Obesity

A high-fructose diet raises blood pressure in men, while a drug used to treat gout seems to protect against the blood pressure increase, according to research reported at the American Heart Association’s 63rd High Blood Pressure Research Conference. “This is the first evidence of a role of fructose in raising blood pressure and a role for lowering uric acid to protect against that blood pressure increase in people,” said Richard Johnson, M.D., co-author of the study and professor and head of the division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of...

This study compared the benefits of using a treadmill underwater or on land for obesity. Both methods of using the treadmill improved aerobic fitness and helped reduce body fat percentage. However, most notably, the underwater treadmill training appeared to produce greater gains in lean body mass. Loss of lean body mass, or sarcopenia, is one of the defining characteristics of aging. This study would support the idea that weight bearing exercise in water...

Younger people with pain look similar in terms of their disability to people who are two to three decades older without pain, according to a study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. The results of the study uncovered that people with pain develop the functional limitations classically associated ...

After two decades of improvement, the percentage of Americans without major heart disease risk factors is dropping, according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. “From a preventive health point of view, it’s important that individuals achieve as many of these goals as possible, and it’s disappointing that less than 10 ...

This is the Medicine Wheel, representing the four dietary components of the traditional Northern Plains Indian hunter-gatherer food pattern. (Credit: Figure was created and copyrighted by Kibbe Conti, second author, and used with her permission)ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2009) — American Indian populations experience significant nutrition-related health disparities compared to other racial and ethnic groups within ...

When the leptin-serotonin pathway is turned on in mice, the researchers found, appetite increases, the animals eat more, gain weight, and their bone mass increases. When the pathway is turned off, mice eat less, lose weight, and their bones weaken.

A moderate aerobic exercise program, without weight loss, can improve insulin sensitivity in both lean and obese sedentary adolescents, according to a new study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas that permits glucose to enter cells to be used for ...

New research from Columbia University Medical Center has illuminated a previously unknown leptin-serotonin pathway in the brain that simultaneously promotes appetite and bone mass accrual. The research, which explains how leptin – well-known appetite-suppressing hormone – acts in the brain, is published in the Sept. 4 issue of Cell. When the leptin-serotonin pathway is turned ...

Eat less, exercise more. Now there is new evidence to support adding another “must” to the weight-loss mantra: eat at the right time of day. A Northwestern University study has found that eating at irregular times — the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep — influences ...

People who have a reduced lung capacity may have a greater risk of heart attack and stroke because they show evidence of inflammation, reveals a study published online ahead of print in Thorax. This association is not related to smoking, respiratory diseases or obesity. The New Zealand researchers took measurements of lung capacity and inflammation ...

Researchers may have found a key ingredient in the recipe that leads from obesity to chronic low-grade inflammation, according to a report in the September issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication. Chronic inflammation within fat tissue is now recognized as a contributor to the many ill health consequences that come with obesity, from diabetes ...

A new study has concluded that low carb-high protein diet leads to more atherosclerosis in mice, findings that could have implications for diet strategies if they also hold true for humans. The low carb approach to dieting had its heyday in the 1990s, with the marketing of popular commercial diets such as the Atkins Diet. ...