Nutrition Review

Chewing gum can help you stay focused for longer on tasks that require continuous monitoring. This is the finding of new research by Kate Morgan and colleagues from Cardiff University due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology today, 8 March.

Sleeping just five hours a night over a workweek and having unlimited access to food caused participants in a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder to gain nearly two pounds of weight.

A new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine reveals that in obese men with type 2 diabetes, weight loss improves erectile function, sexual desire and lowers urinary tract symptoms.

In a study of the impact of weight loss on reversing heart damage from obesity, Johns Hopkins researchers found that poor heart function in young obese mice can be reversed when the animals lose weight from a low-calorie diet. However, older mice, who had been obese for a longer period of time, did not regain better heart function after they were on the same low-calorie diet.

New research from Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the Puget Sound Blood Center (PSBC) has revealed how stresses of flow in the small blood vessels of the heart and brain could cause a common protein to change shape and form dangerous blood clots. The scientists were surprised to find that the proteins could remain in the dangerous, clot-initiating shape for up to five hours before returning to their normal, healthy shape.

The inflammation of fat tissue is part of a spiraling series of events that leads to the development of type 2 diabetes in some obese people. But researchers have not understood what triggers the inflammation, or why.

The first animal model of recent human evolution reveals that a single mutation produced several traits common in East Asian peoples, from thicker hair to denser sweat glands, an international team of researchers reports.

Your hair -- or lack of hair -- is the result of a lifelong tug-of-war between activators that wake up, and inhibitors that calm, stem cells in every hair follicle on your body, according to Cheng-Ming Chuong, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Southern California (USC).

DNA preserved in calcified bacteria on the teeth of ancient human skeletons has shed light on the health consequences of the evolving diet and behaviour from the Stone Age to the modern day. The ancient genetic record reveals the negative changes in oral bacteria brought about by the dietary shifts as humans became farmers, and later with the introduction of food manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution.

Impacting approximately one-third of the U.S. population, obesity is a significant health concern for Americans. It's a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain forms of cancer, and now, according to an article published in the January/February 2013 issue of General Dentistry, the peer-reviewed clinical journal of the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD), it also may be a risk factor for gum disease.