Links for Keyword: Obesity

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By Helen Briggs BBC News The idea that exercise is more important than diet in the fight against obesity has been contradicted by new research. A study of the Hadza tribe, who still exist as hunter gatherers, suggests the amount of calories we need is a fixed human characteristic. This suggests Westerners are growing obese through over-eating rather than having inactive lifestyles, say scientists. One in 10 people will be obese by 2015. And, nearly one in three of the worldwide population is expected to be overweight, according to figures from the World Health Organization. The Western lifestyle is thought to be largely to blame for the obesity "epidemic". Various factors are involved, including processed foods high in sugar and fat, large portion sizes, and a sedentary lifestyle where cars and machines do most of the daily physical work. BBC © 2012

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: 17094 - Posted: 07.28.2012

Should you take one of the new weight loss drugs?

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff The approval this week of a new weight loss pill called Qsymia means that doctors will soon be able to prescribe two new drugs to help overweight people shed pounds. Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the pill Belviq, the first drug approved for obesity in 13 years. Both drugs will hit pharmacies later this year and their cost, yet to be determined, will probably be about $100 to $200 a month. I asked Dr. Richard Siegel, co-director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts Medical Center, to sort out the pros and cons of these new medications and who might be appropriate candidates for drug therapy. Here are edited excerpts from our interview. Which people are most likely to benefit from these drugs? Both drugs were approved for those who are obese -- defined as a body mass index of 30 or above -- or overweight with a BMI of at least 27 and a weight-related complication such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. (Note: A 5’5” person who is 163 pounds has a BMI of 27, and at 180 pounds has a BMI of 30.) How much weight can people expect to lose? It’s variable but the clinical trials performed by the drug manufacturers found that Belviq leads to an average drop in body weight of about 5 percent, while Qsymia leads to an average decline of 10 percent. I tell patients that the more effort they put into it, the more results they can get from weight-loss drugs. Yes, they can lose a few pounds if they just take a pill and do nothing else, but if they join a support group, meet with a nutritionist to map out a new eating plan, and start exercising, they might exceed those average weight losses seen in study participants. © 2012 NY Times Co.

One sport is not enough to cut teen obesity rates, researchers find

By Linda Carroll Teens who play on more than one sports team during the year are far less likely to become overweight or obese, a new study suggests. In fact, Dartmouth College researchers concluded that the obesity rate among high schoolers could be cut by more than 26 percent if all teens signed up for multiple team sports, according to the study, published today in the journal Pediatrics. The researchers also found that kids who bike or walk to school are less likely to become obese. If every kid in the country biked or walked to school at least four days a week, then obesity could be cut by 22 percent, they reported. “I know that coordinating schedules can be difficult in terms of getting kids to practices and games,” said study co-author Keith Drake, a post doctoral research fellow at the Hood Center for Children and Families at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. “But it does look to us like getting kids involved in sports may be the best chance we have to get them physically active and to help them maintain a healthy body weight.” Playing on a single team didn’t appear to have a strong effect. Still, Drake said: “Playing on one team is probably better than playing on none.” Drake and his colleagues surveyed 1,718 New Hampshire and Vermont high school students and their parents for the new study. The new report is part of a seven-year review of adolescent health that started in 2002 and included five separate surveys of the kids and their parents. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 17052 - Posted: 07.17.2012

Keep food journal to lose weight

CBC News Keeping track of how much you eat by writing it down each day, rather than what you eat, is key for weight loss, a new U.S. study suggests. The No. 1 piece of advice would be to keep a food journal to document every morsel that passes your lips and thereby help monitor daily calorie intake, concluded researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Wash. “It is difficult to make changes to your diet when you are not paying close attention to what you are eating.” said lead investigator Anne McTiernan. Participants in the study were given a printed booklet to record their food and beverage consumption, but a food journal doesn't have to be fancy. "Any notebook or pad of paper that is easily carried or an online program that can be accessed any time through a smart phone or tablet should work fine," McTiernan said. Other specific behaviours that support weight loss include not skipping meals and avoiding eating in restaurants – especially at lunch. The findings were published online Friday in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics The study focus was on how self-monitoring and other diet-related behaviors, as well as meal patterns, effect weight change in overweight and obese postmenopausal women. © CBC 2012

How do you measure success in large-scale, anti-obesity campaigns?

By Kay Lazar Mary Regan has witnessed a transformation outside the front door of her Union Square office in Somerville — new “corrals” provide more parking spaces for bicyclists, angled parking has replaced parallel parking for cars to keep doors from flying open into bicycle lanes, and those lanes have been freshly painted. At the nearby farmers’ market, $1 in food stamps is worth $2 in produce to help low-income customers afford fresh fruits and vegetables. “I’ve heard people here say that farmers’ markets used to seem like an elite, foreign thing,” said Regan, a community organizer at a nonprofit organization for affordable housing. “But now that they can use their [food stamps] and get twice as much for the same amount of money, they are buying more healthy foods.” A decade after an ambitious experiment dubbed Shape Up Somerville was launched to lower obesity rates in elementary school children, the campaign has been expanded and woven into the fabric of everyday life in this diverse city of 78,000, where 52 languages are spoken in the public schools and almost two-thirds of students come from families so poor that they receive free or reduced-price school lunches. City decisions about roads, bridges, other transportation projects, real estate development, and parks include an analysis of how the plans might affect residents’ physical activity or ability to shop for healthy food. Two city employees ensure healthy goals are considered at every step, particularly by collaborating with community groups. © 2012 NY Times Co.

TV habits 'can predict kids' waist size and fitness'

Children who increase the number of hours of weekly television they watch between the ages of two and four years old risk larger waistlines by age 10. A Canadian study found that every extra weekly hour watched could add half a millimetre to their waist circumference and reduce muscle fitness. The study, in a BioMed Central journal, tracked the TV habits of 1,314 children. Experts say children should not watch more than two hours of TV a day. Researchers found that the average amount of television watched by the children at the start of the study was 8.8 hours a week. This increased on average by six hours over the next two years to reach 14.8 hours a week by the age of four-and-a-half. Fifteen per cent of the children in the study were watching more than 18 hours per week by that age, according to their parents. The study said the effect of 18 hours of television at 4.5 years of age would by the age of 10 result in an extra 7.6mm of waist because of the child's TV habit. As well as measuring waist circumference, the researchers also carried out a standing long jump test to measure each child's muscular fitness and athletic ability. An extra weekly hour of TV can decrease the distance a child is able to jump from standing by 0.36cm, the study said. BBC © 2012

Fat-melting device a weighty matter for FDA

By Myron Levin and Stuart Silverstein For several years, doctors and medical spas around the country have touted a fat-melting device called the LipoTron 3000, or Lipo-Ex, as a revolutionary way for people to slim down. Signature Medical Spa in Tampa, Fla., in an online pitch for its “Lipo-Ex Spring Fling Fat-Off!,” described the technology as “truly the only non-invasive way to reduce fat.” Praise also came from Sculpt Medical Spa in Chicago, which called the procedure “the most innovative, effective, and technologically advanced” non-surgical method of removing fat. These testimonials have translated into millions of dollars in sales for physicians, med spas, and the device’s manufacturer, RevecoMED International of Fullerton, Calif. But there’s a problem: The LipoTron, which targets fat with radiofrequency waves, has never been cleared or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which would make it illegal under federal law to sell or promote it for weight loss. The FDA is aware of the activity. But an investigation by FairWarning found that the agency has not taken enforcement action — even though it has known about the situation at least since January, 2010. At that time, two whistleblowers, one a former LipoTron distributor, provided sales records and a trove of other documents to an FDA criminal investigator. © 2012 msnbc.com

In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science

By GINA KOLATA Is a calorie really just a calorie? Do calories from a soda have the same effect on your waistline as an equivalent number from an apple or a piece of chicken? For decades the question has percolated among researchers — not to mention dieters. It gained new momentum with a study published last month in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that after losing weight, people on a high-fat, high-protein diet burned more calories than those eating more carbohydrates. We asked Dr. Jules Hirsch, emeritus professor and emeritus physician in chief at Rockefeller University, who has been researching obesity for nearly 60 years, about the state of the research. Dr. Hirsch, who receives no money from pharmaceutical companies or the diet industry, wrote some of the classic papers describing why it is so hard to lose weight and why it usually comes back. The JAMA study has gotten a lot of attention. Should people stay on diets that are high in fat and protein if they want to keep the weight off? What they did in that study is they took 21 people and fed them a diet that made them lose about 10 to 20 percent of their weight. Then, after their weight had leveled off, they put the subjects on one of three different maintenance diets. One is very, very low in carbohydrates and high in fat, essentially the Atkins diet. Another is the opposite — high in carbohydrates, low in fat. The third is in between. Then they measured total energy expenditure — in calories burned — and resting energy expenditure. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Obesity researchers study thin people for clues about hunger and metabolism

By Laura Hambleton, Maureen Michael likes food. Most days, she has three or four meals, and on occasion she eats yet another in the middle of the night. But she rarely worries about her weight, and at 5-foot-8 and 155 pounds, she looks quite trim. “I eat anything, and I eat a lot,” the 51-year-old District resident said. “I like large portions. I have one of those metabolisms, I guess.” Just the other day, Michael ate a salad and two large helpings of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner — after having a hearty bowl of ice cream. For breakfast the next morning, she ate two scrambled eggs, half a package of Polish sausage, English muffins and orange juice. For lunch, she consumed a 12-inch seafood sub and some Doritos, and that night’s dinner featured two pork chops, potatoes and broccoli. That Michael’s weight remains steady even though she eats whatever she wants and does not exercise interests scientists studying the nation’s obesity epidemic. By looking at people who are near their ideal body weight, these reseachers at the National Institutes of Health’s Metabolic Clinical Research Unit in Bethesda hope to figure out what causes so many others to be overweight or uncontrollably fat. Michael is among the one-third of American adults who are at a good weight relative to their height and build. Another third are overweight, and the rest are obese. Unlike Michael, very few people keep their weight in check without paying attention to what they eat and being conscientious about physical activity. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

FDA clears first new weight-loss pill in 13 years

By MATTHEW PERRONE WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved Arena Pharmaceutical’s anti-obesity pill Belviq, the first new prescription drug for long-term weight loss to enter the U.S. market in over a decade. Despite only achieving modest weight loss in clinical studies, the drug appeared safe enough to win the FDA’s endorsement, amid calls from doctors for new weight-loss treatments. The agency cleared the pill Wednesday for adults who are obese or are overweight with at least one medical complication, such as diabetes or high cholesterol. The drug should be used in combination with a healthy diet and exercise. Obesity Society President Patrick O'Neil said he’s encouraged by the drug’s approval because it underscores the notion that lifestyle changes alone are not enough to treat obesity. ‘‘This is good news because it tells us that the FDA is indeed treating obesity seriously,’’ said O'Neil, who teaches at Medical University of South Carolina and was the lead researcher on several studies of Belviq. ‘‘On the other hand, it’s not the answer to the problem — or even a big part of the answer.’’ Even if the effects of Belviq are subtle, experts say it could be an important first step in developing new treatments that attack the underlying causes of obesity. ‘‘The way these things tend to work is you have some people who do extremely well and other people don’t lose any weight at all. But if we had 10 medicines that were all different and worked like this, we would have a real field,’’ said Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the weight loss program at Weill-Cornell Medical College. © 2012 NY Times Co

Testosterone therapy takes off pounds

By Nathan Seppa HOUSTON — Men with low testosterone who are given replacement doses of the hormone shed weight steadily for years, researchers in Germany reported June 23 at a meeting of the Endocrine Society. Study participants, nearly all of whom were overweight or obese at the start of the study, lost 36 pounds on average. “This was an unintended effect,” said study coauthor Farid Saad, a research endocrinologist at Bayer Pharma in Berlin. “The big surprise was that when we analyzed the data [we found] that these men had lost weight continuously...year by year.” The men didn’t diet as part of the study, and any increase in their activity was voluntary, Saad said. He and his colleagues studied 116 men, average age 61, who had low testosterone levels. Each received quarterly injections of the hormone for five years. At the start, 71 percent were obese and another 24 percent were overweight. After five years, 97 percent of the men showed a reduction in waist circumference, on average losing “three to four trouser sizes,” Saad said. Average weight dropped from 236 pounds to about 200. “This definitely offers some insight that we can apply to our clinical practices,” said Vineeth Mohan, a clinical endocrinologist at Cleveland Clinic Florida in Weston. High testosterone levels have been linked to prostate cancer risk (SN: 10/8/05, p. 238), and a small portion of men taking high doses of it experience mania (SN: 2/19/00, p. 119). But in this study, Saad said, men received testosterone in doses just high enough to bring them back to normal levels. Three men in the test group were diagnosed with prostate cancer during the study, a rate lower than the incidence found in routine screening programs for men that age, he said. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

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: 16968 - Posted: 06.26.2012

Diabetes Linked to Memory Problems in Older Adults

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR A new study adds to growing evidence that the complications of diabetes may extend to the brain, causing declines in memory, attention and other cognitive skills. The new research showed that over the course of about a decade, elderly men and women with diabetes — primarily Type 2, the form of the disease related to obesity and inactivity — had greater drops in cognitive test scores than other people of a similar age. The more poorly managed their disease, the greater the deterioration in mental function. And the declines were seen not just in those with advanced diabetes. The researchers found that people who did not have diabetes at the start of the study but developed it later on also deteriorated to a greater extent than those without the disease. “What we’ve shown is a clear association with diabetes and cognitive aging in terms of the slope and the rate of decline on these cognitive tests,” said Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. “That’s very powerful.” While correlation does not equal causation and the relationship between diabetes and brain health needs further study, the findings, if confirmed, could have significant implications for a large segment of the population. Nationwide, nearly a third of Americans over the age of 65, or roughly 11 million people, have diabetes. By 2034, about 15 million Medicare-eligible Americans are expected to have the disease. Previous studies have shown that Type 2 diabetes correlates with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia later in life. But how one leads to the other has not been well understood. 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: 16941 - Posted: 06.20.2012

Weight-loss surgery increases alcohol use disorders over time

Adults who had a common bariatric surgery to lose weight had a significantly higher risk of alcohol use disorders (AUD) two years after surgery, according to a study by a National Institutes of Health research consortium. Researchers investigated alcohol consumption and alcohol use disorders symptoms in 1,945 participants from the NIH-funded Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (LABS), a prospective study of patients undergoing weight-loss surgery at one of 10 hospitals across the United States. Within 30 days before surgery, and again one and two years after surgery, study participants completed the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification (AUDIT) test. The test, developed by the World Health Organization, identifies symptoms of alcohol use disorders, a condition that includes alcohol abuse and dependence, commonly known as alcoholism. Study participants were categorized as having AUD if they had at least one symptom of alcohol dependence, which included not being able to stop drinking once started, or alcohol-related harm, which included not being able to remember, or if their total AUDIT score was at least 8 (out of 40). About 70 percent of the study participants had Roux-en-Y (RYGB) gastric bypass surgery, which reduces the size of the stomach and shortens the intestine, limiting food intake and the body's ability to absorb calories. Another 25 percent had laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgery, which makes the stomach smaller with an adjustable band. About 5 percent of the patients had other, less common weight-loss surgeries.

Growing Up With a Fat Dad

By DAWN LERMAN I grew up with a fat dad — 450 pounds at his heaviest. Every week he would rotate to a new fad diet, and my family ended up eating whatever freeze-dried, saccharin-loaded concoction he was trying at that moment. By the time I was 9, I was an expert on Atkins, Pritikin and Weight Watchers, just to name a few. Did I mention spending four weeks at Duke University’s “Fat Farm” consuming only minuscule bowls of white rice, while my 10-year-old peers were home eating ice cream cones? In spite of being shorter and scrawnier than my classmates, I was eating calorie-free astronaut mystery powders and drinking diet sodas, which were the only staples in our kitchen. My dad was obsessed with his career in advertising and his fluctuating weight, which was fluctuating mostly in the wrong direction. Every new diet, no matter how stringent or odd, was the potential solution for his expanding waistline. My mother, on the other hand, never understood what the big deal with food was and ate only one small meal a day while standing up and chatting on the phone. She had no interest in preparing food. Most of our meals consisted of my dad’s diet foods, a meal replacement shake, a frozen dinner, or a bagel or pizza in the car. We never had meals together as a family; in fact, we never ate sitting down. At home, we never used silverware or dishes, only plastic forks and paper plates. My mom loved the fact that in India they never used silverware at all. Of course, she missed the part that Indian families actually ate together and sat down while eating. What I remember most about those years is that I was always hungry — hungry for food, hungry for nice clean clothes, hungry for someone to notice when I ran away from home or hid in the closet for hours. I was just hungry — hungry for someone to care for me because I was a child and I yearned to be cared for. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Diet sodas may confuse brain's 'calorie counter'

By Janet Raloff By baffling the brain, saccharin and other sugar-free sweeteners — key weapons in the war on obesity — may paradoxically foster overeating. At some level, the brain can sense a difference between sugar and no-calorie sweeteners, several studies have demonstrated. Using brain imaging, San Diego researchers now show that the brain processes sweet flavors differently depending on whether a person regularly consumes diet soft drinks. “This idea that there could be fundamental differences in how people respond to sweet tastes based on their experience with diet sodas is not something that has gotten much attention,” says Susan Swithers of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. A key finding, she says: Brains of diet soda drinkers “don’t differentiate very well between sucrose and saccharin.” Erin Green and Claire Murphy of the University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University recruited 24 healthy young adults for a battery of brain imaging tests. Half reported regularly drinking sugar-free beverages, usually at least once a day. The rest seldom if ever consumed such drinks. While the brain scans were underway, the researchers pumped small amounts of saccharin- or sugar-sweetened water in random order into each recruit’s mouth as the volunteer rated the tastes. Both the diet soda drinkers and the nondrinkers rated each sweetener about equally pleasant and intense, Green and Murphy report in an upcoming Physiology & Behavior. But which brain regions lit up while making those judgments differed sharply based on who regularly consumed diet drinks. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 9: Hearing, Vestibular Perception, Taste, and Smell
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 6: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Link ID: 16909 - Posted: 06.14.2012

Memoirs of a slightly overweight diet doctor

By Suzanne Koven When I first went into practice, over 20 years ago, all my patients were eating pretzels. Also Entenmann’s fat-free cake. And jelly beans. It was the era of the low-fat craze, not to be confused with the low-carb crazes that preceded and followed it. That my patients were not losing weight on these diets didn’t surprise me, not because of my vast knowledge of nutrition (about which physicians receive notoriously scant training), but because I wasn’t faring too well on them myself. You see, dear reader, when it comes to dieting — to paraphrase the men’s hair commercial — I’m not only a professional, I’m also a member of the club. I remember the precise moment I first decided to lose weight. I was 12½ and had lied to my parents about where I would be spending the evening: I said Susie’s. It was actually Teddy’s. As I dressed for my clandestine outing, I gazed at a reflection of myself in a pair of purple striped hip-huggers and resolved to be thinner. I devised a diet that seemed sensible: 400 calories a day. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that this was not enough to sustain a growing adolescent (or the average cocker spaniel, for that matter). What took me decades to figure out, though, was that my impulse to diet had more to do with shame, specifically shame about desire (See above: Teddy) than with what I actually weighed — which wasn’t much. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Feel the Burn: Turning on brown fat in humans may boost weight loss

By Tina Hesman Saey Bruce Spiegelman isn’t always happy with the way his research gets portrayed. He and colleagues discovered a hormone that muscles make during exercise. When given to mice, the hormone causes the animals to burn more energy and lose weight, and improves their response to insulin — all without changing how much the mice eat or exercise. The press touted the discovery as “exercise in a pill.” “I really hate that,” says Spiegelman, a cell biologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “The goal is not to put exercise in a pill.” His goal, instead, is to harness a special type of fat, called brown fat for its color, to replicate the metabolic benefits that exercise delivers. While some researchers have dismissed this fat as a mostly obsolete relic that makes little if any contribution to people’s energy expenditure, new research shows that it can make humans feel the energy burn. Some scientists have found chemical secrets for activating brown fat already in the body, while others are learning how to turn energy-storing white fat brown. Together, such efforts may help fight the battle of the bulge, reducing obesity and the diseases that go along with it. Turning brown fat on may also benefit people who cannot exercise because of disabilities. For many years scientists have recognized brown fat as an energy-burning powerhouse that helps animals and human babies stay warm. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Method of Delivery May Affect Obesity Risk

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Babies delivered by Caesarean section may have an increased risk of obesity by age 3, a new study has found. Among 1,255 women recruited in early pregnancy for the study, 284 gave birth by Caesarean section. By age 3, 15.7 percent of those children were obese (with a body mass index in the 95th percentile or greater), compared with 7.5 percent of those delivered vaginally. Mothers who delivered by Caesarean were on average heavier than those who delivered vaginally, and they breast-fed less. But after controlling for these and other maternal health and socioeconomic factors, the scientists found that Caesarean delivery was associated with a doubling of the odds of obesity in these children. Whether the Caesarean was planned or an emergency delivery made no difference. “Those mothers who are considering C-section in the absence of a medical indication should be counseled about this potential risk,” said the lead author, Dr. Susanna Y. Huh, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard. Babies born by Caesarean develop different intestinal flora from those born vaginally, and the authors suggest this could be a factor. Or, the mode of delivery might have long-term effects on immune or endocrine function. The report was published online Wednesday in The Archives of Disease in Childhood. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

A boy’s serious ailment required only a simple fix once it was diagnosed

By Sandra G. Boodman, When she heard her younger son’s quavery cry of “M-o-o-o-m-m-m” drifting down the hall in the middle of the night, Jocelyn Mathiasen stiffened, braced for what lay ahead. Sometimes the little boy would awaken just before dawn shaky and weak, complaining of hunger or thirst; after consuming something he would quickly recover. But on the bad nights Peter Dawson would spend hours lying on the floor of the bathroom clutching his stomach, vomiting intermittently and refusing to drink anything. It took him hours to rebound — and it was never clear what had made him so sick. Mathiasen did not know what to make of these episodes, which at first were only mild and infrequent, blips in the life of her otherwise healthy child. But when Peter turned 5 in 2006 and the family moved to Easton, Conn., from Seattle, Mathiasen asked her new pediatrician whether the episodes were normal. Leveling a hard look at her, he told her that what she was describing was definitely not normal — and might signify a serious problem, such as juvenile, or Type 1, diabetes. But after tests for diabetes were negative, the search for the underlying cause of Peter’s odd problem floundered. It would take nearly five years for a specialist eight states away to figure out what was wrong. The solution was a surprisingly cheap and prosaic remedy — but one that recently drew attention in an airport security line. As an infant, Peter would periodically wake up in the morning in obvious distress, grabbing his bottle and sucking down the contents “in one gulp, like he was desperate,” his mother recalled. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

When you eat beats what you eat in staying healthy

by Sara Reardon Preventing obesity may be down to timing, in mice, at least. Mice allowed meals only within an 8-hour period were healthier than those that munched freely through the day, even when they consumed more fat. A link between obesity and the time you eat meals makes sense, says Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, as food choices generally get less healthy as the day progresses. Breakfast may include healthy fruits and grains, but late-night snacks are more likely to involve high-fat ice cream or high-calorie alcohol. Furthermore, research has shown that our internal clocks are closely tied to our metabolism; disrupting them can cause weight gain and diabetes. Panda and colleagues fed two groups of mice a high-fat diet. One group could snack whenever they liked, the other could only eat during an 8-hour window. Both groups consumed the same number of calories each day. Two other groups were fed a healthy diet under the same conditions. Three months later, the weight of mice on the all-day, high-fat diet had increased by 28 per cent. Their blood sugar levels had gone up – a risk factor for diabetes – and they also had liver damage. In contrast, mice eating a high-fat diet for only 8 hours a day stayed healthy and didn't become obese. They also had better balance than mice on a healthy diet. Journal reference: Cell Metabolism, DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2012.04.019 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

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