Dr. John's Health Matters
Welcome to Dr. John's Health Matters blog.
The articles posted here are from various sources who are duly acknowledged. I would appreciate being immediately notified, if any copywritten material needs to be removed. This blog is not intended to replace the qualified advice of a licensed health practitioner. Readers should exercise their own judgment. Enjoy, subscribe, participate and tell others :)
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Posts tagged "overweight"
Wednesday, Sep 2nd, 2009 ↓Waist-hip Ratio Better Than BMI For Gauging Obesity In Elderly, Study Finds →
Sept 2, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Body mass index (BMI) readings may not be the best gauge of obesity in older adults, according to new research from UCLA endocrinologists and geriatricians. Instead, they say, the ratio of waist size to hip size may be a better indicator when it comes to those over 70.
In a new study published online in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Epidemiology, researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA found that the waist-to-hip circumference ratio was a better yardstick for assessing obesity in high-functioning adults between the ages of 70 and 80, presumably because the physical changes that are part of the aging process alter the body proportions on which BMI is based.
“Basically, it isn’t BMI that matters in older adults — it’s waist size,” said Dr. Preethi Srikanthan, UCLA assistant professor of endocrinology and the study’s lead investigator. “Other studies have suggested that both waist size and BMI matter in young and middle-aged adults and that BMI may not be useful in older adults; this is one of the first studies to show that relative waist size does matter in older adults, even if BMI does not matter.”
For full article, see link above.
People Who Don't Own A Car And Live Near Fast Food At Greater Risk For Obesity →
Sept 2, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Living without a car in close proximity to fast food restaurants is associated with excess body mass index and weight gain, according to a University of Pittsburgh study available online and published in the September issue of the Journal of Urban Health. Indeed, adults in areas with high fast food concentration who didn’t have a car were as much as 12 pounds heavier than those who lived in neighborhoods that lacked such restaurants.
“Owning a car is generally associated with a more sedentary lifestyle and excess weight gain because people spend more time in their cars and less time walking,” said Sanae Inagami, M.D., study lead author and assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Yet, when Inagami and her colleagues looked at whether a high concentration of fast food restaurants impacted this association, they found that not owning a car in areas where fast food was more readily available increased the risk of obesity.
“Fast food may be specific to weight gain in particular populations and locations,” she said. “People who are less affluent don’t own cars and can’t go distances for healthier foods. As a result, they may end up opting for the lower-priced and high caloric foods available at fast food chains.”
For full article see link above.
Tags: car driving food fast fat obesity restaurant lifestyle sedentary weight gain walking risk overweight neighbourhood
Breast Cancer: Risk Increases For Smokers And Overweight Women →
Sept 1, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—A recent study published in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology has reinforced the correlation between being overweight, smoking and breast cancer. What makes this study unique is how test subjects were not diagnosed for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, which predispose women to breast cancer.
Instead, women with such gene mutations were excluded to allow researchers to concentrate on lifestyle factors such as smoking, exercise, nutrition and weight. All women analyzed in the study were direct ancestors of the first French colonists.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study conducted on a sample of women without BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, which are often found in French-Canadian women,” says lead researcher Vishnee Bissonauth, a graduate of the Université de Montréal’s Department of Nutrition and a researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center.
For full article, see link above.
Tags: smoking breast cancer risk overweight obesity cigarette smoker gene mutation correlation
Larger waists increase asthma risk →
Aug 30, 2009 (Presstv.com)—Apple-shaped women with large waists are reported to be at an increased risk of developing asthma, even if their body weight is normal.
While being overweight is a well-known risk factor for asthma, a new study links bigger waist size (abdominal obesity) with the severity of the respiratory condition.
According to the study published in Thorax, women with a waist larger than 88cm are at a one-third higher risk of developing asthma.
Scientists concluded that waist circumference is a more useful measure compared to body mass index as it reflects the levels of visceral fat deposits found around the body’s organs.
“Visceral fat is metabolically more active - it can produce compounds that may cause inflammation. Inflammation may then be related to asthma,” added lead researcher Julie Von Behren.
PKH/HGH
Tags: asthma risk overweight weight visceral fat inflammation waist apple-shaped abdominal respiratory lung BMI
Obesity Is A Poor Gauge For Detecting High Cholesterol Levels In Children →
Aug 29, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—With the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States, there is concern that overweight and obese children need to be screened for chronic medical conditions, including high cholesterol levels.
However, body fat is not an effective indicator of high cholesterol in children, according to new University of Michigan research.
Those are the findings of a U-M study led by U-M pediatricians Joyce Lee, M.D., MPH, and Matthew Davis, M.D., MAPP, which will appear in the August 3 edition of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
“We found, actually, that using body mass index to find kids with high cholesterol does not work well. There were many overweight and obese kids who had normal cholesterol, and there were a fair number of healthy-weight kids who had high cholesterol,” says Lee, a member of the Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Unit in the U-M Division of General Pediatrics, and assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the U-M Medical School.
For full article see link above.
Tags: obesity weight cholesterol heart cardiovascular disease body fat BMI children child overweight prevention screening risk
More Obesity Blues: Obese People Are At Greater Risk For Developing Alzheimer's, Study Finds →
Aug 25, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Obesity is on a rampage, with the World Health Organization pegging the numbers at more than 300 million worldwide, with a billion more overweight. With obesity comes the increased risk for cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, and hypertension.
Now comes more discouraging news. In the current online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping, Paul Thompson, senior author and a UCLA professor of neurology, and lead author Cyrus A. Raji, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues compared the brains of people who were obese, overweight, and of normal weight, to see if they had differences in brain structure; that is, did their brains look equally healthy.
They found that obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue than people with normal weight, while overweight people had 4 percent less tissue. According to Thompson, who is also a member of UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, this is the first time anyone has established a link between being overweight and having what he describes as “severe brain degeneration.”
“That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain,” said Thompson. “But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”
Tags: risk danger diabetes hypertension cardiovascular brain obesity structure tissue overweight degeneration cognitive reserve alzheimer's
Links Between Video-game Playing And Health Risks In Adults Found →
Aug 18, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—While video gaming is generally perceived as a pastime for children and young adults, research shows that the average age of players in the United States is 35. Investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Emory University and Andrews University analyzed survey data from over 500 adults ranging in age from 19 to 90 in the Seattle-Tacoma area on health risks; media use behaviors and perceptions, including those related to video-game playing; and demographic factors. In an article published in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, they found measurable correlations between video-game playing and health risks.
Participants reported whether they were players or nonplayers, and weekly usage was collected. Internet usage was assessed, as was the relative importance of the Internet as a social support. The personal determinants examined in this study included self-assessments of depression, personality, health status, physical and mental health, body mass index (BMI), and poor quality of life. Immersion in media environments was evaluated using the participants’ estimates of the time they spent during a typical week surfing the Internet and watching TV, including videos and DVDs. The Seattle–Tacoma area was selected because of its size (13th largest US media market) and its Internet usage level is the highest in the nation.
A total of 45.1% of respondents reported playing video games. Female video-game players reported greater depression and lower health status than female nonplayers. Male video-game players reported higher BMI and more Internet use time than male nonplayers. The only determinant common to both female and male video-game players was greater reliance on the Internet for social support.
Writing in the article, Dr. James B Weaver III, PhD, MPH, National Center for Health Marketing, CDC, Atlanta, states, “As hypothesized, health-risk factors – specifically, a higher BMI and a greater number of poor mental-health days – differentiated adult video-game players from nonplayers. Video-game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status, and to mental-health concerns. Internet community support and time spent online distinguished adult video-game players from nonplayers, a finding consistent with prior research pointing to the willingness of adult video-game enthusiasts to sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games. The data illustrate the need for further research among adults to clarify how to use digital opportunities more effectively to promote health and prevent disease.”
For full article see link above.
Tags: video game television tv depression adult movie internet overweight obesity BMI mental health sedentary lifestyle disease
Certain Behavioral Traits And Feeding Practices May Increase Risk For Weight Gain In Children →
Aug 14, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Many clinicians and public health officials view parental involvement as an essential part of solving the current childhood obesity epidemic. However, it’s important for parents to use the right approach when trying to combat childhood obesity. Restrictive feeding practices, or forbidding certain foods, may not always be the best solution. A child’s inhibitory control, a behavior similar to self-control, may be more important than parental restrictions.
An article and related editorial soon to be published in The Journal of Pediatrics, explore the relationship between a child’s low inhibitory control, parental restrictive feeding practices, and childhood weight gain.
Stephanie Anzman, MS, and Leann Birch, PhD, of the Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Pennsylvania State University studied 197 non-Hispanic white girls. They collected information from the girls and their parents over a 10-year period, beginning when the girls were 5 years old. In addition to recording their body mass index (BMI), the researchers asked the girls whether their parents restricted or forbade certain foods. The researchers also recorded the parents’ BMI, income, and education level. Additionally, mothers were asked to describe their child’s level of self-control.
Anzman and Birch found that girls with lower self-control had higher BMIs and gained more weight than those girls who demonstrated better self-regulation. Girls with lower self-control were almost twice as likely to be overweight by the age of 15. The authors also noticed a relationship between a child’s perception of parental restrictive feeding practices and weight gain. In other words, the combination of high parental restriction and low self-control put girls at the highest risk for weight gain among the group studied.
According to Ms. Anzman, “Parental attempts to help children with lower self-control by restricting their access to favorite snack foods can make the forbidden foods more attractive, thereby exacerbating the problem.” She suggests that parents can help their children learn to control their eating habits by allowing them to choose between healthy options. She adds that it is often better to not keep restricted foods in the house. “That way,” she explains, “it is not necessary to constantly tell children they cannot have the foods they want.”
For full article see link above.
Tags: behaviour risk eating pattern weight gain children child kid obesity control overweight restrictive feeding access food forbidden prevention
Prehypertension, Obesity And Kidney Disease Risks →
Aug 11, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—People with prehypertension are not at increased risk of kidney disease if their body mass index (BMI) is under 30.0 kg/m2, a first-ever examination of the combined effect of blood pressure and body weight on the risk of kidney disease shows.
The study was by a team of medical researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Prehypertension is a relatively new medical classification introduced in 2003 in the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on High Blood Pressure (JNC-7), and is defined as systolic blood pressure of 120 to 139 mm Hg or diastolic BP of 80 to 89 mm Hg. Studies from the United States and Asia have shown that prehypertension can increase the risk of serious kidney disease, but because more than 30 percent of the US and European populations can be classified as prehypertensive, treating everyone with this condition would be an enormous undertaking, the researchers observed.
At the same time, obesity is also known to lead to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and death from chronic kidney disease (CKD) as a result of diabetes and hypertension. These increased risks have led medical researchers to consider whether people with prehypertension should be considered for treatment if they have other cardiovascular risks, such as obesity.
For full article see link above.
Tags: kidney risk prevention weight obesity overweight bmi hypertension cardiovascular blood pressure heart disease diabetes prehypertension body
Insufficient Sleep May Be Linked To Increased Diabetes Risk →
Aug 10, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Short sleep times, experienced by many individuals in Westernized societies, may contribute to the development of insulin resistance and reduced glucose tolerance, which in turn may increase the long-term risk of diabetes, according to a new study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).
Sleep curtailment is an increasingly common aspect of the Western lifestyle, which is characterized by physical inactivity and overeating. Today, many Americans sleep fewer than six hours each night and individuals who report such short sleep times have in previous studies demonstrated an increased risk of developing diabetes. This new study examined whether reduced sleep duration itself may increase the risk of developing diabetes when combined with physical inactivity and overeating.
Researchers in this study subjected a group of healthy middle-aged men and women to two controlled 14-day periods of sedentary living with free access to food and 5.5 or 8.5 hour bedtimes. When the subjects had their bedtimes decreased from 8.5 hours to 5.5 hours they showed changes in their response to two common sugar tests, which were similar to those seen in people with an increased risk of developing diabetes.
“Our findings raise the possibility that when the unhealthy aspects of the Westernized lifestyle are combined with reduced sleep duration, this might contribute to the increased risk of many overweight and sedentary individuals developing diabetes,” said Plamen Penev, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago and a senior author of the study. “If confirmed by future larger studies, these results would indicate that a healthy lifestyle should include not only healthy eating habits and adequate amounts of physical activity, but also obtaining a sufficient amount of sleep.”
For full article see link above.
Tags: sleep risk diabetes insulin glucose physical inactivity overeating food nutrition sugar lifestyle overweight
German study links debt, obesity and access to healthy food →
Aug 7, 2009 (Foodnavigator.com)—People in financial debt are more likely to be obese, concludes a study from Germany that adds to concern that healthier foods cost more than energy-dense foods of low nutritional value.
he current financial squeeze has implications for household spending, and people may borrow more to make ends meet. In Germany, where the new study was conducted in 2006-7, 7.6 per cent of households (more than 6 million people) are over-indebted.
The researchers, led by Prof Eva Münster of the University of Mainz, noted that the link between socio-economic status, health and over-weight is well-documented but over-indebtedness has not been included in definitions of socio-economic status.
Prof Münster and her team found that on average over-indebted individuals tended to be younger, with lower education and income, than the general population. They had a higher prevalence of overweight, obesity, depression and tobacco use.
For full article see link above.
Tags: debt diet nutrition overweight obesity finance calorie socio-economic status age education depression tobacco food consumption
Tags: influence eating obesity childhood social factor overweight nutrition diet children child adolescence risk acceptance
Tags: social stress fat obesity overweight lower socioeconomic status heart disease cardiovascular diet cholesterol hormone
Iced coffee contains too many calories →
Aug 2, 2009 (Presstv.com)—The iced coffees sold by some popular chains contain as many calories as an evening meal, placing regular consumers at an increased risk of obesity and cancer.
According to a study recently conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), iced coffee, a combination of sugar, full-fat milk and cream, contains high amounts of fat and calories.
“If you are having them regularly then they will increase the chances of you becoming overweight, which in turn increases your risk of developing cancer, as well as other diseases such as heart disease and diabetes,” the study says.
For full article see link above.
Tags: iced coffee calorie fat nutrition diet overweight obesity cancer cardiovascular heart disease diabetes
More Evidence In Favor Of Healthy Lifestyle In Prevention Of Cardiovascular Disease →
July 27, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—As the ESC Congress 2009 draws ever closer, the evidence in favour of a healthy lifestyle for the prevention of cardiovascular disease grows ever stronger. Prevention is the highlight theme of this year’s event, which will take place in Barcelona from 29 August to 2 September. Lifestyle factors are heavily on the agenda.
There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that the adoption of a healthy lifestyle pays huge rewards in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Indeed, a report in JAMA this week suggests that men who exercised regularly, drank moderately, did not smoke, were not overweight and had a diet that included cereal, fruits and vegetables had a lower lifetime risk of heart failure.(1) The findings have major public health implications, with heart failure now recognised as the leading cause of acute hospital admission and the most prevalent chronic cardiovascular condition.
According to an editorial in the same issue of JAMA, mortality rates after the onset of heart failure remain high, ranging from 20-50 per cent, despite improvements in medical and surgical management.(2) With the outlook so bleak for heart failure patients, the possibility that pursuing a healthy lifestyle may help reduce lifetime risk of heart failure is an important finding.
For full article see link above.
