Tag Archives: Obesity
Health: The Benefits Of “Intermittent Fasting” For People In High-Stress Jobs
From Oxford University Press – OUP (May 1, 2020):
…ultra-processed foods are generally the foods available to nurses working nightshifts, firefighters returning to their department after a call, police officers 
patrolling neighborhoods, or military soldiers during field-exercises. Thus, time-restricted eating removes the added stress of what to eat, and serves as a practical intervention conducive to the schedules of many people.
Time-restricted eating has been shown to lower circulating insulin, blood pressure, body fat and overall body weight, inflammation, and oxidative stress.
Time-restricted eating is a nutrition intervention which alternates between a period of fasting (12 – 16 hours) followed by a period of eating (8 – 12 hours). Unlike other diets, which focus on the caloric content of a meal or which foods you should eat, time-restricted eating focuses exclusively on when you eat by compressing and standardizing the feeding window each day. In turn, people following this type of eating pattern naturally enter a state of caloric deficit.
Rise Of Obesity: “Sugar – The Unsweetened Truth”
Obesity is at the root of silent epidemics such as type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Laura Schmidt explores the causes and solutions, taking lessons from tobacco: reducing the availability of harmful substances reduces consumption, thereby reducing harms to health. She talks about the UCSF Healthy Beverage Initiative and the effects it has had on employee health.
Recorded on 02/13/2020. [5/2020] [Show ID: 35586]
Diet Infographic: Most “Macronutrient Diets” Reduce Weight & Blood Pressure In 6 Months (BMJ)
From a BMJ Study article (April, 2020):
Compared with usual diet, moderate certainty evidence supports modest weight loss and substantial reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure for low carbohydrate (eg, Atkins, Zone), low fat (eg, Ornish), and moderate macronutrient (eg, DASH, Mediterranean) diets at six but not 12 months. Differences between diets are, however, generally trivial to small, implying that people can choose the diet they prefer from among many of the available diets (fig 6) without concern about the magnitude of benefits.
Introduction
The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2018.1 In response, authorities have made dietary recommendations for weight management and cardiovascular risk reduction.23 Diet programmes—some focusing on carbohydrate reduction and others on fat reduction—have been promoted widely by the media and have generated intense debates about their relative merit. Millions of people are trying to lose weight by changing their diet. Thus establishing the effect of dietary macronutrient patterns (carbohydrate reduction v fat reduction v moderate macronutrients) and popular named dietary programmes is important.
Biological and physiological mechanisms have been proposed to explain why some dietary macronutrient patterns and popular dietary programmes should be better than others. A previous network meta-analysis, however, suggested that differences in weight loss between dietary patterns and individual popular named dietary programmes are small and unlikely to be important.4 No systematic review and network meta-analysis has examined the comparative effectiveness of popular dietary programmes for reducing risk factors for cardiovascular disease, an area of continuing controversy.
New Study: Obesity Results In Six Times Higher Rates Of Type 2 Diabetes, 3X More Than Genetic Risks (2020)
From a Diabetologia online study release (April 15, 2020):
“Having normal body weight is crucial in the prevention of type 2 diabetes, regardless of genetic predisposition.”
“The results suggest that type 2 diabetes prevention by weight management and healthy lifestyle is critical across all genetic risk groups.”
“Overall, the results indicate that a favorable lifestyle should be universally recommended in the prevention of type 2 diabetes, regardless of genetic predisposition, thus supporting current public health guidelines,”
Methods
We examined the joint association of genetic predisposition, obesity and unfavourable lifestyle with incident type 2 diabetes using a case-cohort study nested within the Diet, Cancer and Health cohort in Denmark. The study sample included 4729 individuals who developed type 2 diabetes during a median 14.7 years of follow-up, and a randomly selected cohort sample of 5402 individuals.
Results
Obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) and unfavourable lifestyle were associated with higher risk for incident type 2 diabetes regardless of genetic predisposition (p > 0.05 for GRS–obesity and GRS–lifestyle interaction). The effect of obesity on type 2 diabetes risk (HR 5.81 [95% CI 5.16, 6.55]) was high, whereas the effects of high genetic risk (HR 2.00 [95% CI 1.76, 2.27]) and unfavourable lifestyle (HR 1.18 [95% CI 1.06, 1.30]) were relatively modest.
Obesity Study: “Late Night Snacking” Older Adults – Higher Fat Levels Than Early Eaters On Same Diet
From a PLOS Biology Journal study (Feb 20, 2020):
The major finding of this study is that the timing of feeding over the day leads to significant differences in the metabolism of an equivalent 24-h nutritional intake. Daily timing of nutrient availability coupled with daily/circadian control of metabolism drives a switch in substrate preference such that the late-evening Snack Session resulted in significantly lower LO compared to the Breakfast Session.
Developed countries are experiencing an epidemic of obesity that leads to many serious health problems, foremost among which are increasing rates of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. While weight gain and obesity are primarily determined by diet and exercise, there is tremendous interest in the possibility that the daily timing of eating might have a significant impact upon weight management [1–3]. Many physiological processes display day/night rhythms, including feeding behavior, lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, body temperature, and sleep.
These daily oscillations are controlled by the circadian clock, which is composed of an autoregulatory biochemical mechanism that is expressed in tissues throughout the body and is coordinated by a master pacemaker located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei of the brain (aka the SCN [1,4]). The circadian system globally controls gene expression patterns so that metabolic pathways are differentially regulated over the day, including switching between carbohydrate and lipid catabolism [1,3,5–9]. Therefore, ingestion of the same food at different times of day could lead to differential metabolic outcomes, e.g., lipid oxidation (LO) versus accumulation; however, whether this is true or not is unclear.
Study: Maintaining Weight Loss Tied To Healthier Eating Routines Formed Over Two-Year Period
From a New York Times online article (March 16, 2020):
“Maintaining weight loss can get easier over time. Over time, less intentional effort, though not no effort, is needed to be successful. After about two years, healthy eating habits become part of the routine. Healthy choices become more automatic the longer people continue to make them. They feel weird when they don’t.”
Among the useful strategies identified in the new study is to keep lower calorie foods like fruits and vegetables more accessible. “We eat what we see,” Dr. Phelan noted. The corollary is equally important: keep high-calorie, less nourishing foods relatively inaccessible and out of sight if not out of the house entirely.
The new study led by Dr. Phelan, professor of kinesiology and public health at California Polytechnic State University, identified habits and strategies that can be keys to success for millions. Yes, like most sensible weight-loss plans, they involve healthful eating and regular physical activity. But they also include important self-monitoring practices and nonpunitive coping measures that can be the crucial to long-term weight management.
Studies: “Ultra-Processed Foods” Are 58% Of All Calories In U.S., & Obesity Epidemic’s Major Cause
From a The Guardian online article (Feb 12, 2020):
What characterizes ultra-processed foods is that they are so altered that it can be hard to recognize the underlying ingredients. These are concoctions of concoctions, engineered from ingredients that are already highly refined, such as cheap vegetable oils, flours, whey proteins and sugars, which are then whipped up into something more appetizing with the help of industrial additives such as emulsifiers.
From a MedPage Today online article (March 7, 2020):
The top ultra-processed foods by calorie intake were breads, beverages, cakes, 
cookies and pies, salty snacks, frozen and shelf-stable dishes, pizza, and breakfast cereals.
Altogether, ultra-processed foods accounted for 58% of all calories in the U.S. diet and nearly 90% of all added sugars.
They divided foods into four categories:
- Unprocessed or minimally processed foods: Fresh, dry, or frozen fruits or vegetables, grains, legumes, meat, fish, and milk
- Processed culinary ingredients: Table sugar, oils, fats, salt, and other substances extracted from foods or from nature and used in kitchens to make culinary preparations
- Processed foods: Foods manufactured with the addition of salt, sugar, or other substances of culinary use to unprocessed or minimally-processed foods, such as canned food, simple breads, and cheese
- Ultra-processed foods: Formulations of several ingredients that — besides salt, sugar, oils, and fats — include food substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular, flavors, colors, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and other additives used to imitate sensory qualities of unprocessed or minimally-processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product
Health: Growing Concern Over “The Obesity-Cancer Link” (The Lancet)
From a The Lancet online editorial (Feb 3, 2020):
Prevention represents the most cost-effective, long-term strategy for reducing the cancer burden and associated mortality. If provided with adequate information and support to adopt a healthy lifestyle, individuals can reduce their exposure to behavioural and dietary cancer risk factors by quitting smoking, maintaining a healthy BMI, cutting down on alcohol consumption, exercising more, and eating a healthy diet rich in fruit and vegetables.
Although smoking is currently the major cause of preventable cancer cases and accounts for 22% of cancer deaths, a 2018 report from Cancer Research UK estimated that high BMI (overweight and obesity) now causes more cases of four common cancers (bowel, kidney, ovarian, and liver) in the UK than does smoking, and could overtake smoking as the biggest cause of cancer in women in the UK by 2043. According to WHO, in 2016, 1·9 billion adults around the world were overweight, of whom 650 million had obesity—triple the number in 1975. State-level projections for the USA paint an even bleaker picture going forward: by 2030, 48·9% of adults will have obesity; 24·2% of adults will have severe obesity; and severe obesity will be the most common BMI category among women, non-Hispanic black adults, and low-income adults. With such shocking statistics, the knock-on effect of the obesity epidemic for cancer prevention and control cannot be underestimated.
Health Infographics: “Hidden Sugars” In What We Eat & Drink Add Up Fast
Boomers Daily 