Healthsifter by mary desmond pinkowish, since 2003

Why Are We So Fat?

Is it the calories, or is it the carbs?

Tara Parker-Pope recently wrote about her weight struggles in the New York Times magazine and concluded based on her interviews--and personal experience--that once a person gains weight, the body prefers its cushiony state and resists our most valiant attempts to cut calories and increase energy expenditures.

Writing in his book, "Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It," Gary Taubes explains why obesity may be an endocrine disorder caused at least in part by our increased consumption of refined grains and sugars ("carbs"). White bread and sugar rev up our insulin levels. High levels of this hormone are linked to  both heart disease and diabetes, says Taubes, and also to increased body fat. Taube explains today in The Daily Beast:

In the past decade, clinical trials have repeatedly demonstrated that when obese and overweight individuals consciously restrict the carbohydrates they eat, but not calories, they not only tend to lose significant weight, but their heart disease and diabetes risk factors improve significantly as well. Their insulin resistance, in effect, resolves. (An observation that itself suggests that it’s the quantity and quality of carbohydrates we consume that are the fundamental cause of metabolic syndrome.)

Another well-accepted effect of carbohydrate-restriction is that intrusive and obsessive thoughts of food seem to disappear on these diets. People lose weight, but they’re not hungry doing so. In fact, the American Medical Association has described the absence of hunger (technically “anorexia”) as a side effect of diets that severely restrict carbohydrate content but otherwise allow dieters to eat as many calories (from fat and protein) as they want.

And there's more: Diabetes seems to increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that insulin has some role there, too. In fact, insulin treatment is being investigated as a possible treatment for early Alzheimer's. Here's what MayoClinic.com says:

The link between type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's may be especially strong as a result of the complex ways that type 2 diabetes affects the ability of the brain and other body tissues to use sugar (glucose) and respond to insulin.

That bagel looks amazing, but maybe I'll just take the lox.

Would A Robot Companion Help You Lose Weight?

"She" never scolds, she's always positive, and she wants to help you lose weight. She's Autom the weight-loss robot, and she may be available as early as this summer for $500-600.  The idea seems to be that having this small, friendly robot look you in the eye after you've input your diet and exercise information onto her screen will make you more accountable for your efforts--or lack thereof. Autom's manufacturers, Intuitive Automata, say that in their studies, dieters who had Autom's company lost more weight that people who used old-fashioned diet logs or computer programs. See Autom in this video from this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Hey, whatever it takes! Read more at Discovery News.

  

Which Diet is the Best Diet?

Here's a great diet-selection tool from The Daily Beast. Check it out: You'll get information about the amount of weight people lost over the course of a year, what percentage dropped it, and a quick description of what's involved. Very cool. Oh, also, there are references for the assertions they make. Have you ever noticed how little diet-related information is actually supported or verified? 

Dieting May Stress You, And Stress May Sink Your Diet

I avoid writing too often about animal studies, because it's a long way from the hamster cage to your medical records. But today you can read an interesting report at ScienceNOW about an elegant experiment conducted in mice who were put on diets that mimicked a moderately restrictive diet in humans. The investigators found that compared to nondieting mice, the dieting mice had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their bloodstream after exposure to a stressor like loud noise. Further, the cortisol levels stayed high, suggesting that the mice had trouble settling down after they were stressed. When the dieting mice were returned to their regular fare, they remained more sensitive to stress, at least as indicated by their cortisol levels. And when the researchers put them through periodic stress drills, they made a beeline for--you guessed it--a high-fat, high calorie mouse chow.

Sound familiar? Hmm, me too.

Read a shortened version of the original study in The Journal of Neuroscience. 

Overweight? You May Need a Walker or Cane Sooner Than Most

Looking for yet another good reason to shed a few pounds? This one got my attention. Researchers at Purdue University say that as overweight, middle-aged people get older they start using assists like walkers and canes and shower chairs sooner than people who aren't overweight. The story is in ScienceDaily, and here's what one of the investigators, Kenneth Ferraro, says: 

 "Obesity and disability create issues for society, such as in the number of handicap parking spots or availability of larger beds in hospitals and nursing homes. These challenges will escalate as our largest adult population ages," said co-author Kenneth F. Ferraro, a distinguished professor of sociology and director of Purdue's Center on Aging and the Life Course. "Being obese and disabled also fuels a vicious cycle. When you are functionally limited, physical activity is restricted, thereby burning fewer calories, which may lead to additional weight gain. This is another reminder that body weight matters throughout the life course."

Food for thought...Here's the abstract of the original article in The Gerontologist.

Vinegar the Fat-Fighter?

News from Japanese researchers via ScienceDaily that at least in rodents, vinegar (aka acetic acid) keeps the fat off. MedicalNewsToday also reported this a few weeks ago, and this is an excerpt from that article:

"...laboratory mice fed a high-fat diet and given acetic acid developed significantly less body fat (up to 10 percent less) than other mice. Importantly, the new research adds evidence to the belief that acetic acid fights fat by turning on genes for fatty acid oxidation enzymes. The genes churn out proteins involved in breaking down fats, thus suppressing body fat accumulation in the body."

I'm always eager to find a weight-loss miracle that doesn't kill you in the process. This sounds like something to try, although I have no idea how much--is two salads a day with oil and vinegar enough, or should I be doing vinegar shots? That sounds terrible. I wonder if it's dangerous. Thanks to Cecil Adams over at The Straight Dope, I got an answer to the question "Is Consuming Vinegar to Excess Dangerous?"  I won't be doing the shots--that actually could be dangerous. But a tablespoon or two before meals might be worth a try.  

Interested in the folk history of vinegar as a health tonic? Read this article from Nutrition Forum. If you're interested, this is the original journal reference: Kondo et al. Acetic Acid Upregulates the Expression of Genes for Fatty Acid Oxidation Enzymes in Liver To Suppress Body Fat Accumulation. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2009; 090609114939008 DOI: 10.1021/jf900470c

Jillian Michaels on Exercise When You Need to Lose Less than 50 lb

Time.com interviews Jillian Michaels about her new book, of course, and her advice for people who want to lose weight. I'm interested to hear her say that people who need to lose less than 50 lb should exercise about 8 hours a week, and certainly not more than 10 hours. Not that most of us have even 8 hours to carve out of our schedules, but this is reassuring. I wonder what she base this recommendation on. Experience, perhaps.

Kirstie Alley Says that Vegetarianism Cause her Weight Gain

In some respects, vegetarians do tend to be healthier than the rest of us, possibly because in addition to not eating meat they do lots of other healthy things--exercising, not smoking, staying fairly sober, and so forth. But there's a pitfall, as Kirstie Alley admits in her interview in this week's People. The interviewer asked her how she gained back 75-80 lb after leaving Jenny Craig:

"For seven months I was a vegetarian, and I can’t tell you how much weight I gained being a vegetarian! A vegetarian would probably be eating vegetables. But to me being a vegetarian meant I’m going to eat enchiladas with no meat, and I’m going to eat lots of bread, lots of carbs."

See what Lou Aronne, MD, said about weight problems in vegetarians in my article about vegarianism in Westchester magazine last fall.

Everything You Need to Know About Gastric Bypass Surgery

This is a comprehensive article from MayoClinic.com about gastric bypass surgery, with shorter sections on LAP-BAND, vertical band, and biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch. A nice feature is the section on what you can expect post-surgery. Do you have diabetes? That may be a compelling reason to consider this operation. Talk to your doctor and to people who've been through it.

Fresh Advice on Nutrition and Exercise

Check out this series of videos by Louis Aronne, MD, at shezoom.com. Dr. Aronne is a weight-loss and fitness specialist on the faculty at the Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York City. These videos are short, pithy, and packed with authoritative information on weight loss, nutrition, and exercise. Great stuff. (The videos are super-easy to view. The ones I saw had no annoying advertisements, either.)