health blog 12

"We uncovered a well-controlled process for mobilizing energy to the tissues that need it," explains senior author Claudio Villanueva, Ph.D., assistant professor of Biochemistry at U of U Health. Expanding on these findings could lead to a therapy for cold sensitivity. As reported online in  Cell Metabolism  on Sept. 5, the supplement works by boosting levels of a newly discovered fuel source for brown fat, a "good fat" that generates body heat in response to the cold. Lighting the Fire Within While humans have only small amounts of brown fat, it is far more prevalent in mice that must adapt to the cold in order to survive. Unlike white fat that stores calories, this active fat burns energy to maintain the body's core temperature. Villanueva and his team clued into a different outlook on cold adaptation after determining that circulating levels of a waxy lipid called acylcarnitines fluctuated in response to the cold. Levels shot up in young mice as th...

"Our team wanted to make every effort to study female perspectives on how exercise affects diet, because most other studies neglect females," said Jenna Lee, a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at MU. "We wanted to take a look at what drives diet preference and if environmental factors, such as physical activity, play a role in how males and females eat." The team, led by Matthew Will, an associate professor of psychological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science, divided male and female rats into two groups -- a sedentary group and one that had access to a running wheel. Both groups ate the same food. After another week, Lee replaced the standard diet with three optional diets: high fat (similar to cookie dough), high sucrose (three times more sucrose than the other two diets), and a high-cornstarch diet. Each of the diets were matched on proteins, and the rats had continuous access to all three diets for four weeks. Re...

The danger for growing weight problems is influenced by our life-style in addition to our genes. In a brand new examine from Uppsala College, researchers present that our genetic threat for weight problems shouldn't be static, however is influenced by our life-style. Outcomes from the examine have been revealed within the scientific journal  PLOS Genetics . Within the present examine, researchers have investigated if genetic results are influenced by totally different life-style components resembling weight loss program, smoking, socio-economic standing, alcohol consumption and bodily exercise. The examine builds on genetic and self-reported life-style data from 360,000 middle-aged individuals within the UK. "The outcomes of our examine clearly present that the surroundings and the approach to life work together with the genes," says Mathias Rask-Andersen, res...

Writing in the  American Journal of Preventative Medicine , Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health at BUSPH, and colleagues said their findings "highlight the importance" of considering the previously obese subpopulation when monitoring the obesity epidemic. "The results suggest that a much larger fraction of the population is affected by obesity than is reflected by statistics on current weight status alone," the researchers wrote. The researchers expanded the scope of their study to include all US adults who were ever obese as well as the currently obese. They found that 50.8 percent of American men and 51.6 percent of American women had experienced obesity as of 2013-2014. The prevalence of obesity, past and present, also differed across different demographic groups, with race, sex, education, and smoking status revealing disparities in obesity, weight loss, and obesity-related diseases over time. The researchers then examined data around ...

In Switzerland, about each tenth grownup suffers from morbid weight problems. Such corpulence can't solely result in diabetes or heart problems, but in addition to fats accumulation within the liver. Worldwide, about 25 to 30 % of all adults and more and more youngsters are affected by such steatosis -- turning into essentially the most frequent liver illness in recent times. Some sufferers undergo from irritation that would result in a scarred shrinkage of the liver (cirrhosis) and even most cancers. Receptor for programmed cell dying activated Regardless of the rising frequency of obesity-related liver steatosis, there may be at present inadequate data in regards to the origin of this illness. On the College Kids's Hospital Zurich, researchers from the College of Zurich have recognized a signaling pathway in liver cells which will contribute to the event of steato...

Obesity-related kidney dysfunction develops early in the course of obesity, justifying the search for novel regulators that could be targeted for therapy . Obesity can cause structural and functional changes in the kidneys, which may help explain why individuals with obesity face an elevated risk of chronic kidney disease and its progression to kidney failure. Although multiple metabolic factors have been proposed to contribute to obesity-induced kidney problems, the underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. To investigate, a team led by Dr. Joseph (Yossi) Tam, DMD, PhD and the PhD student Shiran Udi, MSc, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute for Drug Research in Israel, examined the kidney cells that are responsible for the reabsorption of nutrients, while allowing other substances of no nutritional value to be excreted in the urine. These kidney cells, called renal proximal tubular cells or RPTCs, are especially sensitive to the accumulation of fat, or...

When compared to patients who took the traditional reflux medication, proton pump inhibitors (PPI), those patients who consumed a 90-95% whole food, plant-based, Mediterranean-style diet paired with alkaline water had the same if not better reduction in reflux symptoms. 62.6 percent of patients treated with a plant-based diet and alkaline water saw a six point reduction in their Reflux Symptom Index (RSI -- a measurement for the severity of reflux symptoms), compared to 54.1 percent reduction in patients taking PPI's. Though this research only focused on those with laryngopharyngeal reflux, this same diet regimen has implications to help patients with gastro-esophageal acid reflux (also known as GERD). Lead author of the study, Craig H. Zalvan, MD, FACS, chief of Otolaryngology and medical director of The Institute for Voice and Swallowing Disorders at Northwell Health's Phelps Hospital and researcher at the Feinstein Institute, said he was formerly one of the largest presc...

In a recent study published online in  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition  (AJCN) on September 6, 2017, BWH investigators examined the relationships between body fat and body mass index, and the timing of food consumption, to time of day and to the body's circadian or body clock. This is the first time that the timing of meals has been studied in real world settings, in relation to melatonin onset, which marks the onset of sleep. "We found that the timing of food intake relative to melatonin onset, a marker of a person's biological night, is associated with higher percent body fat and BMI, and not associated with the time of day, amount or composition of food intake," stated lead author Andrew W. McHill, PhD, researcher with the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at BWH. "These findings suggest that the timing of when you consume calories, relative to your own biological timing may be more important for health than the actual time of day....

The variety of overweight individuals in addition to these affected by sort 2 diabetes is growing worldwide. Each problems are related to metabolic modifications together with amplified inflammatory responses in adipose tissue. "Earlier research have indicated that immunosuppressive regulatory T-cells -- or Tregs for brief -- play an essential position in these processes," explains the chief of the research Dr. Carolin Daniel, group chief on the Institute for Diabetes Analysis (IDF) of the Helmholtz Zentrum München and a scientist within the German Middle for Diabetes Analysis (DZD). "We now needed to look at how these immune cells would possibly help adipose operate in additional element." In an experimental mannequin, Daniel, along with co-first authors Dr. Stefanie Kälin and Maike Becker and colleagues, decided that the variety of Tregs in adipose tissue...

The findings put a new spin on weight management priorities for women in this this age-group, who are prone to abdominal weight gain, said study investigator Line Mærsk Staunstrup, MSc, a PhD student with Nordic Bioscience and ProScion, in Herlev, Denmark. "When assessing cancer risk, body mass index (BMI) and fat percentage may not be adequate measures as they fail to assess the distribution of fat mass," she explained. "Avoiding central obesity may confer the best protection." The findings come from the Prospective Epidemiologic Risk Factor study, an observational, prospective cohort study designed to get a better understanding of age-related diseases in Danish postmenopausal women. It included 5,855 women (mean age 71 years) who underwent baseline dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans to assess body fat and body fat composition and have been followed for 12 years. Using information from national cancer registries, the study recorded 811 solid ca...