Overweight

Fat people fail to recognise abnormal weight

If you are fat, chances are that you would underestimate the size of your kids and vice versa, says a study.

Fat people fail to recognise abnormal weight

People of normal weight make this mistake less often. “The failure to recognise abnormal weight occurs more often among overweight or obese mothers and children,” said lead author Tracy Paul from the Weill-Cornell Medical College in the US.

“Children of obese mothers often also underestimate adult size, suggesting that tolerance of being overweight is common among children exposed to obese parents,” Paul added. Many parents of obese children do not try to prevent their children from becoming obese because they simply fail to recognise abnormal weight.

The researcher queried 253 mothers and their children about their perceptions of what healthy and ideal body sizes are. The researchers found that 71.4 percent of obese adults and 35.1 percent of overweight adults underestimated size, compared to 8.6 percent of people of normal weight.

Among overweight and obese children, 86.3 percent and 62.3 percent respectively think they weigh less than they actually do, versus 14.9 percent of children of normal weight. Mothers of overweight children had a particularly poor showing.

Eighty percent of them underestimated their child’s weight, compared to 7.1 percent of mothers with normal weight children and 23.1 percent of mothers with obese offspring. Children with obese mothers, too, found weight difficult to judge, with the vast majority of them incorrectly classifying an adult’s size. “This is worrying, as flawed weight perception impedes one’s ability to recognise obesity and its risks as a personal health issue,” Paul noted.

The study appeared in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Source: the news

Childhood obesity may cause asthma

It is more probable that childhood obesity contributes to asthma rather than the other way round, says a study.

Childhood obesity may cause asthma

For years, doctors have known that there is a link between childhood obesity and asthma, but have found it difficult to determine which condition tends to come first, or whether one causes the other.

“The relationship between obesity and asthma in adults, which shows that being overweight and obese can precede the onset of asthma, is supported by a number of studies,” said lead author of the study Perdita Permaul from Massachusetts General Hospital in the US.

“There is not as much evidence for children, but the progression from obesity to asthma, rather than the other way around, seems probable,” Permaul added.

Citing a study that showed that rapid growth in body mass index (BMI) during the first two years of life increased the risk of asthma up to six years of age, the team shows that the onset and duration of obesity and the composition of the excess fat can affect lung function.

“Most kids who suffer from asthma also have allergies,” said Michael Foggs, president, American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI).

“These allergic responses in the lung can lead to symptoms of allergy,” Foggs added.

The study appeared in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Source: times of india

Mediterranean diet may control weight among kids

Mediterranean diet may control weight among kids

Children taking a Mediterranean diet are at least 15 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than those children who do not, claims a new study.

Weight, height, waist circumference and percent body fat mass were measured in children from eight countries – Sweden, Germany, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Belgium, Estonia and Hungary.

“The adherence to a Mediterranean-like diet was assessed by a score calculating by giving one point for high intakes of each food group which was considered typical of the Mediterranean diet such as vegetables, fruit and nuts, fish and cereal grains,” explained study author Gianluca Tognon from University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

“One point was given for low intakes of foods untypical of the Mediterranean diet such as dairy and meat products,” he said. High scoring children were then considered high-adherent and compared to the others.

The team found that children with a high adherence to a Mediterranean-like diet were 15 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than low-adherent children.

The findings were independent of age, sex, socio-economic status or country of residence. “The promotion of a Mediterranean dietary pattern is no longer a feature of Mediterranean countries.

“Considering its potential beneficial effects on obesity prevention, this dietary pattern should be part of EU obesity prevention strategies,” said Tognon.

Source: Times of India

Want to protect your kids from obesity? Get enough sleep

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If you wish to protect your kids from obesity, make sure you get enough sleep on a daily basis as a study has shown that a parent’s sleep has an effect on the likelihood that their children will be overweight or obese.

More parental sleep is related to more child sleep, which is related to decreased child obesity, the findings showed.

“We viewed how long parents slept and how long children slept as part of a household routine and found that they really did go together,” said Barbara Fiese from University of Illinois in the US.

In the study, socioeconomic characteristics were assessed in relation to protective routines and prevalence of being obese or overweight for 337 preschool children and their parents.

The routines assessed in parents included adequate sleep (over seven hours) and family mealtime routine.

The four protective routines assessed in children were adequate sleep (10 or more hours per night), family mealtime routine, limiting screen-viewing time to less than two hours a day, and not having a bedroom TV.

The only significant individual protective factor against obesity or overweight in children was getting adequate sleep.

Children who did not get enough sleep had a greater risk for being overweight than children who engaged in at least three of the protective routines regularly, even after controlling for parents’ BMI (body mass index) and socio-demographic characteristics, Fiese said.

But the researchers also learned that the number of hours a parent sleeps is related to how much sleep children are getting.

The study appeared in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Source: samachar

Study: Obesity and Overweight Rates Climbing Worldwide

obese

A new study published in a British medical journal says obesity rates for both adults and children are climbing worldwide, with the greatest gain in weight in developing countries.

According to the report, the number of people carrying extra kilos climbed from 857 million globally in 1980 to more than 2 billion last year. Researchers report 62 percent of the world’s obese individuals live in developing countries.

The findings come from an analysis of data gathered from 188 countries published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

Investigators discovered the rates of overweight and obesity climbed 28 percent over the past 33 years with the biggest increase in children. Forty-seven percent of all youngsters and adolescents worldwide are now considered overweight or obese.

In developed countries, men have higher rates of obesity than women, although there’s evidence that the pace of weight gain in the United States and other Western nations has begun to slow over the past eight years.

“Nowadays, food is prepared for us. Remember, in the past, it used to take some time to cook a dish,” said Ali Mokdad, who teaches health metrics and evaluation at the University of Washington and co-authored the study. “Now a seven- or 10-year-old child could pop something in a microwave. It’s safe and readily available,” he said.

The authors found some of the highest rates of obesity in China, India, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia. Places with the highest percentage of overweight people include the island nation of Tonga, where 50 percent of the population has a weight problem, along with Libya, Qatar, Micronesia and Samoa, where more than 50 percent of women carry excess weight.

The health care costs of obesity, particularly to developing countries, are enormous, according to Mokdad.

“It has a toll on our disability, our diseases. And with an aging population living longer, no country in the world can afford to spend all its money on treatment. We should find a balance between treatment and prevention,” he said.

Without targeted interventions, obesity control programs and the sustained efforts of national governments, experts say it is unlikely countries will meet the United Nations’ goal of halting the rise in obesity rates by 2025.

Source: voa news

Lack of exercise and high fat diet fueling obesity epidemic in Europe

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that lack of physical inactivity and diets high in fats, salts and sugars has led to obesity and overweight is becoming “the new norm” throughout Europe.

Up to 27 percent of Europe’s 13-year-olds and 33 percent of 11-year-olds are overweight, officials said ahead of an EU summit in Greece with a special focus on “the grave public health concern” of childhood obesity.

Countries with the highest proportion of overweight 11-year-olds included Greece, with 33 percent, Portugal (32 percent), and Ireland and Spain, both with 30 percent, the Independent reported.

Overall the UK is performing slightly better, but in Wales 30 percent of 11-year-old boys are overweight.

The WHO’s regional director for Europe, Zsuzsanna Jakab, said that Europeans’ “perception of what is normal has shifted”.

She said that being overweight is now more common than unusual, adding that we must not let another generation grow up with obesity as the new norm.

Inactivity, listed by the WHO as the fourth leading cause of death globally, is now viewed as one of the major health threats affecting developed countries.

In the UK more than two thirds of people over the age of 15 were insufficiently active, according to the WHO’s latest data, from 2008.

It is recommended that adults get 150 minutes moderate-intensity exercise per week, while children and adolescents should have an hour per day, according to international guidelines.

Source: Yahoo news

Football ‘can tackle male obesity’

Football participation is a good way to get men to slim down, a Scottish study published in The Lancet shows.

Some 374 overweight soccer fans were invited to take part in a 12-week program of training sessions at their local football club.

A year later, the men had lost and kept off about 11lb (5kg) each compared with 374 overweight fans put on a waiting list for the programme.

The Glasgow researchers say it proves male-friendly weight loss plans work.

All 748 men in the study were offered healthy-eating advice and tips on weight management, but only half were invited to professional football clubs for weekly training sessions.

Thirteen clubs took part: Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United, Dunfermline Athletic, Hamilton Academical, Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Rangers, St Johnstone and St Mirren.

As well as losing weight when they were on the 12-week programme, nearly 40% of men who participated in the programme maintained a weight loss of at least 5% of their original body weight 12 months later.

Co-author Prof Kate Hunt, from Glasgow University, said: “Weight management and dieting are often wrongly viewed as women’s issues, meaning that some men do not want to take part in existing weight management programmes.”

But given the right circumstances, men are also keen to slim, she says.

“Participants really enjoyed being with other men like them, with a shared interest in football and similar health issues to address. They loved having the opportunity to spend time at the club, using parts of the stadium that they couldn’t ordinarily access.

“And they appreciated the chance to be encouraged, trained, and informed by the club’s coaches. This model has real potential for the future.”

Source: BBC news

Sleep disturbances linked to poor quality of life in obese

A new research has showed that poor sleep quality is strongly associated with mood disturbance and lower quality of life among people with extreme obesity.

Results show that 74.8 percent of participants were poor sleepers, and their mean self-reported sleep duration was only six hours and 20 minutes.

Fifty-two percent of study subjects were anxious, and 43 percent were depressed. After controlling for age, sex, hypertension, diabetes, and obstructive sleep apnea, sleep quality and daytime sleepiness were significantly associated with mood disturbance and quality of life impairment.

“There was a clear association between the sleep problems such as short sleep duration and the psychological disorders and with quality of life,” Dr. G. Neil Thomas, from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said. “These associations remained significant even after adjusting for a range of potential confounders.

According to the authors, the potential role of sleep in the health and well-being of individuals with severe obesity is underappreciated. The results suggested that the early detection of disturbed sleep could prevent the potential development and perpetuation of psychological problems among people with extreme obesity.

The study was published in the journal Sleep.
Source: dna India

High-fat diets interrupt stomach’s signals to the brain

the nerves in the stomach which signal fullness to the brain appeared to be desensitised after long-term consumption of a high-fat diet.

Indulging in fatty foods could destroy stomach’s signals to the brain, according to a new study which gives insight why many dieters tend to regain the weight after losing it.

New University of Adelaide research has found the nerves in the stomach which signal fullness to the brain appeared to be desensitised after long-term consumption of a high-fat diet.

The findings could explain why many dieters tend to regain the weight they have lost.

PhD student Stephen Kentish investigated the impact of high-fat diets on the ability of the gut to signal its fullness, and whether those changes revert back to normal by losing weight.

Study leader Associate Professor Amanda Page said laboratory studies showed the stomach’s nerve response does not return to normal upon a return to a normal diet.

“This means you would need to eat more food before you felt the same degree of fullness as a healthy individual,” she said.

“A hormone in the body, leptin, known to regulate food intake, can also change the sensitivity of the nerves in the stomach that signal fullness.

“In normal conditions, leptin acts to stop food intake. However, in the stomach in high-fat diet induced obesity, leptin further desensitises the nerves that detect fullness.”

Associate Professor Page said the two mechanisms combined meant that obese people needed to eat more to feel full, which fuels their obesity cycle.

She said the results had “very strong implications for obese people, those trying to lose weight, and those who are trying to maintain their weight loss”.

“Unfortunately, our results show that the nerves in the stomach remain desensitised to fullness after weight loss has been achieved,” she said.

Associate Professor Page says the researchers were not yet sure whether the effect was permanent or just long-lasting.

Source: Zee News

Does changing breakfast habits really help you cut the flab?

It is a well documented fact that an association exists between breakfast and weight management, however a new study has found that previous researchers designed to find links between these two things often do not prove that one causes the other.

The research led by David Allison, Ph.D., associate dean for science in the University of Alabama School of Public Health, shows that the question of whether eating vs. skipping breakfast affects weight has not been answered by studies.

Andrew Brown, Ph.D., first author of the study, spearheaded the examination of 92 studies about the proposed effect of breakfast on obesity (PEBO). The PEBO-related research literature, the authors found, seemed to be influenced by factors that led to exaggerated beliefs and statements about the purported effects of breakfast consumption on obesity. These include research that lacks probative value and biased research reporting.

Allison and his team found that scientists collectively do not know as much about the relationship between skipping breakfast and obesity as previously thought, based on the current state of PEBO-related research.

Their meta-analysis indicated that there is certainty that breakfast-skipping and obesity are associated, but it cannot confirm whether there is a causal effect of skipping breakfast on obesity.

Brown said that although we know that breakfast-skippers are more likely to be overweight or obese, we do not know if making breakfast-skippers eat breakfast would decrease their weight, nor do we know if making breakfast-eaters stop eating breakfast would cause them to gain weight.

Meanwhile, Allison said that uncertainty should not be confused with evidence of no benefit or harm, though.

“It just means that right now we don’t know how changing breakfast-eating habits will influence obesity – eating versus skipping breakfast could help control weight, cause more weight gain or have no effect – and the effect may vary from person to person,” the researcher added.

The authors suggest that if causal claims are desired, different research on the topic is needed. They call for stronger study designs that include randomizing people to eat or skip breakfast to help determine causal effects of breakfast on obesity. UAB is leading such a trial in roughly 300 adults at five sites around the world; results from this study are expected in spring 2014.

The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.