The Fat Problem

Does a woman’s visibly losing weight indicate an impending dementia? If not in all cases, yes, it does for many!

The link between dementia and weight loss in women has been popularly noticed, but a decrease in weight being a harbinger to the loss of cognitive function due to changes in the brain has been recently observed by a study.

Alarmingly, women can begin losing weight at least a decade before developing dementia or the disease is diagnosed! Many women have been found to develop dementia 20 years later than when she significantly started losing weight.

The loss of weight in such early stages - as you can consider it — of dementia, may be due to people’s tendency of developing apathy, a loss of initiative as well as a loss in the sense of smell.

But, due to difference in hormones, unlike women, men do not seem to lose weight in the years before developing or the diagnosis of dementia.

Though, this new study — in contrary to earlier suggestions that mid-aged obesity may risk dementia — may kick up new sand of controversy, its ‘early stage-symptom’ finding may eventually be of great help in finding preventive, if not curative, solutions.

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The growing obesity epidemic in the United States is leasing out several diseases amongst children and adolescents,which increasingly go undiagnosed - especially and importantly the soaring high blood pressure among obese juveniles.

You must have heard about governments and local administration bodies in various countries distributing subsidized drugs to their people for controlling fatal diseases like tuberculosis, cholera etc.
Mayor of a northwestern Italian town Vallaro has taken a lesson from this and has announced a monetary reward program to encourage overweight residents of the town to lose weight. Under this program, men will be paid 70 Euros for shedding every 9 pounds and women will get same amount for losing 7 pounds. Not only this, maintaining the reduced weight for 5 months with entitle them for another 200 Euros!
Expanding waistlines has become a major health concern for Italian people with almost 35 percent of country’s population being obese or overweight. This program is definitely going to help those who are shying away from going for a wait loss program because of financial reasons. Approach taken by Mayor Gianluca Buonanno is an innovative way to address the deteriorating health of the residents of Varallo, and is likely to set an example for others to follow.

Via

Women dread the word ‘Menopause‘ as it is associated with a bouquet of complications including hot flushes, insomnia, mood swings, depression and fatigue. The news only gets worse with the findings reporting menopause actually makes women fat, a fact that women knew since ages.

US researchers say that the declining estrogen levels associated with ‘the change’ interferes with the metabolic rate leading to weight gain, especially accumulation of fat around the abdominal region.

Women are protected from these negative consequences as long as they carry their weight in their hips and saddlebags. But when they go through menopause and the body fat shifts to the abdomen, they have to start battling all of these medical complications

said Deborah Clegg, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center.

The experiments were conducted on rats that developed an impaired tolerance to glucose and a sizable weight gain, even when they took in the same amount of calories when the researchers cut off the estrogen supply to the part of the brain that is central to energy regulation. It was found that the excess weight gain was concentrated on the midsection among the rats.

The hypothalamus links the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland controls body temperature, hunger and thirst. The researchers say that if they could target those critical regions and estrogen receptors associated with weight gain and energy expenditure, it could help scientists formulate ‘designer’ harmone replacement therapies to manipulate estrogen levels.

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According to U.S. researchers — obese people who suffer from continuously recurring kidney disease have greater risk of having a medical problem known as hyperparathyroidism in comparison to patients who have normal weight, which also increases their chances of developing heart diseases and finally leading to their death.

Hyperparathyroidism is a medical problem in which the body produces too much of parathyroid hormone thus level of parathyroid hormone (PTH) increases. Usually, the parathyroid hormone has important part to perform in the human body, it helps in maintaining the level of calcium and phosphorus in a person’s body and thus it manages the bone structure of human beings. If the level of this hormone increases than it results in causing abnormalities in your bones & thus raises the chances of cardiovascular problem and than death. Reduced functioning of kidney becomes the main reason for hyperparathyroidism in people who have the chronic kidney disease.

The study monitored nearly 496 patients who have moderate form to serious type of chronic kidney disease and these patients were also not kept on dialysis. In this study the researcher’s found that — important link exists between obesity & hyperparathyroidism. With the increase of body mass, the parathyroid hormone also gets elevated.

The lead author of this study is — Dr. Csaba P. Kovesdy. He mentioned in a prepared statement that:

We knew that in people with normal kidney function obesity leads to impairment in vitamin D metabolism and elevated PTH levels, but this phenomenon was never studied in patients with chronic kidney disease.

As obesity & hyperparathyroidism is considered to be very difficult conditions to deal with in case of chronic kidney disease, and setting up a link between these two problems is very important because of possible diagnosis and its curing suggestions.

This study appeared in the September’s addition of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

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After getting the weight you have desired from so long time you should try to maintain your weight. For shedding weight on permanent basis than you should adopt a healthy way of living. Losing weight suddenly is not healthy for you as it would be dangerous for you.

Try not to repeat your previous eating habits as they are faulty. Stick on healthy balanced diet recommended by your nutritionists if you don’t want to gain weight again. A healthy balanced diet is very important and is required for your complete wellness, so you should try to have sharp look at what you are consuming.

If you want to have full control on your weight than you have to follow certain rules and regulations like — you have to eat a well balanced diet, do regular exercises and you should be very punctual on what you are doing. And one should note it down that nothing is impossible in this world.

Just follow few steps given below to prevent gaining of lost weight.

1) Try not to avoid your meals because it would affect your metabolism. Meals boost up your metabolism and give you the energy you require. When you avoid your meals than it finally result in excess consumption later on.

2) Take your weight once in a week. If you have continuous observation on your weight than it will definitely prevent from gaining weight. If you want to have a guarantee of what you are consuming is healthy for you than you must keep a health & food journal that would really help you in selecting foods. Note down whatever you have consumed throughout the day. Try to be accurate; else food journal won’t help you. 100% accuracy is not expected by anyone but still you have to ensure what amount of calories you are consuming. The journal provides help in different manners - it makes you know when you have consumed high calorie things and when you should it include in your diet. Food journals are available in which you can record your daily exercises and also your fitness activities. Also record how you feel after you eat anything.

3) Consume different types of foods so that you should be able to get nutrients that your body requires.

4) Try to include healthy foods in your meals. Vegetables have very low calories so you should try to have it more and more. Choose your foods varieties also from whole grains, fruits and protein. Try to consume foods which are low in calories & fat but highly fibrous.

5) Try to be active throughout the day. By being physically active you can be very far from gaining extra weight so do those types of physical works that keeps you active. Do exercises to be physically fit.

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Bunking classes and school is a common activity among school-going children. So, few parents get concerned with their such deeds. But, want concern is now growing importance for parents at all corners of the world is their child’s going overweight or obese.

But, do you know that there is strong link between a child’s obesity and his missing classes? Though apparently unbelievable, am sure you can’t afford to ignore the new finding!

According to a new study, compared to their normal-weight classmates, obese elementary schoolchildren tend to miss a couple more school days on average. Thus, obesity leading to missing out classes can onset a couples of other problems - like all those alternatives to bunking classes like resorting to drugs, inheriting health and social problems like AIDS and pregnancy among teens!

Andrew B. Geier, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study said,

At this early age to show that already they’re missing school, and missing school is such a major setup for big-time problems, that’s something school policy people have to know.

To add to the worries of the teens’ and schoolchildren’s parents, obesity rates have been found to have nearly quintupled among 6- to 11-year-olds and tripled among teens and children ages 2 to 5 since the 1970s!

This figure is really alarming. Besides, health crisis ‘obesity’ seems to be a welcome element for a plethora of negative outcomes! This finding, am sure, is enough for you to gear up with planning your child’s healthy-weight lifestyle.

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If you are fond of a particular food or that drink, it is not your age-old habit or your pampering granny to be blamed, but one of your own ‘hormones’. It is the same hormone - leptin - which is responsible for triggering your hunger and killing your appetite.

Yes, it has been recently found that the appetizing properties of food effect the same emotions and desires-triggering key brain regions strongly. Thanks to a group of scientists for showing the lighting up of the concerned brain areas when individuals suffering from leptin deficiency are shown images of food.

For their research the researchers used brain imaging technology. Thus, understanding eating behavior leads to taking into account not only the physiological and hormonal pathways, but also the processes inside the brain, which is evoked by either, sight, smell, taste, or even just thought for food!

More challenging still is to develop an understanding of the ways in which these two sets of processes — the physiological and the brain/neural — interact to shape our patterns of eating.

Thus, not just our physiology, but also neurology or brain shapes our patterns of eating - interestingly both in unison. Can this new discovery help in finding an answer to the treatment and prevention of obesity? - The prevailing worry of the medical fraternity.

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Deficiency of female sex hormone, estrogen might expose aging women to several health wrecking problems like, rampant weight gain, diabetes, increased blood pressure and increase in blood glucose, claims a new study by U.S. scientists.

Experts came up with this conclusion after they found that loss of estrogen in older rats exposed them to such symptoms. During the course of study, Dr. Lourdes Fortepiani of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and colleagues tracked two groups, consisting of 24 aged female rats with their ovaries removed. One group of “http:these rats was given estrogen, while the other group remained without any dose of estrogen.

Finally, what came to the fore reveals that estrogen depleted rats-

• reported significantly higher blood pressure

• increased their blood glucose level by 35 percent

• increased RAS and renal SNS by 16 and 39 percent

• increased their leptin level by 70 percent

• gained twice as much weight as the controls

Prior to this study, also some researches have tried to explore negative effects of lower estrogen level over health. According to which:-

• Memory Loss In Women Linked to Estrogen Level

• Estrogen withdrawal results in bone loss

•Estrogen Loss is Culprit in Loss of Muscle Mass for Older Women

It somewhere seems to be confirming that if through medical procedures doctors enable women to keep balanced level of estrogen, then, graph of health problems like obesity, blood pressure and diabetes might be brought down to a great extent ultimately stoking the mission aimed at creating a healthy world.

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Obese people end up with obese partners and beget obese kids, according to scientists in Britain. Scientists at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, and Aberdeen University found that people were selecting mates who had body fat similar to their own bodies and the double dose of obese genes ran a risk of begetting obese kids.

Researchers are not clear what attracts an obese person to another but the reason why obese people end up together is probably because they empathize and feel more comfortable with each other and don’t have to worry about their bodies.

Professor John Speakman, of Aberdeen University who was a part of the study, said:

Perhaps the social activities of the overweight and obese people coincide, making them more likely to meet partners who are also overweight and obese. This makes it possible for potential partners to select each other on the basis of body fatness.

For the first time in 2006, the number of people who are overweight have outnumbered those who are malnourished in Britain. A study in the British Medical Journal warned that obesity could actually bankrupt the National Health Service as it is costing the British economy about 7.4 billion pounds a year.

The cause for worry is the increasing obesity in the country and not obese people coming together. It’s time for officials to look into these matters seriously before things go out of hands.

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