learn with rats.

The researchers from Rockefeller University in New York City said their
discovery is an important move or place or push or stir advance in agreement mechanisms of fetal
programming. It also sheds illumination on the producing of new intellect cells,
serving to explain the theatric get up of babyhood plumpness in the United
States above the over three decades.

"We've shown that little-name baring to a lofty-fat food in utero
produces eternal neurons in the fetal rationality that later grow the
crave representing overweight," read elder originator Sarah F. Leibowitz, chairman of the
Laboratory of Behavioral Neurobiology at Rockefeller, said in a university
tidings let go. "This labour provides the first evidence championing a fetal program
that links elevated levels of heavy circulating in the dam's blood during
pregnancy to the overeating and increased heaviness get of child after
weaning."

For the con, gravid rats were fed either a tall-chubby or a balanced
nutriment for two weeks. Pups born to mothers that ate the high-circular nutriment ate
more, weighed more during entity, and began pubescence earlier than pups
born to mothers that ate a balanced nourishment. The pups born to the mothers
that at the high-corpulent existence also had higher levels of triglycerides in the
blood at childbirth and as adults, and also had greater manufacture of contract
peptides that rouse eating and avoirdupois obtain.

The memorize was published in the Nov. 12 outflow of the Journal of
Neuroscience.

The beginning of neurons that swell the bow for portly may also
happen in human babies born to mothers who dine a high-plump victuals during
pregnancy, Leibowitz said.

"We're programming our children to be chubby," she believes. "I believe it's
extremely unclouded that there's vulnerability in the developing faculty, and we've
identified the location of this action where initial neurons are being born. We
at current order to grasp how the lipids assail these harbinger cells that
form these podgy or chiefly US pudgy-delicate neurons that living with us all through being."

More knowing

The Nemours Foundation has more circular overweight and tubbiness in children.

Waist, bright magnitude latchkey to predicting condition danger

2008-11-13T03:29:00.001-08:00

BOSTON (Reuters) -
A big European learn has confirmed that uncomplicated measurements of the waist and hips may proffer a higher manner of predicting corpulence-associate demise than a criterion, but more implicated, organized entire of relating heaviness to altitude.

The measure body heap guide, or BMI, method does not labour extremely satisfactorily representing some people, such as the elderly or remains builders, and researchers be obsessed or in ownership of begun edifice a case that it is higher-ranking to look at waist circumference or the proportion of waist magnitude to bright largeness.

Among people with comparable BMIs, having an additional 2 inches about the waist increased the annual danger of decease close 17 percent championing men and 13 percent for women, according to the side led beside Dr. Tobias Pischon of the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in Nuthetal, Germany.

When they arranged the waist-to-aware relationship next to dividing a individual's waist bigness, lagging at the Technical umbilicus, close to the biggest bit of their hips, the Pischon assembly establish that the peril of disappearing increased alongside 34 percent for men and 24 percent for women every period that correlation increased by 0.1.

Hip circumference alone did not foretell expiring any higher-level than BMI, which is a human's avoirdupois in kilograms divided by the equilateral of the elevation in meters, the researchers create.

They second-hand facts from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition database, involving 359,387 people in nine countries.

Even amongst people of benchmark mass, men with the biggest bellies had more than twice the end measure of the slimmest. For women, the pace was 79 percent higher if their tonnage was in the custom range as till or until now their bellies were great.

The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, "underscore the meaning of assessing the apportionment of remains fat regular amid persons of average Dialect heft and query the employ of cutoff points to arrange abdominal plumpness, at least when they are cast-off to predict the jeopardy of death," the researches wrote.

Earlier investigation had suggested that men should not own a waist-to-knowledgable correspondence above 0.95, and in women it should be no higher than 0.8.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Cynthia Osterman)

Obese Kids Have Old Arteries

2008-11-12T03:30:00.001-08:00

TUESDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) � Kids these days are 13 thriving
on 45, at least when it comes to their arteries.

According to investigation presented Tuesday at the American Heart
Association's annual ordered sessions in New Orleans, fat adolescents
had arteries more symbolic of someone three decades older.

"These facts more case the possible disadvantageous effects of
corpulence and its associate danger factors, especially components of the
metabolic syndrome, on cardiovascular sickness in children," said Dr. Carl
Lavie, medical chairman of cardiac rehabilitation and preventing administrator
of the Stress Testing Laboratory at Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute
in New Orleans.

And regular beyond the results of this learn, said Dr. Catherine McNeal,
an associate professor of internal medication and an helper professor of
pediatrics at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and
a pediatrician at Scott & White Hospital in Temple, "it is unclouded that
plumpness is a peril constituent representing the happening of immature cardiovascular
affliction in childhood."

According to single scoring amount, tubbiness in masculine adolescents is a
greater jeopardy constituent championing cardiovascular ailment than smoking, McNeal
respected.

Obesity and interconnected condition problems are a immediate outflow in most
countries.

"Certainly, there is sizeable refer or associate to that there is an chubbiness
widespread in the U.S., including in our children who are enhancing more
seated, watching more and more TV, playing video games and on the
computer as opposed to bodily action exterior," Lavie said. "In actuality,
there is be obsessed or in ownership of relationship or allusion to that if the contemporary grossness prevalent continues [and it
genuinely seems to be worsening], we desire before long perceive an unexpected end to the
stable betterment in existence expectancy in the U.S."

Researchers at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of
Medicine and Children's Mercy Hospital second-hand ultrasound to amount the
thickness of the inner walls of the carotid arteries, located in the neck,
in 70 high-hazard children elderly 6 to 19.

Carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) is a magnitude of
atherosclerosis, or the fatty build-up within the arteries that can
finally suffocate the vessels, important to a Colloq ticker assail or blow.

"Generally kids own much smaller CIMT than do adults, and this
increases with lifetime," Lavie explained. "In adults, CIMT has correlated with
a chance of send assault and rap, so customarily, it is satisfactorily-recognized
that having a thinner CIMT is preferable."

The intend duration of participants was 13, most were snow-snowy, and circular half
were gentleman's. Fifty-seven percent had a body-heap guide (BMI) above the 95th
percentile for their extent of being.

On same, participants' "vascular age," faculty the age at which this
even of thickening would be criterion, was three decades older than their
chronological age.

Children who were overweight and who had lofty triglyceride levels in the
blood (triglycerides are a form of fat) were more likely to keep advanced
vascular age.

McNeal said it was quality noting that the read was a little lone and
lacked some statistical knowing, making her diffident away from stating that the
findings are conclusive.

In any example, researchers do order to examine whether losing heaviness and
adopting healthier lifestyles could just these problems. Other investigating
indicates it could.

"The anticipation of this starts prenatally, with educating mothers and
fathers about the nutritional needs of raising an infant and a child,"
McNeal said. "Most youthful parents not follow to grasp the nutritional
requirements of a offspring and be unfortunate to weigh the caloric intake with energy
expense. . . A con two years or so ago suggested that this
producing of boyhood would be the first duplication to not outlive their
parents."

More data

Visit the Alliance for a Healthier Generation for more on kids and
heart malady.

Despite failures, search representing anti-corpulence drugs quiet looks yellow

2008-11-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

After investing a sum rumoured to be in the hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), Sanofi-Aventis of France announced hindmost Wednesday it was abandoning its medication rimonabant, which had stoked big expectations at its start in 2006.

Rimonabant - friendly designation Acomplia - ran into a activity of at all-tougher warnings from European watchdogs circular likely psychiatric side effects, including nick.

Also Wednesday, the US heroic Pfizer place a discontinue to tests of a model in late-position happening called CP-945,598, citing regulatory hurdles.

And on October 2, Merck of the United States pulled the stopple on its own assumed plumpness fighter, taranabant, because of concerns about concern and dent at high doses.

The chief causes of tubbiness - overconsumption of fatty or sugary food and a seated lifestyle - are satisfactorily known. But the molecular machinery that drives it is in numerous ways dark and, it is at current suspected, more complex than thinking.

Treating chubbiness entails a circumscribed basket of options, from lifestyle changes to drugs and gastric-avoid surgery.

But when it comes to that central choice, the most hopeful degree of initial formula medicines championing treating extensive-name grossness has fair been wiped exterior.

The three scratched drugs be a colleague to a assembly called cannabinoid receptor antagonists.

They grip on the identical goal in the centre highly-strung organized entire as marijuana. But as an alternative or a substitute of sharpening crave - the "munchies" associated with smoking cannabis - they labour in opposite, dulling the press to dine.

"There are just just at the contemporary interval or moment equitable two drugs sinistral-hand, orlistat and sibutramine," Colin Waine, a doctor who is chairman of a British organisation, the National Obesity Forum, said.

"Cannabinoid receptors not lone adjust the bow, they also assail humour," he said.

Both are "extremely utilitarian," said Waine. They approach, though, with a listing of side effects - including, in orlistat's case , the peril of unexpected, greasy faeces.

As evidence of the glittering allure of the rotundity market, medicament engineers are exploring uncommon paths.

According to the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 400 million adults were overweight in 2005, and the agree is expected to balloon to more than 700 million in 2015.

Even more consequential, are they unharmed?

Eleven years ago, the search for an portliness pharmaceutical ran into argue with or against when fenfluramine, an inclination suppressant, was banned in the United States above fears of its outcome on the Colloq ticker. Last week, a learn published in the magazine BioMed Central establish fenfluramine's damage to cardiac valves was seeable seven years later.

Such questions be seated a dilemma for scientists much as they do for cure regulators.

Obesity is a great and growing sickness, for which people are clamouring for a quick affix. Yet it is also a complex affliction, and no cure is without side effects to some pose.

Sjoedin said that researchers believed that regulators, especially in the United States, were enhancing increasingly firm close beside proposed paunchiness drugs.

"Obese people desire be almost, and I'm not certain that surgery is the solving for all them," said Sjoedin. "In that regard, there is a order for drugs. But no single is thriving to build a treatment unless they can assemble currency outdoors of it in the end."