A scientific review in April’s Nutrition Reviews shows that a vegetarian diet is highly effective for weight loss. Vegetarian populations tend to be slimmer than meat-eaters, and they experience lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other life-threatening conditions linked to overweight and obesity. The new review, compiling data from 87 previous studies, shows the weight-loss effect does not depend on exercise or calorie-counting, and it occurs at a rate of approximately 1 pound per week.
Rates of obesity in the general population are skyrocketing, while in vegetarians, obesity prevalence ranges from 0 percent to 6 percent, note study authors Susan E. Berkow, Ph.D., C.N.S., and Neal D. Barnard, M.D., of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
The authors found that the body weight of both male and female vegetarians is, on average, 3 percent to 20 percent lower than that of meat-eaters. Vegetarian and vegan diets have also been put to the test in clinical studies, as the review notes. The best of these clinical studies isolated the effects of diet by keeping exercise constant. The researchers found that a low-fat vegan diet leads to weight loss of about 1 pound per week, even without additional exercise or limits on portion sizes, calories, or carbohydrates. Read the rest of this entry »
In a recent study, Saint Louis University researchers found that weight loss of at least 9 percent helped patients reverse a type of liver disease known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a finding that will allow doctors to give patients specific weight-loss goals that are likely to improve their livers. The finding comes from a study of the diet drug orlistat (also known as Xenical and Alli), which did not itself improve liver disease.
Brent Neuschwander-Tetri, M.D., a hepatologist at Saint Louis University Liver Center and study researcher said, “It’s a helpful study because we can now give patients a benchmark, a line they need to cross to see improvement.” Read the rest of this entry »
Women with a mutation in the gene BRCA1, which predisposes women to breast cancer, are 65% less likely to develop the disease if they lose weight between 18 and 30 years of age. Research published in the open access journal Breast Cancer Research suggests that young women with this genetic predisposition should avoid putting on weight in early adulthood, especially if they plan to have children.
Steven Narod from the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues from universities in Canada, the USA and Poland studied two groups of women, all of whom had a mutation in one of the breast cancer susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. The first group had been diagnosed with breast cancer while the second group had not. Each member of the first group was paired up, or `matched’, with a woman from the second group who was the same age, carried a mutation in the same gene and lived in the same country. This is the largest study of this kind to date, with 1073 women from five different countries in each group. By comparing the two groups, the researchers could identify the relationship between the incidence of breast cancer before the menopause in women at risk, and weight at 18, 30 and 40 years of age. Read the rest of this entry »
The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) says the weight loss drug Accomplia, which has also been shown to help smokers quit, should not be used by patients who are severely depressed or taking anti-depressants as it heightens the risk of suicide among this group.
Accomplia is made by the French pharmaceutical giant sanofi-aventis; the generic name of the drug is rimonabant. It has been authorized in the European Union since June 2006, to be used in combination with diet and exercise to help obese and overweight patients lose weight. It was not approved as a smoking cessation agent. Clinical trials showed that it could help patients lose 10 per cent of their body weight. Read the rest of this entry »
Researchers have found what appears to be a major culprit behind the loss of insulin-producing ? cells from the pancreases of people with diabetes, a critical event in the progression of the disease.
The discovery could lead to new therapies for preventing the death of ? cells or restoring those that have already been lost, Kathrin Maedler and colleagues report in the February 4th issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication. The inflammatory factor they uncovered, which they call CXCL10, might also offer a warning sign of early or impending disease, they said.
” Previously, the idea was that insulin resistance makes one diabetic, but loss of ? cells occurs in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes,” Maedler said, noting that among those who are insulin resistant, only 10-20 percent will go on to develop type 2 diabetes due to a failure of ? cells. “We’ve found an inflammatory marker for both types of diabetes. If we can protect cells from CXCL10 expression, we might prevent the decline in ? cell mass and, with it, the disease.”
Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children or young adults and stems from an inability to produce insulin. The more common type 2 diabetes generally arises later in life when the body fails to produce enough insulin or grows unresponsive to the hormone.
In type 1 diabetes, ? cells are known to be destroyed by the immune system and its production of high concentrations of inflammatory signals. While scientists had floated many ideas, exactly what causes ? cell loss in type 2 diabetes remains a matter of debate. Read the rest of this entry »
New research suggests that, if used properly, vibration plate exercise machines may help you lose weight and trim the particularly harmful belly fat between the organs.
In a study presented on Friday at the European Congress on Obesity, scientists found that overweight or obese people who regularly used the equipment in combination with a calorie restricted diet were more successful at long-term weight loss and shedding the fat around their abdominal organs than those who combined dieting with a more conventional fitness routine.
“These machines are increasingly found in gyms across the industrialized world and have gathered a devoted following in some places, but there has not been any evidence that they help people lose weight. Our study, the first to investigate the effects of vibration in obese people, indicates it’s a promising approach. It looks like these machines could be a useful addition to a weight control package,” said the study’s leader, Dirk Vissers, a physiotherapist at the Artesis University College and the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
Vissers and his colleagues studied the effects of the Power Plate in 61 overweight or obese people – mostly women – for a year. The intervention lasted six months, after which the scientists advised all the volunteers to do the best they could with a healthy diet and exercise regime on their own for another six months. Body measurements, including CT scans of abdominal fat, were taken at the beginning of the study and after three, six and 12 months. Read the rest of this entry »