Entries Tagged 'Diet and Weight Loss News' ↓

Ever heard of synchronized menstruation? It’s when women living together for a long period of time have their menstruation almost at the same time. What does menstruation has to do with your weight? It’s this synchronization that seems to be also getting noticed when it comes to people who are often together. Something like synchronized weight gain?

This came into my attention after reading this article from Jonathan Lapook asking if obesity is contagious.

Jonathan mentioned about this research, Framingham Heart Study, suggesting that a person’s weight can be adopted by other people he or she is often with.

Continue reading →

Treating obesity will be tantamount to treating asthma if this discovery about the immune system cells, known as Th2 cells, that links the two conditions yields more favorable results.

Although some speculate that asthma causes obesity because of having to resort to a more sedentary lifestyle, weight gain, or the increase in body mass index or BMI, happens even before asthma develops, which strengthened the link between asthma and obesity.

This linkage made researchers follow through their study about Th2 cells, which inflames the lungs and produces protein that affects the appetite of a person.

The significance of this study is for asthmatic people to improve their condition.

Read full report.

[image from Lara Ferroni]

Tags: cell, obesity, asthma, research, discovery, BMI

A news article about pregnancy weight affecting whether a child would be obese or not confirms my theory on what caused me to become someone who’d be easier to gain weight than lose some pounds.

According to the report, a study conducted by British and New Zealand researchers that there’s a better chance of a kid getting obese if his or her mother did not mind her weight during pregnancy.

Scientists at the University of Auckland’s Liggins centre say the way the foetus adapts to the environment in the womb can determine how it reacts to food later in life.

If the womb is low in nutrients, the foetus may predict food supplies will be low later in life and set its metabolism to store and conserve fat, the researchers led by Professor Peter Gluckman said in a statement Tuesday.

Continue reading →

Many thinks that exercising continuously will make their weight loss endeavor more successful. It’s as if breaking a sweat should never stop just to earn that head-turning figure. Now that notion is about to be dumped…

A Japanese research about two sets of people exercising - one having a continuous exercise with a rest period of 1 hour and one having two exercise bouts with a 20-minute rest between each bout, showed results that fat breakdown is greater for those who participated in the exercise with a break.

Continue reading →

Orlistat, the generic name of Xenical and Alli , has been reportedly discovered to be able to kill cancer cells through binding with a protein called fatty acid synthase in tumor cells. This causes it stop functioning and the tumor cell eventually dies.

This protein is found in tumor cells that attack the brain, breast, colon, liver, lung and prostate.

Continue reading →

A research finding from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri on a protein called CD36, which show that it is found only in the proximal segment and not the distal segment of the intestine, is believed to be key information for future basis of weight loss treatments.

The research involved studying CD36 protein, a membrane protein identified in past studies to be found in cell surfaces of the lumen of the digestive tract, fat cells, heart and skeletal muscle tissue. This protein has been shown to be of importance in facilitating fatty acid absorption. However, past research involving normal mice versus genetically altered mice without CD36 protein showed no significant difference in intestinal fat absorption.

Continue reading →

The advisory channel to the FDA voted that the agency should not approve it due to the psychiatric risks observed from the use of Acomplia/Zimulti, the diet pill scientifically known as rimonabant from Sanofi-aventis.

Its company has withdrawn its application for U.S. approval because they lacked the time to fix the problems.

Marc Cluzel, a senior vice president of scientific and medical affairs at Sanofi, said on the conference call that the company is committed to getting the medicine approved in the U.S. Sanofi will meet with the regulator soon to try to better understand what’s needed to prove the drug’s safety, he said.

Continue reading →

Aside from usual side digestive system effects from weight loss pills such as gas and diarrhea, users of Alli should also take note of another side effect - vitamin deficiency.

This is because as Alli reduces absorption of fat in the gastrointestinal system, it also decreases the absorption of vitamins.

So according to Dr. David Westbrock, New Profile Weight Management Center’s director and an endocrinologist, it’s important to also take vitamin supplements while using this diet pill.

If you’d like to learn more about Alli, you might want to read “Are You Losing It?” Alli’s diet book.

Tags: Alli, vitamins, diet pill, side effects

As an answer to lack of education on what’s the ideal portion of food for each person, weight management experts came up with a new tool for weight loss - Portion-Control Dishes.

Dr. Pedersen’s team conducted a six-month study of commercially available portion control plates and bowls in 2004. The plates were divided into sections that marked appropriate portions for carbohydrates, proteins, cheese and sauce, with the rest left open for vegetables.

“The weight loss that we saw in this study is similar to weight loss seen in studies of medications for weight loss — but without the associated potential for side effects and at a fraction of the cost,” Pedersen told CTV Newsnet from Calgary.

The sections approximately totaled an 800-calorie meal for men and a 650-calorie meal for women. The cereal bowl was designed to allow a 200-calorie meal of cereal and milk.

The diet plate has line markings to delineate proper portion sizes for meats, starches and vegetables. The main aim of this tool is to help obese patients control their calorie consumption to improve weight loss results and to control the blood sugar levels of those with Type 2 diabetes.

via CTV

Tags: diet plate, weight loss, portion size, diabetes, blood sugar

I’m surprised that this cGMP (current good manufacturing practices) rule on manufacturing dietary supplements has just been issued recently.

“The final rule will help ensure that dietary supplements are manufactured with controls that result in a consistent product free of contamination, with accurate labeling,” said Robert E. Brackett, Ph.D., director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Under the final rule, manufacturers are required to evaluate the identity, purity, strength, and composition of their dietary supplements. If dietary supplements contain contaminants or do not contain the dietary ingredient they are represented to contain, FDA would consider those products to be adulterated or misbranded.

The aim of the final rule is to prevent inclusion of the wrong ingredients, too much or too little of a dietary ingredient, contamination by substances such as natural toxins, bacteria, pesticides, glass, lead and other heavy metals, as well as improper packaging and labeling.

The final rule includes flexible requirements that can evolve with improvements in scientific methods used for verifying identity, purity strength, and composition of dietary supplements.

I thought this has been a part of the cGMP all the while.

via FDA

Tags: cGMP, FDA, diet supplement, manufacturing