Is it possible to keep yourself from developing Alzheimer’s disease? A recent study suggests it might be possible.
For the study, researchers estimated how many Alzheimer’s cases might be attributable to behaviors or conditions, such as physical inactivity, smoking, depression, low education, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. Using a mathematical model, they found that these were responsible for about half of the 34 million cases of Alzheimer’s disease worldwide.
According to the New York Times:
“And they calculated that if people addressed these risks — by exercising, quitting smoking, increasing their education or losing weight, for example — a significant number of Alzheimer’s cases could be prevented. Reducing the prevalence of these risk factors by 10 percent, the researchers estimated, could prevent 1.1 million cases worldwide; reducing these risk factors by 25 percent could prevent more than three million cases.”
Eating fat won’t make you fat. Too many calories can, but most “low-fat” or “fat-free” foods actually have just as many calories as their full-fat versions.
Yahoo Health has collected a list of 20 bad habits that can actually add to your weight. Here are ten of them:
Eating “low-fat”: Low-fat or fat-free foods replace harmless fats with low-performing carbohydrates that digest quickly, causing a sugar rush and, immediately afterward, rebound hunger.
Sleeping too little or too much: Dieters who sleep five hours or less put on 2 and a half times more belly fat, while those who sleep more than eight hours pack on only slightly less than that.
Drinking soda — even diet soda: Drinking one to two sodas per day increases your chances of being overweight or obese by nearly 33 percent. And diet soda is no better.
Eating too quickly: It takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it’s had enough.
Watching too much TV: A study found that overweight participants who reduced their TV time by just 50 percent burned an additional 119 calories a day on average.
Eating off larger plates: One study found that when given an option, a whopping 98.6 percent of obese individuals opt for larger plates.
Taking big bites: Research shows that people who take large bites of food consume 52 percent more calories in one sitting.
Not drinking enough water: Adequate water intake is essential for all your body’s functions, and the more you drink, the better your chances of staying thin
Eating too late: A recent study found that those who ate after 8 PM took in the most daily calories and had the highest BMIs.
Drinking fruity beverages: All juice is high sugar, and the ones that use viscous syrups made mostly from high fructose corn syrup and thickening agents are even worse.
To see the rest of their list, you can click on the link below.
The website Fooducate has taken a look at the annual obesity report issued by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here are some of the 12 shocking statistics they found:
1. Adult obesity rates rose in 16 U.S. states over the past year, and NOT ONE state decreased
2. Twelve U.S. states now have obesity rates above 30 percent
3. Just 4 years ago, only one state had an obesity rate above 30 percent
4. Obesity rates exceed 25 percent in more than two-thirds of U.S. states
5. Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity (34.4 percent)
6. Colorado was the only state with a rate below 20 percent — and next year will probably be above
7. Adult diabetes rates increased in 11 states and Washington, D.C. in the past year; in 8 states, more than 10 percent of adults now have type 2 diabetes.
8. High school dropouts have the highest rates of obesity
To read the rest of their list, you can click on the link below.
The website Fooducate has taken a look at the annual obesity report issued by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here are some of the 12 shocking statistics they found:
Adult obesity rates rose in 16 U.S. states over the past year, and NOT ONE state decreased
Twelve U.S. states now have obesity rates above 30 percent
Just 4 years ago, only one state had an obesity rate above 30 percent
Obesity rates exceed 25 percent in more than two-thirds of U.S. states
Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity (34.4 percent)
Colorado was the only state with a rate below 20 percent — and next year will probably be above
Adult diabetes rates increased in 11 states and Washington, D.C. in the past year; in 8 states, more than 10 percent of adults now have type 2 diabetes.
High school dropouts have the highest rates of obesity
To read the rest of their list, you can click on the link below.
Fifteen years ago, no U.S. had an obesity rate above 20 percent. Now, all states but one do.
An annual obesity report found that the number of obese U.S. adults rose in 16 states in the last year, and obesity rates in a dozen states rose above 30 percent.
According to MSNBC:
“Mississippi is the fattest state in the union with an adult obesity rate of 34.4 percent. Colorado is the least obese — with a rate of 19.8 percent — and the only state with an adult obesity rate below 20 percent … Obesity rates did not decline in any state and even Colorado does not win high marks”.
Obesity levels are now so high that many children are suffering from disease more commonly associated with alcohol abuse. Many of them will develop cirrhosis, and some will require liver transplants.
Studies show that millions of children in the U.S. are suffering from “non alcoholic liver disease” which is caused by a build-up of fat within liver cells. This prevents the organ from functioning properly.
According to the Telegraph:
“The condition increases the risks of heart disease, strokes and type 2 diabetes, and can lead to cirrhosis — scarring of the liver — which is often not detected until it is too late … There is no medical treatment for the disease, but the extent of it can be reduced by weightloss and improvements in diet.”
A recent study investigated the potential of Chlorella as a potential new agent for handling insulin resistance. But what may be just as interesting is the fact that the study tested the effects of Chlorella by first inducing insulin resistance in rats by means of fructose-rich food.
The website Green Med Info has assembled a list of more than 60 articles detailing the toxicity and health effects of fructose, which include:
Insulin sensitivity
Fatty liver disease
Obesity
Metabolic syndrome
Hypertension
According to just one of the many studies linked on the site:
“These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically … promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults.”
Paula Baillie-Hamilton, an expert on metabolism and environmental toxins, was one of the first to make a link between the obesity epidemic and the increase in environmental chemicals. Baillie-Hamilton argued that exposure to chemicals can damage your body’s natural weight-control mechanisms. She calls toxic chemicals that act as endocrine disruptors “chemical calories.”
Environmental researchers now call these chemical calories “obesogens.” These organic pollutants can derail the hormonal mechanisms that control your weight of mice.
According to Grist:
“… [I]t is impossible, now, to tease out how much of obesity is caused by chemicals, and how much by energy balance. They’re intertwined, anyway, with imbalances in appetite-regulating hormones like leptin and ghrelin causing us to want to eat more of the available food … [S]teer clear of Bisphenol-A … [and] shampoos, cosmetics, and soaps containing phthalates”.
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Communications and Media has made a new policy statement on the role of media on obesity. They warn parents that TV watching doesn’t just make children more sedentary — it also influences their eating habits by exposing them to food advertisements.
Studies have shown that children who spend significant time watching TV are more likely to eat higher-calorie foods and grow up to be overweight.
According to Time Magazine:
“The average American child sees nearly 8,000 commercials on TV for food and beverages, and only 165 of these are for nutritious options like fruits and vegetables … Limiting TV time to no more than two hours a day can help, says the AAP committee. Another important step … is to make sure that children don’t have TV sets or Internet connections in their bedrooms.”
Even a modest reduction in consumption of carbohydrate-rich foods may promote loss of deep belly fat. This could help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary artery disease.
Excess visceral fat (intra-abdominal fat) raises the risk of these diseases.
According to Eurekalert:
“… [S]ubjects who consumed [a] moderately carb-restricted diet had 11 percent less deep abdominal fat than those who ate the standard diet … [S]ubjects on both diets lost weight. However, the moderately carb-restricted diet promoted a 4 percent greater loss of total body fat”.
Women who are at a healthy body weight before and after a diagnosis of breast cancer are more likely to survive the disease long term.
A study looked at nearly 4,000 breast cancer survivors, and found that obesity is strongly linked to death due to breast cancer. In particular, overweight or obese women with a history of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer had a higher risk of dying of their disease.
Eurekalert reports:
“Women who were obese at baseline had a 69 percent higher risk of dying of their breast cancer than did nonobese women … This same increased mortality, or death, risk was present in women who were overweight (BMI of 25 to 29) at age 18.”
New findings show that people who have had gastric bypass surgery, or other bariatric weight-loss surgery, have an even higher increased risk of breaking bones than had previously been thought.
The research indicates that patients who had bariatric surgery have 2.3 times the chance of fractures. Preliminary data had suggested the increased risk was only 1.8-fold.
Eurekalert reports:
“Patients who had bariatric surgery had an increased risk of a fracture at nearly all skeletal sites studied, according to the authors. The chance of breaking a foot or hand was especially high — about three times what would be expected”.
According to a new study, getting bariatric surgery will not decrease mortality several years later.
The most common bariatric surgery is gastric bypass. This procedure creates a small stomach pouch that restricts food intake. It is used on the severely obese as a way to reduce weight.
According to CNN:
“But when researchers compared the 850 [study participants] to 1,694 similar patients who did not have bariatric surgery, they found that surgery was not significantly associated with reducing mortality.”
New research indicates that yo-yo dieters may be healthier and live longer than people who simply stay obese. Mice on such a diet lived about 25 percent longer and had better blood glucose levels than obese animals.
Some experts have argued that constantly losing and regaining weight can be harmful to health. The new research, however, suggests that it’s still better than not dieting at all.
Science Daily reports:
“About 34 percent of American adults are considered to be obese; an additional 34 percent are classified as overweight … Although millions of Americans diet each year, research has shown that few people maintain long-term weight loss.”
Your allergy medication could be adding to your weight. Researchers have found that people who take antihistamines regularly are heavier than those who don’t.
One theory as to why suggests that histamine, the neurotransmitter that overreacts when you come into contact with an allergen, has a role in regulating your appetite. Dosing mice with antihistamines has been shown to increase their appetites.
According to MSNBC:
“If you do find that allergies or allergy medications are causing you to overeat, try to indulge in healthy food. In fact, there are a number of healthy foods that provide allergy relief and fight back hunger pangs at the same time.”
The food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) could lead to obesity. Recent research found that people who eat more MSG are more likely to be overweight or obese. What’s more, the link between high MSG intake and being overweight held even after accounting for the total number of calories people ate.
MSG is a widely used food additives. It is often present in processed foods although it is frequently not clearly labeled.
Reuters reports:
“In the latest research … [scientists] followed more than 10,000 adults in China for about 5.5 years on average. The researchers measured MSG intake directly by before-and-after weighing of products, such as bottles of soy sauce, to see how much people ate … Men and women who ate the most MSG (a median of 5 grams a day) were about 30 percent more likely to become overweight by the end of the study”.
Daily intake of a specific form of lactic acid bacteria could help prevent obesity and reduce low-level inflammation.
Rats who were given the bacterium from before birth until adulthood put on significantly less weight than other rats, even though both groups of rats ate a similar diet.
UPI reports:
“The study … found the rats given lactobacilli had a richer and better composition of the bacteria which occur naturally in the intestines. A healthy gut flora should contain a large proportion of ‘good bacteria,’ such as lactic acid bacteria — found in yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, pickles, beer, wine, cider, chocolate and other fermented foods”.
Many foods that are advertised as being healthy are actually not healthy at all. MSNBC has collected a few examples:
Splenda (and other artificial sweeteners)
Artificial sweeteners may actually make people more prone to overindulge and crave sweet foods. They can also cause damage to beneficial bacteria in your gut.
Diet soda
Similarly, researchers found that with each can of diet soda consumed, an individual’s risk for being overweight increased by 41 percent.
Veggie chips
Often, these aren’t much healthier than regular potato chips. Most varieties of veggie chips contain mostly corn flour or potato.
To see the rest of their list, click on the link below.
The possible link between late-night eating and weight gain has been debated for many years in the medical community. One recent study has added support to the claim that eating late does have an effect on weight.
In the study, researchers followed people’s sleeping and eating patterns over the course of a week. About half the subjects tended to go to bed late. These “late sleepers” had higher body mass indexes, consumed more calories, and slept fewer hours, which has also been linked to weight gain.
However, according to the New York Times:
“… [E]ven after adjusting for these and other variables, the scientists discovered that eating after 8 p.m. was associated with a higher body mass index, suggesting that late-evening calories are, for some reason, more hazardous to your weight.”
The article linked below may require a subscription to read. It might, however, be possible to read it in its entirety by means of a web search.
Over the past three decades, obesity in America has more than doubled — as has soda consumption. To illustrate the relationship between those two facts, the group Catalyst rallied 100 students in St. Paul, Minnesota, to erect a three-dimensional bar graph of the rise in obesity rates — composed entirely of soda cans.
In a study that has been described as ‘disturbing’ by weight loss groups, babies will be given diet drug in the womb. One hundred obese pregnant women will be given Metformin as part of a three-year study. The drug will reduce the food supply to their unborn babies, although it will not help the women themselves to lose weight.
Metformin reduces blood sugar levels which are passed onto babies in the womb.
According to the Telegraph:
“Doctors hope it will prevent the birth of oversized babies, thereby reducing the need for caesarean sections. Instances of pre-eclampsia, the potentially fatal complication in pregnancy common to overweight mothers, are also hoped to be reduced.”
Although obesity has long been known to be a risk factor for heart disease, several studies have found that a high body mass index is actually associated with a lower risk of dying from heart ailments. However, according to a new analysis, the apparent paradox may be explained by the simple fact that BMI is a very flawed measurement.
The study revealed that waist size provides a far more accurate way to predict a heart patient’s chances of dying at an early age from a heart attack or other causes.
CNN reports:
“As in previous studies, a high BMI was associated with a lower risk of death. But researchers found that heart patients with a high ratio of waist-to-hip circumference or a large waist size — greater than 35 inches for women, or 40 inches for men — were 70 percent more likely to die during the study period than those with smaller waists. The combination of a large waist and a high BMI upped the risk of death even more.”
Children who eat meals with their families are less likely to be overweight, and in general less likely to eat unhealthy foods. Researchers found that kids who ate with their parents at least three times a week were 12 percent less likely to be overweight.
In addition, they were 20 percent less likely to eat junk food, 35 percent less likely to have eating problems like skipping meals, and 24 percent more likely to eat healthy foods.
The Daily Mail reports:
“The new report is based on findings from nearly 183,000 children about 2 to 17 years of age. While those studies yielded mixed results and weren’t easy to compare, overall they show regular family meals are tied to better nutrition.”
A group of 150 rhesus macaque monkeys are part of a controversial obesity study at the oldest primate research center in the country, the Oregon National Primate Research Center. Researchers are making them sedentary and obese in the hope that their condition will provide clues about human obesity.
Dr. Kevin Grove, the neuroscientist leading the research, is attempting to use the monkeys to mimic the lifestyle and eating habits of obese people. They are kept in small cages to limit exercise, and fed high-sugar snacks and drinks. Under these conditions, the monkeys often develop obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes. This has provoked some outrage among animal rights activists.
According to ABC News:
“… Dr. Grove insisted studying monkeys under these strict conditions is the best way to make strides in obesity research because these primates are so similar to humans in brain function and behavior.”
Here’s something that isn’t being reported anywhere else — Dr. Grove, who in 2007 alone was given over 33 million in government grants for his obesity research, plus money from drug companies to develop diet drugs, is himself obese. If you click on the Oregon Health and Science University link below, you’ll notice that he’s more obese than the monkeys he is artificially making fat. Yet he also says, somehow with a straight face, that they must do this expensive research to see why two-thirds of humans are overweight.
Maybe if he took a look at his own lifestyle, he’d figure it out.
Snorers are often told to sleep on their sides rather than on their backs. This is because if you are lying on your side, the base of your tongue will not collapse into the back of your throat, obstructing breathing.
However, for some snorers, changing sleep position may not make a difference. There are two types of snorers — those who snore when sleeping on their backs, and those who snore in every position.
According to the New York Times:
“… [W]eight plays a major role. In one large study, published in 1997, patients who snored or had breathing abnormalities only while sleeping on their backs were typically thinner, while their nonpositional counterparts usually were heavier … But that study also found that patients who were overweight saw reductions in the severity of their apnea when they lost weight.”
Soon, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans release its latest accounting of the nation’s weight problem, as measured by the body mass index (BMI). But many experts caution that the BMI is an imprecise tool, and one that is often wrong.
If you are very muscular, BMI is often a poor measure of body composition. If you are sedentary but slim, BMI can lead your physician to overlook signs of elevated disease risk. One of the most serious blows to the authority of BMI as a measure of health was a series of studies showing that among patients with established heart disease, those who are overweight or obese by BMI standards fare better and survive longer.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
“The BMI continues to dominate research on obesity and guide physicians’ advice to patients. But some researchers have launched a rear-guard effort to knock the measure from its place atop the public-health pedestal. To replace — or at least supplement — the BMI, they are searching for measures that might offer individual patients a better gauge of their health risks, as well as a wider range of options to better their odds of staying healthy.”
A recent study by the YMCA shows that 89 percent of parents believe they’re good or excellent at providing their children with a healthy home environment. Yet, a full one-third of U.S. children are overweight or obese. According to Time Healthland, parents make five major mistakes when it comes to understanding how they can make their children’s lives healthier. Those are:
1. Letting kids eat junk food every day
2. Not pulling the plugs often enough on electronic devices, including TV, computer, and cell phones
3. Not encouraging kids to play outside more
4. Not making sure they get enough fresh fruits and vegetables
5. Not placing enough emphasis on outside family activities, such as family walks.
Mealtimes can be a struggle for busy families with multiple schedules, places to go and things to do, but it’s still important to sit down and eat together. If for no other reason, mealtime is a time when parents and kids can connect and show that they care for each other. It’s also important because studies show that children and teens who eat with their parents acquire a taste for healthy and wholesome foods.
So how do you make that special time more enjoyable? These are just a few tips from LifeMojo.com for getting the mood going:
1. First, make mealtime a priority
2. Plan your meals and change the menu often
3. Create an enjoyable environment – dinnertime isn’t when you want to bring up confrontational thoughts or conversations
4. Keep it simple and involve the children in planning and preparing the meal
Did you know that it’s possible to lose weight without dieting? That should be good news for anyone looking for lower numbers on the bathroom scales, especially since statistics show that dieting has an overall 99 percent failure rate.
To see what really does work when it comes to weight loss, researchers studied two groups of people who wanted to lose weight. One group was put on a low calorie plan and told to just eat healthy. The other group was told to eat as much as they wanted, but to healthy options such as fruit, vegetables and salad smoothies. After one year the second group had by far the best results.
