weight Archives - First Washington News

December 16, 2022

Low carb, high fat diet may help manage weight, A1c

A cup of blueberries, two fried eggs in a plate and a cucumber salad placed on a wooden table counter. — Research suggests that a low carb, high fat diet is more beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes to help manage weight and glucose. Joscha Malburg/EyeEm/Getty Images

More than 462 million adults around the world have type 2 diabetes.
Although type 2 diabetes is not curable, the condition is sometimes reversible through medications and lifestyle changes, such as diet.
Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark say low carb, high fat diet can help people with type 2 diabetes lose weight and control glucose levels.

More than 462 million adults globally are currently living with type 2 diabetes. And over one million people die each year from diabetes.

While there is no cure for type 2 diabetes, the condition is sometimes reversible through a combination of medications and lifestyle changes, including diet.

Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, found new evidence suggesting a low-carbohydrate, high fat, calorie-unrestricted diet helps people with type 2 diabetes lose weight and keep glucose levels under control better than a high-carbohydrate, low fat diet.

The study appears in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Of the two types of diabetes, type 2 diabetes is the most common — more than 95{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when a person’s body becomes insulin resistant and no longer responds to insulin correctly. The hormone insulin regulates the amount of glucose allowed into the body’s cells, giving them energy.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes happens through a combination of genetics and certain lifestyle factors, including obesity, age, sedentary lifestyle, and family history.

In the United States, research shows certain ethnic groups, including African American, Latinx, American Indian, and Alaska Native, are at a higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

Treatment for type 2 diabetes may include medications and lifestyle changes, including weight loss, exercise, and dietary changes.

For this study, researchers conducted a study with 165 people with type 2 diabetes. Participants were randomly assigned to follow either a low-carbohydrate, high fat diet or a high-carbohydrate, low fat diet for six months. Researchers also asked the participants to eat the same number of calories equal to the energy they burned each day.

Upon conclusion of the study, researchers found people on the low-carbohydrate, high fat diet lowered their hemoglobin A1c levels by 0.59{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} compared to those on the high-carbohydrate, low fat diet. And those on the low carb diet also lost more body fat and reduced their waist circumference compared to the high carb group.

“Diet is very important in the management of type 2 diabetes,” said Camilla Dalby Hansen, an MD and Ph.D. student at the Department of Clinical Research at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, and the Department of Medical Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Odense University Hospital. Hansen is also the first author of this study.

“The patients have the possibility to control the diet themselves. This gives them a feeling of control and the feeling that they can do something themselves in the management of their disease,” Hansen told Medical News Today.

“We were very surprised to see that participants on the (low-carbohydrate, high-fat) diet improved their glycemic control by 9.5mmol/mol (0.88{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}) and lost 5.5 kg even though they were eating the same amount of calories as they were used to.

This will hopefully mean that long-term compliance will be more successful because patients will be full and do not have to starve.”

– Camilla Dalby Hansen

“We were very surprised to see that participants on the (low-carbohydrate, high-fat) diet improved their glycemic control by 9.5mmol/mol (0.88{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}) and lost 5.5 kg even though they were eating the same amount of calories as they were used to,” she told Medical News Today. “This will hopefully mean that long-term compliance will be more successful because patients will be full and do not have to starve.”

At the conclusion of the study, the researchers also found participants did not sustain the changes they experienced during the study once they went back to their typical eating patterns.

“This shows us that this diet approach needs to be considered as a long-term lifestyle choice and not only sustained for a short period of time,” Hansen said.

Lauren Pelehach Sepe, a clinical nutritionist at the Kellman Wellness Center in New York, agreed:

“It is important for people who are dealing with diabetes to implement lifelong diet and lifestyle changes. There is a significant amount of research out there to show that diet and lifestyle can often allow [people with type 2 diabetes] to control their blood sugar, even without medications. However, these changes need to be sustained.

Managing our health is a lifelong process — there are no short-term fixes.”

Upon reviewing this study, Sepe commented she was not surprised by the results as people with diabetes are often recommended a diet focused on low carbohydrate intake, as well as increased protein.

“When we consume carbohydrates, our body breaks them down and converts them into sugar molecules or glucose,” she explained. “This results in an increase in blood sugar, which stimulates the body to release insulin to facilitate the storage of glucose into the cells, where they can be used as a source of energy, as needed.”

“For diabetics, this process is not functioning properly, meaning they continue to maintain high circulating levels of blood sugar despite the release of insulin,” Sepe continued. “Therefore, lowering the intake of carbohydrates naturally helps to control blood sugar levels.”

In regards to the high fat portion of the low-carbohydrate, high fat diet some study participants were on, Sepe mentioned conventional research has only recently opened up to the idea of a higher fat intake is beneficial, particularly for diabetics.

April 13, 2022

Common corticosteroid drug may aid weight loss

white pills spilled over a dark blue background, one pill has a green scribble on it — New exploration in mice implies prednisone, a widespread corticosteroid drug, may possibly assist body weight reduction. Sean Locke/Stocksy

Many men and women with conditions that include serious inflammation choose a everyday dose of a corticosteroid drug identified as prednisone.
The drug is extremely helpful but can induce weight get, muscle mass squandering, and other significant side effects.
A new analyze in mice has observed that a weekly dose of the exact drug could have the reverse influence, creating muscle toughness and endorsing fat decline.
A great deal study stays to be completed, but the scientists speculate that weekly prednisone could reduce aspect effects and reduce or take care of obesity.

Prednisone is a corticosteroid drug that decreases inflammation in a vast array of situations, like muscular dystrophy, bronchial asthma, colitis, arthritis, and psoriasis.

Having said that, whilst the treatment is really powerful, day by day prednisone can induce bodyweight attain and muscle losing, amid other serious side consequences.

Scientists are keen to find out regardless of whether a weekly dose of prednisone could give the identical anti-inflammatory benefits as a day-to-day dose, but with out advertising and marketing body weight acquire and losing.

In a not too long ago printed pilot analyze, scientists at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL, identified that a as soon as-weekly dose of prednisone enhanced muscle mass efficiency in people with muscular dystrophy.

Compared with a everyday dose, the weekly procedure did not appear to bring about the common facet outcomes of corticosteroid treatment method, these types of as weight achieve, large blood sugar, and superior blood pressure.

There had been also no really serious adverse events or persistent facet results from the cure.

Regardless of whether the identical method could avert pounds attain and muscle mass losing in people who do not have muscular dystrophy is unclear, however.

To start out to solution that query, a person of the researchers has now in contrast each day and weekly prednisone in mice fed a large fat diet plan. Elizabeth M. McNallly, Professor of Medication (Cardiology) and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from Northwestern College Feinberg Faculty of Medication in Chicago, IL, led the review.

They located that a weekly dose prevented obesity and improved muscle mass metabolism in the animals.

By contrast, a daily dose of the drug led to pounds attain, exercising intolerance, and large blood sugar concentrations.

In addition, mice that were being presently overweight missing excess weight, obtained energy and improved their lean system mass on a weekly dose of prednisone — despite eating a high-fats diet regime.

The study has been revealed in the Journal of Experimental Medication.

“What is fascinating to me about this work is the acquiring that a straightforward improve in the dosing frequency can rework [corticosteroid drugs] from inducers to preventers of being overweight.”

– Mattia Quattrocelli, Ph.D., corresponding creator

Dr. Quattrocelli, who initiated the research even though at Northwestern, is now assistant professor at Cincinnati Children’s Healthcare facility Health-related Center and the pediatrics section at the College of Cincinnati.

The study adds to proof that a healthful, well balanced metabolism largely is dependent on the molecular “conversation” in between unwanted fat (adipose) tissue and muscles.

The researchers uncovered that in obese mice, a the moment-weekly dose of prednisone greater the volume of a signaling molecule that adipose tissue produces.

The molecule — a hormone referred to as adiponectin that is derived from fats — improved the physical exercise tolerance and energy expenditure of the animals’ muscles.

Conversely, mice that had been genetically engineered to absence adiponectin failed to respond to the once-weekly cure with prednisone.

Dr. Quattrocelli advised Medical Information Currently that researchers will will need to discover more about the mechanisms guiding the discovery before they can translate the conclusions into therapies.

“We very first have to have to collect more mechanisms in mice and potentially other animal styles in get to figure out the degree of translatability,” he explained.

“There’s really a little bit of distinction amongst obesity in mice and being overweight in human beings, and in common involving metabolic pressure in mice and metabolic anxiety in people,” he emphasized.

He additional that muscle mass in mice has a different composition to that in people, with a bigger proportion of “fast twitch” fibers.

“On top of that I want to deliver to the fore the worth of the complexity of social behavior in human beings in comparison to mice,” he mentioned.

“As human beings we have extremely, quite advanced social behaviors that directly affect when and how we try to eat and the dynamics of overall body mass in standard,” he additional.

By distinction, researchers can tightly regulate the availability of food items and other environmental things in the cages of lab mice.

“This examine provides up a really exclusive and interesting concept that has yet to be explored further more,” claimed Dr. Revital Gorodeski Baskin, an endocrinology and diabetic issues professional, and director of obesity at University Hospitals in Cleveland, OH.

“I am enthusiastic to see that just after just one significant dose of prednisone, these mice showed enhancement in physique mass, muscle mass fat burning capacity, and electrical power expenditure,” she instructed MNT.

“This might seem like a feasible treatment method tactic for obesity, with a few concerns,” Dr. Baskin additional.

She pointed out that a solitary, large dose of a steroid can result in psychological distress, poor snooze, paranoid thoughts, and stress in some men and women.

She explained substantial doses of steroids are regarded to minimize bone density and increase an infection rates, so scientists would need to examine no matter if shorter bursts of the prescription drugs could, around time, result in the similar concerns.

The scientific gains could also wane in excess of time as patients’ bodies accommodate to the therapy.

“I do, nevertheless, think that this is a very distinctive thought to advancement in energy metabolism and entire body mass,” Dr. Baskin additional. She said she looked ahead to observing further analysis into the idea.

Posted on February 3, 2022
Chemicals found in plastic may lead to weight gain

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New research explores the effect of chemicals in everyday plastic items on mouse fat cells. Group4 Studio/Getty Images

Changes in diet and exercise do not fully explain the steep rise in overweight and obesity over recent decades.

One theory claims that chemicals in everyday plastic products promote weight gain by changing human metabolism.

A new study found that a range of plastic household items contain thousands of chemicals, many of them unknown.

One-third of the items contained chemicals that, after extraction, caused the growth and proliferation of mouse fat cells in the lab.

Chemicals in plastic household items such as drinks bottles, yogurt pots, and freezer bags may be contributing to the global epidemic of obesity, a new study suggests.

The chemicals may alter human metabolism by promoting the growth of fat cells, or adipocytes.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people with obesity has nearly tripled globally since 1975.

The WHO estimates that in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight. Of these individuals, more than 650 million had obesity.

Having excess body weight increases a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer.

Research suggests that factors such as changes in diet are insufficient to explain the scale of the obesity epidemic and the speed with which it has spread around the world.

One possible culprit is the effect of synthetic chemicals in our environment called endocrine disruptors. These influence the endocrine system, which includes the hormones that regulate appetite, metabolism, and weight, among other bodily functions.

The most well-known endocrine disruptors are bisphenol A and phthalates, which are present in some plastics.

These chemicals affect human development and fertility, and lab-based experiments indicate that they may also promote obesity.

However, plastics contain thousands of chemicals. Products made from plastic comprise one or more polymers, but manufacturers also add chemical fillers and additives to achieve the desired properties.

A 2019 study estimates that plastic food packaging alone could contain more than 4,000 known substances that appear in chemical databases.

However, biologists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim suspected that there might be many unknown chemicals in plastic products that do not appear in the databases.

They used methanol to extract chemicals from 34 everyday products, including freezer bags, yogurt pots, drinks bottles, vegetable trays, scouring pads, and coffee cup lids.

Crucially, they used a technique called nontarget high resolution mass spectrometry, which identifies both known and unknown substances, to find chemicals.

They detected a total of 55,300 chemical features and tentatively identified 629 substances that are already in databases, including 11 that are known to disrupt metabolism.

Finally, they tested extracts from each of the products on a type of mouse precursor cell that can differentiate into fat cells.

They compared the effect of the extracts with those of a reference chemical — a diabetes drug called rosiglitazone (Avandia) that has well-known metabolic effects.

The chemical cocktails from four out of the 34 products transformed precursor cells into adipocytes that were larger and contained more fat than rosiglitazone-treated cells. Chemicals from 11 of the products induced the formation of adipocytes.

The results have been published in Environmental Science & Technology.

“It’s very likely that it is not the usual suspects, such as bisphenol A, causing these metabolic disturbances,” says first author Johannes Völker, Ph.D., who is affiliated with the university’s biology department.

“This means that other plastic chemicals than the ones we already know could be contributing to overweight and obesity,” he adds.

The scientists report that chemical cocktails from PVC and PUR products were most likely to promote the creation of fat cells, whereas those from PET, HDPE, and PLA products were inactive.

They emphasize that food packaging is not the only potential source of metabolism-disrupting chemicals.

The substances may also find their way into the body through the skin — for example, from plastic shower slippers or when inhaling dust that has been in contact with plastic flooring.

In their paper, the authors conclude:

“Given the potency of the extracted mixtures and considering our close and constant contact with plastics, our results support the idea that plastic chemicals can contribute to an obesogenic environment and, thus, the obesity pandemic.”

However, they acknowledge that the results are not definitive, since the experiments took place in cells growing in dishes in the lab rather than in whole animals.

“It is too early to quantify the contribution of plastic chemicals to obesity from a public health perspective, mainly because our work was done in vitro, not in vivo, and the causative chemicals remain unknown,” said senior author Martin Wagner, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at the university.

“So, we cannot draw a causal link to what is happening in human populations so far,” he told Medical News Today.

However, he pointed out that there is good evidence from in vivo and epidemiological studies that bisphenol A is associated with obesity.

In a tweet, he called for manufacturers to make their plastics chemically simpler and safer.

The researchers used methanol to extract chemicals from the plastics, which may not reflect what happens under everyday conditions.

“The authors are studying extraction rather than migration,” said Chris Howick, who is chairperson of the product safety committee at the British Plastics Federation.

“The authors are removing ingredients that would normally remain in the sample throughout its lifetime — as an example, flexible PVC products do not generally become brittle over their lifetimes since the plasticizer remains in the product,” he told MNT.

However, Prof. Wagner said that in a previous study, his team demonstrated that many chemicals do, in fact, leach from plastic products in a standard test for food contact materials that uses water only.

“We also found that these migrates induced in vitro toxicity, including endocrine-disrupting effects,” he said.

“For the metabolism-disrupting compounds, we have not done this type of experiment yet, so it is too early to tell if these also leach,” he added.

In their new paper, the authors also acknowledge that they analyzed plastic packaging that had contained food or personal care products.

“Because chemical migration is not a one-way street, we cannot exclude the possibility that compounds from the contents migrated into the packaging,” they write.

“This is an ever-present challenge in migration studies, and it is common, especially for food with a high fat content, for migration of food into the plastics to exceed any migration from the plastic into the food,” said Howick.

He also pointed out that certain foods have well-established effects on the endocrine system.

Posted on October 2, 2021
Losing visceral fat more important than overall weight

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According to a small study, even people of moderate weight can reverse diabetes by losing visceral fat. EMS-FORSTER-PRODUCTIONS/Getty Images

Researchers have shown that for people with overweight or obesity, losing weight can reverse type 2 diabetes.

In a small study, the team found that weight loss reversed type 2 diabetes in participants, even though their body mass index (BMI) was in a moderate range.

The study authors believe that lowering levels of fat around the organs may be more important than lowering BMI.

In a small, preliminary study, researchers have found that people with type 2 diabetes who also have a BMI that falls within a moderate range can reverse their diabetes by losing weight.

The researchers reported their findings at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, accounting for around 91.2{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of diabetes cases in the United States.

The condition occurs when a person’s body does not produce enough insulin or if the insulin no longer works effectively. Insulin normally helps glucose enter the cells of the body. In the absence of insulin, glucose stays in the blood, where it can damage organs and tissues.

This means that a person with type 2 diabetes has an increased risk of several health issues, including stroke, heart disease, issues with their feet, kidney disease, dental issues, and bladder problems.

According to researchers writing in the journal Nutrients, scientists for a long time believed that type 2 diabetes was incurable, so they primarily focused on how people should manage symptoms of the condition.

However, evidence now suggests that if individuals who are overweight or have obesity achieve and maintain weight loss, they can reverse type 2 diabetes.

In the present small, preliminary study, researchers have gone one step further and examined whether weight loss might reverse type 2 diabetes even in those whose weight falls within the moderate BMI range.

Medical News Today spoke with the study’s first author, Dr. Ahmad Al-Mrabeh, a Transitional Research Fellow at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at Queen’s Medical Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.

He explained that they decided to explore whether weight loss could be effective at reversing type 2 diabetes for people with moderate BMI after looking at the results of their previous research.

“We observed that the metabolic profile changed markedly after following a low calorie diet even when the change in body weight was […] minor. We, therefore, wanted to test whether inducing modest weight loss could achieve remission in those who are non-obese,” said Dr. Al-Mrabeh.

According to the principal investigator of the study, Prof. Roy Taylor, Director of the Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre at Newcastle University, U.K., “[o]ur previous research has shown that weight loss of 10–15{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} can achieve remission in people with type 2 diabetes who are overweight or obese.”

“Doctors tend to assume, however, that type 2 diabetes has a different cause in those who aren’t overweight. This means that, unlike those who are overweight, those who are of [moderate] weight aren’t usually advised to lose weight before being given diabetes drugs and insulin.”

“Instead, there’s a tendency to start them on insulin and other medication at a much earlier stage.”

“What we’ve shown is that if those of [moderate] weight lose 10-15{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of their weight, they have a very good chance of getting rid of their diabetes.”

“This should be a wake-up call to doctors, and, with 1 in 10 of the 4.5 million people with type 2 diabetes in the U.K. of [moderate] weight at diagnosis, there is no time to be lost in getting the message across.”

– Prof. Taylor

The study involved just 23 people. Of these, 12 individuals had a type 2 diabetes diagnosis with an average age of 58.3 years and an average BMI of 24.5. The remaining 11 did not have diabetes and were of similar age and BMI. This group acted as the control.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classify BMI scores of 18.5–24.9 as “healthy.”

All participants followed a low calorie diet for 2 weeks, consuming no more than 800 calories each day. The researchers then supported them to maintain their new weight for 4–6 weeks.

They completed this cycle two or three times until all participants had reduced their body weight by 10–15{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}.

The researchers measured each participants’ visceral fat and insulin sensitivity before, during, and after the study.

At the end of the study, the researchers matched the people with diabetes with control participants of the same age, sex, and BMI. The scientists found that the individuals with diabetes lost more than twice as much fat in their liver compared with the controls.

In the diabetes group, fat in the pancreas reduced from 5.1{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} to 4.5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}. Also, their average triglyceride levels fell from 1.6 millimoles per liter to 1.0 millimoles per liter — a significant reduction similar to the control group.

Most significantly, two-thirds of the participants found that their type 2 diabetes went into remission and could stop taking their medication.

Prof. Taylor says that “[t]hese results, while preliminary, demonstrate very clearly that diabetes is not caused by obesity but by [carrying too much weight] for your own body. It’s due to having too much fat in your liver and pancreas, whatever your BMI.”

“In the liver, this excess fat prevents insulin from working normally. In the pancreas, it causes the beta cells to stop producing insulin.”

Dr. Al-Mrabeh said to MNT that the results may be reproducible in larger studies, “however, it is important to understand the mechanisms of excess fat buildup within these vital metabolic organs (liver and pancreas) in non-obese people.”

Speaking with MNT, Prof. Pål R. Njølstad, Leader of the Center for Diabetes Research at the University of Bergen, Norway, said that “[t]he findings are interesting and indicate that weight loss is also important in non-obese individuals with type 2 diabetes.”

Prof. Njølstad added that “[m]ore studies are needed with an increased number of study participants and increased time of follow up, in addition to investigating the effect of other factors, such as age, sex, and ethnicity.”

Dr. Al-Mrabeh said to MNT that he will continue developing the initial findings.

“I have recently moved to the University of Edinburgh to establish an independent research program looking into the mechanisms of how excess fat causes damage to the pancreas in type 2 diabetes. My aim is to dissect these mechanisms using both human and animal studies.”