Some reasonable people will point out this study does not prove a causal relationship or the direction of causation. But as with many other great pleasures, I've never tried to be reasonable about my chocolate eating. I'm skinny and I eat chocolate. I'm going to believe that's not a coincidence until proven otherwise.
CHICAGO – More frequently eating chocolate was linked to lower body mass index (BMI), according to a research letter in the March 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Consumption of certain types of chocolate has been linked to some favorable metabolic associations with blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and cholesterol level. However, because chocolate can be a calorie-laden sweet there are concerns about eating it.
Beatrice A. Golomb, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues with the University of California, San Diego, studied 1,018 men and woman without known cardiovascular disease, diabetes or extremes of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels who were screened for participation in a clinical study examining noncardiac effects of statins. To measure chocolate consumption, 1,017 of the participants answered a question about how many times per week they ate chocolate. BMI was calculated for 972 of them. Of the participants, 975 completed a food frequency questionnaire.
"Adults who consumed chocolate more frequently had a lower BMI than those who consumed chocolate less often," the authors note.
Participants had a mean (average) age of 57 years, 68 percent were men and the mean BMI was 28. They ate chocolate a mean (average) of two times a week and exercised 3.6 times a week.
"In conclusion, our findings – that more frequent chocolate intake is linked to lower BMI – are intriguing," the authors conclude. "A randomized trial of chocolate for metabolic benefits in humans may be merited."
I'm not going to enroll in a randomized trial where I might get put into the no-chocolate group. I'm also not going to go into any no-blueberry, no-strawberry, or no-kiwi fruit control group (among others).
Katherine Hepburn famously said of her slim physique: "What you see before you is the result of a lifetime of chocolate." New evidence suggests she may have been right.
More protein and lower glycemic index carbs work best to keep the weight off.
Researchers at the Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE), University of Copenhagen, can now unveil the results of the world's largest diet study: If you want to lose weight, you should maintain a diet that is high in proteins with more lean meat, low-fat dairy products and beans and fewer finely refined starch calories such as white bread and white rice. With this diet, you can also eat until you are full without counting calories and without gaining weight. Finally, the extensive study concludes that the official dietary recommendations are not sufficient for preventing obesity.
After going on an 800 calories/day diet the participants were put on different maintenance diets to see which diet would keep the weight off.
A total of 772 European families participated, comprising 938 adult family members and 827 children. The overweight adults initially followed an 800 kcal/day diet for eight weeks, losing an average of 11 kg. They were then randomly assigned to one of five different low-fat diet types which they followed for six months in order to test which diet was most effective at preventing weight regain.
The results are plain to see in this chart. The Low Protein-High Glycemic Index (LP-HGI) diet was worst. The High Protein-Low Glycemic Index (HP-LGI) diet was best.
This is right out of the Paleo Diet game book. Stay away from those high glycemic index grains. Eat more meat.
If you want to eat some carbs that are low in glycemic index then check out this searchable glycemic index food database. Check out your foods in that database. Note that rices span a very wide range of glycemic index values. The sticky rice in Chinese restaurants is some of the highest glycemic index food you can eat. But Uncle Ben's Converted Rice is one of the very low glycemic index foods.
In a study of children in Colombia low blood vitamin D was associated with higher rate of weight gain.
Villamor worked with colleagues at the National University of Colombia and began the research while at Harvard. The investigators recruited a group of 479 school children ages 5-12 from Bogota, Colombia, in 2006 and followed them for about 30 months. They measured vitamin D in blood taken at the beginning of the study, and then examined the link between vitamin D levels and changes in three indicators of body fat over time: body mass index, waist circumference and subscapular-to-triceps skin fold ratio.
"We found that the kids with the lowest vitamin D levels at the beginning tended to gain weight faster than the kids with higher levels," said Villamor, who added that children with the lowest vitamin D levels had more drastic increases in central body fat measures.
On a related note another study found greater weight loss among people who drink milk. Would vitamin D alone account for this? Or are other components of milk helping?
Now there's a new reason to grab a glass of milk when you're on diet, suggests a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In a 2-year weight loss study, milk drinkers had an advantage over those who skipped the milk. Israeli researchers found that adults who drank the most milk (nearly 2 glasses per day) and had the highest vitamin D levels at 6 months, lost more weight after 2 years than those who had little or no milk or milk products -- nearly 12 pounds weight loss, on average.
Researchers also found that each additional 6-ounce serving of milk or milk products (about 3/4 of a glass of milk) was associated with 10 pounds successful weight loss above the average, at 6 months.
If the effect here is real then why? Do calcium and/or vitamin D suppress appetite? Or some other combination of nutrients in milk perhaps? This reminds me of Stephan Guyenet's post on a report about a multivitamin supplement that supposedly caused weight loss in obese people. If obesity is a result of a metabolism going very awry then could nutrient deficiencies be a contributing factor?
Another idea: displacement. Maybe the milk fats displace from the diet omega 6 fatty acids which cause obesity. Or maybe the milk fats cancel out some metabolic effects of omega 6s?
Could it be that corn fed to a cow to make milk is healthier for us than corn oil consumed directly? Yes, I know, it is heretical to think the last few decades of mainstream dietary advice is mostly wrong. I'm a heretic in so many ways. Why not add on another one?
A short period of excess food consumption can have long term effects on your body weight and fat storage even after the initial weight is lost. A study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Nutrition & Metabolism has found that a four-week episode of increased energy intake and decreased exercise can cause increased weight and fat mass more than two years later when compared to control individuals.
Åsa Ernersson worked with a team of researchers from Linköping University Sweden to investigate the long term effects of a sedentary and gluttonous lifestyle. They capped the physical activity of 18 individuals and used excessive food consumption to increase their energy intake by an average of 70% for four weeks. A separate control group ate and exercised as normal.
A long vacation pig-out could have long term consequences.
A very interesting result: The overeating group experienced a long term shift to higher weight.
The intervention group gained an average of 6.4 kg in body weight, which was mostly lost 6 months later. However, one year later the intervention group showed an increased fat mass compared to baseline; the differences were even greater after two and a half years. Ernersson said "The long term difference in body weight in the intervention and control groups suggests that there is an extended effect on fat mass after a short period of large food consumption and minimal exercise."
What I want to know: is there some way to recalibrate one's metabolism permanently toward a lower weight? Or is human metabolism ratchetable only in one direction?
I also wonder about actors who gain weight for a part. Did Renee Zellweger have a tougher time staying emaciated after she played Bridget Jones?
Normal-weight women need 60 minutes a day of moderate exercise in order to maintain a healthy weight, researchers said.
Those who exercised fewer than 420 minutes a week gained significantly more weight than those who met this target, I-Min Lee, MBBS, ScD, of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues reported in the March 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
For the heaviest women, however, there was no relationship between exercise and weight gain.
1 hour is a lot of time per day. But the researchers say 30 minutes per day of intense exercise will do the trick too.
One hour per day too long? High intensity interval training is also worth consideration.
The usual excuse of "lack of time" for not doing enough exercise is blown away by new research published in The Journal of Physiology.
The study, from scientists at Canada's McMaster University, adds to the growing evidence for the benefits of short term high-intensity interval training (HIT) as a time-efficient but safe alternative to traditional types of moderate long term exercise. Astonishingly, it is possible to get more by doing less!
"We have shown that interval training does not have to be 'all out' in order to be effective," says Professor Martin Gibala. "Doing 10 one-minute sprints on a standard stationary bike with about one minute of rest in between, three times a week, works as well in improving muscle as many hours of conventional long-term biking less strenuously."
This study only looked at muscle effects from the training. So it isn't clear whether it would work as well against weight gain. But it delivers benefits to muscles similar to that of 43 minutes of moderate bicycling per day.
To achieve the study's equivalent results by endurance training you'd need to complete over 10 hours of continuous moderate bicycling exercise over a two-week period.
Previous research by the McMaster group involved 30 seconds of maximal pedaling on a special bike followed by four minutes of recovery, and repeated 4-6 times. The new study involves eight to 12 one-minute bouts of exercise on a standard stationary bicycle at a relatively lower intensity with rest intervals of 75 seconds, for a total of 20-25 minutes per session. The workload was still above most people's comfort zone —about 95% of maximal heart rate — but only about half of what can be achieved when people sprint at an all-out pace.
In results published online March 18 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.
The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.
The second experiment -- the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals -- monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet. In humans, this would be equivalent to a 200-pound man gaining 96 pounds.
Also see my previous post on fructose and high blood pressure.
Is obesity the body's attempt to protect you from bad food you eat?
In an attempt to determine the effects of obesity itself, diabetes researchers Roger Unger and Philipp Scherer, both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, reviewed several recent studies of the role of fat cells in humans and mice.
In particular, the pair looked at the fates of people with a genetic condition that means they can't make their own fat cells and mice genetically engineered to have low supplies of these cells and fed a diet that would make normal mice obese. They found that, despite not being obese, both tend to develop metabolic syndrome earlier on in life than their overweight, overfed counterparts.
Fat as a protective cushion against junk food? Can this be?
I'm not ready to let fat off the hook. Plenty of studies find evidence that intra-abdominal fat causes harm. For example, fat around the heart spells trouble.
The first study, presented by cardiology fellow Nikolaos Alexopoulos, MD, now at the University of Athens, Greece, shows that patients with a larger volume of epicardial adipose tissue tend to have the types of atherosclerotic plaques cardiologists deem most dangerous: non-calcified plaques.
Calcium tends to build up in atherosclerotic plaques. Even though the heart's overall coronary calcium burden is a good predictor of heart disease, calcium in an individual plaque doesn't necessarily mean imminent trouble, Raggi says. Researchers have been learning that non-calcified plaques indicate active buildup in that coronary artery, and studies suggest that the fat around the heart secretes more inflammatory hormones, compared to the fat just under the skin.
"Release of inflammatory factors from epicardial adipose tissue may be promoting an active atherosclerotic process, and this is indicated by the presence of non-calcified plaques," Raggi says.
In any case, eat fruits and vegetables, eat whole grains if you must eat grains, and get exercise.
The way I would prefer to deal with the slings and arrows of diet, weight, and aging: Get in a time machine and come out in 2050 when rejuvenation therapies should be perfected.
If you need to lose weight and lower your blood pressure read this:
DURHAM, NC — In a head-to-head comparison, two popular weight loss methods proved equally effective at helping participants lose significant amounts of weight. But, in a surprising twist, a low-carbohydrate diet proved better at lowering blood pressure than the weight-loss drug orlistat, according to researchers at Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Duke University Medical Center.
Orlistat (aka Xenical or Alli) works by blocking fat absorption. So blocking fat absorption does not lower blood pressure as well as a low carb diet. Note that the orlistat diet participants were also counseled to reduce fat consumption.
The lead author recommends a low carb diet for those both overweight and with high blood pressure.
The findings send an important message to hypertensive people trying to lose weight, says William S. Yancy, Jr., MD, lead author of the study in the Jan. 25 Archives of Internal Medicine, and an associate professor of medicine at Duke. "If people have high blood pressure and a weight problem, a low-carbohydrate diet might be a better option than a weight loss medication."
The two diets yielded equal weight gains. They also improved blood cholesterol and glucose by about the same amount. But the low carb dieters did better on blood pressure control.
The average weight loss for both groups was nearly 10 percent of their body weight. "Not many studies are able to achieve that," says Yancy, who attributes the significant weight loss to the group counseling that was offered for 48 weeks. In fact, he says "people tolerated orlistat better than I expected. Orlistat use is often limited by gastro-intestinal side effects, but these can be avoided, or at least lessened, by following a low-fat diet closely. We counseled people on orlistat in our study fairly extensively about the low-fat diet."
In addition to achieving equal success at weight loss, the methods proved equally effective at improving cholesterol and glucose levels.
But Yancy said it was the difference in blood pressure results that was most surprising.
Nearly half (47%) of patients in the low-carbohydrate group had their blood pressure medication decreased or discontinued while only 21 percent of the orlistat plus low-fat diet group experienced a reduction in medication use. Systolic blood pressure dropped considerably in the low-carbohydrate group when compared to the orlistat plus low-fat diet group.
I am curious to know whether the low carb dieters ate disproportionately more protein or fat. Would a high protein and low carb diet lower blood pressure as well as the low carb diet used in this study?
Women who store fat on their waist in middle age are more than twice as likely to develop dementia when they get older, reveals a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy.
The study has just been published in the scientific journal Neurology.
"Anyone carrying a lot of fat around the middle is at greater risk of dying prematurely due to a heart attack or stroke," says Deborah Gustafson, senior lecturer at the Sahlgrenska Academy. "If they nevertheless manage to live beyond 70, they run a greater risk of dementia."
The research is based on the Prospective Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, which was started at the end of the 1960s when almost 1,500 women between the ages of 38 and 60 underwent comprehensive examinations and answered questions about their health and lifestyle.
What I wonder: What's the long term effect of liposuction? Does it decrease any risks associated with abdominal fat? Or do risks perhaps even increase because then more excess calories turn into intra-abdominal fat around internal organs?
What I also wonder: Is the waist fat risk really due to the fat near the skin? Or is that fat just a proxy also indicating the presence of far more dangerous intra-abdominal fat around internal organs? Could be both.
I ask all these questions about intra-abdominal fat because fat deposited around your organs makes those organs perform poorly.
(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that fat collection in different body locations, such as around the heart and the aorta and within the liver, are associated with certain decreased heart functions. The study, which appears on-line in Obesity, also found that measuring a person’s body mass index (BMI) does not reliably predict the amount of undesired fat in and around these vital organs.
So how to keep the weight off inside your body where fat is most harmful? So far the only way I know to do it is exercise after a diet. If you go on a diet and lose weight then exercise will keep the weight off around internal organs.
Could the conventional mainstream wisdom about diet (more carbo, less fat) be, like, totally wrong? Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden find that children who drink full-fat milk have lower body mass index.
Eight-year-old children who drink full-fat milk every day have a lower BMI than those who seldom drink milk. This is not the case for children who often drink medium-fat or low-fat milk. This is one conclusion of a thesis presented at the Sahlgrenska Academy.
The study showed that children who drink full-fat milk every day weigh on average just over 4 kg less.
"This is an interesting observation, but we don't know why it is so. It may be the case that children who drink full-fat milk tend also to eat other things that affect their weight. Another possible explanation is that children who do not drink full-fat milk drink more soft drinks instead", says dietician Susanne Eriksson, author of the thesis.
Better deep fat than the high fructose corn syrup found in soda.
The scientists also discovered a difference between overweight children who drink full-fat milk every day and those who do not. Children who often drink milk with a fat content of 3% are less overweight. The thesis shows also that the children eat more saturated fat than recommended, but those children who have a high intake of fat have a lower BMI than the children with a lower intake of fat.
For some children there is no deep fat. The children of Woody Allen's futuristic Sleeper knew (or will know) better.
Mice were genetically engineered to lack myostatin. The results were salutary.
Knockout of myostatin, a growth factor that limits muscle growth, can decrease body fat and promote resistance against developing atherosclerosis, or "hardening" of the arteries, according to a new study conducted in mice. The results will be presented Thursday at The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
Avoid obesity and atherosclerosis by suppressing this gene.
Bhasin and his co-workers wanted to find out if inhibiting myostatin in mice could resist the development of diet-induced obesity and of atherosclerosis, the buildup of lipid deposits called plaque that can narrow and clog coronary arteries.
The researchers took mice that were genetically altered to develop atherosclerosis and then cross-bred them with myostatin knockout mice. Ten generations later, they had mice who were genetically predisposed to both atherosclerosis and inactivation of myostatin. For controls, they studied mice with a genetic predisposition for atherosclerosis but with intact myostatin gene. All mice received a high-fat diet for 12 weeks, to spur the development of atherosclerosis.
Lower fasting blood sugar, lower fasting insulin, and other beneficial changes in blood chemistry resulted from cutting back on myostatin.
Compared with controls, the mice with deleted myostatin gene had much less body fat and 30 percent lower fasting blood sugar and 80% lower fasting insulin levels, showing a reduction in obesity and a strong resistance to developing diabetes, the authors reported. They also had 50 percent lower low-density-lipoprotein ("bad") cholesterol and 30 to 60 percent lower levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides (fats in the blood), respectively. These results indicate protection against the development of atherosclerosis, according to Bhasin.
Might a drug be found that inhibits myostatin?
Go for eggs over bagels for breakfast?
A study led by Maria Luz Fernandez, Ph.D., professor in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Connecticut, investigated the differences in post-meal hunger and daily caloric intake when eating a breakfast of either protein-rich eggs or carbohydrate-rich bagels. Although the two breakfast options contained an identical amount of calories, the researchers found that adult men who consumed eggs for breakfast:
- consumed fewer calories following the egg breakfast compared to the bagel breakfast
- consumed fewer total calories in the 24-hour period after the egg breakfast compared to the bagel breakfast
- reported feeling less hungry and more satisfied three hours after the egg breakfast compared to the bagel breakfast(1)
This study supports previous research published in the International Journal of Obesity, which found that eating eggs for breakfast as part of a reduced-calorie diet helped overweight dieters lose 65 percent more weight and feel more energetic than dieters who ate a bagel breakfast of equal calories and volume. The study also found no significant difference in blood levels of LDL- and HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides between the individuals who ate the egg breakfast and those who ate the bagel breakfast.(2)
Click thru to read results of a second study that found solid food protein cuts appetite but liquid food protein does not. So don't eat those protein diet drinks. Stick to solids.
First off, you are better off just drinking water. But fructose sweetening of beverages might be worse than glucose sweetening.
In 2005, the average American consumed 64kg of added sugar, a sizeable proportion of which came through drinking soft drinks. Now, in a 10-week study, Peter Havel and colleagues, at the University of California at Davis, Davis, have provided evidence that human consumption of fructose-sweetened but not glucose-sweetened beverages can adversely affect both sensitivity to the hormone insulin and how the body handles fats, creating medical conditions that increase susceptibility to heart attack and stroke.
In the study, overweight and obese individuals consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages that provided 25% of their energy requirements for 10 weeks. During this period, individuals in both groups put on about the same amount of weight, but only those consuming fructose-sweetened beverages exhibited an increase in intraabdominal fat. Further, only these individuals became less sensitive to the hormone insulin (which controls glucose levels in the blood) and showed signs of dyslipidemia (increased levels of fat-soluble molecules known as lipids in the blood). As discussed in an accompanying commentary by Susanna Hofmann and Matthias Tschöp, although these are signs of the metabolic syndrome, which increases an individual's risk of heart attack, the long-term affects of fructose over-consumption on susceptibility to heart attack remain unknown.
Also see my previous posts Liquid Calories Key To Weight Loss, More Evidence For Fructose Obesity Link, and "Fructose Consumption May Lead To Obesity". However, do not let the fructose-fat link dissuade you from eating fruits. Fruits are beneficial.
You can be at higher risk of heart failure even if your body mass index (BMI) is in a normal range. The type of fat you have is as important as the total amount of fat you have.
The researchers examined two Swedish population-based studies, the Swedish Mammography Cohort (made up of 36,873 women aged 48 to 83) and the Cohort of Swedish Men (43,487 men aged 45 to 79) who responded to questionnaires asking for information about their height, weight and waist circumference. Over a seven-year period between January 1998 and December 2004 the researchers reported 382 first-time heart-failure events among the women (including 357 hospital admissions and 25 deaths) and 718 first-time heart-failure events among men (accounting for 679 hospital admissions and 39 deaths.)
Their analysis found that based on the answers provided by the study participants, 34 percent of the women were overweight and 11 percent were obese, while 46 percent of the men were overweight and 10 percent were obese.
“By any measure – BMI, waist circumference, waist to hip ratio or waist to height ratio –our findings showed that excess body weight was associated with higher rates of heart failure,” explains Levitan.
Further breakdown of the numbers showed that among the women with a BMI of 25 (within the normal range), a 10-centimeter higher waist measurement was associated with a 15 percent higher heart failure rate; women with a BMI of 30 had an 18 percent increased heart failure rate. In men with a BMI of 25, a 10-centimeter higher waist circumference was associated with a 16 percent higher heart failure rate; the rate increased to 18 percent when men’s BMI increased to 30.
So fat on your waist is a bigger threat than fat on, say, your hips. So then does liposuction of stomach fat reduce heart attack risk?
Do not drink high calorie drinks if you want to keep the weight off. Parenthetically, I saw this coming and have only drank water about 99% of the time for decades. Works for me.
When it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be more important than what you eat, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined the relationship between beverage consumption among adults and weight change and found that weight loss was positively associated with a reduction in liquid calorie consumption and liquid calorie intake had a stronger impact on weight than solid calorie intake. The results are published in the April 1, 2009, issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
“Both liquid and solid calories were associated with weight change, however, only a reduction in liquid calorie intake was shown to significantly affect weight loss during the 6-month follow up,” said Benjamin Caballero MD, PhD, senior author of the study and a professor with the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health. “A reduction in liquid calorie intake was associated with a weight loss of 0.25 kg at 6 months and 0.24 kg at 18 months. Among sugar-sweetened beverages, a reduction of 1 serving was associated with a weight loss of 0.5 kg at 6 months and 0.7 kg at 18 months. Of the seven types of beverages examined, sugar-sweetened beverages were the only beverages significantly associated with weight change.”
Solid foods make your stomach stretched and the calories in them get absorbed more rapidly. Want to lose weight? My advice is raise the lower the glycemic index of your diet while also increasing fiber consumption. Also, drink water and rarely drink anything sweet.
Exercise with dieting reduces loss of muscle in old folks.
A group of sedentary and overweight older people placed on a four-month exercise program not only became more fit, but burned off more fat, compared to older sedentary people who were placed on a diet but did not exercise. The new study also showed that when older people diet without exercising, they lose more lean muscle compared to those who exercise, said senior researcher Bret H. Goodpaster. When they combined weight loss with exercise, it nearly completely prevented the loss of lean muscle mass. The results are important because older people tend to lose muscle mass as they age and too much muscle loss may interfere with activities of daily living. The study, “Separate and combined effects of exercise training and weight loss on exercise efficiency and substrate oxidation,” appears in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, published by The American Physiological Society. Francesca Amati, John J. Dube, Chris Shay and Goodpaster, all of the University of Pittsburgh, carried out the study. Exercise while losing weight is probably good advice at any age. However, the elderly in particular have a problem with a loss of muscle mass called sarcopenia. While some see it mainly as a consequence of decreased exercise with age a number of age-related changes might contribute to sarcopenia. Thus, in humans between 20 and 80 years of age, muscle mass decreases about 40%, with negative effects on mobility, strength production, metabolic rate and respiratory function. A continuous reparative process is also present in skeletal muscle due to the presence of quiescent adult stem cells, called satellite cells, which are able to change their phenotype when appropriate conditions are present. Sarcopenia is considered an event with a multifactorial etiology: (1) mitochondrial deletion, i.e., replication errors in mitochondrial DNA that lead to an energetic deficit and fiber atrophy; (2) protein synthesis alterations, with an imbalance between protein degradation and the ability of the fibers to synthesize protein; (3) loss of repair ability of the satellite cells, caused by an alteration in the proteic growth factors (mainly IGF–1, mIGF–1, HGF) and hormones (growth hormone, testosterone and estrogens), or by an imbalance of the antioxidant system. We need stem cell therapies and gene therapies to do repairs on aged muscle tissues. But while we wait for those therapies we should get lots of exercise to minimize the muscle mass loss. You might want to calculate your calories burned per mile walking at different speeds if you are having trouble fighting your weight. If you've got the wrong copy of a gene called FTO one solution is to become an Amish farmer to get the exercise you need to control your weight. High levels of physical activity can help to counteract a gene that normally causes people to gain weight, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. They analyzed gene variants and activity levels of the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pa., and found that the obesity-related FTO gene had no effect on individuals who were the most physically active. "Our results strongly suggest that the increased risk of obesity due to genetic susceptibility can be blunted through physical activity," the authors conclude. "These findings emphasize the important role of physical activity in public health efforts to combat obesity, particularly in genetically susceptible individuals." The results of the study are being published in the Sept. 8, 2008, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Soren Snitker, M.D., Ph.D., the senior author and an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, says, "Our study shows that a high level of physical activity can 'level the playing field,' equalizing the risk of obesity between those who have copies of the FTO gene variant and those who don't." The FTO gene recently has been linked to obesity and increased body mass index, or BMI, in several large-scale studies. More than half of all people of European descent have one or two copies of a variation of this gene, British scientists reported last year. Individuals with two copies of the gene variant are on average 7 pounds heavier and 67 percent more likely to be obese than those who don't have it. We are not adapted to industrialized environments. Though not everyone does equally poorly in low exercise lifestyles. Therefore it is not surprising that scientists can find specific genetic variations that make some more or less adapted to less physical activity. The more active among the Amish are known to burn a lot more calories than the vast majority of people who live in industrialized countries. Though they are not all intensely physically active since they do not all work in the same occupation. Even different kinds of farming introduce different levels of physical activity. University of Maryland researchers found this same link between variations of the FTO gene and increased risk of obesity in their study of 704 Amish men and women. But, in examining the gene in this unique group of people with a similar genetic background and active lifestyle, the researchers also found that high levels of physical activity helped to counteract the gene's effects.
"Having multiple copies of FTO gene variants had no effect on body weight for people who were the most physically active, regardless of whether they were men or women. But in less active people, the association between the gene and increased BMI was significant," says Evadnie Rampersaud, Ph.D., the lead author and a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who is now at the University of Miami Institute for Human Genomics. "This provides evidence that the negative effects of the FTO variants on increasing body weight can be moderated by physical activity." You have to burn an extra 900 kilocalories per day in order to fully control for the effects of the weight-boosting FTO variant. Participants were classified as having "high activity" or "low activity" levels. The more active people used 900 more kilocalories, or units of energy, a day, which translates into three to four hours of moderately intensive activity, such as brisk walking, housecleaning or gardening. This isn't to say that a lower level of exercise wouldn't help. In fact, jogging 30 miles per week lowers the rate of weight gain but does not stop it entirely. Those 30 miles probably amount to about 120 kcal per mile or 3600 kcal per week. That falls short of the extra 7 times 900 kcal per day for these Amish or 6300 kcal per week. So maybe if you ran 52.5 miles per week that'd prevent weight gain. Um, I'm not up for doing that. If you want to save time running at 10 mph burns over 1000 calories per hour. In another study a group of Old Order Amish in southern Ontario were found to walk about 5 times further per day than the average American. They had a very low rate of obesity too. But burn calories they surely do, as his study in the January edition of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise demonstrates. By contrast the average American takes about 3000 steps per day. A 200 lb person walking 3 mph can burn 70 extra kcals per mile as compared to sitting still. So you'd need to walk over 12 miles per day to equal the extra calories burned by a heavily active Old Order Amish farmer. You could walk at a brisk pace and cut your time down from 4 hours though or even jog. You could also weight train to build up your muscles in order to boost your rate of calorie burn while sitting still. If neuroendocrinologist Dr Zane Andrews has it right aging of appetite control neurons reduces appetite suppression in the brain and thereby causes excess eating. A Monash University scientist has discovered key appetite control cells in the human brain degenerate over time, causing increased hunger and potentially weight-gain as we grow older. The research by Dr Zane Andrews, a neuroendocrinologist with Monash University's Department of Physiology, has been published in Nature. Dr Andrews found that appetite-suppressing cells are attacked by free radicals after eating and said the degeneration is more significant following meals rich in carbohydrates and sugars. Yet another vicious cycle. Your brain becomes damaged by the carbs. That makes you want more carbs. Hey, carbs are like cocaine. Insert my recurring comments about a lack of free will here. "The more carbs and sugars you eat, the more your appetite-control cells are damaged, and potentially you consume more," Dr Andrews said. Dr Andrews said the attack on appetite suppressing cells creates a cellular imbalance between our need to eat and the message to the brain to stop eating. "People in the age group of 25 to 50 are most at risk. The neurons that tell people in the crucial age range not to over-eat are being killed-off. The proopiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons get hit by free radicals. We need neural stem cell therapy to replace POMC neurons to get our appetites under control. Imagine that. Stem cells for weight control. "When the stomach is empty, it triggers the ghrelin hormone that notifies the brain that we are hungry. When we are full, a set of neurons known as POMC's kick in. "However, free radicals created naturally in the body attack the POMC neurons. This process causes the neurons to degenerate overtime, affecting our judgement as to when our hunger is satisfied," Dr Andrews said. The free radicals also try to attack the hunger neurons, but these are protected by the uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2). Oh what wretches we are. Dietary advice to replace fats with carbs might have sealed our fates and doomed us to early deaths. Even if we turn away from potatoes and buns today the damage has already been done. Dr Andrews said the reduction in the appetite-suppressing cells could be one explanation for the complex condition of adult-onset obesity. "A diet rich in carbohydrate and sugar that has become more and more prevalent in modern societies over the last 20-30 years has placed so much strain on our bodies that it's leading to premature cell deterioration," Dr Andrews said. Dr Andrews' next research project will focus on finding if a diet rich in carbohydrates and sugars has other impacts on the brain, such as the increased incidences of neurological conditions like Parkinson's disease. We lack free will. It gets worse as we age. We need stem cell therapies to restore at least the illusion of free will - as well as make us skinnier and younger looking and feeling. People fighting the battle of the bulge need every advantage they can use. Here's an easy one: Cut out the spice monosodium glutamate. People in rural Chinese villages who put MSG on their food weigh more than those in the same villages who do not use MSG. CHAPEL HILL – People who use monosodium glutamate, or MSG, as a flavor enhancer in their food are more likely than people who don't use it to be overweight or obese even though they have the same amount of physical activity and total calorie intake, according to a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health study published this month in the journal Obesity. Researchers at UNC and in China studied more than 750 Chinese men and women, aged between 40 and 59, in three rural villages in north and south China. The majority of study participants prepared their meals at home without commercially processed foods. About 82 percent of the participants used MSG in their food. Those users were divided into three groups, based on the amount of MSG they used. The third who used the most MSG were nearly three times more likely to be overweight than non-users. "Animal studies have indicated for years that MSG might be associated with weight gain," said Ka He, M.D., assistant professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the UNC School of Public Health. "Ours is the first study to show a link between MSG use and weight in humans." Because MSG is used as a flavor enhancer in many processed foods, studying its potential effect on humans has been difficult. He and his colleagues chose study participants living in rural Chinese villages because they used very little commercially processed food, but many regularly used MSG in food preparation. "We found that prevalence of overweight was significantly higher in MSG users than in non-users," He said. "We saw this risk even when we controlled for physical activity, total calorie intake and other possible explanations for the difference in body mass. The positive associations between MSG intake and overweight were consistent with data from animal studies." My guess is that those animal studies were controlled interventional studies. Anyone know? The history of weight loss research has generally been that few weight losers keep the weight off. Well, in one group of overweight and obese women adding an additonal 5 hours per week of exercise and sustaining this kept off the lost weight. In addition to limiting calories, overweight and obese women may need to exercise 55 minutes a day for five days per week to sustain a weight loss of 10 percent over two years, according to a report in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. More than 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, a public health concern, according to background information in the article. "Among obese adults, long-term weight loss and prevention of weight regain have been less than desired," the authors write. "Therefore, there is a need for more effective interventions." Current recommendations prescribe 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days of the week, for a total of 150 minutes per week. However, a growing consensus suggests that more exercise may be needed to enhance long-term weight loss. To calculate the amount of exercise needed, John M. Jakicic, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues enrolled 201 overweight and obese women in a weight loss intervention between 1999 and 2003. All the women were told to eat between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day. They were then assigned to one of four groups based on physical activity amount (burning 1,000 calories vs. 2,000 calories per week) and intensity (moderate vs. vigorous). Group meetings focusing on strategies for modifying eating and exercise habits, as well telephone calls with the intervention team, also were conducted over the two-year period. The only women who kept off all the lost weight burned more calories per week doing exercise. But they also continued to better follow weight loss diet advice. After six months, women in all four groups had lost an average of 8 percent to 10 percent of their initial body weight. However, most were not able to sustain this weight loss. After two years the women's weight was an average of 5 percent lower than their initial weight, with no difference between groups. The 24.6 percent of individuals who did maintain a loss of 10 percent or more over two years reported performing more physical activity (an average of 1,835 calories per week, or 275 minutes per week over the baseline level of activity) than those who lost less weight. They also completed more telephone calls with the intervention team, engaged in more eating behaviors recommended for weight control and had a lower intake of dietary fat. I wonder if the problem of obesity is due to our appetites being evolutionarily tuned to eat for a higher average level of activity. If we take pills that emulate exercise will this keep off the fat? More muscle would mean more calories burned per day since muscle just sitting there uses energy. So boosting our muscle mass would probably help keep the weight off. Exercise with more muscle mass would burn more calories per unit time. I do not expect obesity to last as a problem for much longer than perhaps 15 years. Even if anti-obesity drugs take 10 years to develop we should know enough within 5 years what sorts of drugs to develop to boost muscle mass, reduce appetite, and increase breakdown of fat. The recent report about compounds that emulate the effects of exercise are an example of how fast our understanding of metabolism is advancing. Diets with more fats and protein seem take off more fat than diets low in fat. NEW YORK, July 14, 2008 – A two-year study led by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) reveals that low-carbohydrate and Mediterranean diets may be just as safe and effective in achieving weight loss as the standard, medically prescribed low-fat diet, according to a new study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. The study was conducted by BGU and the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, Israel, in collaboration with Harvard University, The University of Leipzig, Germany and the University of Western Ontario, Canada. In the two-year study, 322 moderately obese people were intensively monitored and were randomly assigned one of three diets: a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet; a Mediterranean calorie-restricted diet with the highest level of dietary fiber and monounsaturated/saturated fat; or a low-carbohydrate diet with the least amount of carbohydrates, highest fat, protein, and dietary cholesterol. The low-carb dieters had no caloric intake restrictions. Although participants actually decreased their total daily calories consumed by a similar amount, net weight loss from the low-fat diet after two years was only 6.5 lbs. (2.9 kg) compared to 10 lbs. (4.4 kg) on the Mediterranean diet, and 10.3 lbs. (4.7 kg) on the low-carbohydrate diet. "These weight reduction rates are comparable to results from physician-prescribed weight loss medications," explains Dr. Iris Shai, the lead researcher. The Mediterranean diet has more fiber and probably a lower glycemic index than a typical low fat diet that does not take into consideration the types of carbos. When glucose enters the blood it causes insulin release to transport it out of the blood and into cells. How the body responds to that insulin and sugar probably helps to increase weight and push one's blood lipid profile in an unhealthy direction. Cutting carbohydrates does the most to improve blood lipids. The low-fat diet reduced the total cholesterol to HDL ratio by only 12 percent, while the low-carbohydrate diet improved the same ratio by 20 percent. Lipids improved the most in the low-carbohydrate, with a 20% increase in the HDL ("good") cholesterol and, 14% decrease in triglycerides. In all three diets, inflammatory and liver function biomarkers was equally improved. However, among diabetic participants, the standard low-fat diet actually increased the fasting glucose levels by 12mg/dL, while the Mediterranean diet induced a decrease in fasting glucose levels by 33mg/dL. Shift toward eating more monounsaturated fats (olive oil) and fish along with veggies and nuts. Cut back on the grains - especially the higher glycemic index refined grains. Check out this online searchable database on glycemic index of hundreds of foods. One of the steps I've taken in the direction of a higher protein diet is to cook 20 lb turkeys and eat turkey every day. It is lower in fat than most red meats and lasts at least a couple of weeks afterward in a fridge kept just at the freezing point. Update: Some are suspicious of this study because of where the funding came from. The study was funded by a foundation established by Robert Atkins, of Atkins Diet fame. Though the Atkins Diet has a popular reputation as a meat-heavy, bacon-lover’s dream, those in the study who were assigned to the low-carb plan were counseled to favor vegetarian sources of fat and protein. I think the study should be considered on its merits. Dean Ornish says these results contradict the results of research he has done. My colleagues and I at the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University of California, San Francisco, have studied for more than three decades the effects of diets much lower in fat (10 percent) than the one used in NEJM study as well as lower in refined carbohydrates and higher in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products. We reported in a randomized, controlled clinical trial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association a 24-pound weight loss after one year and 13-pound average weight loss after five years in a group of men and women, much more than the 9.7 to 10.3 pounds lost in the new NEJM study. These findings were replicated in larger demonstration projects as well. Ornish makes the important point that some evidence links higher fat diets to prostate cancer. But at least one study found saturated fat was the source of risk for progression of prostate cancer. Ornish might be painting with too broad a brush and the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats might provide net benefits. One study found that polyunsaturated fats are not associated with increased risk of advanced prostate cancer. While the Atkins Foundation funded this study and the low-carb were counseled to eat a lot of protein the participants were encouraged to eat plant protein rather than animal protein. Well, it is hard to eat a lot of plant protein. But according to the report in The New England Journal of Medicine, the low-carb dieters in the study “were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein.'’ Although saturated fat was not specifically restricted, the dieters were told that “moderation” was recommended. So the dieters in this study ate less saturated fats and probably less protein than full-on Atkins dieters. We know some foods are good. Eat lots of vegetables. That's the hardest advice of all for most to follow. Eat whole fruits. When you eat meat choose leaner meats. Eat fish. Eat beans and lower glycemic index rices rather than breads.
The 98 Amish adults Bassett surveyed wore pedometers for a week. The men averaged 18,000 steps a day. The women took an average of 14,000 steps.
The men spent about 10 hours a week doing heavy work like plowing, shoeing horses, tossing hay bales, and digging. The women spent about 3.5 hours a week at heavy chores. Men spent 55 hours a week in moderate activity; women reported 45 hours a week of moderate chores like gardening and doing laundry.
The obesity rate among the participants was 4 percent, as determined by body mass index, or BMI. The current obesity rate among the adult American population is a whopping 31 percent.