Biological Psychology Links

By ELIZABETH SIMPSON NORFOLK, Va. — Mary Writesel wrestled with obesity for a couple of decades, but it wasn't until she was diagnosed with diabetes that she considered a drastic solution: Weight-reduction surgery. Even before she left the hospital after the surgery last August, her blood sugar levels had fallen so much she no longer needed medication for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. A year later and 60 pounds lighter, "I'm considered diabetes free," the 55-year-old Portsmouth resident said. "I can't tell you what a relief it is." That by no means happens to all diabetics who go through weight-reduction surgery, but it happens enough that researchers are taking note. Writesel agreed to donate a sample of fat removed during her surgery for a study being conducted by researchers at Norfolk's Eastern Virginia Medical School. "I told them they could have as much of that as they wanted." The local medical school study is one of many exploring why diabetes sometimes goes away after weight-reduction surgery. At first, the phenomenon was chalked up to weight loss, but some patients were shedding the disease before losing a pound or even leaving the hospital. Researchers at the EVMS Strelitz Diabetes Center decided to study different types of body fat to see whether certain aspects are more likely to result in problems such as diabetes and heart problems. © 2010 msnbc.com

By Katherine Harmon More than 26 percent of American adults were obese as of 2009—compared with less than 20 percent in 2000, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the number of U.S. states with more than 30 percent of their population topping a body mass index (BMI) of 30 tripled between 2007 and 2009. With this accelerating epidemic, researchers are looking for clues beyond daily diet and exercise to explain our propensity for extra poundage—and many are finding evidence in the very first stages of life. A growing number of analyses have found a convincing link among a heavier mother-to-be, increases in her baby's birth weight, and the child's later risk of obesity. In many past observational studies, however, basic genetics or environmental factors could be blamed for this association. A new study of 513,501 mothers and 1,164,750 of their children born across 15 years aimed to take genetics out of the equation by assessing maternal and infant weight only for those women who had more than one child. "By making comparisons of two or more infants born to the same mother, we were able to factor out the role of genetics," says David Ludwig, an associate professor of pediatrics, director of the Obesity Program at Children's Hospital Boston and co-author of the new study. Women who gained more than 24 kilograms during a pregnancy (which occurred in about 12 percent of pregnancies) added an average of 147.4 additional grams to their baby's birth weight than those who gained about 7.5 to 10 kilograms. © 2010 Scientific American,

By Katherine Harmon Having a mixed up body clock has been linked to a vast array of ailments, including obesity and bipolar disorder. And researchers are still trying to understand just how these cyclical signals influence aspects of our cellular and organ system activity. Now, a study published online August 3 in Cell Metabolism shows that in mice, a disrupted circadian rhythm spurs an increase in triglycerides—heightened levels of which have been linked to heart disease and metabolic syndrome in humans. To find this link, researchers compared normal lab mice to those bred to have dysfunctional sleep-wake cycles. As nocturnal animals, the control mice had the lowest levels of triglycerides at night, when they were most active, and higher levels during the daytime rest period. The mice with out-of-whack cycles kept confused hours, fed longer and were less active overall. These mutant mice also had far less fluctuation in their triglyceride levels. "We show that the normal up and down [of triglycerides] is lost in clock mutants," M. Mahmood Hussain, of the Department of Cell Biology and Pediatrics at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and coauthor of the paper, said in a prepared statement. The mutant mice had "high triglycerides all the time," he noted. © 2010 Scientific American,

By DENISE GRADY Americans are continuing to get fatter and fatter, with obesity rates reaching 30 percent or more in nine states last year, as opposed to only three states in 2007, health officials reported on Tuesday. The increases mean that 2.4 million more people became obese from 2007 to 2009, bringing the total to 72.5 million, or 26.7 percent of the population. The numbers are part of a continuing and ominous trend. But the rates are probably underestimates because they are based on a phone survey in which 400,000 participants were asked their weight and height instead of having it measured by someone else, and people have a notorious tendency to describe themselves as taller and lighter than they really are. “Over the past several decades, obesity has increased faster than anyone could have imagined it would,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued a report on the prevalence of obesity. Obesity rates have doubled in adults and tripled in children in recent decades, Dr. Frieden said. If the numbers keep going up, he added, “more people will get sick and die from the complications of obesity, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.” The report estimates the medical costs of obesity to be as high as $147 billion a year, and notes that “past efforts and investments to prevent and control obesity have not been adequate.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

By Emma Wilkinson Health reporter, BBC News A combination pill of two drugs used to treat addiction may help people lose weight, say US researchers. The Lancet reports that Naltrexone, commonly used to treat alcoholics and heroin addicts, and the anti-smoking drug bupropion led to greater weight loss than diet and exercise alone. It is thought the treatment may help beat food cravings. However, one UK expert said he would like to see much higher weight loss for the drug to be used in clinics. Professor Nick Finer, an obesity expert from University College London (UCL), said the drug may prove more useful if researchers can better identify who would benefit. In the study, 1,700 overweight and obese adults were all offered a weight-loss programme with diet and exercise advice. Two-thirds were also given the combination treatment (in one of two doses) and a third were given a placebo, or dummy pill, to take twice a day. Only half completed the trial, which lasted a year. Overall those taking the treatment lost an average of 5% to 6% of their weight depending on the dose, compared with 1.3% in the placebo group. The researchers said if only those who completed the trial were included, weight loss was 8% of body weight for those on the anti-addiction drugs. The treatment was not without side effects which included nausea, headaches, constipation, dizziness, vomiting and a dry mouth. (C)BBC

By Jennifer LaRue Huget A number of my apparently sleep-deprived friends and colleagues, upon learning I planned to write about foods that might help people sleep better, have told me they're eager to see what I come up with. I so hate to disappoint them. But it turns out science has yet to find a magical food that can send us right to slumberland. "The bad news for people trying to talk about food and sleep is that . . . generally it's hard to find foods that help with sleep," says Michael Grandner, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology. "The easier question," Grandner says, "is what are the things to avoid?" Though you might expect caffeine to top that list, Grandner's most recent research, published February in the journal Sleep Medicine, found otherwise. Tracking the diets and sleep habits of 459 women enrolled in the federal government's 15-year Women's Health Initiative, he found that fat was the main nutrient (out of dozens tracked) associated with getting less sleep. "The more fat you ate, the less you slept," he says. Women who ate the most fat slept for shorter times and took more naps, a sign that they didn't get enough restful sleep at night. (He believes his findings apply to the broader population, not just older women.) © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Infants who will eventually be diagnosed with autism may be slower to eat solid foods and be fussier eaters, but their growth doesn't seem to be impaired compared with children without the disorders, a new British study suggests. Parents often describe infants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) as "slow feeders," and children with ASDs are often reported to eat a limited range of foods. Compared with 12,901 children without ASDs, 79 children ultimately diagnosed with an ASD were more likely to be slow eaters by six months, Dr. Pauline Emmett of the University of Bristol in England and her colleagues reported in Monday's online issue of the journal Pediatrics. Compared to the control group, children with ASD ate fewer vegetables, salads, and fresh fruit, but also consumed fewer sweets and carbonated drinks, the researchers said. About eight per cent of parents of autistic children reported that, as their kids reached 15 months, they were "very difficult to feed." That compared to about three per cent of kids without autism. Even though children with ASD consumed less of some vitamins and ate a more limited variety of foods, their intake of carbohydrates, protein, fats and total energy were similar to controls. No major differences in weight, height or body mass index were found up to age seven. © CBC 2010

By Janet Raloff Being fat may diminish mental performance, studies find — a problem that worsens with age. But among elderly women, where fat is deposited may matter. To wit: The big apple is sharper than the obese pear. Genetics dictates where people preferentially accumulate body fat. For most it’s around the belly. Among the obese, these apple-shaped individuals tend to run a bigger risk of developing heart disease than do pears — people who deposit most of their excess fat at the hips and thighs. For a host of reasons, physicians had expected that if body shape affected mental performance, apples would again prove the bigger losers. In fact, the opposite appears true, Diana Kerwin of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and her colleagues report online July 14 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The team pored over data collected from more than 8,700 women, all 65 to 79 years old. These were a healthy subset of incoming participants to the Women’s Health Initiative study. This long-running trial at 40 medical centers across the country has been investigating the role of hormone-replacement therapy and diet on risk of heart disease, fractures and certain cancers. Each woman was administered a test of memory and reasoning known as the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination, or 3MSE. Kerwin’s team correlated a participant’s score with her shape and her height-adjusted weight — something known as body-mass index, or BMI. BMI values were divided into six categories, with 1 being lean and 6 morbidly obese. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

By GINA KOLATA If you had to choose one public health problem to attack, which would it be: teenage smoking or childhood obesity? To answer that question, you might want to pose another. Who will have the harder road in life, or indeed the longer one: the teenage puffer or the chubby child? Pitting smoking against obesity is tricky because it can mean comparing apples and bonbons, but there is some suggestion that a kind of weird zero-sum game is actually going on. And some smoking opponents fear that a choice has been made — with obesity the winner, quite possibly for the wrong reasons. “Obesity is the new kid on the block, relatively speaking,” said Kenneth E. Warner, dean of the University of Michigan’s school of public health. “Tobacco is old news.” When it comes to smoking, said Stanton A. Glantz, director of the University of California at San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, “we really haven’t had anyone pushing it to the top of the agenda.” That is a problem. “It’s not that I am for obesity,” he said, but he finds it less than encouraging, for example, that the hugely influential Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is pulling back from its anti-smoking efforts while directing its money and resources to preventing childhood obesity. Then there is Michelle Obama’s campaign, Let’s Move, to prevent childhood obesity. And in May, the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity announced its goal — reduce the rate of childhood obesity, now 17 percent, to 5 percent by 2030. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

by Susan Heavey and Lisa Richwine WASHINGTON — The first of three new fat-fighting pills faces public scrutiny by U.S. regulatory advisers next week, as small biotechs target the growing number of obese Americans despite a checkered past for weight-loss drugs. Vivus Inc, Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc and Orexigen Therapeutics Inc are trying to succeed where earlier efforts flopped after several weight-loss drugs were linked to serious side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will seek input from outside advisers July 15 on Vivus' pill, Qnexa, for use with diet and exercise. If approved, it would be the first new prescription weight-loss drug in a decade in the United States, where two out of every three people are overweight. The FDA's review by a panel of outside experts follows a troubled history with obesity pills that either never gained approval, were pulled from the market after sales began, or were slapped with severe warnings. "The history of weight-loss drugs is such that it's a no-brainer that the FDA is going to take each and every one to an advisory panel," said analyst Ira Loss, who follows the agency for Washington Analysis Corp. An advisory panel is one of the last hurdles in a drug's route to market. The FDA will make the final decision, but usually follows the advice of its advisers. Copyright 2010 Reuters

by Andy Coghlan A FAULTY internal clock in the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin could be behind type 2 diabetes - a condition in which the body is unable to produce or use insulin properly. The finding suggests that disruption of natural night and day cycles through artificial lighting may be a factor in the emergence of type 2 diabetes in adults. It also fits with studies showing that shift workers are unusually prone to the condition. Insulin is produced by beta cells to control glucose levels in the blood. Joseph Bass of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and colleagues grew mouse beta cells in the lab to monitor insulin secretion. They found that beta cells lacking circadian "clock" genes produced 50 per cent less insulin, showing that these genes are essential for normal insulin production (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09253). Likewise, live mice with disrupted clock genes rapidly developed type 2 diabetes. The next step, says Bass, is to identify the "switch" in beta cells that responds to the clock, and use it to develop a treatment. "The key thing the researchers have shown is that disruption of this internal clock causes a defect in insulin secretion," says Noel Morgan of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, UK, who studies type 1 diabetes, in which the body's own immune system destroys its beta cells. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

A team of researchers asks in a new health journal article, "Are the Fat More Jolly?" What they found was that obesity does not protect people from mental health problems. "The answer," they write, "is a most emphatic 'No.'" Looking at eight different indicators of mental health problems, the researchers examined whether the stereotype of the "jolly fat" is accurate. It's not, says researcher Robert E. Roberts, Ph.D., of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. "There was either no observed association between obesity and psychological dysfunction or the obese were worse off," he and his colleagues write. "� In no case did we observe better mental health among the obese. In sum, the obese were not more jolly."

UCSF researchers have identified a biochemical feedback system in rats that could explain why some people crave comfort foods - such as chocolate chip cookies and greasy cheeseburgers - when they are chronically stressed, and why such people are apt to gain weight in the abdomen. The finding, to be published this week on-line in the Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on a glucocorticoid steroid hormone (corticosterone in rats, cortisol in humans) that plays a key role in the stress-response system. In their study, the researchers determined that 24 hours after activation of the chronic stress system - which stimulates a flood of hormonal signaling from the hypothalamus to the adrenal glands – glucocorticoids prompt rats to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviors, which include eating high-energy foods (sucrose and lard). The animals develop abdominal obesity, and the negative aspects of the chronic stress response system, otherwise ushered in by the glucocorticoids, are blunted. The researchers suspect that the metabolic signal to inhibit the stress system comes directly from fat depots. The finding offers an explanation into how chronic stress can be inhibited, or curbed. While the body's acute response to stress - say to being cut off in traffic by a speeding car - diminishes through a naturally occurring inhibitory feedback mechanism of the adrenal stress system, its chronic response to stress - in which a barrage of threats, scares or frustrations occur over days, weeks or months -- becomes chronically excited. Over time, the elevated stress level can initiate a host of deleterious effects on the body - a loss or gain of weight, depression, obesity (associated with type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke), and a loss of brain tissue.

By Jeff Wheelwright Pecos Road runs due west along the southern boundary of Phoenix. On the city side of the road, new subdivisions of retirement homes are pushing up their tile roofs like mushrooms that sprout with no rain. On the other side of the road lies the flat scrub of the Gila River Indian Community, some 600 square miles, most of it empty. The reservation shimmers out of the reach of the builders like a desert mirage. This land was no good to anyone in 1859, when it was allocated to the Pima Indians. Today it has 13,000 Native American residents, living in squat cinder-block houses in scattered, dusty hamlets; three casinos that have boosted the tribal income to $100 million annually from $4 million; irrigated cotton, alfalfa, and citrus, for Pimas were always farmers; and a hospital and two kidney-dialysis clinics, with another medical clinic in the planning stage. Kidney failure is a deadly complication of diabetes, and Pimas, so far as scientists can tell, have the world’s highest rate of type 2 diabetes. The Pimas have grown to hate this superlative perhaps more than the disease itself. Mary Thomas, the 60-year-old ex-governor of the tribe and presently its lieutenant governor, drove me around the community. A few miles south of Pecos Road, we came to the St. Johns Mission, a quiet, whitewashed church. There was once a Catholic boarding school for Indian children on the grounds. Thomas said that when she was 17 and in school here, she went for an eye test and was told she had diabetes. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company. All rights reserved

By Jocelyn Selim An expanding waistline may have less to with what a person eats than what’s already inside, say microbiologists Jeffrey Gordon and Fredrik Backhed at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. Variations in the population of bacteria living in the gut may explain why some people pack on extra pounds while others stay slim. Gordon and Backhed base their claim on a study of two groups of mice, one exposed to normal intestinal microbes and another raised in a germ-free bubble. The germ-free mice had 42 percent less body fat, even though they were fed one-third more calories. When the animals were inoculated with bacteria from their normal counterparts, the bubble mice increased their body fat by 57 percent in just two weeks. “We know that gut microbes have ways of breaking down otherwise indigestible carbohydrates, increasing the calories available to the animal, but we thought something else must be at work,” Gordon says. His team therefore also looked at a hormone that limits fat storage in the body. They found that the gut bacteria secrete a substance that interferes with the hormone, causing even more of the calories to be stored as fat than would happen normally. The result is that microbe-containing mice pork up, even on a moderate diet. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company.

No matter how much you might hate hearing it, you know you do have you mother's eyes, or her hair, or her smile. How much you resemble your mother depends on which of her genes you inherit. But looking like her is not the only hold your mom's genes have on your life. There's mounting evidence that mom's genes may indirectly affect your weight and your health all the way into adulthood. "Not only are your genes important, and your environment — that is, how much you eat, how much dietary fat you eat — but also mom's genes are important," says geneticist Joseph Jarvis, perhaps influencing how your body is affected by what you eat. Jarvis, a researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, says that's because our mother's genes somehow affect how our bodies react to our prenatal and early environment (while nursing), switching certain of our genes on or off. This could have consequences throughout our lives, affecting our weight that could lead to health issues such as diabetes and high cholesterol. According to Jarvis, much of the earlier research into this effect had looked at weight gain of very young mice. This is because for "a two-week-old mouse, the only source of food they have is mother's milk. And we know that in mice, milk production has a genetic basis," he explains. "So it makes sense for the two-week weight to depend on who your mother was." © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

By DENISE GRADY Several new studies suggest that diabetes increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, adding to a store of evidence that links the disorders. The studies involve only Type 2 diabetes, the most common kind, which is usually related to obesity. The connection raises an ominous prospect: that increases in diabetes, a major concern in the United States and worldwide, may worsen the rising toll from Alzheimer’s. The findings also add dementia to the cloud of threats that already hang over people with diabetes, including heart disease, strokes, kidney failure, blindness and amputations. But some of the studies also hint that measures to prevent or control diabetes may lower the dementia risk, and that certain diabetes drugs should be tested to find whether they can help Alzheimer’s patients, even those without diabetes. Current treatments for Alzheimer’s can provide only a modest improvement in symptoms and cannot stop the progression of the disease. The new findings were presented yesterday by the Alzheimer’s Association at a six-day conference in Madrid attended by 5,000 researchers from around the world. Alzheimer’s affects 1 in 10 people over age 65, and nearly half of people over 85. About 4.5 million Americans have it, and taking care of them costs $100 billion a year, according to the association. The number of patients is expected to grow, possibly reaching 11.3 million to 16 million by 2050, the association said. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Calorie-restriction -- consuming 30-percent fewer calories than normal -- is the only scientifically proven way to slow the process of aging in organisms ranging from yeast to mammals. Now a new study in mice shows that through a similar mechanism, calorie restriction may also slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease. "A decrease in amount of calorie intake might have a causal effect in prevention of Alzheimer's disease," says Giulio Pasinetti, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He and his team conducted the study in a strain of transgenic mice destined to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms. The mice that were fed a calorie-restricted diet, mainly by a reduction in their carbohydrate intake, over a period of six months, had fewer disease symptoms than their normal-diet counterparts. "With this kind of calorie restriction we were able to improve memory function – I would say five-fold times more efficient," says Pasinetti. The amount of beta-amyloid peptides, molecules that cause the build-up of characteristic Alzheimer's plaques, was also much lower in the brains of the mice on the low-calorie diet. Since calorie restriction has been found to increase the expression of proteins known as sirtuins, Pasinetti and his team tested whether or not one of these proteins could be responsible for the reduction of Alzheimer's symptoms in these mice. As they reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, they synthesized a sirtuin called SIRT1 and applied it to brain cells in the laboratory to see whether they'd see similar results to those with calorie restriction. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

By GARDINER HARRIS, BENEDICT CAREY and JANET ROBERTS When Anya Bailey developed an eating disorder after her 12th birthday, her mother took her to a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called Risperdal. Created for schizophrenia, Risperdal is not approved to treat eating disorders, but increased appetite is a common side effect and doctors may prescribe drugs as they see fit. Anya gained weight but within two years developed a crippling knot in her back. She now receives regular injections of Botox to unclench her back muscles. She often awakens crying in pain. Isabella Bailey, Anya’s mother, said she had no idea that children might be especially susceptible to Risperdal’s side effects. Nor did she know that Risperdal and similar medicines were not approved at the time to treat children, or that medical trials often cited to justify the use of such drugs had as few as eight children taking the drug by the end. Just as surprising, Ms. Bailey said, was learning that the university psychiatrist who supervised Anya’s care received more than $7,000 from 2003 to 2004 from Johnson & Johnson, Risperdal’s maker, in return for lectures about one of the company’s drugs. Doctors, including Anya Bailey’s, maintain that payments from drug companies do not influence what they prescribe for patients. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

By Linda Carroll Janine Geredes is the kind of person many of us love to hate. No matter how much the Northern California woman eats, she never gets fat. While the rest of us obsess over every morsel passing through our lips, convinced we’ll pack on the pounds if we let our guard down for just one moment, Geredes worries she’ll become unappealingly bony if she doesn’t eat enough. “I’ve always had to work to keep weight on,” says Geredes, 43, who is 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 118 pounds. “When I was a growing up I was teased for being so thin. But now, people are always saying, ‘I wish I could eat like you. You stay so thin. You must work out a ton.’ I don’t. My son and daughter are the same way. I’ve always figured it was genetic.” As it turns out, Geredes may be right. Scientists now say they have discovered the “skinny” gene. And they’ve found this lucky batch of DNA in a variety of animals, according to a report published Tuesday in the journal Cell Metabolism. "This gene is in every organism from worms to humans," says the study’s senior author, Dr. Jonathan Graff, an associate professor of developmental biology and internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "We all have it. It's very striking." © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Chapter 13. Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States