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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Drinking Vegetable Juice May Help Increase Vegetable Intake And Support Weight Management

Studies show drinking V8® 100% vegetable juice may be a simple way for people to increase their vegetable intake and may help them manage their weight - two areas of concern outlined in the newly released 2010 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.1

A study conducted by researchers at the University of California-Davis found that adults who drank one, 8-ounce glass of vegetable juice each day, as part of a calorie-appropriate Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, got nearly twice as many vegetable servings a day than those who did not drink any vegetable juice. Additionally, nine out of 10 participants who drank V8 100% vegetable juice said they felt they were doing something good for themselves.2

Researchers attribute the results to the ease, convenience and enjoyment of vegetable juice as a way to get more vegetables.

"This study suggests that it's not enough to just educate people on the importance of vegetables, you need to show them ways to easily incorporate them into their daily routine," said study co-author Carl Keen, PhD, Professor of Nutrition and Internal Medicine at the University of California-Davis. "What we found was that something as simple as drinking your vegetables can be an effective tool in achieving behavior change."

The new U.S. Dietary Guidelines report also reinforces the need for Americans to achieve and sustain a healthy weight. Current data shows that 64 percent of women and 72 percent of men are overweight or obese.3 Eating more vegetables can be a helpful strategy to manage weight because they are "low-energy-dense," meaning they have more nutrition for fewer calories.

Again, vegetable juice can play a key role. A study from Baylor College of Medicine shows that overweight individuals with metabolic syndrome who drank one to two servings of V8 100% vegetable juice as part of a calorie-appropriate DASH diet lost more weight compared to non-juice drinkers. Over the 12-week study period, the juice drinkers lost an average of four pounds compared to the non-juice drinkers who lost one pound.4 In addition to weight loss, the vegetable juice drinkers had significant increases of vegetable intake, vitamin C and potassium over the course of the study compared to the non-juice drinkers.

"Making vegetable consumption easy is critical because it has so many benefits, from disease prevention to weight management," said John Foreyt, PhD, Director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine. "We have a lot more work to do in finding ways for people to improve their health, but providing them with something simple like vegetable juice is a step in the right direction."

About the Studies

Both studies were randomized controlled trials, each lasting 12 weeks. The University of California-Davis study involved 90 healthy adults, ages 40-65 years. The Baylor College of Medicine study enrolled 81 adults (83.5% of whom were minority) aged 35-65 with metabolic syndrome risk factors. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors for heart disease and diabetes that includes excess body fat in the midsection, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and elevated blood cholesterol.

The studies were supported in part by Campbell Soup Company and by resources provided from University of California-Davis and Baylor College of Medicine.

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), USDA. 2010. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 7th edition, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. January 31, 2011.

2. Shenoy A, Kazaks A, Holt R, et al. Easy accessibility to a vegetable beverage can result in marked increase in vegetable intake: an approach to improving vascular health. Poster presented at Experimental Biology, New Orleans, LA, 2009.

3. Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Ogden CL, Curtin LR. Prevalence and trends in obesity among U.S. adults, 1999-2008. JAMA. 2010;303:235-241.

4. Shenoy S, Poston W, Reeves R, et al. Weight loss in individuals with metabolic syndrome given DASH diet counseling when provided a low sodium vegetable juice: a randomized controlled study. Nutr J. 2010;9:8.

Source:
Emily Jane Meyer
Weber Shandwick Worldwide

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Teen's Best Friend: Young Dog Owners More Physically Active

They're furry, fun loving and could be the key to getting your sedentary teen off the couch, finds a new study on dog ownership and adolescent physical activity.

"You can think of your dog not only as your best friend, but also a social support tool for being active," said John Sirard, Ph.D., the study's lead author and an assistant professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

In the study, which appears in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Sirard and his colleagues surveyed 618 pairs of Minneapolis adolescents and their parents about the number of dogs in their home and how much time they spent in physical activity. For a week, 318 of those teens also wore accelerometers - devices used to collect data on time spent moving.

It turns out that teens from dog-owning families recorded greater amounts of movement on the accelerometer devices, even after researchers took into account demographic variables, like gender, race and socioeconomic status.

That might mean that teens with dogs could log about 15 additional minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week, according to the authors.

The association with adolescent physical activity took the researchers by surprise. They expected that if anyone in the family were to walk the dog, it would be the parents. "If dog ownership has an effect, we hypothesized it would have an effect on adults, but we didn't see that. We saw it in the kids," Sirard said.

Finding ways to encourage teens' physical activity levels is critical, since time spent exercising drops precipitously after the elementary school years, said Cheryl B. Anderson, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor of pediatrics at the Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine.

Despite the link that researchers established between dog ownership and teenagers' physical activity, they said they could not be certain that getting a dog means people will be more active. "It might be that more active people choose to get dogs because it fits their lifestyle already," Sirard said.

"You may walk it, you may not, but the fact that you have this animal in the house makes you get up off the chair more. Every bit of activity is important," Anderson said.

Sirard JR, et al. Dog ownership and adolescent physical activity. Am J Prev Med 40(3), 2011.

Source:
Health Behavior News Service

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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Global Obesity Exceeds 1 In 10

More than one in ten of us around the world is now obese, nearly double the figure of thirty years ago, according to a major analysis of global risk factors that also reports high-income nations have achieved impressive reductions in blood pressure and cholesterol, with some doing much better than others.

The analysis, published as three papers in The Lancet today, shows country by country trends from 1980 to 2008 in three important heart disease risk factors: obesity, cholesterol, and blood pressure; and comes from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO).

An international team of researchers, led by Professor Majid Ezzati from Imperial College London in the UK and Dr Goodarz Danaei from the Harvard School of Public Health in the US, reviewed the available global data to assess how body mass index (BMI), blood pressure and cholesterol changed between 1980 and 2008.

The World Health Organization and a number of other institutions also collaborated on the work.

Ezzati told the press:

"It's heartening that many countries have successfully reduced blood pressure and cholesterol despite rising BMI."

"Improved screening and treatment probably helped to lower these risk factors in high-income countries, as did using less salt and healthier, unsaturated fats," he suggested.

The BMI analysis shows that in 2008, more than one in ten of the adults in the world was obese, with women more likely to be so than men. The researchers estimate 205 million men and 297 million women, that is more than half a billion adults worldwide, were obese in 2008.

The analysis on blood pressure shows that between 1980 and 2008, there was a modest fall in the proportion of the world's population with uncontrolled hypertension or high blood pressure, but because the world's population is aging and growing, the number of people with this condition went up from 600 to nearly 1 billion over the three decades.

High-income countries achieved large drops in population proportions with high blood pressure, the steepest being in Australasian women and North American men, said the researchers, who defined hypertension as having a systolic pressure higher than 140 mmHg or a diastolic pressure higher than 90 mmHg.

The cholesterol analysis shows that over the same period, the average levels of total blood cholesterol fell in high-income nations in North America, Australasia and Europe but went up in East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific region.

Ezzati said these figures show that overweight and obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are no longer just Western problems or problems of wealthy nations.

"Their presence has shifted towards low and middle income countries, making them global problems," he said.

He and his colleagues also looked within these global patterns at how countries compare in terms of each of the three risk factors: BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol. The highlights include:

Body Mass Index (the ratio of a person's weight to their height squared, measured in kg per meter squared, kg/m2) is a measure of obesity, which is defined as having a BMI over 30 kg/m2). The proportion of adult women in the world classed as obese rose from 7.9% to 13.8% between 1980 and 2008.
For men this figure went from 4.8% to 9.8%.
Over the period, BMI went up by 0.4 kg/m2 per decade for men and 0.5 kg/m2 for women, the fastest rise being in the US (more than 1 kg/m2 per decade), followed by New Zealand and Australia for women and followed by UK and Australia for men.
In some Western European countries there was hardly any rise in BMI for women.
The region with the highest average BMI in the world is the Pacific Island nations with 70 per cent more people with BMI in the range 34-35 kg/m2 than some Southeast Asian and sub-Saharan African countries.
Average BMI was lowest in Bangladesh (20·5 kg/m2) for women and lowest in Democratic Republic of the Congo (19·9 kg/m2) for men.
Among high-income nations, the US has the highest average BMI (over 28 kg/m2 for men and women), followed by New Zealand, with Japan having the lowest (about 22 kg/m2 for women and 24 for men), followed by Singapore.
The UK has the sixth highest BMI in Europe for women and ninth highest for men (both about 27 kg/m2).
In Europe, the countries with the highest BMI are Turkey for women and the Czech Republic for men (both about 28 kg/m2).
Swiss women appear to have the lowest BMI in Europe (about 24 kg/m2).In most regions of the world, men have higher blood pressure than women.
Average systolic blood pressure is highest in Baltic and East and West African nations, up to 135 mmHg for women and 138 for men.
These levels are on a par with those of Western European nations in the 1980s, before they started to come down rapidly.
Nations with some of the lowest average blood pressure in both the female and male adult population include South Korea, Cambodia, Australia, Canada and the US (below 120 mmHg for women and 125 for men).
Portugal, Finland and Norway have the highest average blood pressure among high income nations.Although total cholesterol fell in the high-income region consisting of Australasia, North America, and western Europe, and in central and eastern Europe, Western European countries like Greenland, Iceland, Andorra, and Germany have the highest cholesterol levels in the world, with mean serum total cholesterols of around 5.5 mmol/L.
The lowest average cholesterol levels are in sub-Saharan Africa at 4·08 mmol/L for men and 4·27 mmol/L for women.
Greece has the lowest cholesterol for both men and women in the high income countries (under 5 mmol/L), and the US,
Ezzati said that:

"The findings are an opportunity to implement policies that lead to healthier diets, especially lower salt intake, at all levels of economic development, as well as looking at how we improve detection and control through the primary healthcare system."

He said the High-level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on Non-Communicable Diseases in September 2011 should pay special attention to ways to address cardiovascular risk with improved policies and targets.

Danaei said this was the first time that anyone has tried to estimate the trends in these risk factors at the global and country by country level:

"The amount of data we collected is unprecedented and vast, and allows us to draw robust conclusions," he stressed.

Dr. Gretchen Stevens, from the World Health Organization, who was also involved in the research said:

"We know that changes in diet and in physical activity have contributed to the worldwide rise in obesity, but it remains unclear which policies would effectively reduce obesity."

"We need to identify, implement, and rigorously evaluate policy interventions aimed at reversing the trends, or limiting their harmful effects," she urged.

"National, regional, and global trends in body-mass index since 1980: systematic analysis of health examination surveys and epidemiological studies with 960 country-years and 9.1 million participants."
Mariel M Finucane, Gretchen A Stevens, Melanie J Cowan, Goodarz Danaei, John K Lin, Christopher J Paciorek, Gitanjali M Singh, Hialy R Gutierrez, Yuan Lu, Adil N Bahalim, Farshad Farzadfar, Leanne M Riley, Majid Ezzati,on behalf of the Global Burden of Metabolic Risk Factors of Chronic Diseases Collaborating Group (Body Mass Index).
The Lancet, Early Online Publication 4 February 2011.
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62037-5

"National, regional, and global trends in serum total cholesterol since 1980: systematic analysis of health examination surveys and epidemiological studies with 321 country-years and 3.0 million participants."
Farshad Farzadfar, Mariel M Finucane, Goodarz Danaei, Pamela M Pelizzari , Melanie J Cowan, Christopher J Paciorek, Gitanjali M Singh, John K Lin, Gretchen A Stevens, Leanne M Riley, Majid Ezzati, on behalf of the Global Burden of Metabolic Risk Factors of Chronic Diseases Collaborating Group (Cholesterol).
The Lancet, Early Online Publication 4 February 2011.
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62038-7

"National, regional, and global trends in systolic blood pressure since 1980: systematic analysis of health examination surveys and epidemiological studies with 786 country-years and 5.4 million participants."
Goodarz Danaei, Mariel M Finucane, John K Lin, Gitanjali M Singh, Christopher J Paciorek, Melanie J Cowan, Farshad Farzadfar, Gretchen A Stevens, Stephen S Lim, Leanne M Riley, Majid Ezzati, on behalf of the Global Burden of Metabolic Risk Factors of Chronic Diseases Collaborating Group (Blood Pressure).
The Lancet, Early Online Publication 4 February 2011.
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62036-3

Additional source: Imperial College London (3 Feb 2011 press release).

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

posted by TJ on 4 Feb 2011 at 6:28 am

No one ever sets the goal of becoming obese (unless perhaps they're an actor preparing for a role), nor does obesity happen suddenly, rather it happens gradually over time. Taking these two obvious facts together, we realize that in about 95% of cases, obesity is a behavioral aberration: people don't respect and pay sufficient attention to their own bodies. I'm thin, I'm fit, I'm over 40, I'm not an athlete, yet I eat things like Baconators and Twinkies on a daily basis without any health problems. How do I manage this? I pay attention to my body, not in the sense of personal vanity, but in the spiritual sense of respecting physiology as the foundation for mental and emotional activity in the material world. If there's an obesity epidemic (and I'm not so sure there is), it probably derives from a general sense of alienation from one's own body. So learn to pay attention to your own bodies, people, and you can eat anything you want!

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Evolution Led To Genetic Variation That May Affect Diabetes, Stanford Scientist Says

The root causes of complex diseases such as type-2 diabetes and obesity have been difficult to identify because the diseases are, well, complex. They occur at the dicey biological intersection of genes and environment, and, because they arose in our relatively recent past, it's not easy to simply compare DNA sequences from "then" and "now" to pinpoint likely genetic culprits.

Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified genetic variations in a hormone involved in the secretion of insulin - a molecule that regulates blood sugar levels - that occur more frequently in some human populations than others. People with the "new" variants, which are thought to have first occurred 2,000 to 12,000 years ago, have higher fasting levels of blood glucose than those with the more traditional, or ancestral, form of the gene. High blood glucose levels are associated with the development of diabetes, which occurs when the body is unable to produce or respond properly to insulin.

The finding may help scientists better understand the subtle changes in human metabolism, or "energy balance regulation," that occurred as our species shifted from being primarily hunter-gatherers to a more agriculturally based society. It may also help clinicians identify individuals likely to develop diabetes, and direct the development of new therapies for diabetes and obesity.

"These studies are fascinating because it shows how much the selection process has affected human energy-balance regulation in just a few thousand years and how complex it could be for the future practice of personalized medicine," said Sheau Yu "Teddy" Hsu, PhD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and senior author of the study.

The research was published online Feb. 7 in Diabetes. It follows a similar paper in the January issue of Genome Research that also explored the recent evolution of energy balance regulation, or how humans choose whether and how to store excess calories, among populations.

In the new paper, Hsu and his colleagues at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan and Texas A&M University first identified 207 genetic regions that have been associated with diabetes or obesity. They then looked to see which of these had increased in prevalence in the time since humans began to move out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. They identified 59 genetic regions of particular interest, and homed in on those that occurred in at least 30 percent of people in the HapMap project - a worldwide survey of genetic differences among populations. (Restricting their search to relatively common variants ensured that their findings would be widely applicable and would provide a more powerful tool to identify any associated phenotype differences.)

The researchers identified five genes with genetic differences that occurred frequently in Asians and/or Europeans, but infrequently in Africans. (These groups were pre-identified as part of the HapMap project, which sampled people of Nigerian, Chinese, Japanese and European ancestry.) Hsu's team selected GIP, one of the five genes, for further study because the GIP protein was known to be involved in stimulating insulin secretion in humans after a meal.

"We thought GIP was the most interesting because the newly selected form occurs in about 50 percent of people from Europe or Asia, but in only about 5 percent of Africans. That indicates this gene is highly adaptable to new environments," said Hsu.

He and his colleagues identified three individual changes in the regulatory region of GIP - that is, the DNA adjacent to the GIP gene that affects when and how it is translated into protein - that reduced the levels of the hormone. What's more, these three also tended to occur with another mutation in the coding region that results in a slightly different form of the protein. This alternate form is degraded more slowly in human blood.

"So now we know there are two different forms of the protein, which allowed one form to be selected in one population, and the other in a different population," said Hsu. "But we still needed to show that these variants led to phenotypic differences in modern humans."

Because previous studies of GIP variants hadn't showed any conclusive differences among their human carriers, Hsu and his colleagues focused their study more narrowly on a population that is not only metabolically challenged, but also critical to evolutionary success: pregnant women. They found that, out of 123 East Asian pregnant women, those who carried two copies of the newly evolved variant had significantly lower levels of GIP circulating in their blood. These women were also at a significantly increased risk to have fasting blood glucose levels that exceeded the recommended threshold of 140 mg/dL (48.3 percent vs. 20.9 percent of those who carry the ancestral variant).

The finding is particularly interesting because it may help clinicians identify pregnant women likely to develop gestational diabetes, according to Hsu. But it also gives a glimpse into our not-so-distant past and the ways our ancestors grappled with environmental change.

"Like other humans at the time, the Eurasian population really had to fight for survival," said Hsu. "Now we're starting to pinpoint how they did that on a molecular level. These gene variants, and the resulting higher blood sugar levels it fostered, may have helped women maintain successful pregnancies in the face of the inevitable famines that occur in an agriculturally based society. Now, in a more food-secure environment, variations in GIP could contribute to the development of diabetes or obesity."

Notes:

In addition to Hsu, James Cai, PhD, a former Stanford postdoctoral scholar in biology, was also involved in the study. He is now an assistant professor at Texas A&M University.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Avon Foundation and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. Stanford's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology supported the work.

Source:
Krista Conger
Stanford University Medical Center

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Tahitian Noni International Releases New Fit Reduce

Tahitian Noni International (TNI) recently announced the release of Fit, a comprehensive new body composition system that offers products specifically engineered to promote optimal body composition for better health and wellness. Fit takes an innovative approach to weight management by focusing on building lean muscle to increase your body's ability to burn fat.* The Fit product line includes Fit Reduce - a bioactive blend of nutrients that include a combination of soluble and insoluble fibers. This blend helps block the absorption of some dietary fat, promoting elimination from your system before it becomes fatty tissue. Fit Reduce helps to promote a healthy digestive system.*

Fit Reduce contains psyllium husk, oat fiber and inulin. It tastes great and comes in two delicious flavors - orange and pink lemonade. The natural bioactives help to block the absorption of dietary fat, maintain cholesterol levels already within normal ranges, and keep you feeling fuller between meals, thereby helping to cut down on between meal snacks.*

The Fit Body Composition System emphasizes proper nutrition and exercise in combination with the Fit products, which are engineered to cleanse and nourish the body, build calorie-burning lean muscle, and help remove excess fat and cholesterol.*

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Source:
Tahitian Noni International

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U.S. Call For Improved Nutrition And Physical Activity Supported By Gerontological Society of America

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) - the nation's largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging - commends the federal government's recent release of the "2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans" and particularly applauds its inclusion of specific advice for older adults.

Because more than one-third of children and more than two-thirds of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese, the 7th edition of "Dietary Guidelines for Americans," issued by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, places stronger emphasis on reducing calorie consumption and increasing physical activity.

"Good nutrition is an integral component of successful aging," said GSA President Donald Ingram, PhD. "The benefits of a healthy diet and regular physical activity may include a more robust immune system, higher energy levels, faster recuperation times, sharper mental acuity, and better management of chronic health problems."

In Boston this November, GSA's Annual Scientific Meeting - under the theme of "Lifestyle -Lifespan" - will explore nutrition and aging in greater detail. Numerous sessions are scheduled to focus on the healthy gut, anorexia, obesity, antioxidant supplements, calorie restriction, brain foods, women's nutrition, and nutrition among long-lived populations.

Moreover, numerous studies reported in GSA's peer-reviewed scientific journals have tied obesity to poor health outcomes for America's seniors. A January 2010 special issue of The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological and Medical Sciences described many of the negative consequences, even showing that the adverse affects of being overweight are not limited to physical function but also extend to neurological function.

"Dietary Guidelines for Americans" makes several age-based recommendations. Individuals aged 50 years and older are encouraged to consume food fortified with vitamin B12, such as fortified cereals or dietary supplements. Additionally, people aged 51 and older are advised to reduce their sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams per day.

For women aged 51 and over, the government recommends a daily intake of between 1,600 and 2,200 calories depending on physical activity level, and for men aged 51 and over, a daily intake of between 2,000 and 2,800 calories depending on physical activity level.

Adults aged 65 years and older who are overweight are encouraged not to gain additional weight. Among older adults who are obese, particularly those with cardiovascular disease risk factors, intentional weight loss can be beneficial and result in improved quality of life and reduced risk of chronic diseases and associated disabilities, according to the new report.

In regard to physical activity, the government states that older adults should follow the standard adult guidelines, noting that seniors should be as physically active as their abilities and conditions will allow. Similarly, they are also advised to do exercises that maintain or improve balance if they are at risk of falling. Those with chronic conditions should understand if and how their conditions affect their ability to do regular physical activity safely.

Source:
Todd Kluss
The Gerontological Society of America

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High School Students Graduating To Be Tomorrow's Cancer And Cardiovascular Patients, Australia

Results of a national diet and physical activity survey of high school students, released today (9 Feb), will ring alarm bells among educators, health professionals and parents.

The research, by Cancer Council and the Heart Foundation, reveals excessive prevalence of overweight and obesity among students (highest in low SES areas), inadequate rates of physical activity, insufficient fruit and vegetable intake and a high proportion of students making food choices based on advertising.

The participation of 12,000 students in years eight to 11 across 237 schools provides the first truly national sample for a physical activity survey of young Australians since 1985.

Key findings:

- One in four students are overweight or obese, with a significantly higher rate in low SES areas.

- Eighty-five per cent of students don't engage in sufficient activity to provide a health benefit.

- Low fruit and vegetable intake, with 76% not meeting the daily recommended intake of four vegetable servings daily and 59% not meeting the daily recommended intake of three servings of fruit daily.

- One third drink four or more cups of soft drink, cordial or sports drink a week

- More than half (51%) tried a new food or drink product in the past month they had seen advertised.

Cancer Council Australia CEO, Professor Ian Olver, said the findings confirmed what health experts had been saying for years, that poor nutrition and inadequate exercise were contributing to an unprecedented number of overweight and obese adolescents and a "chronic disease time bomb".

"If ever there was a wake-up call for Australians, this is it," Professor Olver said. "As obese kids move into adulthood the heightened risk of chronic diseases like cancer means previous gains in life expectancy may be reversed. We may see today's teenagers die at a younger age than their parents' generation for the first time in history"

National Heart Foundation of Australia CEO, Dr Lyn Roberts, said that all policy makers should be deeply disturbed by the findings.

"This piece of research confirms what we've feared for some time - that the high school students of today will grow up to be the heart attack victims of tomorrow," Dr Roberts said.

Chair of Cancer Council Australia's Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, Kathy Chapman, said the report provided compelling evidence for the Australian Government to implement a comprehensive obesity strategy, as recommended by the National Preventative Health Taskforce.

"Overweight and obesity significantly increase cancer risk and unless we address the problem, common cancers such as bowel and breast cancer will surge," Ms Chapman said.

Source:
Cancer Council Australia

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