There are less invasive options becoming available for weight loss surgery. There are over 200,000 Americans who undergo the major operation called bariatric surgery to try to least weight.
Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323296504578396440393998244.html
40 Facts about sleep you probably didn’t know; some examples are ………..
– To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain’s sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That’s why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep.
– Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you’re sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you’re still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.
-Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.
– Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.
read more at:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/sleep/facts.htm
Fun toy to track your moves and monitor your fitness
Fitbit launched a .028 ounce wireless monitor to track your moves. Its available at Fitbit.com $60
Researchers are discovering more ways obesity can damage one’s body. These include an individual’s sense of smell, disrupting sleep and seual life and cancerous tumors can grow faster. Read more at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204598504578080683053072000.html
Timing is everything in life….especially when it comes to weight loss. A timely study just released from the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reminds us that the calorie density, or the amount of calories per bite of food that you eat, may make all the difference in helping you painlessly shed some of that extra winter weight.
Just ask Barbara Rolls, PhD, researcher, and author of the just released, The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet, an updated and expanded version of her bestseller book published in 2004. According to research, much of which was conducted by Rolls, it is the volume of food rather than the calories that is the key to helping you feel satisfied or satiated when you eat. Translation: When it comes to weight loss, you need to outsmart your stomach by filling it up with a large volume of low calorie-dense foods to satisfy your hunger, which will enable you to cutback on daily calories. In this case, size does matter.
For example, an apple that would fit in the palm of your hand (about 3 inches) is a mere 75 calories. Because over 85 percent of its weight is from water (0 calories) and fiber (0 calories), it is considered a low-density food as it is low in calories per bite. However, a slice of apple pie, which could also fit in the palm of your hand, has calorie-dense fat and sugar added, along with the apples, so will serve up about 300 calories a slice. (That’s without the a la mode part.) You would have to eat four apples to consume the equivalent of the calories in the pie slice. Because of the apple’s volume, you would likely get “full” after chomping on an apple or two, and thus, consume less calories overall.
Compare these two meals:
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| Source: CDC |
Volume-wise, the more colorful dinner plate of grilled chicken, which is loaded with tons of low calorie, high-volume veggies is going to fill you up for less calories compared to the higher fat, more caloric-dense fried chicken meal. In fact, the puny portions in the fried chicken dinner may cause you to go back for seconds (adding more calories to your meal) in order to obtain the volume of foods you need to eat to feel full.
The same strategy goes for soups. By ladling a low-calorie dense, veggie-based soup rather than a high calorie-dense fatty chowder in your bowl, you will end up consuming the same volume of soup but for less calories:
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| Source: CDC |
This is actually part of the logic behind the new MyPlate. By devoting half of your plate to low- calorie, high-volume fruits and veggies, you will crowd out the higher, calorie-dense items on your plate while feeling satisfied.
Need help in planning meals that are voluminous but not high in calories? The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet also contains over 100 new recipes developed by registered dietitian and culinary wizard, Mindy Hermann, as well as advice for when you are food shopping and dining out.
You can eat more and weigh less.
Having a so-called obesity gene doesn’t necessarily doom you to being fat, a study finds — if you stay active.
A meta-analysis that included 45 studies of 218,166 adults looked at the effect physical activity had on being saddled with a gene associated with fat mass and obesity, otherwise known as the FTO gene or obesity gene. Researchers found that having the gene upped the risk of being overweight or obese, as well as having a higher body mass index, a larger waist circumference and higher body fat percentage.
However, getting some exercise seemed to reduce that chance. Being physically active had an effect on the FTO gene, reducing obesity risk by an average of 27% compared with people who were sedentary. The same effect was not seen in an analysis of nine studies on children and teens.In analyzing the studies, researchers set the bar fairly low for what they considered physical activity. People were deemed inactive if they had a sedentary job and did less than one hour of moderate to vigorous activity per week, or their level of physical activity was in the lowest 20% among that group of study participants.
“Our findings are highly relevant for public health,” the authors wrote in the study, released Tuesday in the journal PLoS Medicine. “They emphasize that [physical activity] is a particularly effective way of controlling body weight in individuals with a genetic predisposition towards obesity,” and it goes against the belief that genetics are unchangeable.
Getting people to understand the link between genes and lifestyle is important, they added, and could give people a sense of control in determining their health.
This finding comes on the heels of another PLoS Medicine study that found that eating a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables may have a protective effect against a gene that’s linked to a higher risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease.
By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff
Every year the American Psychological Association releases its “Stress in America” survey — the latest was released yesterday — warning us that we’re frazzled beyond belief, especially if we’ve got health problems or are caring for someone who does. No surprise there.
Yet I wonder just how much the survey of 1,200 reflects the national psyche of 300 million. Or whether it’s even relevant to try to summarize what the collective mass is feeling. Those who are unemployed, facing foreclosure or going through a divorce have a different set of stresses than a frazzled working mother who’s caring for a mother-in-law with back problems. (Okay, that last example was me.)
The stress survey found that more than 1 in 5 Americans report feeling chronic “extreme stress” but also found that, on average, our stress levels have dipped a smidgen since last year’s survey.
Oddly, the APA expressed alarm that only about 31 percent of the survey respondents thought that their stress level was having an impact on their health even though the vast majority said they knew that stress can contribute to major health problems like heart disease, depression, and obesity.
“When considered alongside the finding that only 29 percent of adults believe they are doing an excellent or very good job at managing or reducing stress,” the survey report stated, the “APA warns that this disconnect is cause for concern.”
I’m not really sure why it would be, if there was a lot of overlap among the 31 percent who reported that stress wasn’t affecting their health and the 29 percent who reported that they were managing their stress well.
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