Brian Owens The gut is home to innumerable different bacteria — a complex ecosystem that has an active role in a variety of bodily functions. In a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, a team of researchers finds that in mice, just one of those bacterial species plays a major part in controlling obesity and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes. The bacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, digests mucus and makes up 3–5% of the microbes in a healthy mammalian gut. But the intestines of obese humans and mice, and those with type 2 diabetes, have much lower levels. A team led by Patrice Cani, who studies the interaction between gut bacteria and metabolism at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, decided to investigate the link. Mice that were fed a high-fat diet, the researchers found, had 100 times less A. muciniphila in their guts than mice fed normal diets. The researchers were able to restore normal levels of the bacterium by feeding the mice live A. muciniphila, as well as 'prebiotic' foods that encourage the growth of gut microbes. The effects of this treatment were dramatic. Compared with untreated animals, the mice lost weight and had a better ratio of fat to body mass, as well as reduced insulin resistance and a thicker layer of intestinal mucus. They also showed improvements in a host of other indicators related to obesity and metabolic disorders. “We found one specific common factor between all the different parameters that we have been investigating over the past ten years,” says Cani. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 18156 - Posted: 05.14.2013

By Bruce Bower Human ancestors living in East Africa 2 million years ago weren’t a steak-and-potatoes crowd. But they had a serious hankering for gazelle meat and antelope brains, fossils discovered in Kenya indicate. Three sets of butchered animal bones unearthed at Kenya’s Kanjera South site provide the earliest evidence of both long-term hunting and targeted scavenging by a member of the human evolutionary family, anthropologist Joseph Ferraro of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and his colleagues conclude. An early member of the Homo genus, perhaps Homo erectus, hunted small animals and scavenged predators’ leftovers of larger creatures, researchers report April 25 in PLOS ONE. Along with hunting relatively small game such as gazelles, these hominids scavenged the heads of antelope and wildebeests, apparently to add a side of fatty, nutrient-rich brain tissue to their diets, the scientists say. Those dietary pursuits could have provided the extra energy Homo erectus needed to support large bodies, expanded brains and extensive travel across the landscape, Ferraro says. A few East African sites dating to as early as 3.4 million years ago had previously produced small numbers of animal bones bearing butchery marks made by stone tools. Scientists think those bones indicate occasional meat eating (SN: 9/11/10, p. 8). Now Kanjera South has yielded several thousand complete and partial animal bones, representing at least 81 individual animals. A known reversal of Earth’s magnetic field preserved in an excavated soil layer allowed Ferraro’s team to determine the age of the finds, which accumulated over a few thousand years at most. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Evolution; Aggression
Link ID: 18113 - Posted: 05.04.2013

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR A large new study confirms that sticking to the Mediterranean diet — fish, poultry, vegetables and fruit, with minimal dairy foods and meat — may be good for the brain. Researchers prospectively followed 17,478 mentally healthy men and women 45 and older, gathering data on diet from food questionnaires, and testing mental function with a well-validated six-item screening tool. They ranked their adherence to the Mediterranean diet on a 10-point scale, dividing the group into low adherence and high adherence. The study was published April 30 in the journal Neurology. During a four-year follow-up, 1,248 people became cognitively impaired. But those with high adherence to the diet were 19 percent less likely to be among them. This association persisted even after controlling for almost two dozen demographic, environmental and vascular risk factors, and held true for both African-Americans and whites. The study included 2,913 people with Type 2 diabetes, but for them adherence to the diet had no effect on the likelihood of becoming impaired. The lead author, Dr. Georgios Tsivgoulis, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Athens, said that this is the largest study of its kind. The Mediterranean diet, he added, “has many benefits — cardiovascular, cancer risk, anti-inflammatory, central nervous system. We’re on the tip of the iceberg, and trying to understand what is below.” Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 18100 - Posted: 05.01.2013

By TARA PARKER-POPE Are doctors nicer to patients who aren’t fat? A provocative new study suggests that they are — that thin patients are treated with more warmth and empathy than those who are overweight or obese. For the study, published in the medical journal Obesity, researchers at Johns Hopkins obtained permission to record discussions between 39 primary care doctors and more than 200 patients who had high blood pressure. Although patients were there to talk about blood pressure, not weight, most fell into the overweight or obese category. Only 28 were of normal weight, meaning they had a body mass index below 25. Of the remaining patients, 120 were obese (B.M.I. of 30 or greater) and 60 were classified as overweight (index of 25 to 30). For the most part, all of the patients were treated about the same; there were no meaningful differences in the amount of time doctors spent with them or the topics discussed. But when researchers analyzed transcripts of the visits, there was one striking difference. Doctors seemed just a bit nicer to their normal-weight patients, showing more empathy and warmth in their conversations. Although the study was relatively small, the findings are statistically significant. “It’s not like the physicians were being overtly negative or harsh,” said the lead author, Dr. Kimberly A. Gudzune, an assistant professor of general internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “They were just not engaging patients in that rapport-building or making that emotional connection with the patient.” Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 18093 - Posted: 04.30.2013

The Brain: Our Food-Traffic Controller By KATHLEEN A. PAGE and ROBERT S. SHERWIN IMAGINE that, instead of this article, you were staring at a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The mere sight and smell of them would likely make your mouth water. The first bite would be enough to wake up brain areas that control reward, pleasure and emotion — and perhaps trigger memories of when you tasted cookies like these as a child. That first bite would also stimulate hormones signaling your brain that fuel was available. The brain would integrate these diverse messages with information from your surroundings and make a decision as to what to do next: keep on chewing, gobble down the cookie and grab another, or walk away. Studying the complex brain response to such sweet temptations has offered clues as to how we might one day control a profound health problem in the country: the obesity epidemic. The answer may partly lie in a primitive brain region called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus, which monitors the body’s available energy supply, is at the center of the brain’s snack-food signal processing. It keeps track of how much long-term energy is stored in fat by detecting levels of the fat-derived hormone leptin — and it also monitors the body’s levels of blood glucose, minute-to-minute, along with other metabolic fuels and hormones that influence satiety. When you eat a cookie, the hypothalamus sends out signals that make you less hungry. Conversely, when food is restricted, the hypothalamus sends signals that increase your desire to ingest high-calorie foods. The hypothalamus is also wired to other brain areas that control taste, reward, memory, emotion and higher-level decision making. These brain regions form an integrated circuit that was designed to control the drive to eat. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 18087 - Posted: 04.28.2013

Published by scicurious under Behavioral Neuro It's late. I've got a lot on my plate. A lot to do. And most of us do. So here I am, burning the midnight oil along with many of my neighbors. I usually count myself lucky to get 7 hours a night, and I AM lucky. For many parents or other caregivers, for example, 7 hours is unheard-of luxury. Is it just me? Probably not. Most of us don't get enough sleep, and those who don't sleep? Snack. But why? And what does this mean for issues like obesity? We know that there has been an increase in obesity in this country. And many people are asking why. There are probably lots of reasons involved: too much sugar, too little exercise, genetics, too much fat. But what about sleep? It turns out that getting less sleep is a risk factor for obesity, but...how are sleep and weight gain related? It turns out that sleep, or lack thereof, can have a lot of influence on how much we need to eat and how much we feel like eating. For example, sleep deprivation changes hunger hormone levels, which can change food intake, and some scientists hypothesize that decreased sleep can change energy expenditure as well. But in order to understand just how lack of sleep influences weight gain, well you need to sleep deprive some people. The authors took 8 men and 8 women who reported getting an average of 8 hours of sleep per night into an inpatient facility. They were taken off caffeine one week before the study and were told to stick to 9 hours of sleep opportunity (stay in bed 9 hours) per night for the first week. They also were put on a diet that was calibrated exactly to maintain their current weight. Copyright © 2013

Keyword: Sleep; Aggression
Link ID: 18074 - Posted: 04.25.2013

By Stephen L. Macknik Why, oh why, would I order a plastic fork, costing $89 (on-sale), 5 months before its scheduled release? Because it promises to help me control my eating speed, which, I am now convinced, is indeed critical to controlling obesity and diabetes. The fork is essentially a Bluetooth device that communicates to your smartphone and counts how many bites you take each meal. More importantly, I believe it counts the amount of time between each bite and if you go too fast, it vibrates. [Insert vibrator to mouth joke here. Yes, I'm blonde.] The reason I think it will help me goes back to my gastric bypass two months ago. Before and after the surgery, patients of Dr. Robin Blackmore at the Scottsdale Healthcare Bariatric Surgery Unit must take a series of courses aimed at preparing patients for life after surgery. One of the main lessons is that patients must now eat each meal over a 20 minute period. No more, no less. As you might surmise, for patients like me, “no more” is ready to achieve, but “no less” than 20 minutes is surprisingly difficult. And they are well aware of how hard it is, demanding that you practice ahead of time. I don’t know about my fellow patients, but I didn’t practice at all and have paid the price numerous times since my surgery for eating too fast: let’s just say it sometimes leads to a temporary obstruction and leave it at that. Because the details are unbelievably disgusting. © 2013 Scientific American,

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 18068 - Posted: 04.24.2013

By CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS Laura Ward, 41, had always attributed her excess pounds to the drugs she takes for major depression. So Ms. Ward, who is 5-foot-6 and once weighed 220 pounds, didn’t try to slim down or avoid dietary pitfalls like fried chicken. But in a clinical trial, Ms. Ward managed to lose more than 30 pounds doing low-impact aerobics three times a week. During the 18-month experiment, she was introduced to cauliflower and post-workout soreness for the first time. She and the other participants attended counseling sessions where they practiced refusing junk food and choosing smaller portions. She drank two liters of Diet Dr Pepper daily instead of eight. Eventually, Ms. Ward, who lives in Baltimore, realized her waistline wasn’t simply a drug side effect. “If it was only the medications, I would have never lost all that weight,” she said. People with serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression, are at least 50 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than the general population. They die earlier, too, with the primary cause heart disease. Yet diet and exercise usually take a back seat to the treatment of their illnesses. The drugs used, like antidepressants and antipsychotics, can increase appetite and weight. It has been a difficult issue for mental health experts. A 2012 review of health promotion programs for those with serious mental illness by Dartmouth researchers concluded that of 24 well-designed studies, most achieved statistically significant weight loss, but very few achieved “clinically significant weight loss.” Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 18042 - Posted: 04.16.2013

Published by scicurious I love salt. It's just delicious. I wrote this post while noshing on deliciously salty popcorn, after a dinner which I put salt on. I crave salt so much that my parents used to joke about getting me a salt lick. And I'm not alone. Sodium is an incredibly important part of life, which means it's also an important part of what we eat. To make sure we get enough salt, animals have evolved salt-sensing systems, and low levels (below 100 mM of NaCl) of salt are very attractive. But there IS such a thing as too much salt. High levels of salt (>300 mM NaCl) are really aversive (from personal experience, I wonder if Carrabba's restaurant has concentrations of salt in their food over 300 mM). Most animals will quickly turn up their noses at a high salt concentration. You probably know that you have classes of receptors on your tongue for taste (though they are not clustered into areas of your mouth, like front for sweetness, as previously thought). You have sweet, umami (savory), bitter, sour, and salt. In most animals, sweet and umami are always attractive, while bitter and sour are nasty (except where we have overcome the aversion to enjoy things like coffee and beer). Salt, though, is the only one that goes two ways, with low levels being attractive and high levels being aversive. Now we know how low salt works. The salt receptors that are currently known are good for detecting low salt. But high salt, that's more difficult. First of all, our aversion to high salt concentrations is not very selective. While low salt detection is limited to good old NaCl, high salt detection is non-specific, working for many salts including NaCl, but others as well (like KCl). Neurotic Physiology Copyright © 2013

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 18025 - Posted: 04.13.2013

By Tara Haelle New evidence is confirming that the environment kids live in has a greater impact than factors such as genetics, insufficient physical activity or other elements in efforts to control child obesity. Three new studies, published in the April 8 Pediatrics, land on the import of the 'nurture' side of the equation and focus on specific circumstances in children's or teen's lives that potentially contribute to unhealthy bulk. In three decades child and adolescent obesity has tripled in the U.S., and estimates from 2010 classify more than a third of children and teens as overweight or obese. Obesity puts these kids at higher risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, and bone or joint problems. The variables responsible are thought to range from too little exercise to too many soft drinks. Now it seems that blaming Pepsi or too little PE might neglect the bigger picture. "We are raising our children in a world that is vastly different than it was 40 or 50 years ago," says Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity doctor and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. "Childhood obesity is a disease of the environment. It's a natural consequence of normal kids with normal genes being raised in unhealthy, abnormal environments." The environmental factors in these studies range from the seemingly minor, such as kids' plate sizes, to bigger challenges, such as school schedules that may keep teens from getting sufficient sleep. But they are part of an even longer list: the ubiquity of fast food, changes in technology, fewer home-cooked meals, more food advertising, an explosion of low-cost processed foods and increasing sugary drink serving sizes (pdf) as well as easy access to unhealthy snacks in vending machines, at sports games and in nearly every setting children inhabit—these are just a handful of environmental factors research has linked to increasing obesity, and researchers are starting to pick apart which among them play bigger or lesser roles in making kids supersized. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 18009 - Posted: 04.10.2013

Scientists have identified a group of brain cells which have the power to control appetite and could be a major cause of eating disorders such as obesity. In experiments in rodents, cells called tanycytes were found to produce neurons which specifically regulate appetite. The University of East Anglia researchers say their find means appetite is not fixed at birth. Their study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. It was previously thought that nerve cells in the brain associated with appetite regulation were generated entirely during an embryo's development in the womb and could not be altered. But the UEA study's discovery of these tanycytes, which act like stem cells, in the brains of young and adult rodents shows that appetite can be modified. Researchers looked in detail at the hypothalamus section of the brain, which is known to regulate sleep, energy expenditure, appetite, thirst and many other critical biological functions. They studied the nerve cells that regulate appetite using a 'genetic fate mapping' technique and found that some cells added neurons to the appetite-regulating circuitry of the mouse brain after birth and into adulthood. BBC © 2013

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17998 - Posted: 04.08.2013

Steve Connor The rise in the number of overweight children in Britain may be as much to do with their genes as their diet and exercise levels, according to a study that has identified a handful of genetic mutations linked with childhood obesity. Scientists have discovered that children with the most severe kinds of obesity are more likely than other children to have one or more of four genetic variations in their DNA, which could influence such things as appetite and food metabolism. The discovery is part of a wider search for the genes involved in increasing a person’s risk of becoming overweight when exposed to an “obesogenic environment” of high-calorie food and inactivity – which is known to affect some people more than others. The study looked at 1,000 children with the most severe form of early-onset obesity, which is highly likely to result in obesity in adulthood. Some of the 10-year-olds in the study weighed between 80kg and 100kg (12.5st-15.7st). Some of the genetic variations revealed by the study were rare but others are relatively common, suggesting an interaction between genetics and environment, which could explain why certain children become obese while others do not even when they share a similar upbringing. Obesity among British children aged between two and ten has risen since 1995 from 10.1 per cent to 13.9 per cent in 2011. This rise cannot be due to a change in genes alone, because it takes many generations to alter the frequency of genetic mutations in the population. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 17997 - Posted: 04.08.2013

By Neil Bowdler BBC News UK-based scientists have designed an 'intelligent' microchip which they claim can suppress appetite. Animal trials of the electronic implant are about to begin and its makers say it could provide a more effective alternative to weight-loss surgery. The chip is attached to the vagus nerve which plays a role in appetite as well as a host of other functions within the body. Human trials of the implant could begin within three years, say its makers. The work is being led by Prof Chris Toumazou and Prof Sir Stephen Bloom of Imperial College London. It involves an 'intelligent implantable modulator', just a few millimetres across, which is attached using cuff electrodes to the vagus nerve within the peritoneal cavity found in the abdomen. The chip and cuffs are designed to read and process electrical and chemical signatures of appetite within the nerve. The chip can then act upon these readings and send electrical signals to the brain reducing or stopping the urge to eat. The researchers say identifying chemicals rather than electrical impulses will make for a more selective, precise instrument. The project has just received over 7m euros (£5.9m; $9m) in funding from the European Research Council. A similar device designed by the Imperial team has already been developed to reduce epileptic seizures by targeting the same vagus nerve. "This is a really small microchip and on this chip we've got the intelligence which can actually model the neural signals responsible for appetite control," Prof Toumazou told the BBC. BBC © 2013

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 17965 - Posted: 03.30.2013

By DENISE GRADY The bacterial makeup of the intestines may help determine whether people gain weight or lose it, according to two new studies, one in humans and one in mice. The research also suggests that a popular weight-loss operation, gastric bypass, which shrinks the stomach and rearranges the intestines, seems to work in part by shifting the balance of bacteria in the digestive tract. People who have the surgery generally lose 65 percent to 75 percent of their excess weight, but scientists have not fully understood why. Now, the researchers are saying that bacterial changes may account for 20 percent of the weight loss. The findings mean that eventually, treatments that adjust the microbe levels, or “microbiota,” in the gut may be developed to help people lose weight without surgery, said Dr. Lee M. Kaplan, director of the obesity, metabolism and nutrition institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and an author of a study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine. Not everyone who hopes to lose weight wants or needs surgery to do it, he said. About 80 million people in the United States are obese, but only 200,000 a year have bariatric operations. “There is a need for other therapies,” Dr. Kaplan said. “In no way is manipulating the microbiota going to mimic all the myriad effects of gastric bypass. But if this could produce 20 percent of the effects of surgery, it will still be valuable.” In people, microbial cells outnumber human ones, and the new studies reflect a growing awareness of the crucial role played by the trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in their own ecosystem in the gut. Perturbations there can have profound and sometimes devastating effects. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17959 - Posted: 03.28.2013

Alternating between periods of eating and fasting is gaining in popularity among dieters and generating criticism in nutritional circles. Intermittent fasting, sometimes known as the 5:2 diet, asks people to eat very little or nothing at times, such as eating normally for five days a week and fasting for the other two. Brad Pilon designed one of the first intermittent fasts that became popular after he published a guide, Eat Stop Eat. Pilon said the diet allows followers to eat the foods they crave most of the time and still lose weight. "In the fasted state your body's set up to burn the calories you stored while eating," said Pilon. "So it's set up specifically for the act of burning body fat." Cutting down on weekly calorie intake is generally recommended. And there's research underway into the hypothesis that restricting calories could extend a healthy lifespan. Critics of intermittent fasting say that besides burning unwanted fat, the body will also burn its building blocks. "So when those energy stores start to drop the body looks for other sources and it goes to the muscles and burns muscle," said Margaret De Melo, a registered dietician at Toronto Western Hospital. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17954 - Posted: 03.27.2013

By Sandra G. Boodman, A year after her daughter’s stomach problems began, Margaret Kaplow began having pains of her own. When she sat down to dinner with her family, Kaplow’s gut would clench involuntarily as she waited to see if this was one of the nights Madeline would eat a few bites before putting down her fork, pushing away from the table and announcing, “I don’t feel good.” For nearly six years, Maddie Kaplow’s severe, recurrent abdominal pain, which began shortly before her 13th birthday, was attributed to a host of ailments. Specialists in the District, Maryland and Virginia decided at various times that she had a gluten intolerance, a ruptured ovarian cyst, a diseased appendix or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Some were convinced that her problem was psychological and that she was a high-strung teenaged girl seeking attention. “It was a freaking nightmare,” Kaplow recalled of those years. She said she never believed her daughter was exaggerating or faking her symptoms. And each time a new diagnosis was made, Kaplow said, she felt elated that a doctor had figured out the cause of Maddie’s pain, which would turn into crushing disappointment when it recurred. It was only after she landed in a college infirmary 400 miles from her Northern Virginia home that doctors finally determined what was wrong and treated Maddie for the illness that dominated her adolescence. © 1996-2013 The Washington Post

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 17948 - Posted: 03.26.2013

By TARA PARKER-POPE The best path to a healthy weight may be a good night’s sleep. For years researchers have known that adults who sleep less than five or six hours a night are at higher risk of being overweight. Among children, sleeping less than 10 hours a night is associated with weight gain. Now a fascinating new study suggests that the link may be even more insidious than previously thought. Losing just a few hours of sleep a few nights in a row can lead to almost immediate weight gain. Sleep researchers from the University of Colorado recruited 16 healthy men and women for a two-week experiment tracking sleep, metabolism and eating habits. Nothing was left to chance: the subjects stayed in a special room that allowed researchers to track their metabolism by measuring the amount of oxygen they used and carbon dioxide they produced. Every bite of food was recorded, and strict sleep schedules were imposed. The goal was to determine how inadequate sleep over just one week — similar to what might occur when students cram for exams or when office workers stay up late to meet a looming deadline — affects a person’s weight, behavior and physiology. During the first week of the study, half the people were allowed to sleep nine hours a night while the other half stayed up until about midnight and then could sleep up to five hours. Everyone was given unlimited access to food. In the second week, the nine-hour sleepers were then restricted to five hours of sleep a night, while the sleep-deprived participants were allowed an extra four hours. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 17918 - Posted: 03.19.2013

By GINIA BELLAFANTE Under the category “Summer Rentals That Have Gone Terribly Wrong,” there are perhaps few parallels to the experience of Charles Henry Warren, a Manhattan banker who, in 1906, took a house in Oyster Bay on Long Island’s North Shore. By the end of the season, Mr. Warren’s young daughter had developed typhoid. She was soon followed in illness by Mr. Warren’s wife, a second daughter, two maids and a gardener. At the time, typhoid, a bacterial illness spread through contaminated food and water, was largely a disease of the urban poor. The property’s owner, George Thompson, concerned that the house, on which he relied for rental income, would become associated with tenement filth in the minds of wealthy New Yorkers, invited a sanitary engineer to determine the source of the outbreak. What the medical investigator, George Soper, discovered was that the Warrens’ cook, Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant, had left an imprint of malady in other quarters of upper-class Manhattan and its summer enclaves. Typhoid, he wrote, had erupted in every household in which Mallon had worked over the previous decade. An asymptomatic carrier of the disease, Ms. Mallon would be known to history as Typhoid Mary and spend most of the remainder of her life quarantined on North Brother Island in the East River, having failed to abide by a promise to cease working in the city’s kitchens. The events supply the narrative of “Fever,” a new novel by Mary Beth Keane, which arrives at a time when we are once again debating the parameters of public health policy’s encroachments on our behaviors. Last week, a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan used the words “arbitrary and capricious” in striking down the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to limit the size of sugary drinks (which pertained to certain sweetened beverages but not others, and some retail environments but not all). The phrase, though, could have been similarly applied a century ago to the city’s treatment of Ms. Mallon, given that officials were not in the habit of isolating other healthy carriers whom they had identified as ignoring ordinances against the spread of the disease. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17907 - Posted: 03.18.2013

By Meghan Rosen Alcohol may give heavy drinkers more than just a buzz. It can also fuel their brains, a new study suggests. Long-term booze use boosts brain levels of acetate, an energy-rich by-product of alcohol metabolism, researchers report online March 8 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. In the study, people who downed at least eight drinks per week also sucked more energy from acetate than their light-drinking counterparts. The extra energy may give heavy drinkers more incentive to imbibe, says study coauthor Graeme Mason of Yale University. And the caloric perk might help explain why alcohol withdrawal is so hard. “I think it's a very good hypothesis,” says biochemical geneticist Ting-Kai Li of Duke University. Scientists had suspected that heavy drinkers absorb and burn more acetate, but, he adds, “Graeme Mason showed that this is actually happening.” Acetate is best known as a chemical in vinegar. But when people drink a glass of wine or drain a can of beer, their liver breaks down the alcohol and pumps out acetate as leftovers. The bloodstream then delivers acetate throughout the body, including to the brain. Human brains typically run on sugar. But with enough acetate in the blood, Mason thought, brains might crank up their ability to burn it too. To find out if his suspicion was correct, Mason and his colleagues peered into the brains of seven heavy drinkers and seven light drinkers, who quaffed fewer than two drinks per week. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17887 - Posted: 03.11.2013

Surgically implanting pacemaker-like devices into the brains of people with severe anorexia might help improve their symptoms, a small Canadian study suggests. Anorexia affects an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people in Canada, mainly young women who face a high risk of premature death. The mortality rate is between six to 11 per cent. About 60 to 70 per cent of people with anorexia recover fully with traditional treatments, said Dr. Blake Woodside, medical director of the eating disorders program at Toronto General Hospital. But in Wednesday's online issue of the medical journal The Lancet, Woodside and his co-authors describe using deep brain stimulation to treat six women with severe anorexia that did not respond to treatment. The treatment involves surgery to implant the electrical stimulators. It's considered minimally invasive and the stimulation can be turned off. In the pilot study, the average age of the women at diagnosis was 20 and they ranged in age from 24 to 57 when the surgery was performed. Five had a history of repeated hospital admissions for eating disorders. While the study was meant to test the safety of the procedure, not its effectiveness, Woodside's team found three of the six patients achieved and maintained a body mass index greater than their historical level. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 17873 - Posted: 03.07.2013