And excess consumption of saturated fats raises obesity risk, researchers find

New research sheds light on the possible link between the genes you inherit and the size of your belly.

Participants in a French study doubled their risk of having fat around the abdomen if they had a certain genetic trait, and the more of these traits one had, the greater the risk for a pot belly.

The study was looking at metabolic syndrome, a condition in which abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure combine to raise the risk of several diseases such as stroke, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

The findings are just one more piece of the obesity puzzle, a nutrition specialist said.

“Certainly it adds to the body of knowledge, but we need to look at what it means within the big picture and context of all the other obesity research,” said Lona Sandon, an assistant professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

Results of the study, which was designed to explore a possible link between genes and metabolic syndrome, are published in the November issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

The researchers followed 1,754 French people for seven and a half years, tracking what they ate. They found that having any one of five genetic traits doubled the risk that a person would have abdominal obesity, and that eating a lot of saturated fats boosted the risk even more. But they also found that having one of the genetic traits didn’t boost the risk of metabolic syndrome.

Sandon said the study doesn’t confirm that the genetic trait directly leads to obesity. The findings, she said, show “an association, not a cause-and-effect.”

Also, she pointed out that while the study found a relationship between the gene and abdominal obesity, some subjects were consuming more than 15.5 percent of their calories from saturated fat.

The current recommendation is 10 percent for most healthy people and 7 percent for those with high cholesterol and other metabolic risk factors for heart disease, she said.

In the larger picture, researchers are beginning to understand how genetics are connected to obesity and “how those genes are affected by environment and food components,” Sandon said.

“The mystery is how do we put this into real health recommendations, and how do multiple genes work together to promote or squelch obesity,” she said. “If there were just one gene related to obesity, the answer might be simple. But we know multiple genes are involved, so it is difficult to make hard and fast conclusions about what people should do with this information.”

When it comes to obesity, the factors of genetics, diet and exercise — or lack thereof — are indeed “highly entangled,” said study co-author Dr. Richard Planells, a professor of biochemistry at University of Aix-Marseille II in France.

What to do? At the moment, genetic tests to track these particular genes aren’t feasible. “Many other genes have to be analyzed before one can design a genetic map,” Planells explained.

Even if there was such a test, “the majority of control is always in your hands,” added Cynthia Sass, a registered dietitian and author in New York City. “Even if you have strong genetic predispositions to obesity or any disease, you are not guaranteed to develop that disease. Given the exact same lifestyle, yes, you will have a higher risk, but the bottom line is that the majority of the risk lies in how you treat your body, and that’s empowering.”

SOURCES: Lona Sandon, R.D., assistant professor, clinical nutrition, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas; Richard Planells, M.D., Ph.D., professor, biochemistry, University of Aix-Marseille II, Marseille, France; Cynthia Sass, M.P.H., R.D., registered dietitian and author, New York City; November 2009, Journal of Nutrition

Copyright (c) 2009 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

What is weight cycling?

Weight cycling is the repeated loss and regain of body weight. This sometimes happens to people who go on weight-loss diets. A small cycle may include loss and regain of 3 to 6 kg. In a large cycle, weight can change by 20 kg or more.

Is weight cycling harmful to my health?

Experts are not sure if weight cycling leads to health problems. However, some studies suggest a link to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, gallbladder disease, and other problems. One study showed other problems may be linked to weight cycling as well. The study showed that women who weight cycle gain more weight over time than women who do not weight cycle. Binge eating (when a person eats a lot of food while feeling out of control) was also linked to women who weight cycle. The same study showed that women who weight cycle were also less likely to use physical activity to control their weight.

Weight cycling may affect your mental health too. People who weight cycle may feel depressed about their weight. However, weight cycling should not be a reason to “feel like a failure.” If you feel down, try to focus on making changes in your eating and physical activity habits. Keeping a good attitude will help you stay focused. In addition, talk with a health care professional about your weight and ways you can manage it. Doing so may help you determine why you weight cycle. Understanding the cause of your weight cycling may help you in the process of lifelong weight management.

How can I manage weight and avoid weight cycling?

We recommend different strategies for different people. The goal for everyone is to achieve a healthy weight. This can help prevent the health problems linked to weight cycling.

If I weight cycle after a diet, will I gain more weight than I had before the diet? Will I have less muscle?

Studies do not show that fat tissue increases after a weight cycle. Study results do not support decreases in muscle either. Many people simply regain the weight they lost while on the diet—they have the same amount of fat and muscle as they did before the weight cycle.

Some people worry that weight cycling can put more fat around their stomach area. This is important since people who carry extra body weight around this area are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Studies show that people do not have more fat around their stomach after a weight cycle. However, other studies suggest that women who are overweight and have a history of weight cycling have thicker layers of fat around their stomach—compared to women who do not weight cycle. It is not clear how this relates to weight cycling.

If I regain lost weight, will it be even harder to lose it again?

Losing weight after a weight cycle should not be harder. Studies show weight cycling does not affect how fast you burn food energy, which is called your “metabolic rate.”  This rate slows as we get older, but healthy eating and regular physical activity can still help you achieve a healthy weight.

Is staying overweight healthier than weight cycling?

This is a hard question to answer since experts are not sure whether weight cycling causes health problems. However, experts are sure that if you are overweight, losing weight is a good thing. Being overweight or obese is associated with the following health problems:

• high blood pressure
• heart disease
• stroke
• gallbladder disease
• fatty liver disease
• type 2 diabetes
• certain types of cancer
• arthritis
• breathing problems, such as sleep apnea (when breathing stops for short periods during sleep)

Not everyone who is overweight or obese has the same risk for these problems. Risk is affected by several factors:  your gender, family history of disease, the amount of extra weight you have, and where fat is located on your body. You can improve your health with a modest weight loss. Losing just 10 percent of your body weight over 6 months will help.

Conclusions

Try to eat healthy and get plenty of physical activity. If you go through a weight cycle, do not feel like a failure. Just keep trying your best.

Experts need to learn more about weight cycling. Knowing if it is a cause or effect of poor physical and mental health is important. In the meantime, you can help yourself if you are overweight or obese. Try to eat healthy and get plenty of physical activity. If you go through a weight cycle, do not feel like a failure. Just keep trying your best.

Source: Weight-control Information Network

Healthy eating and physical activity habits are key to your child’s well-being. Eating too much and exercising too little may lead to overweight and related health problems that may follow children into their adult years. You can take an active role to help your child—and your whole family—learn healthy eating and physical activity habits that last a lifetime.

Is my child overweight?

Children grow at different rates at different times, so it is not always easy to tell if a child is overweight. If you think that your child is overweight, talk to your health care provider. He or she can tell you if your child’s weight and height are in a healthy range.

How can I help my overweight child?

Involve the whole family in building healthy eating and physical activity habits. This benefits everyone and does not single out the child who is overweight.

Do not put your child on a weight-loss diet unless your health care provider tells you to. If children do not eat enough, they may not grow and learn as well as they should.

Be Supportive

• Tell your child that he or she is loved, special, and important. Children’s feelings about themselves are often based on how they think their parents feel about them.
• Accept your child at any weight. Children are more likely to accept and feel good about themselves when their parents accept them.
• Listen to your child’s concerns about his or her weight. Overweight children probably know better than anyone else that they have a weight problem. They need support, understanding, and encouragement from parents.

Encourage Healthy Eating Habits

• Buy and serve more fruits and vegetables (fresh, frozen, canned, or dried). Let your child choose them at the store.
• Buy fewer soft drinks and high-fat or high-calorie snack foods like chips, cookies, and candy. These snacks may be OK once in a while, but always keep healthy snack foods on hand. Offer the healthy snacks more often at snack times.
• Make sure your child eats breakfast every day. Breakfast may provide your child with the energy he or she needs to listen and learn in school. Skipping breakfast can leave your child hungry, tired, and looking for less healthy foods later in the day.
  
• Eat fast food less often. When you do visit a fast food restaurant, encourage your family to choose the healthier options, such as salads with low-fat dressing or small sandwiches without cheese or mayonnaise.
• Offer your child water or low-fat milk more often than fruit juice. Low-fat milk and milk products are important for your child’s development. One hundred percent fruit juice is a healthy choice but is high in calories.
• Limit the amount of saturated and trans fats in your family’s diet. Instead, obtain most of your fats from sources such as fish, vegetable oils, nuts, and seeds.
• Plan healthy meals and eat together as a family. Eating together at meal times helps children learn to enjoy a variety of foods.
• Do not get discouraged if your child will not eat a new food the first time it is served. Some kids will need to have a new food served to them 10 times or more before they will eat it.
• Try not to use food as a reward when encouraging kids to eat. Promising dessert to a child for eating vegetables, for example, sends the message that vegetables are less valuable than dessert. Kids learn to dislike foods they think are less valuable.
• Start with small servings and let your child ask for more if he or she is still hungry. It is up to you to provide your child with healthy meals and snacks, but your child should be allowed to choose how much food he or she will eat.
• Be aware that some high-fat or high-sugar foods and beverages may be strongly marketed to kids. Usually these products are associated with cartoon characters, offer free toys, and come in bright packages. Talk with your child about the importance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthy foods—even if these foods are not often advertised on TV or in stores.

Find More Help

Your Health Care Provider

Ask your health care provider for brochures, booklets, or other information about healthy eating, physical activity, and weight control. He or she may be able to refer you to other health care professionals who work with overweight children, such as registered dietitians, psychologists, and exercise physiologists.

Weight-control Program

You may want to think about a treatment program if:

• You have changed your family’s eating and physical activity habits and your child has not reached a healthy weight.
• Your health care provider has told you that your child’s health or emotional well-being is at risk because of his or her weight.

The overall goal of a treatment program should be to help your whole family adopt healthy eating and physical activity habits that you can keep up for the rest of your lives. Here are some other things a weight-control program should do:

• Include a variety of health care professionals on staff, including doctors, registered dietitians, psychiatrists or psychologists, and exercise physiologists.
• Evaluate your child’s weight, growth, and health before enrolling him or her in the program. The program should also monitor these factors while your child is enrolled.
• Adapt to the specific age and abilities of your child. Programs for 4-year-olds should be different from those for 12-year-olds.
• Help your family keep up healthy eating and physical activity behaviors after the program ends.

Source: Weight-control Information Network

“Obesity” specifically refers to an excessive amount of body fat. “Overweight” refers to an excessive amount of body weight that includes muscle, bone, fat, and water. As a rule, women have more body fat than men. Most health care professionals agree that men with more than 25 percent body fat and women with more than 30 percent body fat are considered obese. These numbers should not be confused with the body mass index (BMI), however, which is more commonly used by health care professionals to determine the effect of body weight on the risk for some diseases.

“Women with a waist measurement of more than 35 inches and men with a waist measurement of more than 40 inches may have more health risks than people with lower waist measurements because of their body fat distribution.”

Being healthy is a big deal. Eating healthy foods and being active are good for you and your family. Here are a few tips.

1. Eat breakfast everyday! Breakfast gives you energy.It can help you at school and at play.
2. Eat healthy foods. Try fresh fruits like apples and oranges. Eat Vegetables like broccoli and carrots.
3. Try not to eat too much fast food, like pizza and french fries.
4. Drink healthy drinks like water or milk.Try milk that is low in fat or fat-free.Try not to drink sugary drinks like soda.
5. Help your family shop for food. Ask if you can help fix a meal! Remind your family that it is important for every one to eat healthy foods.
6. Get active! Turn off your TV. Take a break from video games.
7. Play outside with your family, friends, or your pet. Kick a soccer ball around or jump rope. Just get moving!

Talk to your family about being healthy and having fun.Ask an adult in your family to call and order a free activity kit with information that can help.

(source: www.reutershealth.com)

Patients who have undergone gastric bypass surgery for obesity have higher breath-alcohol levels after drinking the same amount as other people — and it takes much longer for their levels to return to zero, the findings from a small study suggest.

“There are a few implications here. The overwhelming one being that patients need to be cautious using alcohol after they’ve had this surgery. One drink may be one too many,” senior author Dr.John Morton, from Stanford University in California, told Reuters Health. “In addition, by relaxing the intestine, alcohol can allow the patient to consume more food, which could wreak havoc on their weight maintenance.”

The findings, which were presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery in San Diego, are from a study of 19 patients who underwent gastric bypass 1 year earlier and 17 comparison subjects (controls), who were about the same weight as the patients post-surgery.

All of the subjects were given 5 ounces of red wine and instructed to consume the beverage within 15 minutes. Breath-alcohol levels then were measured every 5 minutes.

Seventy-seven percent of gastric bypass patients had a peak alcohol level of 0.08 percent, “which is considered legally intoxicated” in some states, Morton noted. By contrast, the peak level reached in the control group was 0.05 percent.

For the control subjects, it took 72 minutes for breath-alcohol levels to return to zero. In gastric bypass patients, on the other hand, 108 minutes were required.

Further studies are needed to better understand how gastric bypass surgery causes changes in alcohol metabolism, Morton said.

One possible mechanism involves alcohol dehydrogenase, an enzyme needed for the body to metabolize alcohol. Morton explained that this enzyme is present in the stomach, as well as in the liver.

Because the surgery bypasses much of the stomach, there is less enzyme available to breakdown the alcohol. “So, the alcohol just gets dumped into the small intestine, where it is readily absorbed.”