Is Obesity Hard-Wired in The Brain?

The escalating obesity rate has become a tricky issue for many countries. This is because obesity can eventually lead to development of many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and stroke. The expecting cost of dealing with these diseases can be huge, which will become a burden not only on the people but also on the government.

Many health experts have frequently blamed the modern lifestyle of overeating, inappropriate diet and lack of exercise as the cause of overweight and obesity. However, a study by the researchers from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles found that obesity might be hard-wired into the brain from birth so that some people are more prone to overweight than others.

The findings of an animal study, appearing on in the February 2008 issue of Cell Metabolism, showed that obese rats had faulty brain wiring that impaired their response to the hunger-suppressing hormone leptin.

It seemed that appetite and obesity were built into the brain for obesity-prone rats, according to the researchers. The neurodevelopment differences in these animals could be seen as early as the first week. Such results showed that obesity could be wired into the brain from early life.

Leptin, produced by fat tissue, plays a central role in fat metabolism by acting as a signal to the brain about the body's energy status. Though scientists are still not clear about its role in weight regulation, they are aware that the brain calibrates the requirement for food intake partly based on leptin levels.

Learnt from previous research that the brains of obesity-prone rats were insensitive to these leptin signals, the researchers looked for brain abnormalities that could explain this.

In the study, they found defects in the brain circuits that relay leptin signals throughout the hypothalamus. Hypothalamus is the brain’s central switchboard for regulating conditions in the body.

The findings showed that exercising and eating right might improve the rat’s condition, but the propensity to gain weight could not be reversed.

The researchers also pointed out that if the findings are replicated in humans, then those individuals who are genetically predisposed to obesity as a result of their brains’ configuration should carefully pay attention to diet and energy balance.

Meanwhile, they also cautioned that the general belief that weight regulation is all a matter of nutrition or lifestyle choices might not be helpful for people whose biology predisposes them to obesity.

What Can Plavix and Aspirin Do For Heart Disease Patients With AF?

A blood thinner, a common name for an anticoagulant agent, is a drug used to prevent formation of blood clots by hindering coagula. Blood thinner does not really thin the blood; it just prevents the blood from clotting. Doctors usually prescribe blood thinners to heart disease patients who are at risk for heart attack and stroke.

So far, anticoagulants such as warfarin and aspirin have been the only effective therapies in treating heart disease patients suffering from atrial fibrillation (AF). AF is a condition in which the heart's 2 upper chambers, the atria, quiver instead of beating effectively. This will raise the risk of blood clotting or pooling in the chambers that could eventually trigger a heart attack or stroke.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), there are some 2.2 million Americans suffer from AF. These patients often need to be fitted with a pacemaker. Yet many of them cannot be treated with warfarin to stop blood clotting because warfarin increases the risk of an internal hemorrhage by up to 70 percent.

At the annual conference of the American College of Cardiology in Orlando on March 31, 2009, researchers from Ontario's McMaster University revealed that they managed to help AF patients cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by combining Plavix with aspirin.

Plavix is known under the generic name of clopidogrel. It is used to prevent the platelets in blood from coagulating and forming clots.

ACTIVE-A, a clinical trials involving 7,554 patients, aimed to determine whether the addition of clopidogrel to aspirin could reduce major vascular events and stroke in AF patients at an acceptable risk of increased hemorrhage. In the trials, the researchers showed that combination of Plavix and aspirin could help AF patients who are unable to take other blood thinners like warfarin.

The combination of clopidogrel and aspirin reduced major vascular events by 11 percent, including a 28 percent reduction in stroke and a 23 percent reduction in myocardial infarction (also known as heart attack), as found in the study.

It is believed that this is a new treatment for AF for the first time in 20 years.

Why You Should Not Be Too Skinny?

While being overweight or obese is definitely not healthy, people who are skinny are neither preferable. Why?

Because of modern lifestyle, number of people who are overweight or obese is increasing at a fairly fast rate. As we know, overweight or obesity can easily lead to many other diseases including diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol and heart disease. However, it seems that being very skinny is even more dangerous than being overweight or obese.

Japanese researchers from Tohoku University's Graduate School of Medicine recently (June 2009) found that slightly overweight people at the age of 40 could live 6 to 7 years longer than those very skinny people, who have an average life expectancy that is shorter by some 5 years than that of obese people.

The researchers did expect thin people to have shorter life expectancy but were surprised to discover such a large difference.

Working on middle-aged and elderly people, the long-term study involved 50,000 people between the age of 40 and 79 over a period of 12 years in the modern Japanese prefecture of Miyagi. The participants were divided into 4 groups at the age of 40 according to their BMI (body mass index).

BMI is the ratio of a person’s weight in kilos over the square of height in meters. BMI lower than 18.5 is classified as underweight. When BMI is between 18.5 and 25, the person is considered normal. Once the BMI exceeds 25 but lower than 30, the person is slightly overweight and once BMI exceeds 30, the person is considered as obese.

It was thought that thin people having shorter lives because many of them are either sick or smoke. However, the difference remained almost the same, even eliminating these 2 factors.

The researchers argued that skinny people were of shorter lifespan because they are vulnerable to disease such as pneumonia and the fragility of their blood vessels.

Nevertheless, people were not advised to eat as much as they want. Instead, the researchers recommended that thin people should try to gain normal weight but people with normal weight should never be putting on their weight.

Heart Disease Threats Can Cut Lifespan?

Smoking, high cholesterol and hypertension (high blood pressure) are 3 risk factors that can lead to heart disease. This statement can hardly arouse any objection.

In fact, many studies have confirmed that people, who do not smoke, eat healthily, and exercise, can cut their risk of developing heart disease. However, very few of these studies actually tackled and answered the question: ‘to what extend does having these heart disease risk factors shorten life expectancy?’

In order to seek the answer, researchers from the University of Oxford analyzed the data of 19,000 male British civil servants who were examined in the late 1960s when they were between 40 and 69 years old.

They found out that those male smokers with high cholesterol and hypertension die, on average, a decade sooner than those without any of these risk factors for heart disease. The findings were published on September 18, 2009 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The detailed information on medical history, lifestyle and smoking habits were provided by the participants at the outset of the study. Their weight, blood pressure, cholesterol level, blood sugar level and lung function were recorded by the doctors.

In 1997, or 28 years after the initial examination, more than 7,000 of those surviving participants were re-evaluated. It was found that those men who had a triple risk threat at the beginning of the study were 2 to 3 times more likely to have died of heart disease than men who were free from all the 3 risk factors. In other words, their lives were shortened, on average, by a decade.

According to health experts, the percentage of people having fatal stroke or heart attack does decline by about a quarter in many rich countries over the last decade. However, similar downtrend is not seen in many known risk factors for heart disease.

In the United States, the American Heart Association revealed that uncontrolled hypertension has fallen by only 16 percent, high blood cholesterol by 19 percent, and smoking by just over 15 percent since 1999.

Meanwhile, other risk factors of heart disease have remained either constant or even increased. For example, the number of people who exercise does not exceed than that more than 10 years ago. On the other hand, obesity rate have increased tremendously, especially among younger generation.

How Is Coffee Linked to Weight Gain?

Coffee is one of the most favorable beverages for people, especially for those staying in the United States. People not only drink coffee in the morning but also consume it in the afternoon, and even in the night. One good reason quoted by coffee lovers is that coffee can keep them awake for longer hours to help them accomplish their tasks or works.

In recent years, blended coffee beverages have gained popularity. Blended coffee beverage is one that contains milk, sugar, pre-sweetened milk, chocolate powder, etc, in addition to coffee. Latte, cappuccino, flat white, mocha and frappuccino are just a few popular examples, and there are of course many more varieties. These so-called blended coffees can be either served in hot or cold.

However, are people paying attention to the calories of the coffee they drink? A survey conducted on coffee chains by a New York City Health Department found that a black coffee or one served with milk, sugar, or both had an average calorie of 63.

Meanwhile, they also discovered that other varieties of blended coffee, with pre-sweetened milk, ice or pre-mixed, had about 239 calories, which is 12 percent of a 2000-calorie diet. In a particular coffee chain, a large blended coffee could contain as high as about 860 calories.

The findings, which were published in the online journal Preventing Chronic Disease during September 2009, included 3,000 purchases from 115 coffee and restaurant chains in the city. Nevertheless, not all drinks are filled with calories. For instance, a simple black brewed coffee or tea can have as little as 10 calories.

The calorie-loaded coffee beverages could easily cause the coffee drinkers to put on weight! As overweight is a risk factor for many other medical disorders, for example, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), etc, the Health Department in the United States suggests that consumers should order a small size beverage with low fat or skim milk, and without flavorings. This would cut down the calories and reduce the risk of weight gain.

Can Foods Rich in Magnesium Reduce Stroke Risk?

Being the leading cause of heart disease and cancer, cigarette smoking is also strongly linked to stroke.

A study that was published on March 10, 2008 in the Archives of Internal Medicine reported that diets rich in magnesium could help smokers reduce their stroke risk. Carried out by researchers from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, the study was aim originally to look at possible lung cancer therapies.

Researchers have not figured out the mechanism behind the finding, but suspected that it might be the magnesium that helps reduce high blood pressure. High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a disorder that can lead to stroke if it is not treated in time.

About 26,556 Finnish male smokers were followed for more than 13 years. The study found that those who consumed an average of 589 milligrams of magnesium each day in their diets had a 15 percent lower risk for cerebral infarction than those who consumed less magnesium. Cerebral infarction is a kind of stroke that occurs when blood flow to the brain is blocked.

The effect was found to be stronger for men younger than 60 years old. Meanwhile, the study also showed that the intake of calcium, potassium and sodium was not associated with risk for any type of stroke.

Magnesium can not only lower blood pressure but also influence the cholesterol level or the use of insulin that turns glucose into energy. Any of these 2 mechanisms would affect the risk for cerebral infarction but not hemorrhagic stroke. Hemorrhagic stroke is another type of stroke that occurs when the vessel ruptures, causing blood to leak into the brain.

Foods rich in magnesium can be found in whole grains, black beans, broccoli, halibut, oysters, peanuts, rockfish and spinach. However, the researchers are not sure if taking magnesium dietary supplements would also produce the same result.

Couples Sleeping Apart To Prevent Heart Disease and Other Disorders?

Sleep plays an important role in our health. If one could not have a good night sleep, many health hazards might just occur. Evidences have already shown that poor sleep was linked to depression, heart disease, lung disorder, traffic and industrial accidents, as well as divorce. Nevertheless, people do not seem to pay much attention to the quality of their sleep.

Of course, poor sleep can be due to many causes. For instance, family or work pressure, frequent passing of urine during the night, snoring from the partner sharing the same bed, and so on and so forth.

An interesting finding, revealed on September 10, 2009 at the British Science Festival, indicated that couples actually sleep better when they sleep separately. This seems to be opposite to what people generally feel: they tend to sleep better when a partner accompanies them.

In order to compare how well couples slept when they shared a bed versus slept separately, the researchers from the University of Surrey studied the sleep patterns of 40 couples. They found that when couples slept together in the same bed and if one of them moved in his or her sleep, there was a 50 percent chance that their partners on the same bed would badly be disturbed.

They also revealed that even with the evidence they gathered, couples are reluctant to sleep apart. There is only 8 percent of those couples who are in their 40s and 50s are sleeping in separate rooms. Perhaps, the thinking that couples do not sleep in the same bed only when they have problem in their relationship still firmly instilled in the mind of most people.

One sleep specialist, who sleeps separately with his wife, argues that people were never meant to share their beds.

Why?

According to his explanation, the concept of modern martial bed only started with the industrial revolution. This is because people were moving to overcrowded towns and cities where living space was scarce. He further pointed out that married couples sleeping apart were rather common before the Victoria era.

So what should the couples sharing the same bed do now?

The advice from the experts is that if couples sleeping together can sleep perfectly well, then they should stick to it, otherwise they should not be afraid to do something different.