Links for Keyword: Obesity

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One-Third the Man He Used to Be, and Proud of It

By SARAH LYALL IPSWICH, England — Who knows what the worst moment was for Paul Mason — there were so many awful milestones, as he grew fatter and fatter — but a good bet might be when he became too vast to leave his room. To get him to the hospital for a hernia operation, the local fire department had to knock down a wall and extricate him with a forklift. That was nearly a decade ago, when Mr. Mason weighed about 980 pounds, and the spectacle made him the object of fascinated horror, a freak-show exhibit. The British news media, which likes a superlative, appointed him “the world’s fattest man.” Now the narrative has shifted to one of redemption and second chances. Since a gastric bypass operation in 2010, Mr. Mason, 52 years old and 6-foot-4, has lost nearly two-thirds of his body weight, putting him at about 336 pounds — still obese, but within the realm of plausibility. He is talking about starting a jewelry business. “My meals are a lot different now than they used to be,” Mr. Mason said during a recent interview in his one-story apartment in a cheerful public housing complex here. For one thing, he no longer eats around the clock. “Food is a necessity, but now I don’t let it control my life anymore,” he said. But the road to a new life is uphill and paved with sharp objects. When he answered the door, Mr. Mason did not walk; he glided in an electric wheelchair. And though Mr. Mason looks perfectly normal from the chest up, horrible vestiges of his past stick to him, literally, in the form of a huge mass of loose skin choking him like a straitjacket. Folds and folds of it encircle his torso and sit on his lap, like an unwanted package someone has set there; more folds encase his legs. All told, he reckons, the excess weighs more than 100 pounds. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 17772 - Posted: 02.06.2013

Link between obesity and vitamin D clarified

By Nathan Seppa The link between obesity and vitamin D deficiency appears to be a one-way street. A large study of the genetics underpinning both conditions finds that obesity may drive down vitamin D levels, but a predisposition to the vitamin deficiency doesn’t lead to obesity. The findings also suggest that boosting vitamin D levels won’t reverse obesity. An association between the two has been observed for years, but determining cause and effect has been difficult. “I find this very plausible and a correct interpretation of the data,” says Robert Heaney, an endocrinologist at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. “I think it’s worth reporting.” In the new study, researchers tapped into a huge international database, accessing the genetic profiles of more than 42,000 people. The scientists noted whether a person harbored any of 12 genetic variants associated with being overweight. Not surprisingly, people with these variants were more likely to be obese than those without them. People with these obesity-associated gene variants were also apt to have low vitamin D levels, Elina Hyppönen, an epidemiologist and nutritionist at University College London, and colleagues report online February 5 in PLOS Medicine. When the researchers tested for four genetic variants linked to low vitamin D levels, they found that people with the variants were not necessarily prone to obesity. The researchers checked both findings against a separate database of people and got similar results. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Meal timing matters for weight loss success

When you eat could play an important role in weight loss, a new study suggests. Researchers looked at the role of meal timing in 420 men and women in southeast Spain participating in a 20-week weight-loss treatment following several studies in animals showing a relationship between the timing of feeding and weight regulation. Lunch was the main meal among the Mediterranean population studied.Lunch was the main meal among the Mediterranean population studied. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters) "Our results indicate that late eaters displayed a slower weight-loss rate and lost significantly less weight than early eaters, suggesting that the timing of large meals could be an important factor in a weight loss program," Frank Scheer, director of the medical chronobiology program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said in a release. Of the participants, 51 per cent were early eaters who ate their main meal, lunch, before 3 p.m. The other 49 per cent had lunch after three. The researchers found energy and nutrient intake, estimates of calories burned, appetite hormones and hours of sleep were similar between both groups. "Nevertheless, late eaters were more evening types, had less energetic breakfasts and skipped breakfast more frequently than early eaters," Scheer and his co-authors wrote in Tuesday's issue of the International Journal of Obesity. They suggested that new weight loss strategies should incorporate the timing of food as well as the classic look at calorie intake and distribution of carbohydrates, fats and protein. © CBC 2013

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Link ID: 17728 - Posted: 01.29.2013

How Does Belviq Work?

Analysis by Sheila Eldred This spring, it's likely there will be a new diet pill on the market. Belviq (lorcaserin) won approval from the FDA last spring, making it the first weight-loss drug approved in 13 years, and the DEA proposed this week that the drug be classified as a Schedule IV controlled substance. Belviq is an appetite suppressant. The new chemical entity works by activating the brain's response to serotonin. Serotonin is a neuro-transmitter known for evoking happy moods; some anti-depressants work by keeping serotonin levels elevated. Belviq works specifically with the serotonin receptors involved with appetite, according to Time. In trial, patients who took Belviq lost 3 to 3.7 percent more weight than those taking a placebo; after taking it for one or two years, 47 percent lost at least 5 percent of their body weight (compared to 23 percent of those who took a placebo), WebMD reports. Another new weight loss drug, Qsymia, is already on the market, although sales have been slow. Belviq is approved for obese people and overweight people who have another weight-related disease or risk factor. Side effects include headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, dry mouth and constipation; in patients with diabetes, additional side effects include low blood sugar, back pain, and coughing. © 2012 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Treat obesity as physiology, not physics

Gary Taubes. “It is better to know nothing,” wrote French physiologist Claude Bernard in An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), “than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek.” Embracing a fixed idea is one of the main dangers in the evolution of any scientific discipline. Ideally, errors will be uncovered in the trial-by-fire of rigorous testing and the science will right itself. In rare cases, however, an entire discipline can be based on a fundamental flaw. As a science journalist turned science historian, I have written at length about how and why this may have happened in obesity research. I have suggested that the discipline may be a house of cards — as, by extension, may much research into the chronic diseases associated with obesity, such as diabetes. Before the Second World War, European investigators believed that obesity was a hormonal or regulatory disorder. Gustav von Bergmann, a German authority on internal medicine, proposed this hypothesis in the early 1900s. The theory evaporated with the war. After the lingua franca of science switched from German to English, the German-language literature on obesity was rarely cited. (Imagine the world today if physicists had chosen to ignore the thinking that emerged from Germany and Austria before the war.) Instead, physicians embraced the ideas of the University of Michigan physician Louis Newburgh, who argued that obese individuals had a “perverted appetite” that failed to match the calories that they consumed with their bodies' metabolic needs. “All obese persons are alike in one fundamental respect,” Newburgh insisted, “they literally overeat.” This paradigm of energy balance/overeating/gluttony/sloth became the conventional, unquestioned explanation for why we get fat. It is, as Bernard would say, the fixed idea. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Obesity in Young Is Seen as Falling in Several Cities

By SABRINA TAVERNISE PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines. The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students. “It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011. The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course. The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them. Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Lose weight without eating less - just cut down on fat

by Julia Brown Forget dieting; just cut down a little on the fat in what you eat and you'll lose weight. The confirmation that you can lose weight without eating less comes from a review of studies involving nearly 75,000 people – none of whom were trying to lose weight. The pounds fell off when they changed to a diet containing less fat. The work was commissioned by the World Health Organization to find out what our optimal intake of fat should be. Lee Hooper at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and her colleagues reviewed 43 studies carried out in developed countries in which volunteers reduced the overall fat content of their diet, compared with controls who ate either their usual diet or a more healthy one. In all studies, volunteers had to maintain their eating plan for at least six months, with the median time about six years. The studies varied in how volunteers reduced their fat intake and by how much. For example, in one, volunteers simply replaced normal food with low-fat equivalents. In others, participants could change their diet in various ways to reduce their daily fat intake by about 7 per cent on average. In all but one study, the low-fat groups saw a greater weight reduction than the controls, with people losing on average about 1.6 kilograms. "I've never seen quite such a consistent set of results," Hooper says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Obese kids' brains may respond more to food logos than normal weight children

Children who are obese may be more vulnerable to food advertising, a brain scanning study suggests. Food and beverage companies market to children to establish brand recognition, brand preference and loyalty. Previous studies found preschoolers said foods tasted better wrapped in branded packaging than plain packaging and kids were more likely to try to influence their parents' purchases when exposed to ads. Researchers in the U.S. suspected that children who are obese would show greater activation to food logos in the "drive" regions of the brain compared with healthy weight children. Amanda Bruce of the psychology department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and her colleagues looked at 10 healthy children and 10 obese children aged 10 to 14 using questionnaires measuring self-control and functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain activity. Other corporate logos and blurred images were also tested. Obese children showed more activation in some reward regions of the brain than the healthy weight children when shown food logos. But that wasn't the case for the control regions of the brain. "When shown food logos, obese children showed significantly less brain activation than the healthy weight children in regions association with cognitive control," the study's authors concluded in Friday's issue of The Journal of Pediatrics. "This provides initial neuroimaging evidence that obese children may be more vulnerable to the effects of food advertising." © CBC 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 17559 - Posted: 12.01.2012

Childhood obesity 'can be predicted by check at birth'

By Melissa Hogenboom BBC News Researchers say a baby's chance of being obese in childhood can be predicted at birth using a simple formula. The formula combines several known factors to estimate the risk of obesity. The authors of the study, published in PLos One, hope it will be used to identify babies at risk. Childhood obesity can lead to many health problems, including Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Researchers from Imperial College London looked at 4,032 Finnish children born in 1986 and at data from two further studies of 1,503 Italian children and 1,032 US children. They found that looking at a few simple measurements, such as a child's birthweight and whether the mother smoked, was enough to predict obesity. Previously it had been thought that genetic factors would give bigger clues to later weight problems, but only about one in 10 cases of obesity is the result of a rare gene mutation that affects appetite. Obesity in children is rising, with the NHS estimating that 17% of boys and 15% of girls in England are now obese. BBC © 2012

Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation. The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years. The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Obesity gene may help protect against depression

The search for genes predisposing people to depression has taken an unexpected twist, according to Canadian researchers who found a clue in an obesity gene. Studies on families and twins suggest depression has a genetic component, but for 15 years, scientists haven't been able to find genes associated with the illness. Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., took a different approach by testing how obesity genes may be linked with depression. "We found the first gene predisposing to depression with consistent results," said David Meyre, an associate professor in clinical epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster and a Canada Research Chair in genetic epidemiology. In Monday's issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Meyre and his co-authors reported that a variant of the FTO gene may be associated with a lower risk of depression independent of the gene's effect on obesity. The common perception is that obese people become depressed because of their appearance and poor self-esteem or discrimination. Another common thought is that those who are depressed are less likely to be physically active or follow healthy eating habits. Taking antidepressants can also lead to weight gain. But the genetic findings challenge that thinking, Meyre said, since those with the genetic mutation predisposing to obesity were protected from depression. "This suggests that the FTO gene may have a broader role than initially thought with an effect on depression and other common psychiatric disorders," the researchers wrote. © CBC 2012

Exercise may actually suppress your appetite, two new studies suggest

By Lindsey Emery, Men’s Health When most people finish a hard workout, they want a reward — possibly a sandwich, or some pancakes, or maybe even a burger and fries. What they don’t want? To not eat anything. And yet, a few recent studies found that moderate intensity aerobic training could actually decrease your appetite or increase your feelings of fullness or satiety. Strange, right? Previous research has shown that people who exercise often reward themselves with food, increasing overall calorie consumption, and often sabotaging their weight loss goals. So, what gives? “Exercise can definitely suppress hunger,” says Barry Braun, director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has co-authored multiple studies on the subject. How, why, and for how long afterward is something researchers are still working out. They do know that workouts trigger changes in the hunger hormone ghrelin and the satiety hormones, PYY and GLP-1 — though research has yet to establish the exact relationship. A recent study published in the journal Metabolism found that perceived fullness — both while fasting and after eating — was higher among participants after 12 weeks of aerobic training, but not after resistance training for the same amount of time. And another study out of Brigham Young University revealed that women appeared to be less interested in food on mornings when they walked on a treadmill for 45 minutes than on days they didn’t. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Can Exercise Protect the Brain From Fatty Foods?

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS In recent years, some research has suggested that a high-fat diet may be bad for the brain, at least in lab animals. Can exercise protect against such damage? That question may have particular relevance now, with the butter-and cream-laden holidays fast approaching. And it has prompted several new and important studies. The most captivating of these, presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, began with scientists at the University of Minnesota teaching a group of rats to scamper from one chamber to another when they heard a musical tone, an accepted measure of the animals’ ability to learn and remember. For the next four months, half of the rats ate normal chow. The others happily consumed a much greasier diet, consisting of at least 40 percent fat. Total calories were the same in both diets. After four months, the animals repeated the memory test. Those on a normal diet performed about the same as they had before; their cognitive ability was the same. The high-fat eaters, though, did much worse. Then, half of the animals in each group were given access to running wheels. Their diets didn’t change. So, some of the rats on the high-fat diet were now exercising. Some were not. Ditto for the animals eating the normal diet. For the next seven weeks, the memory test was repeated weekly in all of the groups. During that time, the performance of the rats eating a high-fat diet continued to decline so long as they didn’t exercise. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 17468 - Posted: 11.08.2012

As Sales Fall, Allergan Seeks a Buyer for Lap-Band

By ANDREW POLLACK Allergan said Tuesday that it was looking to divest itself of its Lap-Band, the once-popular weight-loss device that has experienced several years of falling sales, loss of market share and controversies about its safety and effectiveness. The falling sales “do not fit the profile of a high-growth company like Allergan,” David E. I. Pyott, the company’s chief executive, told analysts Tuesday morning on a call announcing the company’s third-quarter financial results. In an interview, Mr. Pyott said Allergan had already hired an investment banking firm, which he would not name, and was sending letters to other medical device companies and private equity firms seeking a buyer for its obesity business, which also includes a balloonlike device that is not approved in the United States but is used in some other countries. The Lap-Band, a silicone ring that is wrapped around the stomach and can be inserted in an outpatient procedure, once appeared to have a bright future as a less drastic, if less effective, alternative to gastric bypass, which involves rerouting the digestive tract. But Allergan’s obesity business sales have fallen from a peak of $296 million in 2008 to an expected $160 million this year. In the third quarter, the sales fell by 25 percent to $37.4 million from a year earlier. The obesity business, while still profitable, represents less than 3 percent of total product sales for Allergan, which is known most for its Botox treatment for wrinkles, migraine headaches and other conditions. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Calories poorly grasped for maintaining weight

People often don't know how many calories they're eating, how many they burn off, or what they need, say doctors who are calling for prominent calorie labels at the point of sale. The Canadian Obesity Network, a group of obesity experts, showed people examples of foods and asked them to guess how many calories the items contained. Many people don't know their recommended daily intake of calories.Many people don't know their recommended daily intake of calories. (Lee Jae Won/Reuters) "A lot of Canadians were quite off the mark," said Dr. Arya Sharma, chair in obesity research and management at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. "When we showed people food labels and asked them to calculate how many calories they'd be getting if they consumed say a can of soup, very few Canadians were able to figure out that number." Sharma is concerned about the consequences of caloric illiteracy considering two-thirds of Canadians are carrying extra pounds and a quarter of adults are considered to be medically obese, according to Statistics Canada. "Ultimately calories are the currency of weight management," Sharma said. "If you don't know how many calories you're eating, you don't know what your body's doing with the calories, you don't know where the calories are going. That's like trying to manage your bank account without knowing how much money you make or how much money things cost." © CBC 2012

How Slight Sleep Deprivation Could Add Extra Pounds

By Katherine Harmon Getting seven to eight solid hours of sleep each night might seem an almost impossible luxury to many people. But not getting enough sleep is known to impair mental function and increase the risk for heart disease, among other ill effects. Accumulating evidence also suggests that even short-term, partial sleep deprivation could pave the way for weight gain and other negative metabolic consequences. More than 28 percent of adults in the U.S. report that they get less than six hours of sleep a night, with this cumulative deprivation becoming more common in the past three decades. And now that more than 35 percent of U.S. adults are currently obese, researchers have been searching for potential links between the two conditions, in hopes of reducing the increasing health and economic burden of obesity. Establishing lack of sleep as a risk factor for weight gain could have important clinical and public health effects, possibly allowing people to make simple lifestyle changes to improve their metabolic health. A new report, published online October 24 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, reviews 18 carefully controlled laboratory studies that tested human subjects' physiological and behavioral responses to sleep deprivation as they relate to metabolic health. Reena Mehra, an associate professor of medicine who studies sleep and health at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and who was not involved in the new analysis, notes that the new paper is "a well done review of the experimental data." © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 17419 - Posted: 10.25.2012

Hormone boost lets mice live longer without fasting

by Shaoni Bhattacharya Talk about having your cake and eating it. Fasting might not be the only route to a longer life – a hormone seems to work just as well, for mice at least. We know that some animals can extend their lifespan by consuming fewer calories. Engineered mice can get the same effect by simply pumping out high levels of a hormone normally produced during a fast, according to Steven Kliewer and David Mangelsdorf at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Their team found that mice engineered to make higher levels of the hormone, FGF21, increased their lifespan on average by over a third. "What we are seeing is the benefit of caloric restriction without having to diet," he says. Humans have the hormone too, and Kliewer believes FGF21 has the potential to extend the human "health-span" – the time we live healthy lives. The researchers believe FGF21 may act to prolong life by affecting pathways such as the insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) pathway implicated in ageing. "It blocks growth hormones promoting pathways which are associated with diseases, including cancers and metabolic diseases, and as a consequence these animals live longer," says Kliewer. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 17413 - Posted: 10.24.2012

In Fight Against Obesity, Drink Sizes Matter

By JANE E. BRODY I recently met a slender, health-conscious young woman who insisted that the size of sugar-sweetened drinks should not be legislated. “Getting people to drink less of them should be done through education,” she said. It is an opinion shared by many others. Some may be unaware of the role that these beverages are playing in the nation’s burgeoning epidemics of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Few know the disappointing history of efforts to change human behavior solely through education. The young woman was reacting to a New York City regulation, to take effect on March 12, limiting to 16 ounces the size of sugar-sweetened soft drinks available for purchase at restaurants, street carts, movie theaters and sporting events. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the new home of the Nets, has already imposed this limit. Convenience stores, vending machines and some newsstands are exempted from the regulation. Several new studies underscore the public health potential of the restriction. If it succeeds in curbing the consumption of sweet liquid calories, it is likely to be copied elsewhere, because the nation’s love affair with super-size sugary soft drinks is costing cities and states billions of dollars annually in medical care. We are all born with a natural preference for sweetness, which through evolution enabled us to know when fruits and berries were ripe and ready to eat. But as Gary K. Beauchamp, a biopsychologist and director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, has put it, “We’ve separated the good taste from the good food.” Our sweet tooth is no longer working to our advantage. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Fasting hormone helps mice live longer

By Tina Hesman Saey New work suggests that a hormone that makes the body think it’s starving could prolong life about as long as severely cutting calories does but without the denial. A hormone called fibroblast growth factor-21, or FGF21, lengthened the lives of mice that had been genetically engineered to constantly produce large amounts of the protein, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas report online October 15 in eLife. The hormone is normally made by the liver during fasting and may tap into some of the same life-extending biochemical processes as does caloric restriction, a proven longevity booster. Caloric restriction — usually defined as cutting calorie intake to 75 to 80 percent of the amount needed to maintain normal body weight, while still maintaining good nutrition — has been shown lengthen life in a wide variety of species, such as fruit flies and dogs. Minimal calorie consumption turns on many different biological processes that slow aging, says Cynthia Kenyon, a developmental biologist at the University of California, San Francisco. The hormone in the study somehow interferes with a chain reaction anchored by insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a process that is also shut down by caloric restriction and thought to be responsible for many of its life-extending effects. In the study, researchers led by UT Southwestern’s David Mangelsdorf and Steven Kliewer genetically engineered mice to constantly make five to 10 times as much FGF21 as normal. These engineered mice lived 30 to 40 percent longer than normal mice on a standard diet. Female mice benefitted from the hormone even more than males; about a third of the FGF21-producing female mice still were alive at 44 months old. Average survival for normal mice in the study was about 28 months. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Obesity surgery 'seen as quick fix'

By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News Obesity surgery is often seen as a quick fix, without proper consideration of the risks, a review says. The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death looked at the care given to more than 300 patients at NHS and private hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It found that many were given insufficient time or information to properly consent to the operations. Post-surgery care was also found to be lacking, the watchdog said. In particular, it highlighted the fact patients were not always given access to dieticians and psychologists. The report also suggested the failings could be contributing to the high number of readmissions - nearly a fifth of the patients had to return within six months. Weight loss operations, such as the fitting of gastric bands, have been growing in popularity. There were more than 8,000 of these operations, sometimes called bariatric surgery, carried out by the NHS last year - and the number is rising by about 10% a year. BBC © 2012

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