If your pants are feeling a bit tight around the waistline, take note: Belly bulge can be deadly for older adults, even those who aren’t overweight or obese by other measures.
One of the largest studies to examine the dangers of abdominal fat suggests men and women with the biggest waistlines have twice the risk of dying over a decade compared to those with the smallest tummies.
Surprisingly, bigger waists carry a greater risk of death even for people whose weight is “normal” by the body mass index, or BMI, a standard measure based on weight and height.
“Even if you haven’t had a noticeable weight gain, if you notice your waist size increasing that’s an important sign,” said lead author Eric Jacobs of the American Cancer Society, which funded the study. “It’s time to eat better and start exercising more.”
Belly bulge can be deadly
Other research has linked waist size to dementia, heart disease, asthma and breast cancer.
Bulging bellies are a problem for most Americans older than 50. It’s estimated that more than half of older men and more than 70 percent of older women have bigger waistlines than recommended. And it’s a growing problem: Average waistlines have expanded by about an inch per decade since the 1960s.
To check your girth, wrap a tape measure around your waist at the navel. No fair sucking in your bulge. Men should have a waist circumference no larger than 40 inches. For women, the limit is 35 inches.
The new study, appearing in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine, is the first to analyze waist size and deaths for people in three BMI categories: normal, overweight and obese. In all three groups, waist size was linked to higher risk.
Dr David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum, said the research is important.
“This underlines the message that fat inside the belly is dangerous.
“Even if you have a normal BMI and a big tummy then you are just as much at risk as someone who is classified as obese with a large tummy.”
Previous studies have shown that abdominal obesity is a strong indicator for the development of coronary artery disease and is associated with insulin resistance and the development of Type 2 diabetes.
The risk is associated with the fat stores, which are not just under the skin but deep within the abdominal cavity.
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September 20th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
The Scottish Government considers introducing regular weight checks for new mothers and their babies to prevent health problems in later life.
New mothers and babies could be given “obesity checks” under plans to improve Scotland’s weight problem.
The Scottish Government’s draft strategy on improving maternal and infant nutrition is to go out for consultation this week, with the final version due to be published next year.
It notes that the mother’s diet before conception and during pregnancy, the feeding received in the first few months of life and the overall diet of growing children all contribute “significantly” to the long term health of the population.
Under the proposed new measures, women would be screened about six months after giving birth and their babies weighed around their first and second birthdays.
If concerns were highlighted about their weight, youngsters could then be referred to specialists for advice on making diet and lifestyle changes to avoid future health problems.
Other ideas to promote breastfeeding and healthy eating in children are also being proposed.
Figures released last week showed that Scotland still has some of the lowest life expectancy rates in Europe.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/198299-obesity-checks-planned-for-newborn-babies/
September 20th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
If you think being overweight is a person’s own fault or his or her parents’, then here’s a reality check—even childhood viral infection could be one of the causes of obesity, reveals a new cross-sectional study by University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers.
They found that children exposed to a particular strain of adenovirus were significantly more likely to be obese.
Dr. Jeffrey B. Schwimmer, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at UC San Diego, and colleagues examined 124 children, ages 8 to 18, for the presence of antibodies specific to adenovirus 36 (AD36), one of more than 50 strains of adenovirus known to infect humans and cause a variety of respiratory, gastrointestinal and other infections.
AD36 is the only human adenovirus currently linked to human obesity.
A little more than half of the children in the study (67) were considered obese, based on a Body Mass Index or BMI in the 95th percentile or greater. The researchers detected neutralizing antibodies specific to AD36 in 19 of the children (15 percent).
The majority of these AD36-positive children (78 percent) were obese, with AD36 antibodies much more frequent in obese children (15 of 67) than in non-obese children (4 of 57).
Children who were AD36-positive weighed almost 50 pounds more, on average, than children who were AD36-negative.
Within the group of obese children, those with evidence of AD36 infection weighed an average of 35 pounds more than obese children who were AD36-negative.
“This amount of extra weight is a major concern at any age, but is especially so for a child. Obesity can be a marker for future health problems like heart disease, liver disease and diabetes. An extra 35 to 50 pounds is more than enough to greatly increase those risks,” said Schwimmer.
The study is published in the latest online edition of the journal Pediatrics.
September 20th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Eating vegetables like asparagus, garlic and artichokes could help keep obesity and diabetes at bay.
Scientists are trying to figure out whether a fibre-rich diet can suppress hunger and improve one’s ability to control blood sugar levels.
Foods like garlic, chicory, asparagus and artichokes are known as fermentable carbohydrates, believed to activate the release of gut hormones that reduce appetite, reports the Telegraph.
They also enhance sensitivity to insulin – the hormone produced by the pancreas that allows glucose to enter the body’s cells, thereby leading to better glucose control.
Charity Diabetes UK is now funding research into the health benefits of such foods. If proved to be effective, the findings could revolutionise treatments for obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Nicola Guess, dietitian at Imperial College, London, who is leading the three-year study, said: “By investigating how appetite and blood glucose levels are regulated in people at high risk of Type 2 diabetes, it is hoped that we can find a way to prevent its onset.
There are 2.35 million people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in Britain alone, and a further half a million sufferers who are unaware that they have the condition.
If left untreated, type 2 diabetes can lead to complications such as kidney failure, heart disease, stroke and amputation.
Research by the University of Leicester, published last week, suggests that eating green leafy vegetables could help cut the risk of type 2 diabetes.
The vegetables are rich in antioxidants and magnesium, which has been linked to lower levels of diabetes.
September 20th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
The obesity explosion that has swept the Western world over the past 30 years may have been caused by a virus, scientists have said.
Researchers have discovered new evidence for an illness they have called “infectobesity” – obesity that is transmitted from person to person, much like an infection. The agent thought to be responsible is a strain of adenovirus, versions of which cause the common cold. It has already been labelled the “fat bug”.
There are more than 50 strains of adenovirus known to infect humans but only one, adenovirus 36, has been linked with human obesity.
Now scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have found that children who showed evidence of infection with adenovirus 36 were more likely to be fat. In tests on 124 children aged eight to 18, the virus was present in more than 20 per cent of those who were obese, compared with less than 6 per cent of the rest. Among those infected with adenovirus 36, four out of five were obese.
Children carrying the virus weighed on average almost 50lb more than those who were not. Among the obese children, who accounted for half the total, those with the virus weighed on average 35lb more than the rest.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/western-surge-in-obesity-may-have-been-caused-by-a-virus-2084737.html
September 23rd, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Obesity is becoming the most prevalent public health problem in industrialised nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Thursday, and called on governments to take comprehensive action to tackle it.
Since 1980, when fewer than one in 10 people in OECD member nations were obese, rates have doubled and even tripled in many countries, the OECD said in a report released Thursday in Paris.
“If recent trends continue, projections suggest that more than two out of three people will be overweight or obese in at least some OECD countries within the next 10 years,” the OECD said in the study, “Obesity and the Economics of Prevention”.
According to the OECD’s website, one is obese when one has a body mass index (BMI) of 30. The BMI is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by the square of one’s height in metres.
The reasons for the surge in obesity include: changes in food production that “have cut the price of calories dramatically”, changing living and working conditions that reduced the amount of physical activity, increased levels of stress, and longer working hours, the OECD said.
Women are more often obese than men, but male obesity rates have been growing faster than female rates in most OECD countries.
In addition, obesity is more common among the poor and the less educated. These social disparities are also present in obesity rates for children, the organisation said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the problem is most acute in the world’s most prosperous country, the US, where in 2008 nearly three in four women and two in three men were overweight, and about one-third of all adults were obese.
As a result, obesity accounts for between five and 10 percent of total health expenditure in the US, compared to one to three percent in most other countries.
“And costs will rise rapidly in coming years as obesity-related diseases set in,” the OECD warned.
The organisation called on governments to take action to “help people change their lifestyle”, including health education and promotion, regulation and fiscal measures as well as lifestyle counseling by physicians.
These methods “are a better investment than many treatments currently provided by OECD health care systems”, the organisation said.
Such a comprehensive strategy would prevent 155,000 deaths from chronic diseases in Japan every year, 75,000 in Italy, 70,000 in Britain and 40,000 in Canada.
September 24th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Britain is the fattest country in Europe and the fifth most overweight of the world’s 33 most-developed nations, a new study has revealed.
A quarter of all adults in the U.K. are obese and a staggering 66 per cent of men and 57 per cent of women are overweight.
The U.S. remains home to the fattest people on the planet, with more than three out of ten men and women clinically obese.
It is followed by Mexico, Chile and New Zealand and then Britain.
The world’s thinnest people are the Japanese where only three per cent of people are obese and one in five is overweight.
The South Koreans, Swiss, Norwegians and Italians are the next slimmest people, according to the report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314807/How-Britain-fattest-country-Europe-fifth-overweight-world.html
September 26th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
UK Restaurants need to print calorie information on menus to ensure diners know how healthy their meals are, says the Government.
Calls from health secretary Andrew Lansley urged businesses to set a target date by which they will set out the nutritional value of products to their customers.
He said: ‘Our aim is to give people the help and advice they need to adopt a healthy lifestyle, and I want to make it as easy as possible for them to do that.
‘That’s why we’re working with industry to bring in calorie information on menus.
‘As a nation we are too unhealthy. We cost the NHS billions of pounds a year through bad diet, lack of exercise and poor lifestyle choices. We can and we must improve this.’
He suggested the voluntary move as he introduced plans for a network of businesses, health charities and public health experts to help people live longer, healthier lives’. The group would address the issue of calorie labelling as part of its work.
The first companies to introduce calorie labelling – including Burger King, Pizza Hut and Pret a Manger – did so with few problems, according to The Food Standards Agency (FSA).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315302/Restaurants-asked-print-calories-menus-latest-combat-unhealthy-eating.html
September 26th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
The NHS should pay fat people to lose weight and smokers to quit, and give children toys for eating their fruit and vegetables, according to a report commissioned by its rationing body.
The advice, which will be published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence tomorrow, has been greeted with anger by critics who claimed such “bribes” were draining the public purse of money which could be better spent elsewhere.
The study examined a series of schemes, including one in Kent which pays dieters up to £425 for losing weight and another in Scotland which gives pregnant women shopping vouchers worth up to £650 for quitting the habit.
It also looked at programmes in Oxford, Manchester, London and Bangor in Wales, where schools have been given toys such as juggling balls, stickers and pencils to children who have eaten their fruit and vegetables.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8025014/Taxpayer-should-fund-bribes-for-obese-and-smokers.html
September 29th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Feeding babies milk enriched with nutrients to promote faster weight gain in infancy makes them fatter later in life, researchers suggest.
Body fat mass in five to eight-year-olds was 22 per cent to 38 per cent greater in those who were given nutrient-enriched milk as babies than those who had standard formula, according to a team based at University College London’s Institute of Child Health.
Previous studies have shown a link between over-nutrition in childhood and overweight adults in animals, but this is the first demonstration in humans when other factors, such as the size of mothers, are ruled out.
The scientists said the findings, published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, have important public health implications as Britain tackles the problem of obesity. They confirm previous estimates that more than 20 per cent of adult obesity may be caused by over-nutrition or other early excessive weight gain in infancy.
Researchers looked at two randomised, controlled, double blind studies – where neither they nor the mothers knew which kind of milk they were assigned – involving newborn babies.
Professor Atul Singhal, who led the research, said: “This study robustly demonstrates a link between early nutrition and having more fat in later life in humans. Immediately, it raises the issue about the best way to feed those children small for gestational age, which should now be evaluated in the light of all current evidence. In public health terms, it supports the case in the general population for breastfeeding – since it is harder to overfeed a breastfed baby.”