BMI, Brain Volume, White Matter Lessions

A May 2024 report by Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University said,

• “High cumulative BMI is detrimental to brain health, especially for younger adults under 45 years, where it corresponds to approximately 12 years of brain aging,”

• “Maintaining a BMI below 26.2 kg/m² is suggested for better brain health.”

•  “This research provides crucial insights into the relationship between BMI and brain health, emphasizing the need for public health strategies to control BMI for better neurological outcomes,”

• “Future studies should focus on acquiring longitudinal neuroimaging data to further explore these associations.”

Obesity and Asthma

A November 2022 study by Nottingham Trent University said,

• “We have found a significant link between gut permeability, being overweight and poor asthma control, particularly in people with obesity. This suggests that dietary interventions to improve gut barrier function may be an effective, alternative treatment target for asthma patients who are overweight or have obesity.”

• “Our initial findings show that increased gut permeability is likely to be a factor in worsening asthma symptoms in patients with obesity, so it will be interesting to look at whether dietary interventions can improve symptoms for these patients.”

late-night eating,weight gain, diabetes

An October 2022 study on mice by Northwestern Medicine said, 

• "It is well known, albeit poorly understood, that insults to the body clock are going to be insults to metabolism,” 

• “When animals consume Western style cafeteria diets — high fat, high carb — the clock gets scrambled,” 

• “The clock is sensitive to the time people eat, especially in fat tissue, and that sensitivity is thrown off by high-fat diets. We still don’t understand why that is, but what we do know is that as animals become obese, they start to eat more when they should be asleep. This research shows why that matters.”

• “We thought maybe there’s a component of energy balance where mice are expending more energy eating at specific times,”

• “That’s why they can eat the same amount of food at different times of the day and be healthier when they eat during active periods versus when they should be sleeping.”

• “We need to figure out how, mechanistically, the circadian clock controls creatine metabolism so that we can figure out how to boost it,” 

• “Clocks are doing a lot to metabolic health at the level of fat tissue, and we don’t know how much yet.”

High aerobic fitness and metabolic syndrome

An October 2022 study by the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Eastern Finland said,  

• “Our results show that being overweight or obese increases the risk of metabolic syndrome regardless of the level of aerobic fitness,” 

• “Instead of focusing on aerobic fitness, preventing metabolic syndrome should start with increasing physical activity, improving diet quality, and controlling weight.”

The feeding window and obesity

A May 2021 study by the University of Surrey said,

"Time-restricted feeding has the potential to become an extremely effective tool in the fight against the obesity epidemic facing many countries. However, the study clearly shows that the ability of people to restrict their daily feeding window is dependent on their individual lifestyles.”

The study found that most people could reduce their feeding window by 3 hours.

Diabetes type 2: New Treatment pathway

A June 2021 study from University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and BIO5 Institute, and  Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University,

• "All current therapeutics for Type 2 diabetes primarily aim to decrease blood glucose. So, they are treating a symptom, much like treating the flu by decreasing the fever,”

• "Obesity is known to be a cause of Type 2 diabetes and, for a long time, we have known that the amount of fat in the liver increases with obesity,”

• "As fat increases in the liver, the incidence of diabetes increases."

• "We found that fat in the liver increased the release of the inhibitory neurotransmitter Gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA," 

• "We then identified the pathway by which GABA synthesis was occurring and the key enzyme that is responsible for liver GABA production - GABA transaminase."

• "When the liver produces GABA, it decreases activity of those nerves that run from the liver to the brain. Thus, fatty liver, by producing GABA, is decreasing firing activity to the brain," 

• "That decrease in firing is sensed by the central nervous system, which changes outgoing signals that affect glucose homeostasis."

• "Inhibition of excess liver GABA production restored insulin sensitivity within days," 

• "Longer term inhibition of GABA-transaminase resulted in decreased food intake and weight loss."

gut inflammation and infection

A June 2021 study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Cleveland Clinic said,

• "Inflammatory bowel disease has historically been a problem primarily in Western countries such as the U.S., but it's becoming more common globally as more and more people adopt Western lifestyles," 

• "Our research showed that long-term consumption of a Western-style diet high in fat and sugar impairs the function of immune cells in the gut in ways that could promote inflammatory bowel disease or increase the risk of intestinal infections."

• "Obesity wasn't the problem per se,”

• "Eating too much of a healthy diet didn't affect the Paneth cells. It was the high-fat, high-sugar diet that was the problem."

• "This was a short-term experiment, just eight weeks,”

• "In people, obesity doesn't occur overnight or even in eight weeks. People have a suboptimal lifestyle for 20, 30 years before they become obese. It's possible that if you have Western diet for so long, you cross a point of no return and your Paneth cells don't recover even if you change your diet. We'd need to do more research before we can say whether this process is reversible in people."

Obesity and Exercise

“Exercise training can help support management of overweight and obesity in adults, and can contribute to health benefits beyond "scale victories” found a July 2021 review by the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) which provides scientific evidence on health and wellbeing benefits of exercise training for people living with overweight and obesity.

Heart Health, Obesity: Cut 200 calories and exercise

An August 2021 study by Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina found that 

• "Cutting 200 (not 250) calories daily and exercising may improve heart health in obese older adults" 

• “This is the first study to assess the effects of aerobic exercise training with and without reducing calories on aortic stiffness, which was measured via cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) to obtain detailed images of the aorta,” 

• “We sought to determine whether adding caloric restriction for weight loss would lead to greater improvements in vascular health compared to aerobic exercise alone in older adults with obesity.”

• “Our findings indicate that lifestyle changes designed to increase aerobic activity and moderately decrease daily calorie intake may help to reduce aortic stiffness and improve overall vascular health,”

• “However, we were surprised to find that the group that reduced their calorie intake the most did not have any improvements in aortic stiffness, even though they had similar decreases in body weight and blood pressure as the participants with moderate calorie restriction.”

• “These results suggest that combining exercise with modest calorie restriction — as opposed to more intensive calorie restriction or no-calorie restriction — likely maximizes the benefits on vascular health, while also optimizing weight loss and improvements in body composition and body fat distribution. The finding that higher-intensity calorie restriction may not be necessary or advised has important implications for weight loss recommendations to improve cardiovascular disease risk in older adults with obesity.”

Cocoa and Weight Control

An April 2021 study by Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences said,

"While it is typically considered an indulgence food because of its high sugar and fat content, epidemiological and human-intervention studies have suggested that chocolate consumption is associated with reduced risk of cardio-metabolic diseases including stroke, coronary heart disease and Type 2 diabetes,”

"So, it made sense to investigate whether cocoa consumption had an effect on non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease, which is commonly associated with human obesity.”

"Given the high proportion of people in the United States and other parts of the world with obesity, there is a need to develop potentially effective dietary interventions rather than just preventive agents,”

“This exchange is potentially beneficial, especially in combination with a healthy overall diet and increased physical activity,”

"If you go to the gym and work out, and your reward is you go home and have a cup of cocoa, that may be something that helps get you off the couch and moving around."

Physical Activity At Work Enough?

An April 2021 study by the National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen, Denmark.

"We adjusted for multiple factors in our analysis, indicating that the relationships were not explained by lifestyle, health conditions or socioeconomic status,”

"Many people with manual jobs believe they get fit and healthy by their physical activity at work and therefore can relax when they get home. Unfortunately, our results suggest that this is not the case. And while these workers could benefit from leisure physical activity, after walking 10,000 steps while cleaning or standing seven hours in a production line, people 

"A brisk 30-minute walk will benefit your health by raising your heart rate and improving your cardiorespiratory fitness, while work activity often does not sufficiently increase heart rate to improve fitness. In addition, work involving lifting for several hours a day increases blood pressure for many hours, which is linked with heart disease risk, while short bursts of intense physical activity during leisure raises blood pressure only briefly."

"We are trying to vary the tasks, give recovery time, or raise heart rate so there is a fitness and health benefit," 

Losing Weight by Exercising

An April 2021 study by the Technical University, Munich and the University of Nebraska found, 

"In the sports context, we have the phenomenon of people overeating after physical activity," 

"People want to reward themselves and their bodies for being active. So we use a hypothetical experiment to find out why people eat more after exercise compared to when they don't exercise."

"Based on this study, we were able to show for the first time that certain characteristics, such as the amount and 'urgency' with which a person wants to eat, change over the course of physical exertion," 

“These findings help us develop new interventions to optimize weight loss through exercise."

"The actual results suggest that physical exertion can entice those who do sport to eat larger amounts of food more quickly after the training session," 

"Since weight loss is a main motivation for exercising for many, and failure to achieve the desired weight loss makes it likely to quit exercising, it could be a good strategy to think about what you want to eat afterwards before you start to exercise."

BMI, body shape and cancer risk

A May 2021 study by he University of Glasgow and the University of Newcastle said,

"Our findings underscore the importance of measuring more than just BMI when predicting cancer risk, and suggest that people's body shape may increase their risk of certain cancers", 

"Whatever method you use, being overweight or obese is the single biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking. More urgent actions are needed to help people maintain a healthy bodyweight and shape throughout their lives, starting at an early age."

metabolic pathways and disease

A March 2021 study headed up by Dr. Claudia Langenberg, looked at a number of unassociated metabolic processes linked to various diseases.

"We wanted to know whether there are certain markers in the blood that indicate a risk, not only for one but for several diseases at the same time," 

"We found, for example, that an increased concentration of the sugar-like molecule N-acetylneuraminate increased the risk of no less than 14 diseases," 

"Gamma-glutamylglycine, on the other hand, is exclusively associated with the occurrence of diabetes. Other members of the same molecular groups simultaneously increase the risk of liver and heart disease." 

"Overall, we observed that two-thirds of the molecules are associated with the occurrence of more than one disease. This is in line with the fact that patients often develop a range of diseases in the course of their lives. If we succeed in influencing these key factors, this could make it possible to counter multiple diseases simultaneously."

Fat around the waist

A May 2021 study by Dr Alexis Elias Malavazos, I.R.C.C.S.Policlinico San Donato, San Donato Milanese, Italy, and colleagues, said, 

"Abdominal obesity might predict a high chest X-ray severity score better than general obesity in hospitalised patients with COVID-19. Therefore, in hospital, waist circumference should be measured and patients with abdominal obesity should be monitored closely."

Weight Loss and Diabetes Risk

It appears that just a few kilograms in weight loss can significantly reduce the risk of diabetes.

A November 2020 study by the University of East Anglia said, "We have now shown a significant effect in Type 2 diabetes prevention, and we can be very optimistic that even a modest weight loss, and an increase in physical activity, in real world programmes like this have a big effect on the risk of getting Type 2 diabetes.”

"This is really great news for the eight million people in the UK with a prediabetes diagnosis. The results of this trial, show that diabetes prevention is possible in the same prediabetes populations being treated in the NHS national diabetes prevention programme.”

"This is important to know, as the clinical methods for diagnosing diabetes and prediabetes have changed a lot in recent years."

Visceral fat and cognition

A March 2020 study by Augusta University said,

• "We have moved beyond correlations saying there is a lot of visceral fat here, and there is cognitive decline here so they may be interacting with each other."

• "We have identified a specific signal [proinflammatory protein signal interleukin-1 beta] that is generated in visceral fat, released into the blood that gets through the blood brain barrier and into the brain where it activates microglia and impairs cognition."

• "Obesity-induced inflammation occurs over years and so does inflammation in some … chronic inflammatory diseases."

For visceral fat, BMI (body mass index, dividing weight by height) is inferior to the waist-hip ratio.

Attitudes to Obesity

A March 2020 study by Leeds University said,  

• "…weight stigma and discrimination are common within healthcare settings and affects the quality of care that patients receive."

• "Attributions of personal responsibility can lead to bias... with a person's health status perceived to be within an individual's control, which leads to fault and blame.

•  Obesity is "...a complex, multifaceted health condition that can be caused by, for instance, by genetics, epigenetics, biological, environmental, and societal factors."

• "The most striking difference is that the language used about cancer is positive, reflecting optimism and hope … When compared with obesity, the language is negative, reflecting pessimism, fear and unpleasantness."

The report’s proposals include

1. Using “object descriptions such as "weight" or "excess weight"”

2. Putting “people first - not using 'obese people' but 'people with obesity'”

3. Being “accurate in the description of the complex causes of weight gain”

4. No implying “there is a group of people who do not wish to manage their weight.”

Eating Protein At Night

It may be that the time you eat protein impacts on the blood sugar level in different ways according to July 2020 research by the University of Bath. Eating protein at night may have a higher impact on blood sugars levels the following morning.

Eleanor Smith, who presented the work, said: "Future research will look at whether this applies to older and overweight people who tend to have more problems controlling their blood sugar levels. It would also be interesting to know to what extent our findings are due to eating at an unusual time or the type of protein consumed."

Nobiletin, oranges, weight loss

A March 2020 study by the University of Western Ontaria of sweet oranges and tangerines said,

"We went on to show that we can also intervene with nobiletin,"

"We've shown that in mice that already have all the negative symptoms of obesity, we can use nobelitin to reverse those symptoms, and even start to regress plaque build-up in the arteries, known as atherosclerosis."

"This result told us that nobiletin is not acting on AMP Kinase, and is bypassing this major regulator of how fat is used in the body,"

"What it still leaves us with is the question - how is nobiletin doing this?" [They don’t know yet].

“Obesity and its resulting metabolic syndromes are a huge burden to our health care system, and we have very few interventions that have been shown to work effectively… We need to continue this emphasis on the discovery of new therapeutics."