Archive for December 5th, 2005
Children who are overweight face more than future health problems. They appear to have broken bones and joint problems more often during childhood than kids of normal weight, research suggests.
“A lot of people think that if you’re an overweight kid … that later on in life you’re going to run into having heart disease or Type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Susan Yanovski, director of the obesity and eating disorders program at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“But kids and adults who are overweight are already having problems with their mobility, fractures, and joint pain.”
A study led by her husband, obesity researcher Dr. Jack Yanovski, found that children and teens who were overweight were far more likely to have had a fracture than their ideal-weight peers. They also had more bone and hip joint abnormalities, which can lead to permanent deformities.
The research involved 227 overweight children and adolescents and 128 who weren’t overweight. The children had an average age of 12. All were enrolled in various federal health studies between 1996 and 2004 and were considered overweight if they were in the 95th percentile of weight and height for their age and sex.
A review of their medical history revealed that 13 percent of overweight kids had had at least one broken bone at some point in their lives, compared with less than 4 percent of ideal-weight children. Similar results were found for how many had muscle, bone or joint pain, especially knee pain, and restricted movement.
“The combination of musculoskeletal pain and poor mobility may possibly lead to less physical activity … and perpetuate the vicious cycle,” said Yanovski.
Source: bahraintribune.com
December 5th, 2005
05.12.05
By Martin Johnston
Sugar-laden Sprite will be scratched off the drinks menu at 21 McDonald’s outlets in a bid to help curb diabetes.
In what is thought to be a world first for the fast-food chain, all its Counties-Manukau restaurants will sell only Sprite Zero, which contains artificial sweeteners.
Consuming regular soft drinks, sweetened by about 10 teaspoons of sugar per can, causes 40 preventable deaths a year in New Zealand from heart attacks and strokes, according to Auckland Medical School estimates.
The open-ended diet Sprite trial, which starts on December 6, has been organised under the Let’s Beat Diabetes project of the Counties Manukau District Health Board.
“[It’s] one of our hopes that it will prevent weight gain,” said the project’s medical director, diabetes specialist Dr Brandon Orr Walker. “We don’t yet know that substitution of sugary drinks with diet drinks prevents weight gain; it flows from logic, but it’s not proven.”
Counties Manukau is an acknowledged leader in fighting type 2 diabetes, the obesity-linked epidemic that threatens to swamp the public health system.
Around 115,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease nationally and the number is expected to exceed 160,000 by 2021. Poorly managed diabetes leads to complications such as heart disease, blindness and lower-limb amputations.
One in six McDonald’s customers buys Sprite. The trial will use Sprite Zero because the taste difference between the regular and diet versions is less than for some other soft drinks, including Coke, and since Sprite Zero is not yet available on tap at McDonald’s.
Coca Cola Oceania regional corporate affairs manager Alison Sykora said the company had been “proactive” in participating in the trial, however it was “unlikely” that the trial would extend to Coke.
“We have already got Diet Coke, so there is a choice for people who want a diet option.”
McDonald’s spokeswoman Joanna Redfern-Hardisty said the chain joined the trial as part of its goal of improving the healthiness of its meals.
“If we get a really good [customer] response, it’s something we would look at, how we can put it in a significant number of other restaurants. It’s new territory.”
Dr Orr Walker said one of the aims was to change people’s habits. “This is an issue of making low and non-sugar drinks the easy option, making them the default option rather than being the namby-pamby option out there somewhere from left field.”
Auckland Medical School researcher Professor Rod Jackson, who has urged hospitals and schools to replace sugary soft drinks with diet versions, said the trial was a step in the right direction.
Diabetes specialist Professor Jim Mann, of Otago University, said: “We have to applaud anything that reduces calorie intake.”
But the human response could not be predicted: “People might feel self-righteous with diet Sprite and have a double ice-cream.”
There is controversy about artificial sweeteners. Sprite Zero contains aspartame, acesulphame potassium and saccharin.
Dr Orr Walker said Sprite Zero was safe to drink, except for people with the rare metabolic disorder phenylketonuria, for whom aspartame was not a safe sugar substitute.
Soft drinks and sugar
* A can of regular soft drink contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar.
* Researchers estimate the amount we drink leads to 40 preventable deaths from heart attacks and strokes each year.
Source: nzherald.co.nz
December 5th, 2005
Press Association
Monday December 5, 2005 3:08 AM
Drinking alcohol in small amounts regularly could mean you are less likely to become obese than if you do not drink at all, new research suggests.
The US study, published in the journal BMC Public Health, may appear to contradict the traditional image of the beer belly often found attached to those who like a drink or two.
But the researchers said the results did not mean teetotallers should turn to the bottle in the battle of the bulge.
Dr Armed Arif, of Texas Tech University, and Professor James Rohrer, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, analysed the results of a health and nutrition survey, focusing on 8,236 non-smokers who took part.
The respondents were asked to fill in a questionnaire about their drinking habits, while their body mass index was also measured.
The survey found that 46% of the group were “current drinkers” who drank at least one drink a month on average, while those who drank four or more drinks a day were classified as heavy drinkers.
The researchers found current drinkers had a 0.73 lower chance of being obese compared to non-drinkers. They said that those who drank one or two drinks regularly, but less than five drinks a week, were significantly less likely to be obese compared to non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.
But heavy drinkers were 46% more likely to be obese compared to those who drank nothing at all.
Dr Arif and Prof Rohrer said: “The odds of overweight and obesity were significantly higher among those who indulged in binge drinking and/or heavy drinking - consuming four or more drinks per day.
“In contrast, light to moderate drinking - consuming one or two drinks per day - was associated with lower odds of overweight and obesity.”
© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2005, All Rights Reserved.
Source: guardian.co.uk
December 5th, 2005
By Brock Vergakis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 5, 2005
“It astonished me, actually,” said his friend, Steven Peck. “We were both very heavy. It was hard not to be struck.”
After watching Mr. Hawks lose and keep the weight off for a year and a half, Mr. Peck tried intuitive eating in January. “I was pretty skeptical of the idea you could eat anything you wanted until you didn’t feel like it. It struck me as odd.” Mr. Peck is an assistant professor at BYU.
Eleven months later, Mr. Peck sometimes eats mint-chocolate-chip ice cream for dinner, is 35 pounds lighter and a believer in intuitive eating.
“There are times when I overeat. I did at Thanksgiving,” Mr. Peck said. “That’s one thing about Steve’s ideas, they’re sort of forgiving. On other diets, if you slip up, you feel you’ve blown it, and it takes a couple weeks get back into it. — This sort of has this built-in forgiveness factor.”
The one thing all diets have in common is that they restrict food, said Michael Goran, an obesity specialist at the University of Southern California. Ultimately, that’s why they usually fail. At some point, you want what you can’t have.” Still, he thinks intuitive eating makes sense as a concept “if you know what you’re doing.”
Intuitive eating alone won’t give anyone six-pack abs, Mr. Hawks said, and what he eats is “actually quite healthy.”
“I’m as likely to eat broccoli as eat a steak,” he said.
In a small study published in the American Journal of Health Education, Mr. Hawks and a team of researchers examined a group of BYU students and found those who were intuitive eaters typically weighed less and had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than other students. He said the study indicates intuitive eating is a viable approach to long-term weight management and he plans to do a larger study.
Source: washtimes.com
December 5th, 2005
By Brock Vergakis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 5, 2005
SALT LAKE CITY — Who says you have to eat lettuce when you want chocolate?
Not Steven Hawks. When he’s tempted by ice cream bars, M&Ms and toffee-covered almonds at the grocery store, he doesn’t pass them by. He fills up his shopping cart.
It’s the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five years.
Mr. Hawks calls his plan “intuitive eating” and thinks the rest of the country would be better off if people stopped counting calories, started paying attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever they wanted.
As part of intuitive eating, Mr. Hawks surrounds himself with unhealthy foods he especially craves. He says having an overabundance of what’s taboo helps him lose his desire to gorge.
There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eaters only eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full. That means not eating a box of chocolates when you’re feeling blue or digging into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else at the table is.
The trade-off is the opportunity to eat whatever your heart — well, stomach — desires when you’re actually hungry.
“One of the advantages of intuitive eating is you’re always eating things that are most appealing to you, not out of emotional reasons, not because it’s there and tastes good,” he said. “Whenever you feel the physical urge to eat something, accept it and eat it. The cravings tend to subside.”
Mr. Hawks should know. In 1989, the Utah native had a job at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and wanted to return to his home state. But at 210 pounds, he didn’t think a fat person could get a job teaching students how to be healthy, so his calorie-counting began.
He lost weight and got the job at Utah State University. The pounds soon came back.
Several years later and still overweight, Mr. Hawks decided it was time for a lifestyle change. He stopped feeling guilty about eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips. He also stopped eating when he wasn’t hungry.
His weight gradually began to drop. Exercise helped. His friends and co-workers soon took notice of the slimmer Mr. Hawks.
Continue No-foods-barred diet feeds cravings to loseII
Source: washtimes.com
December 5th, 2005
NEW YORK (BBC Health News) — Scientists have discovered why it is often harder to keep weight off than to lose it in the first place.
A team at New York’s Columbia University has shown the key is falling levels of the hormone leptin, which controls appetite.
They found that giving people who had recently lost weight injections of the hormone helped them to avoid putting the pounds straight back on.
The study features in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
It is estimated that more than 85% of obese people who have lost weight eventually put at least some of it back on.
Research suggests this is due to a number of changes in the functioning of the body’s metabolic, hormonal and nervous systems.
The Columbia team believes these changes are governed by low levels of leptin.
The hormone is made in the fat tissue, and so when a person loses weight their leptin production falls off.
Conversely, putting weight back on should raise leptin levels, and start to reverse the changes that made weight gain more likely.
To test their theory, the researchers gave doses of leptin to lean and obese volunteers who had recently lost weight.
They found that most of the metabolic and hormonal changes which mean people cannot keep the weight from creeping back on were reversed once leptin levels were restored to pre-weight loss levels.
Leptin is known to play a role in controlling appetite, but as yet the exact way that it works is unclear.
Injections of leptin have been used to help morbidly obese people with a deficiency of the hormone to lose weight, but a similar approach has no effect on obese people with normal leptin levels. ——————-New drug hope
The researchers said it might eventually be possible to develop new drugs to keep weight off that work by targeting the way the body monitors leptin levels.
Lead researcher Dr. Michael Rosenbaum told the BBC News website that historically it made sense our ancestors to defend their fat reserves, as they were often subjected to periods when food was scarce.
“We would predict that the human genome is heavily enriched with genes that defend body fatness and relatively lacking in genes that would oppose weight gain.
“We essentially have lived through hundreds of thousands of years of an environment that would encourage us to eat more and move less to preserve energy stores. “We are now in an environment where those traits are maladaptive.”
Dr. Ian Campbell, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said it was possible that medication could eventually be developed to target the leptin system.
However, he said: “The common denominator among people who do manage to maintain weight loss is a continuation of physical activity. “There may be room for medication at some point, but you need to look at lifestyle factors first, and the most important way to manage your weight is to keep a check on your diet, and to take regular physical activity.”
Source: tehrantimes.com
December 5th, 2005
05.12.05
A New Zealand doctor who specialises in obesity says it comes as no surprise that the country now ranks at number seven in an OECD league of the world’s most obese nations.
Wellington hospital director of clinical services Robyn Toomath said it had to be expected, considering a third of New Zealand primary school children were overweight.
She said that across the board, New Zealanders were more obese than ever, yet there was a particular problem among Maori, and the figures were higher again for Pacific Islanders.
New Zealand, with 20.9 per cent of the population classified as obese, ranks seventh on the latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) list of the world’s fattest countries.
Australia has a 21.7 per cent obesity rate, and the United States has ballooned into first place with 30.6 per cent.
Dr Toomath, who is also a spokeswoman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic, blames the rise on the marketing of junk food.
“We are terribly prone to marketing techniques which are unbelievably diverse, and subtle and powerful.”
She said products previously consumed only occasionally, such as chips and soft drinks, - ” ” - were now “locked into culture, as something you eat several times a day”.
Dr Toomath, who says there has been a tremendous increase in obesity locally over a very short period of time, said the growth was leading to eating-related illnesses filtering down to children.
“There’s been a rise in diabetes, and surgeons are now having to do gall bladder operations on children, which is something we used to say only occurred if you were ‘fat and forty’.”
Whereas in the past, a lack of education has been pinpointed as a major fat factor, Dr Toomath said times had changed.
“A vast majority of people who are overweight are fully aware potato chips, soft drinks, pies and chocolate biscuits are things that make you fat, so educating people about fatty foods is a waste of time.”
She said the only way of stopping the bulge in numbers was to re-engineer society.
“We have to put a different frame around it and say ‘look, what do we have to do to protect our children from becoming obese’?”
Huge progress could be made once that framework was in place, she said.
“Like taking advertising of junk food off TV and taking junk food out of schools … That is the beginning.”
Obesity, worst 10
Country and percentage of population:
United States 30.6
Mexico 24.2
Britain 23
Slovak Republic 22.4
Greece 21.9
Australia 21.7
New Zealand 20.9
Hungary 18.8
Luxembourg 18.4
Czech Republic 14.8
(Source: OECD)
-NZPA
Source: nzherald.co.nz
December 5th, 2005
