Obesity and the struggle to lose weight is starting to become the plight of our time. Much research is being done to find effective ways to understand the causes and finding effective ways to win this losing battle. Right now, more than one third of adults in the US are obese or overweight and a little more then a quarter of the adults in UK is obese or overweight.
Amongst all that research work a recent study published in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism Journal, suggests that central heating might be another contributing factor to rising number of overweight individuals. As the temperature in homes, offices, hospitals and most places is being kept high our bodies are no longer burning that many calories to keep the body warm. Normally our metabolism rate (BMR) rise in cold weather to produce body heat. About 80% of the energy produced from our food intake is used up by our BMR.
According to the researchers at Maastricht University, a temperature of 66F would suffice to maintain a normal balance. The report also points out that about 90% of people remain mostly indoors while keeping the temperature at maximum comfort levels in turn minimizing caloric use by our bodies to maintain normal body temperature, shifting the balance towards weight gain.
Although lowering the thermostat alone may not lead to weight loss but it will definitely help along with exercise and diet. The report
also mentions a study from Japan in which volunteers showed a decrease
in body fat after spending two hours a day in 17C over a period of six
weeks.According to BBC World reporter James Gallagher;
Dr Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt told the BBC: "19C is enough - and not for the whole day.
"Energy increases were in the order of 6% in mild cold, and in the long term that could really make a difference.
"It could be a substantial influence and help in combination with food changes and exercise."
He said people could "try turning the thermostat down" at home or "go outside".
P.S:
Central heating may make you fat, say researchers (BBC World)
Want to lose weight? Try turning your heating down: Being cold is a 'cheap way to get slim' (Daily Mail UK)
Showing posts with label physical activity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label physical activity. Show all posts
Friday, January 24, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Obesity spreads to developing countries
A UK think tank The Overseas Development Institute report concludes that number of obese and overweight adults in the developing world has almost quadrupled to about one billion since 1980.
According to the report, there are almost as many overweight or obese adults in North Africa, Middle East and Latin America as there are in Europe. It also highlights the fact that one in three adults in the world (1.46 billion) were overweight or obese in 2008, up by 23% since 1980.
If these figure are not enough to make us realize that obesity is no longer a rich countries' problem instead is more of a worldwide health issue, then I do not know what is going to!
A major change seen in worldwide diets is the increasing consumption of sugar and sweeteners, which has risen by over 20% per person between 1961 and 2009. One big culprit for that is the increased consumption and marketing of processed foods everywhere.
In countries with emerging economies, people are making bigger incomes and hence now can chose more varied foods and change diets. A huge majority of these individuals in developing countries live in highly congested urban settings and get very little exercise.
South Korea's Health Wellness efforts at a national level have resulted in a 300% increase in fruit and 10% increase in vegetable consumption. Major campaigns by the government and nutrition specialists to advertise and teach the public that the traditional diet which is low fat is a healthy diet. The most common ingredients in Korean traditional cuisine are vegetables along with use of ginger, garlic, herbs, and various condiments, the health benefits of which are well-known. The educational and campaigning efforts also focused on providing new approaches to maintaining a traditional yet contemporary Korean diet. These efforts to improve the national diet has helped South Korea keep its obesity rate at 4%. This is the lowest in the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmen) but unfortunately it too is rising gradually and is expected to increase by about 5% in ten years.
I am sure that reasons and solutions as well, are far more complex and numerous then the ones I list, but it is clear that if we do not take major steps to change these dangerous dietary and lifestyle trends for the better, we are heading for a disastrous worldwide health catastrophe.
P.S:
According to the report, there are almost as many overweight or obese adults in North Africa, Middle East and Latin America as there are in Europe. It also highlights the fact that one in three adults in the world (1.46 billion) were overweight or obese in 2008, up by 23% since 1980.
If these figure are not enough to make us realize that obesity is no longer a rich countries' problem instead is more of a worldwide health issue, then I do not know what is going to!
A major change seen in worldwide diets is the increasing consumption of sugar and sweeteners, which has risen by over 20% per person between 1961 and 2009. One big culprit for that is the increased consumption and marketing of processed foods everywhere.
In countries with emerging economies, people are making bigger incomes and hence now can chose more varied foods and change diets. A huge majority of these individuals in developing countries live in highly congested urban settings and get very little exercise.
South Korea's Health Wellness efforts at a national level have resulted in a 300% increase in fruit and 10% increase in vegetable consumption. Major campaigns by the government and nutrition specialists to advertise and teach the public that the traditional diet which is low fat is a healthy diet. The most common ingredients in Korean traditional cuisine are vegetables along with use of ginger, garlic, herbs, and various condiments, the health benefits of which are well-known. The educational and campaigning efforts also focused on providing new approaches to maintaining a traditional yet contemporary Korean diet. These efforts to improve the national diet has helped South Korea keep its obesity rate at 4%. This is the lowest in the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmen) but unfortunately it too is rising gradually and is expected to increase by about 5% in ten years.
I am sure that reasons and solutions as well, are far more complex and numerous then the ones I list, but it is clear that if we do not take major steps to change these dangerous dietary and lifestyle trends for the better, we are heading for a disastrous worldwide health catastrophe.
P.S:
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
School children need more physical activity!
Every child needs plenty of physically activity both for healthy growth and maintenance of good physical and mental health. Unfortunately it is being seen that our children are getting less and less physically active. In addition to the overuse of TVs, computers, Nintendos, Playstations and X boxes as a major cause of reduced outdoor activities in children, there is also a significant dearth of physical education in school all over the country. Less then half even have a PE more then once of twice a week. But now concerned schools are coming up with new ways to keep children active.
Maanvi Singh writes on the subject on NPR Public Health page;
Maanvi Singh writes on the subject on NPR Public Health page;
To Get Kids Exercising, Schools Are Becoming Creative
Avery Stackhouse, age 7, of Lafayette, Calif., says he wishes he had more time for phys ed.
"We just have it one day a week — on Monday." There's always lunch and recess, he says. "We play a couple of games, like football and soccer," he tells Shots.
But at Happy Valley Elementary, where he goes to school, recess last only 15 minutes and lunch is 45. Between eating and mingling, he says, "there's only a few minutes left where we play games and all that."
Fifty-six percent of parents say their elementary school kids are getting just one or two days of physical education a week, according to a poll NPR conducted in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Fewer than 1 in 5 parents with children in kindergarten through fifth grade said their kids were getting physical education daily.
Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that K-5 students get at least 150 minutes a week. Physical activity has a lot of benefits, from reducing obesity to helping kids do better academically.
Louisiana State University's Russ Carson, an exercise researcher, tells Shots the poll results don't surprise him. "This has been going on for years, unfortunately," he says. School administrators can only fit so many things into a day, and often, he says, "testing and other aspects of education take precedence over physical education."
Monday, December 9, 2013
Exercise is good.....at any age!
Many who never exercise when young think it futile to try starting in senior years of life. But a recent study has proven that multiple benefits of regular exercise can be gained even if after being inactive for decades a person took up exercising.
Here is a Reuters Health report on the study:
Here is a Reuters Health report on the study:
Exercise later in life tied to healthy aging
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It's never too late to start exercising, according to a new study that found formerly inactive seniors who took up exercise still experienced health benefits.
The study sheds light on the question of whether the slower mental and physical decline seen among active seniors extends to former couch potatoes who begin exercising later in life.
"Regular physical activity in older age is important to remain healthy. However, taking up physical activity at old age is also beneficial," Mark Hamer told Reuters Health in an email. He led the study at University College London.
These findings "underscore the importance of prevention as well as rehabilitation," said Ursula M. Staudinger, who directs the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center in New York City.
"When you start later in life you can still get gains," Staudinger, who was not part of the research team, said.
For their study, Hamer and his coauthors analyzed information on 3,454 healthy seniors involved in the ongoing English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
Participants reported how much they exercised at the start of the study, in 2002 to 2003. Researchers then followed them through regular health surveys for the next eight years.
At follow-up, 19 percent of the seniors were considered to be aging healthily. That is, they had not developed any major chronic diseases or depression and had not experienced any deterioration in their physical or mental status during the study period.
Seniors who were active at least once a week at the start of the study and remained active were the most likely to experience healthy aging. But those who started exercising during the study period benefited as well, Hamer and his colleagues reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
People who remained active during all eight years were over seven times more likely to experience healthy aging than inactive seniors. Those who became active after the study started were three times more likely than inactive adults to age well.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
To be overweight or not to be overweight should not even be a question!
After reading the conflicting news on Obesity in 2013 alone, I am mystified and dumbfounded. Why are we even asking if obesity is healthy or not? If you have ever seen a real human heart or a real human liver or spleen, you would know they were never meant to support gigantic amounts of fat. It is is clearly another attempt by the processed food industry and the GMO industry to avoid being looked at as a potential source of all the weight woes.
On January 2, 2013 CNN actually reported that if you are overweight you will live longer, the headline was 'Being overweight linked to lower risk of mortality' Then the next day read another shocking CNN headline 'Big deal: You can be fat and fit'. Really??!!
If we start justifying being fat and deceive ourselves into believing we can be fat and fit, then we probably will end up like the morbidly obese people from that animated movie "Wall-E (2008)", who are shown to be totally dependent on automated systems from feeding themselves to washing themselves, they actually never get off their high-tech seats that not only take them everywhere but also convert into beds at night. As a result the individuals never do much muscular movement, and hence don't develop the muscle strength to even walk.
The scary part is we already have people in the US who are so morbidly obese that they can't carry their own weight anymore and need motorized chairs to move around a grocery store or a mall. Some might have valid medical reasons for the weight gain but a huge majority do not. The major reason for them being overweight is poor food choices and too big portions. The fact that every American restaurant and specially fast food restaurant serves unhealthily large servings of unhealthy foods does not help.
There is also a huge lobby promoting the use of synthetic ingredients in our foods, such as trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc.... Whereas the Agriculture industry is pushing the use on GMOs on farmers everywhere and growing more and more bioengineered foods. Unfortunately very little legislation controls or oversees the use of these genetically manufactured seeds. And then the media furthers the public ignorance of what is really making them obese and sick by spreading news such as "Fat is fun and healthy".
Amongst this media madness it was a relief to see reports of the latest study on obesity that dispelled the myth that you can be fat and healthy. Here is an excerpt from the story on BBC World (Dec.3rd, 2013);
The idea of "healthy obesity" is a myth, research suggests.
I do realize some individuals will find my point of view mean and unsympathetic, but often the truth hurts and isn't well received even if coming from our well-wishers. I write about this only to remind us that our bodies are not meant to be obese, and expecting them to keep functioning normally when overworked and overburdened is unreasonable. Most of the reasons besides actual medical and physiological causes of being morbidly overweight, have a solution. Trying to make being fat fun isn't one of them!
We need to address this problem head on as a nation and refuse to feed ourselves and our children these man made artificial items they like to sell as food. We have to look at what we eat and how much we eat. We need to regulate what the Food and Beverage Industry can put into our foods and drinks. We need to regulate the unnecessary use of GMOs, bioengineering and chemical fertilizers by the Agriculture Industry.
And last but not least we need to stop finding excuses for our own neglect. We alone are guilty of reckless behavior when it comes to benign obesity and therefore we need to accept responsibility for our own health.
On January 2, 2013 CNN actually reported that if you are overweight you will live longer, the headline was 'Being overweight linked to lower risk of mortality' Then the next day read another shocking CNN headline 'Big deal: You can be fat and fit'. Really??!!
If we start justifying being fat and deceive ourselves into believing we can be fat and fit, then we probably will end up like the morbidly obese people from that animated movie "Wall-E (2008)", who are shown to be totally dependent on automated systems from feeding themselves to washing themselves, they actually never get off their high-tech seats that not only take them everywhere but also convert into beds at night. As a result the individuals never do much muscular movement, and hence don't develop the muscle strength to even walk.
The scary part is we already have people in the US who are so morbidly obese that they can't carry their own weight anymore and need motorized chairs to move around a grocery store or a mall. Some might have valid medical reasons for the weight gain but a huge majority do not. The major reason for them being overweight is poor food choices and too big portions. The fact that every American restaurant and specially fast food restaurant serves unhealthily large servings of unhealthy foods does not help.
There is also a huge lobby promoting the use of synthetic ingredients in our foods, such as trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc.... Whereas the Agriculture industry is pushing the use on GMOs on farmers everywhere and growing more and more bioengineered foods. Unfortunately very little legislation controls or oversees the use of these genetically manufactured seeds. And then the media furthers the public ignorance of what is really making them obese and sick by spreading news such as "Fat is fun and healthy".
Amongst this media madness it was a relief to see reports of the latest study on obesity that dispelled the myth that you can be fat and healthy. Here is an excerpt from the story on BBC World (Dec.3rd, 2013);
The idea of "healthy obesity" is a myth, research suggests.
Excess fat still carries health risks even when cholesterol, blood pressure and sugar levels are normal, according to a study of more than 60,000 people.
It has been argued that being overweight does not necessarily imply health risks if individuals remain healthy in other ways.
The research, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, contradicts this idea.
The study looked at findings from published studies tracking heart health and weight in more than 60,000 adults.
Researchers from the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, found there was no healthy pattern of increased weight when heart health was monitored for more than 10 years.
They argue that people who are metabolically healthy but overweight probably have underlying risk factors that worsen over time.
Study leader Dr Ravi Retnakaran told BBC News: "This really casts doubt on the existence of healthy obesity.
"This data is suggesting that both patients who are obese who are metabolically unhealthy and patients who are obese who are metabolically healthy are both at increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, such that benign obesity may indeed be a myth."
I do realize some individuals will find my point of view mean and unsympathetic, but often the truth hurts and isn't well received even if coming from our well-wishers. I write about this only to remind us that our bodies are not meant to be obese, and expecting them to keep functioning normally when overworked and overburdened is unreasonable. Most of the reasons besides actual medical and physiological causes of being morbidly overweight, have a solution. Trying to make being fat fun isn't one of them!
We need to address this problem head on as a nation and refuse to feed ourselves and our children these man made artificial items they like to sell as food. We have to look at what we eat and how much we eat. We need to regulate what the Food and Beverage Industry can put into our foods and drinks. We need to regulate the unnecessary use of GMOs, bioengineering and chemical fertilizers by the Agriculture Industry.
And last but not least we need to stop finding excuses for our own neglect. We alone are guilty of reckless behavior when it comes to benign obesity and therefore we need to accept responsibility for our own health.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Moms, we've got to get moving!
I am guilty of this too, I watch far too much TV. Yes, and that automatically reduced the amount of physical activity I get. That in turn plays an important role in leading to unwanted weight gain.
Not only is this lack of physical activity bad for the moms, it is setting a poor example for our kids, who too spend far too much time in front of TVs and Computer screens. If not for ourselves, let us change that for our sons and daughters and lets get moving!!
Here is the report on the subject on MedicineNet.com;
Less Physical Activity, More TV for Today's Moms, Study Finds
American mothers watch more TV and get less physical activity today than mothers did four decades ago, a new study finds.
"With each passing generation, mothers have become increasingly physically inactive, sedentary and obese, thereby potentially predisposing children to an increased risk of inactivity, adiposity [body fat] and chronic non-communicable diseases," said study leader Edward Archer, an exercise scientist and epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina.
Not only is this lack of physical activity bad for the moms, it is setting a poor example for our kids, who too spend far too much time in front of TVs and Computer screens. If not for ourselves, let us change that for our sons and daughters and lets get moving!!
Here is the report on the subject on MedicineNet.com;
Less Physical Activity, More TV for Today's Moms, Study Finds
American mothers watch more TV and get less physical activity today than mothers did four decades ago, a new study finds.
"With each passing generation, mothers have become increasingly physically inactive, sedentary and obese, thereby potentially predisposing children to an increased risk of inactivity, adiposity [body fat] and chronic non-communicable diseases," said study leader Edward Archer, an exercise scientist and epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina.
"Given that physical activity is an absolute prerequisite for health and wellness, it is not surprising that inactivity is now a leading cause of death and disease in developed nations," Archer noted in a university news release. The analysis of 45 years of national data focused on two groups of mothers: those with children 5 years or younger, and those with children aged 6 to 18. The researchers assessed physical activity related to cooking, cleaning and exercising. (Continued)
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