Fat, Dietary
Say ‘goodbye’ to back fat rolls
Even as many of us yearn to wear the sheer, body-hugging fashions available today, we are stopped by our rear reflection and the sight of dreaded back fat rolls and lumps. A study published in the October issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), reveals a new back lift procedure that removes these unsightly bumps and bulges while hiding the scar under the bra line.
“For many patients—even the very fit ones, such as an aerobics instructor—the upper to mid-line back where the rolls and bulges form was very frustrating,” said senior author Joseph Hunstad, MD and ASPS Member Surgeon. “This redundancy of skin occurs generally from aging and cannot be exercised away. For those who desire to wear form-fitting outfits, this procedure eliminates the problem.”
The study reviewed seven female patients who had the bra-line back lift between 2001 and 2007 with an average follow-up of 22 months. Pre-operative marks were placed to outline the patient’s brassiere, as well as delineate the excess back tissue to be removed. The procedure removed the redundant skin, sometimes up to 8 or 10 inches wide, and connected the remaining tissue together. According to the study, the procedure takes about an hour from start to finish. The authors have completed the bra-line back lift on 20 patients to date.
“Good” fat may be new weapon in obesity fight
A new understanding of the origins of brown fat cells—the “good” kind of fat that burns energy and keeps us warm—may lead to new treatments for obesity, two research teams reported on Wednesday.
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said they used a single molecular switch to turn immature muscle cells into brown fat cells in the lab, suggesting that brown fat may be more akin to muscle cells than conventional white fat cells.
A second team from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, found a protein important for bone growth helped promote the development of brown fat tissue in mice.
Low-fat diet as heart-healthy as Mediterranean
After a heart attack, adopting either a low-fat or Mediterranean-style diet similarly and significantly benefits overall and cardiovascular health, research suggests.
The diets provide similar amounts of protein, carbohydrates, cholesterol, and unhealthy saturated fats, but a Mediterranean diet has higher amounts of “healthy” monounsaturated fats, particularly omega-3 fatty acids found in fish.
Either diet, when applied with equal intensity, can be an effective component of post-heart attack lifestyle changes, researchers say. Post-heart attack patients who followed these diets for 4 years significantly reduced their risk for subsequent cardiovascular events, Dr. Katherine R. Tuttle and colleagues found.
Mood hormone may affect fat, U.S. study finds
A brain chemical strongly linked to mood and appetite may also directly affect fat gain, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
They said levels of serotonin, the nerve-signaling chemical targeted by many antidepressants, may also direct the body to put down fat regardless of how much food is eaten.
“It may be one reason diets fail,” metabolism expert Kaveh Ashrafi of the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
McDonald’s cooking oil trans fat-free in U.S., Canada
McDonald’s Corp has switched to cooking oils free of trans fats in all of its restaurants in the United States and Canada, Chief Executive Jim Skinner said on Thursday.
The restaurants made the switch over the past few months, he said.
By the end of the year, McDonald’s pies and other baked goods will also be free of trans fats, Skinner told the company’s annual meeting.
Novel mechanisms controlling insulin release and fat deposition discovered
Scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have in two recent studies shown that a receptor called ALK7 plays important roles in the regulation of body fat deposition as well as the release of insulin from beta-cells in the pancreas. These findings have implications for the development of treatments against diabetes and obesity.
“We have shown in animal studies that removing the ALK7 receptor improves insulin release by beta-cells in the pancreas, and at the same time decreases fat deposition in situations of high caloric intake”, says Professor Carlos Ibáñez, who lead the two studies that are now published as back-to-back papers in the PNAS. “The well-known connections between diabetes and obesity make our combined findings quite exciting.”
Up to 6 per cent of the world population is estimated to suffer from some form of diabetes, either due to a reduced ability to produce insulin, or to insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone required by cells in the body to absorb glucose from the blood, thereby providing them with energy. Obesity has been shown to increase the risk of developing diabetes, and as overweight becomes more prevalent in the human population, so do the cases of diabetes.
Fish oil has heart-rhythm stabilizing effects: study
In a prospective clinical study, the consumption of fish oil supplements had the effect of reducing the electrical irritability of the heart in people with heart rhythm disturbances.
“This stabilizing effect may be one way in which fish oil reduces mortality in patients with coronary artery disease,” Dr. Glenn D. Young from Royal Adelaide Hospital, Australia told Reuters Health.
“This study supports the more wide spread use of fish oil and/or fish consumption in coronary artery disease patients,” Young said.
Too fat? Common virus may be to blame: study
A common virus causes human adult stem cells to turn into fat cells and could explain why some people become obese, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
The research builds on prior studies of adenovirus-36, a common cause of respiratory and eye infections, and it may lead to an obesity vaccine, they said.
Obese people tend to pick overweight mates
A new UK study provides additional evidence that heavy people are more likely to choose other overweight individuals as mates.
This phenomenon is known as “assortative mating” - when men and women tend to select partners according to nonrandom attributes such as height, religion, age and smoking habits.
Abnormal fat metabolism underlies heart problems in diabetic patients
Heart disease hits people with diabetes twice as often as people without diabetes. In those with diabetes, cardiovascular complications occur at an earlier age and often result in premature death, making heart disease the major killer of diabetic people. But why is heart disease so prevalent among diabetics?
To help answer that question, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been analyzing the fat (lipid) composition of heart tissue from laboratory mice with diabetes. They have found that heart cells of diabetic mice lose an important lipid from cellular components that generate energy for the heart, and their latest research shows this happens at the very earliest stages of diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes and heart disease—Heavier may mean healthier
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences studying links between an early sign of heart disease called coronary artery calcification and body fat have found that, paradoxically, more fat may have some advantages, at least for people – particularly women – who have type 1 diabetes. Cardiovascular complications, including heart disease, are a leading cause of death for people with diabetes, who tend to suffer cardiovascular disease decades earlier than non-diabetics.
“Gaining weight may reflect good or better treatment with insulin therapy, which may partly explain why participants who gained weight over time had lower mortality rates,” said Trevor Orchard, M.D., professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), who is presenting the findings during the 67th annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association. Scientific sessions take place June 22-26 at the McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago.
Exercise, diet reduce fatty liver in obese teens
Efforts to help obese children become more active and eat better can help reduce the amount of fatty tissue in their livers.
Known medically as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, this condition is becoming increasingly common as the prevalence of obesity increases, Dr. Ana R. Damaso and colleagues from the Federal University of Sao Paulo in Brazil note in their report. There are currently no drugs available to reverse fatty liver disease, which can progress to cirrhosis, even among young patients, the doctors add.
They set out to determine whether a 12-week program including nutrition education and two one-hour exercise sessions per week would have any effect on fatty liver in a group of 73 obese teens.
Wendy’s cuts most trans fats from fries, chicken
Wendy’s International Inc. on Thursday said it would significantly cut trans fats from its menu, beating market leader McDonald’s Corp., which still has not made good on its promise to remove the artery-clogging fats from french fries in the United States.
Wendy’s, the No. 3 U.S. burger chain, said its restaurants in the United States and Canada will switch to a new blend of corn and soy oil for french fries and breaded chicken items starting in August.
The move will reduce trans fats in french fries to just zero to 0.5 grams, depending on serving sizes, while all of the breaded chicken products will have zero grams of trans fats.
Cloned pigs could produce healthier bacon
In what sounds like a bacon lover’s dream, scientists have genetically engineered piglets to carry a heart-healthy form of fat normally found in fish.
However, it will likely be some time before the results appear on supermarket shelves, if ever.
But the research, reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology, marks the first time that livestock have been genetically altered to produce omega-3 fatty acids—a type of fat, found largely in fish, that has been linked to lower heart disease risk.
McDonald’s to put fat content on wrappers
McDonald’s Corp. customers will soon know that the Big Mac they bought contains almost half their recommended daily fat intake just by looking at the wrapper.
In its latest measure to fend off critics that blame the world’s largest restaurant company for contributing to rising incidents of obesity and other health problems, McDonald’s on Tuesday said it will start printing nutritional information on the packaging of its food.
