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How A High-Fat Diet In Childhood May Wire The Brain For Addiction Later On – Forbes
Forbes | How A High-Fat Diet In Childhood May Wire The Brain For Addiction Later On Forbes A fascinating new study looks into what may happen in childhood to predispose a person's brain to addiction later in lifeit finds that a high-fat diet in adolescence may wire the brain's reward system to be more sensitive to real drugs later on ... |
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How A High-Fat Diet In Childhood May Wire The Brain For Addiction Later On - Forbes
How to lose weight without restricting yourself – The Independent
Weight loss is always a result of energy balance, this is just science.
Energy in < Energy out = weight loss.
Energy in > Energy out = weight gain.
Energy in = Energy out = no change in weight.
This is thermodynamics and it applies to everyone. Every diet on the planet works in exactly the same way they change the energy balance equation to cause weight loss, they do this by creating a caloric deficit, as this is the ONLY way to lose body fat.
Take the low carb diet for example, it aims to reduce overall calorie intake by restricting the intake of carbs because removing carbs from your diet will slash your calories.
We also have the Paleo diet that demonises processed food a significant portion of a typical western diet is processed therefore eliminating this food group will result in a large calorie reduction.
Weight Watchers employs portion control in an effort to create the desired calorie deficit. It seems theres a trend here.
The take-home message is dont make dieting any harder for yourself than it already is.
When you look past the marketing and the hype, ALL diets work in exactly the same way. Some diets just place unnecessary restrictions in the hope that it will create that all-important calorie deficit.
But, theres an easier way; a way that doesnt involve restriction.
- 2-4 meals a day
- Use your palm as a portion measure.
- 1 portion of protein (meat/eggs/greek yoghurt/fish etc) each meal.
- 1 portion of carbs (bread/rice/pasta/breakfast cereal/beans/oats etc) each meal.
- 1 portion of veg (any veg at all) each meal.
- 0.5 x portions of fats (cheese/nut butters/oils/nuts) each meal.
- 2 snacks per day fruit and/or protein bars make great snacks.
I recommend most clients do this in conjunction with tracking their food and drink intake using a calorie tracking app such as My Fitness Pal or my own app Harry Smith Fitness.
This way, over time youll see the relationship between your caloric intake and your bodyweight/body fat levels and can make minor adjustments dependent on your goals.
If you fancy some naughty food just have it! Track it in the app and work around it.
Flexibility is key to sustainability and sustainability is key to success. Theres no need to overcomplicate it.
Harry Smith is a personal trainer. Follow him on Facebook.
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How to lose weight without restricting yourself - The Independent
My month on the Whole30 diet – Mother Nature Network (blog)
On day five of my voluntary participation in the Whole30 program, I posted this as my Facebook status.
The diet claims to "eliminate the most common craving-inducing, blood sugar disrupting, gut-damaging, inflammatory food groups for a full 30 days" and says it will change your life by resetting your eating habits.
Those food groups are sugar, grains, dairy, beans and alcohol. Except for the alcohol, I stuck with the diet, not counting a few slip-ups that I could count on one hand. Since I write extensively about wine, there were times I had to drink, but I kept it to a minimum, even cancelling some tastings that weren't mandatory.
You may be wondering what you can eat on the program. The diet consists mainly of meat and seafood, vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts and nut butters (except peanut), eggs and healthy oils. You are also allowed ghee on the program, even though you can't have any other dairy.
Nuts, except peanuts, are allowed on the Whole30 diet and they are one of the foods that kept me sane. (Photo: prasit jamkajornkiat/Shutterstock)
I've put on a lot of weight over the past year and a half. The stress of divorce got to me, understandably, and I'd been having trouble getting back to healthy habits. But, that's not the reason I chose such a restrictive diet. I chose this diet because my feet hurt. I had swelling along with planter's fasciitis that made it painful to walk, and at night, the aching in my feet and ankles would keep me awake. A friend had told me she learned that she was allergic to dairy and gluten, and when she eliminated those from her diet, her foot pain went away.
I figured Whole30 could be a way to see if my foot pain was being caused by something I was eating without having to go through allergy testing, plus it could put me back on the road to not eating whatever the hell I wanted, whenever the hell I wanted.
Did it work? Somewhat. Although the underlying planter's fasciitis is still an issue, the swelling in my feet, and my hands, has gone down. I can get out of bed in the morning without searing pain in my feet when they first hit the floor. Aching that I had in the ligaments in my forearms also went away. There were other positive benefits. The skin under my eyes is now skin color and not gray. My rosacea has tamed down a bit. Some digestive problems that I've had for years improved. I sleep much better and there have been several nights where I've slept through the night. (That's incredibly rare.)
The 30 days were very hard at times, but I think they were worth it. There were a few foods that kept me from going insane: sweet potatoes, almond butter, nuts, bananas and ghee (not all together, of course). Now comes the even harder part, though, taking what I have learned, keeping what's good, and figuring out how to keep a lot of these ingredients down to a minimum in my diet. And while the better health I've experienced over the past 30 days have been wonderful, there have been things I've learned that are also important.
The first week on Whole30, I spent a lot of money on food, went to the grocery store almost every day, and got incredibly frustrated. Almost everything has sugar in it. I know that many foods that shouldn't have sugar in them do, but I didn't realize just how many. I spent hours in Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, reading ingredients, trying to find a nitrate-free bacon that also didn't have sugar. I couldn't do it. I asked both of the local meat vendors at the farmers market if their nitrate-free bacons had sugar. They did. I did find a sugar-free, nitrate-free turkey bacon and it was vile.
I had to read every jar of almond butter and every container of nuts two things that should never need sugar to make sure they were sugar-free. After reading the ingredients in all the mayonnaise on the store shelf, I ended up making my own. (That turns out to be time-consuming but really worth it and makes the best deviled eggs I've ever had.)
You know what else has sugar in it? Store-made rotisserie chicken. I bought one my first day to have something to pick on, and when it dawned on me the next day there might be sugar in the solution, I read the ingredients. I cursed.
This what I learned: even packaged or prepared foods that I normally think of as not-so-bad choices have ingredients in them that I'm unaware of. I already cook a lot of my foods from scratch. I need to do even more of that, and I need to keep reading ingredient lists, even when I think I know what's in a food.
If you don't expect these zucchini strips to taste like zucchini, you probably won't be disappointed in them. (Photo: Robin Shreeves)
In the first week, I went crazy with new recipes and new ingredients. I tried to make chicken nuggets with almond flour. I made meatballs without breading or cheese but with way too many spices. The dog really liked both of those dishes. The worst, though, was the beef fried cauliflower rice. I've heard great things about riced cauliflower. I've seen moms rave on social media that their children had no idea their rice had been replaced with cauliflower. I call B.S.
The beef fried cauliflower rice was made entirely with Whole30 compliant ingredients, and at a glance it looked like rice. It was made with fresh vegetables, grass-fed beef, and coconut aminos instead of soy sauce. This is when my 15-year-old rebelled against the plan. Did I forget to mention he decided to do it with me? He did great until day five when I made this dish. Not only does riced cauliflower not soak up any juices, making it incredibly soupy, the coconut aminos make it smell like a pina colada. Coconut is not what you're supposed to smell when you're bringing beef fried rice up to your mouth.
This is what I learned: I was much better off cooking up steak or chicken and having a bunch of vegetables on the side than trying to make Whole30 recipes. If I was going to try something different, I decided to look at for what it was, not what it was supposed to be. For example, I used a spiralizer to make what some people would refer to as zucchini noodles or "zoodles" as a substitute for pasta. There is no way I could be satisfied if I tried to think of zucchini as pasta, even if is in pasta-like strips. So, when I made the dish above sauted tomatoes and garlic in sheet and olive oil with zucchini and cooked chicken I chose to just think of it as zucchini, tomatoes and chicken, nothing more. It was quite yummy, but it was nothing like pasta.
That day five Facebook status was not the only one I made. Here's one from day nine.
This is what I learned: some good comes out of thinking your unpleasant thoughts all the way through, and that may be one of the biggest benefits of the elimination diet. I did a lot of sorting through my feelings during the 30 days not just my feelings about food, but things that were going on in my head about my work, my dating life, and even my kids. It was certainly an unexpected benefit.
Crab Bruschetta Eggplant Toast isn't really on toast, but the combination still works well. (Photo: Robin Shreeves)
I'm still figuring out what comes next. As I write this, I'm a few days out of Whole30. I haven't eaten much of what isn't allowed on the diet. Yesterday I had oatmeal and some milk in my mashed potatoes, but ate Whole30 the rest of the time. Today, it's been all fruit and almond butter so far.
There are several foods I learned to appreciate on the plan that I'm going to keep eating. I really enjoyed one of my go-to breakfasts of roasted sweet potato slices, mashed avocado, diced cherry tomatoes and a fried egg. I'll keep eating that. Larabar's Pecan Pie bars were something I could keep in my bag to eat on the run that I'll continue to buy. I made Crab Bruschetta Eggplant Toast that was so good I'll make it again, and spring for better crab next time. But, let's be real. You can't make toast out of eggplant so I'll just call it Crab Bruschetta on Eggplant.
And, here's the most amazing thing. I have no craving at all to add sugar back into my diet. Last night, I was upset and couldn't sleep. No one would have blamed for grabbing a pint of ice cream over this particular upset, but I didn't even open the freezer. Instead, I cut up a banana and strawberries and ate them. I do feel as if my sugar cravings have been reset. I'm also aware that it wouldn't take too many bowls of ice cream to bring them back.
There's one big problem that I always knew would be a problem. By eliminating all those foods at once, it's unclear which one or ones were contributing to some of my health issues that improved. I think I'll be adding foods back in slowly and watching my reaction. I'm also considering doing a Whole30 before 6 p.m. sort of plan, completely knocking off Mark Bittman's Vegan before 6 p.m. idea.
Maybe I'll have to do another post a month from now to talk about the next 30 days.
It should be noted that in a study of 38 diets, U.S. News & World Report ranked Whole30 as number 38. They had this to say about the health and nutrition of the plan:
The panel from U.S. News said that while the diet is not particularly unsafe, it is relatively likely to spur temporary weight loss. One expert noted that it is "the antithesis of a long-term healthy dietary pattern."
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My month on the Whole30 diet - Mother Nature Network (blog)
India’s limits on selling cattle could hurt industry, diets – Sacramento Bee
Sacramento Bee | India's limits on selling cattle could hurt industry, diets Sacramento Bee FILE - In this Sunday, March 26, 2017, file photo, Mehta, 40, stands at a slaughter house where he used to work after it was shutdown by authorities in Allahabad, India. The Indian government has banned the sale of cows and buffaloes for slaughter in a ... |
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India's limits on selling cattle could hurt industry, diets - Sacramento Bee
The Fat Fad: Low-carb ketogenic diet catching on in Yakima – Yakima Herald-Republic
For dinner one night last week, Mandy Hale laid out ingredients for a pizza: bacon, sausage, onion, ricotta cheese, eggs, butter, almond flour. For dessert, she made a flourless strawberry shortcake.
This is the ketogenic diet, or keto for short the latest health craze to sweep the nation. And yes, it includes plenty of bacon.
From her office in Yakima, Hale has built an online community of people seeking advice and solidarity in following the high-fat food plan, where the majority of daily calories come from fat, and almost no carbohydrates.
In her own experience with the diet, Hale lost roughly 60 pounds in less than four months, lowered her triglycerides and got her hormones back in balance.
She has since leveraged her experience into a new health coaching business.
I just started having people contacting me going, What the heck are you doing? I want whatever youre having, Hale recalled.
But like any diet plan, keto is not a panacea for all ailments, physicians and licensed dietitians say. And its not something to enter into lightly.
Its not something that you can say, Im going to do this for a couple months and lose some pounds, Yakima dietitian Katie Thorner said.
It isnt something you can dabble in. Its something you actually need to know what youre doing to actually be effective in its application.
The ketogenic diet works by sending your body into ketosis, which causes it to burn fat for fuel.
Our body will first use glucose or sugar as energy, for our muscles, our brain. Thats No. 1, explained Rocio Petersen, a dietitian with Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic. Plan B, say, in starvation mode, (if youre) not getting enough food or fuels, our liver can use fat and some proteins, and will start using that as energy. Its essentially our backup.
Ketosis kicks in after two or three weeks, but Petersen cautioned that the switch is not pleasant at first: Thats starvation mode. You wont feel very good those first few days, if you are trying a ketogenic diet.
Keto proponents sometimes call this keto flu, as your body takes a week or so to adjust to no sugar.
The ketogenic diet requires some math: 60 to 80 percent of a persons daily calories are supposed to come from fat; 15 to 35 percent come from protein; and 5 percent or less from carbohydrates, including vegetables.
That 5 percent translates to only about 20 or 30 grams of carbs.
The average person consumes 30 to 75 grams of carbs in a single meal, Petersen said. To limit to just 30 grams, That would be, all day, you ate one-and-a-half apples, and thats all the carbohydrates you had, she said.
People who follow a ketogenic diet use a lot of coconut oil and butter in their cooking, along with olive oil and avocado oil, but not highly processed canola, vegetable or seed oils.
Keto recipes include significant amounts of avocado, eggs, almond or coconut flours, cauliflower (to replace carbs like potatoes or rice), cheese, beef, chicken and fish.
Fruit is minimal, though berries are typically an acceptable dessert. No added sugars; ketogenic cooks use low-carb sweeteners instead.
This diet doesnt have to be restrictive, Hale said. Through sharing her experience with others, shes decided to pursue a degree in nutrition and has set up an office from which she offers fat-fueled health coaching and meal plan help. This is the diet I tell people you can have bacon and your cake, too, just make your own cake with better ingredients, and sometimes it tastes better than the original.
Also, for people who have stayed in ketosis long enough to become fat-adapted which may take a couple months, Hale says indulging in a carb-heavy slice of cake every now and then wont send them back to square one.
(If, however, they go on a weeklong sugar binge and fall off the wagon, she also helps coach people into getting back on track.)
In the Yakima area, Hale has been talking with some local businesses about offering keto-friendly food.
Sundance Espresso in Selah, which occupies the former North Town building, has started offering cheese-and-salami snack packs as well as a salad with salami, bacon, egg and ranch dressing. Theyre also looking to serve coffee drinks with a dollop of coconut oil or Kerrygold butter melted in, for the added fat.
Owner Tim Lantrip is trying the diet himself.
A lot of customers were asking if we would be willing to provide keto-friendly foods, especially something thats like a grab-and-go type food, he said. One thing for me that makes sense with the keto diet, is it eliminates all the sugar. To me it seems like a lot of customers that are doing the keto diet have lost a lot of weight.
Selah resident Bethanie Lundgren is part of Hales Fat-Fueled Friends Facebook group. She started the keto diet at the start of 2017, and also started going to the gym to do high-intensity interval training. Shes lost weight and seen an improvement in muscle tone, but says the biggest difference is that she doesnt feel bloated anymore and her digestion has improved.
Ive felt tremendously better, she said. I have more energy; no more brain fog; able to keep up with my three children.
Diet science can be a maddening topic because it seems to flip-flop on an annual basis. A quick Google search for saturated fat will yield an endless list of contradictory results: American Heart Association recommends limiting saturated fat. Everyone was wrong: Saturated fat can be good for you. And so on.
Whether the keto diet is right or wrong depends on the individual and his or her goals, dietitians say.
Where the ketogenic diet is most proven is in targeted or therapeutic uses, Thorner said. Its good for people with seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, because ketones (the byproduct of ketosis) make for good brain fuel. It also may have some anti-aging properties or help with maintaining mental function.
Ketogenic diets are good for endurance athletes, though sprinters or athletes who engage in similar anaerobic exercise would need more carbohydrates, she said.
And ketogenic diets are very helpful to people with Type 2 diabetes who have not otherwise managed to get their blood sugar under control.
Eating keto also may help appetite, as eating fat and protein makes you feel more full.
While peoples main worry upon learning of a diet that sanctions bacon is usually heart health, emerging research is changing the way medical providers think about fat, cholesterol and heart disease.
Theres still little consensus among providers about whether saturated fats are OK or not, but the scales seem to be tipping away from blaming fat for all of societys ills. There also is a risk to eliminating virtually all carbohydrates from ones diet, providers say, as carbohydrates help the thyroid and adrenal glands run smoothly.
Youre going to be able to hold up to stress better if those organs feel supported and not in a starvation state, Thorner said.
For any diet to be effective and sustainable, it needs to be a long-term lifestyle change, rather than a temporary sprint.
If youre doing it for the weight loss perspective, its more of that fad diet, where you might lose it short term and if you go back to general, regular eating, most people will gain weight back, Petersen said.
Thorner said this is not a diet she would recommend to someone who has not yet stabilized his or her overall health.
The amount of work it takes to get to ketosis is usually pretty overwhelming, because its not natural to eat this way its a major change, she said. And there are lots of steps to get there, baby steps, that you can be eating better without actually being ketogenic.
Hale agreed that there are less-intensive options.
I highly recommend anybody who is considering a ketogenic diet to talk to somebody who is knowledgeable with it before jumping in, she said. That being said, anybody who decides to decrease their amount of carbs or sugars and increase their healthy fats is going to benefit.
Much of the initial weight loss with the keto diet (or any diet) likely comes from people just being mindful of what theyre eating for perhaps the first time, Petersen and Thorner said.
Anything where we can get away from the standard American diet theres middle ground here, and the pendulum doesnt have to swing one way or the other, Thorner said.
The bottom line is that to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn, says Dr. Tanny Davenport, who practices at Family Medicine of Yakima.
By restricting the types of food people can eat no carbs, for instance they are naturally going to lose weight, because they stop consuming those calories.
We know that when people lose weight, in general, they have better health outcomes. And if the tool they use to lose weight is a low-carb diet, which is usually higher in fat and protein, its hard to criticize that, Davenport said.
Theres data that show that low-carbohydrate diets, in the short-term, do better than low-fat diets, he said, but the data is hazy as to whether low-carbohydrate diets fare any better in the long run.
As for weight loss, he said, a reasonable goal for most people is to shed 5 to 7 percent of their total body weight. And a reasonable pace to do that is about 1 to 2 pounds a week, if you want to keep it off.
For the people who really succeed, its about watching what they eat and making lifestyle changes about their dietary habits, Davenport said. A change of 300 calories a day, one way or the other, can (cause a) swing from gaining a pound every couple weeks to losing a pound every couple weeks.
Living in a fast-paced world, Petersen says she wishes she could offer her patients a single easy fix to their weight and health problems.
But everythings individualized and everything takes time, she said. Lets say we got to a weight where were not happy. It didnt happen in a week; it happened over months and years. Its 100 percent normal to feel frustrated that maybe itll take weeks and months and years to get down from that.
In Hales case, eating keto is something she plans to continue for the foreseeable future. While the weight loss has slowed down not helped by the fact that shes currently writing a keto cookbook and testing recipes she still sees major benefits.
I am continually feeling better right now, she said.
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The Fat Fad: Low-carb ketogenic diet catching on in Yakima - Yakima Herald-Republic
‘Flexible’ eating is as effective as controlling calories, CSIRO study finds – The Sydney Morning Herald
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to weight-loss, and a flexible approach can be as beneficial as a structured one, according to a new study by the CSIRO.
The four-month study is, they say, "one of the largest and most comprehensive clinical studies on intermittent/alternate day fasting and meal replacements".
One hundred and sixty-four participants were divided into two groups. The first group was placed on a "flexi"diet where they "fasted"for three days of the week ((in this case "fasting"days involved between 2500 kilojoules and 4500 kilojoules depending on the individual's body size), were calorie-controlled for three and had one day where they could eat as they pleased. The second controlgroupwas on a calorie-controlled diet seven days a week consisting of two meal replacements and one "healthy"meal of vegetables and protein.
All of the participants were provided with recipe ideas and virtual consultations with dietitians.
At the end of the 16 weeks, participants had lost an average of 11 kilograms, which they had maintained in the eight-week follow-up. They also all experienced health benefits including improvements in cholesterol, insulin, glucose and blood pressure.
"It tells us that both diets work equally well in assisting people to lose weight and get health benefits there are options out there, so if a certain style of dieting does or doesn't suit someone, they can try something different," said CSIRO Research Dietitian Dr Jane Bowen.
Intermittent fasting has surged in popularity in recent years.
Bowen believes it is because people are searching for solutions to combat the rising rates of obesity (currently about two-thirds of Australian adults are overweight or obese).
"There have been many studies to show that a huge proportion of the general population are trying to lose weight at any one time and it's about exploring strategies that might be a little bit different but are more effective because we know that maintaining weight-loss is very challenging," Bowen said.
Prior to recent research highlighting the benefits of fasting, it was deemed ineffective and even unsafe.
"Science does evolve and change over time and becomes increasingly sophisticated," Bowen explained. "There have been some interesting studies to show that there are a range of health benefits from periods of fasting ... We've seen that when following that diet people have improvements in blood pressure, they had improvements in their lipid profile and even their insulin levels went down which is a good thing in terms of diabetes risk. Fasting, as a strategy for weight-loss, does come with health benefits."
While the CSIRO research was funded by meal replacement company Impromy, other experts say that meal replacements, intermittent fasting and calorie restriction are all potentially effective options.
"All of the scientific research to date, including a recent clinical trial of 12 months, suggests that popular intermittent fasting diets are equivalent to conventional diets in terms of weight loss and health benefits," said Associate Professor Amanda Salis from the University of Sydney's Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders. "This means that if intermittent fasting diets appeal to you as a means of weight loss or weight management, and if your health care provider has given you the all-clear, then they are a valid option to try."
Salis added:"Meal replacement products are a highly effective but undervalued and under-utilised tool for weight management. It is good to see them being used in an intermittent fasting regime, because meal replacement products help people to meet their needs for essential nutrients despite consuming very few kilojoules."
Dietitian Melanie McGrice agreed adding that most studies on intermittent fasting have been conducted using meal replacements.
"The advantage of intermittent fasting with meal replacements is that people can maintain a low intake of kilojoules, whilestill meeting their nutritional requirements and having the flexibility to be able to eat out with friends and family," McGrice said.
Bowen said it's important to provide people with different options as some thrive off the structure of constantly controlled calories while others struggle.
"The concept of eating less on some days in order to give the flexibility to eat more on another day is appealing for a lot of people," Bowen said.
"A lot of people might try the constant energy restriction and feel like it's just too difficult on the weekends and if they blow their diet they just give up, whereas this legitimises having a day off and acknowledges that social situations happen, parties happen and it allows people to build that into their weight management."
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'Flexible' eating is as effective as controlling calories, CSIRO study finds - The Sydney Morning Herald
Why does dieting not work? Study sheds light – Medical News Today
Many of us know from experience that losing weight is a feat of endurance. Some diets will work, others won't, and despite our best efforts, it might seem at times as though a diet makes us put on even more weight. So why does dieting not work? A new study finds a mechanism that may explain how our body limits weight loss, working against us when we are trying to lose weight.
New research published in the journal eLife has uncovered a mechanism in mice that may be responsible for those frustrating moments in a dieter's life when nothing seems to work.
Mice, our fellow mammals, share enough similarities with the human body to provide a good model for understanding how our body responds to weight loss efforts.
The team of researchers - led by Dr. Clemence Blouet from the Metabolic Research Laboratories at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom - examined a group of neurons in the brain's hypothalamus and their role in regulating appetite.
The hypothalamus is a brain area responsible for producing hormones that regulate a series of bodily functions, ranging from body temperature and hunger, to mood, libido, and sleep.
This brain region contains a group of neurons called "agouti-related neuropeptides" (AGRP), which play a key role in regulating appetite. When AGRP neurons are "on," we want to eat, but when these neurons are deactivated, they can make us stop eating almost completely. AGRP neurons have the same effect in animals.
Dr. Blouet and team used genetics to switch these neurons "on" and "off" in mice. They used transgenic mice that had been modified to have the hM3Dq designer receptor, which can only be activated by designer drugs.
This genetic "shortcut" was tested in previous studies, which used evolved G protein-coupled receptors to control the neural activity in mice remotely.
The mice were examined in special "metabolic chambers" that can measure energy expenditure. They were also fitted with probes that measured their body temperature - which is also an indicator of how much energy the body is expending.
Dr. Blouet and colleagues took energy expenditure measurements in different situations - namely, in situations where food was either more or less available.
The experiments revealed that "artificially activating the neurons in mice that don't have access to food increases the animals' activity levels but reduces the rate at which they burn calories."
This helps the mice to maintain the same weight. However, when the small rodents were allowed to eat - or even just smell or see the food - their energy expenditure levels went back to normal.
"Finally, exposing mice to a high-fat diet for several days inhibits their AGRP neurons, and causes the animals to burn calories at a faster rate," report the authors.
In other words, AGRP neurons regulate our appetite depending on the amount of food that is available.
The study's lead investigator explains further:
"Weight loss strategies are often inefficient because the body works like a thermostat and couples the amount of calories we burn to the amount of calories we eat. When we eat less, our body compensates and burns fewer calories, which makes losing weight harder.
Our findings suggest that a group of neurons in the brain coordinate appetite and energy expenditure, and can turn a switch on and off to burn or spare calories depending on what's available in the environment. If food is available, they make us eat, and if food is scarce, they turn our body into saving mode and stop us from burning fat."
Dr. Blouet goes on to speculate that from an evolutionary perspective, such a mechanism may have evolved in order to help animals cope with famine. Evidently, in the case of dieting, the brain cannot tell that the person is intentionally trying to lose weight.
The study's first author, Dr. Luke Burke, also explains what these findings mean to the person who is trying to lose weight:
"This study could help in the design of new or improved therapies in future to help reduce overeating and obesity. Until then, [the] best solution for people to lose weight - at least for those who are only moderately overweight - is a combination of exercise and a moderate reduction in caloric intake."
Learn how mindful eating may help people to lose weight.
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Why does dieting not work? Study sheds light - Medical News Today
Weight loss: Expert reveals THIS tip will achieve fast weight loss in time for summer – Express.co.uk
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If you have been struggling to lose weight and think you have tried everything, there are still things you can do.
Psychologist Corinne Sweet advised dieters to stop seeing food as either good or bad, as this increases the chance of eating high-calorie foods.
She explained: People talk about themselves in terms of being good or bad according to how habitually they eat or drink things, or whether they snack.
Ive been bad today, might mean someone has had a chocolate bar or muffin with their coffee. Or Ive been good can mean they have abstained from the biscuit round in the tearoom.
Often this creates stress and complex feelings, which can actually accentuate and increase the behaviour rather than curb it.
She also said it was time to stop associating food with punishment or reward, and said: People learn behaviours quite often with a punishment and reward value. If I finish my homework I can have some chocolate, or after a hard day at work I deserve a drink.
Work cultures also are full of punishment and rewards, involving food and drink: the office party, a group meal out, a social event or celebration, cakes at leaving dos and birthday drinks.
Temptation will always present itself. You have to be prepared, and be aware, ahead of time, that when you go somewhere, visit someone, go out for a meal, that temptation will be right there, in front of you.
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You have to plan a course of action to curb your vulnerability to being seduced by something you know will trigger your need to snack. This may take effort and time, as we often hang on to what is familiar, but if you stick to it, you will soon be reaping the rewards for a little thoughtful decision-making, retraining and application of willpower.
One way to do thesis with Slissie, which is the first of its kind as it delivers curb-craving flavourings that instantly help you resist the temptation of sugary, calorific snacks. Once the flavours that contain aromas are detected by your tastebuds and olfactory receptors, messages are sent to the appetite control centres of the brain leaving users feeling their appetite has been satisfied.
As well as dealing with temptation, choosing the right foods is also the key to weight loss, as Dr Marilyn Glenville, the UKs leading Nutritionist, explained.
She said: If a food or drink is described as low sugar, slim line or diet, it will usually contain an artificial sweetener. These sweeteners have been linked to mood swings and depression, and it has been found that people who regularly use artificial sweeteners tend to gain weight because they can slow down the digestive process and increase appetite.
Make a point of sitting down and eating your food as calmly as possible
Dr Marilyn Glenville
Dr Marilyn also urged people to sit down and enjoy their food, particularly because it has benefits for weight loss too.
Eating on the run, she said gives your body the message that time is scarce, you are under pressure and stressed. Furthermore, your digestive system will be less efficient. Make a point of sitting down and eating your food as calmly as possible.
Listening to your body and actually concentrating on the food in front of you is key for weight loss, as Shona Wilkinson, Nutritionist at Superfood.uk, revealed: Try and pay attention to how your stomach is feeling and eat slowly, rather than eating everything thats in front of you. Its important that you eat to feel satisfied, as opposed to stuffing yourself.
Shona also advised not to skip main meals as this wont help you lose weight. She said: Another great tip is to not snack on foods such as toast, bread, cereals, cakes or biscuits telling yourself you wont eat a main meal later (to make up for the calories).
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This is a trap many people fall into, because they love their sweet foods and they find these foods easier to prepare than a main meal. Make sure you eat three balanced meals a day.
Finally, Dr Marilyn reminded dieters not to fall into the common trap of confusing thirst for hunger.
She said: It's actually relatively common for people to confuse thirst for hunger, thats why keeping your fluid intake up is really important. Try drinking a large glass of water when you are feeling those hunger pains and wait to see if they dissipate.
The expert weight loss tips come as one nutritionist revealed doing too much exercise could hinder your weight loss.
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Weight loss: Expert reveals THIS tip will achieve fast weight loss in time for summer - Express.co.uk
Plant-based diets work better for diabetics – The Straits Times
Readers may get the impression that drinking more milk will benefit their health after reading the report on May 24 (Drinking milk lowers risk of diabetes, hypertension: NUS study).
There is evidence that plant-based diets that exclude dairy are healthier if we want to fight Type 2 diabetes.
In the United States, a large study found that people eating a plant-based diet that excluded dairy had 62 per cent less chance of developing Type 2 diabetes.
In addition, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found in repeated studies that people with Type 2 diabetes following plant-based diets were able to reduce their medication and manage their diabetes better than those following the diets recommended by the American Diabetes Association, which included animal products like milk.
It is well established that the mutation for digesting lactose is not common in Asian populations.
Thus, encouraging Singaporeans to consume milk causes many to experience negative health effects, including bloating, cramps, diarrhoea and nausea.
There is also emerging evidence that casein in dairy milk is cancer-promoting.
A meta-analysis of studies on plant-based diets by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that these diets decreased not only hypertension, but also ischaemic heart disease, certain types of cancer and obesity.
Many of these diseases are top killers in Singapore , according to the Ministry of Health, and are driving up the healthcare costs in the process.
Michael Broadhead
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Plant-based diets work better for diabetics - The Straits Times
A new take on salt – Bend Bulletin
Dr. Jens Titze discovers the more salt you eat, the hungrier, not thirstier, you become
The salt equation taught to doctors for more than 200 years is not hard to understand.
The body relies on this essential mineral for a variety of functions, including blood pressure and the transmission of nerve impulses. Sodium levels in the blood must be carefully maintained.
If you eat a lot of salt sodium chloride you will become thirsty and drink water, diluting your blood enough to maintain the proper concentration of sodium. Ultimately you will excrete much of the excess salt and water in urine.
The theory is intuitive and simple. And it may be completely wrong.
New studies of Russian cosmonauts, held in isolation to simulate space travel, show that eating more salt made them less thirsty but somehow hungrier. Subsequent experiments found that mice burned more calories when they got more salt, eating 25 percent more just to maintain their weight.
The research, published recently in two dense papers in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, contradicts much of the conventional wisdom about how the body handles salt and suggests that high levels may play a role in weight loss.
The findings have stunned kidney specialists.
This is just very novel and fascinating, said Dr. Melanie Hoenig, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The work was meticulously done.
Dr. James R. Johnston, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, marked each unexpected finding in the margins of the two papers. The studies were covered with scribbles by the time he was done.
Really cool, he said, although he added that the findings need to be replicated.
The new studies are the culmination of a decadeslong quest by a determined scientist, Dr. Jens Titze, now a kidney specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research in Erlangen, Germany.
In 1991, as a medical student in Berlin, he took a class on human physiology in extreme environments. The professor who taught the course worked with the European space program and presented data from a simulated 28-day mission in which a crew lived in a small capsule.
The main goal was to learn how the crew members would get along. But the scientists also had collected the astronauts urine and other physiological markers.
Titze noticed something puzzling in the crew members data: Their urine volumes went up and down in a seven-day cycle. That contradicted all hed been taught in medical school: There should be no such temporal cycle.
In 1994, the Russian space program decided to do a 135-day simulation of life on the Mir space station. Titze arranged to go to Russia to study urine patterns among the crew members and how these were affected by salt in the diet.
A striking finding emerged: a 28-day rhythm in the amount of sodium the cosmonauts bodies retained that was not linked to the amount of urine they produced. And the sodium rhythms were much more pronounced than the urine patterns.
The sodium levels should have been rising and falling with the volume of urine. Although the study wasnt perfect the crew members sodium intake was not precisely calibrated Titze was convinced something other than fluid intake was influencing sodium stores in the crews bodies.
The conclusion, he realized, was heresy.
In 2006, the Russian space program announced two more simulation studies, one lasting 105 days and the other 520 days. Titze saw a chance to figure out whether his anomalous findings were real.
In the shorter simulation, the cosmonauts ate a diet containing 12 grams of salt daily, followed by 9 grams daily, and then a low-salt diet of 6 grams daily, each for a 28-day period. In the longer mission, the cosmonauts also ate an additional cycle of 12 grams of salt daily.
Like most of us, the cosmonauts liked their salt. Oliver Knickel, 33, a German citizen participating in the program who is now an automotive engineer in Stuttgart, recalled that even the food that supplied 12 grams a day was not salty enough for him.
When the salt level got down to 6 grams, he said, It didnt taste good.
The real shocker came when Titze measured the amount of sodium excreted in the crews urine, the volume of their urine, and the amount of sodium in their blood.
The mysterious patterns in urine volume persisted, but everything seemed to proceed according to the textbooks. When the crew ate more salt, they excreted more salt; the amount of sodium in their blood remained constant, and their urine volume increased.
But then we had a look at fluid intake, and were more than surprised, he said.
Instead of drinking more, the crew were drinking less in the long run when getting more salt. So where was the excreted water coming from?
There was only one way to explain this phenomenon, Titze said. The body most likely had generated or produced water when salt intake was high.
Another puzzle: The crew complained that they were always hungry on the high-salt diet. Titze assured them that they were getting exactly enough food to maintain their weights, and were eating the same amount on the lower-salt diets, when hunger did not seem to be problem.
But urine tests suggested another explanation. The crew members were increasing production of glucocorticoid hormones, which influence both metabolism and immune function.
To get further insight, Titze began a study of mice in the laboratory. Sure enough, the more salt he added to the animals diet, the less water they drank. And he saw why.
The animals were getting water but not by drinking it. The increased levels of glucocorticoid hormones broke down fat and muscle in their own bodies. This freed up water for the body to use.
But that process requires energy, Titze also found, which is why the mice ate 25 percent more food on a high-salt diet. The hormones also may be a cause of the strange long-term fluctuations in urine volume.
Scientists knew that a starving body will burn its own fat and muscle for sustenance. But the realization that something similar happens on a salty diet has come as a revelation.
People do what camels do, noted Dr. Mark Zeidel, a nephrologist at Harvard Medical School who wrote an editorial accompanying Titzes studies. A camel traveling through the desert that has no water to drink gets water instead by breaking down the fat in its hump.
One of the many implications of this finding is that salt may be involved in weight loss. Generally, scientists have assumed that a high-salt diet encourages a greater intake of fluids, which increases weight.
But if balancing a higher salt intake requires the body to break down tissue, it may also increase energy expenditure.
Still, Titze said he would not advise eating a lot of salt to lose weight. If his results are correct, more salt will make you hungrier in the long run, so you would have to be sure you did not eat more food to make up for the extra calories burned.
And, Titze said, high glucocorticoid levels are linked to such conditions as osteoporosis, muscle loss, Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic problems.
But what about liquids? Everyone knows that salty foods make you thirsty. How could it be that a high-salt diet made the cosmonauts less thirsty?
In reality, said Zeidel, people and animals get thirsty because salt-detecting neurons in the mouth stimulate an urge to drink. This kind of thirst may have nothing to do with the bodys actual need for water.
These findings have opened up an array of puzzling questions, experts said.
The work suggests that we really do not understand the effect of sodium chloride on the body, said Hoenig.
These effects may be far more complex and far-reaching than the relatively simple laws that dictate movement of fluid, based on pressures and particles.
She and others have not abandoned their conviction that high-salt diets can raise blood pressure in some people.
But now, Hoenig said, I suspect that when it comes to the adverse effects of high sodium intake, we are right for all the wrong reasons.
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A new take on salt - Bend Bulletin