The Reason Fat People Find It Hard to Lose Weight Is Found

The reason fat people find it hard to lose weight is found.

The difference in the number of fat cells between lean and obese people is established in childhood and, although fat people replenish fat cells at the same rate as thin ones, they have around twice as many.

This remarkable glimpse of what gives us beer guts, love handle and muffin tops could also lead to new approaches to fight the flab, by cutting the overall number of fat cells in the body, as well as providing an insight into why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, because the number of fat cells in a person remains the same, even after a successful diet.

The details of how humans regulate their fat mass is reported today in the journal Nature by a team led by scientists at the Karlolinksa Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, as a second team, led by Imperial College London, reports in the journal Nature Genetics the discovery of a gene sequence present in half the population linked to three quarters of an inch bigger waistline, four lb gain in weight, and a tendency to become resistant to insulin, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

The fundamental new insight into the cause of obesity comes from an international team lead by Dr Kirsty Spalding, Prof Jonas Frise'n and Prof Peter Arner who found the body constantly produces new fat cells to replace equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death.

They also show, that overweight people generate and replace more fat cells than do lean - and that the total number of fat cells stays equal after a diet program.

Until now, it was not clear that adults could make new fat cells. Some had assumed that they increase their fat mass by incorporating more fats into already existing fat cells in order to maintain their body weight (lean, overweight, obese). However now it seems we constantly produce new fat cells irrespective of our body weight status, sex or age.

"The total number of fat cells in the body is stable over time, because the making of new fat cells is counterbalanced by an equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death", says Prof Arner.

The study was made possible by a method to use radioactive isotopes in fat cells from people who had lived through the brief period of Cold War nuclear bomb testing from 1955 to 1963 to determine the age of the fat cells in the body.

This was combined with methods to carefully measure the size of the fat cells in relation to the total amount of adipose tissue in 687 people with a large individual variation in body weight who had undergone liposuction and abdominal reconstruction surgery.

Fat cells are replaced at the same rate that they die - roughly 10 per cent every year. The level of obesity is determined by a combination of the number and size of fat cells, which can grow or shrink as fat from food is deposited in them.

Even if obese subjects go on a diet they keep the total number of fat cells in the body constant, but the size of individual fat cells is decreased markedly.

The findings therefore provide a new target for treatment of obesity, namely by attacking the signals and genes in fat cells that control the formation of new such cells.

"The results may, at least in part, explain why it is so difficult to maintain the weight after slimming", adds Prof Arner.

"Until now it was not clear whether there was fat cell turnover in adults," adds Dr Spalding. "Now we have established this does occur, we can target the process.

"Various groups are looking at compounds that might regulate the formation of fat cells but this work is at too early a stage to say when anti obesitiy drugs based on this understanding will be tested on patients, if at all."

Other new insights into how to treat obesity could come from the gene sequence linked to an expanding waist line, weight gain and a tendency to develop type 2 diabetes in the Imperial led study.

Professor Jaspal Kooner, the paper's senior author from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, says: "Finding such a close association between a genetic sequence and significant physical effects is very important, especially when the sequence is found in half the population."

The study shows that the sequence is a third more common in those with Indian Asian than in those with European ancestry. This could provide a possible genetic explanation for the particularly high levels of obesity and insulin resistance in Indian Asians, who make up 25 per cent of the world's population, but who are expected to account for 40 per cent of global heart disease by 2020.

The new gene sequence sits close to a gene called MC4R, which regulates energy levels in the body by influencing how much we eat and how much energy we expend or conserve. The researchers believe the sequence is involved in controlling the MC4R gene, which has also been implicated in rare forms of extreme childhood obesity.

Previous research on finding the genetic causes of obesity has identified other energy-conserving genes. Combining knowledge about the effects of all these genes could pave the way for transforming how obesity is managed.

This research, backed by the British Heart Foundation, was carried out with scientists from the University of Michigan and the Pasteur Institute, France.

Last year a British led team found that if people carry one copy of a variant in a gene called FTO, as does half of the general population, it will lead to a gain in weight of 2.6lb or put just over half an inch on their waists and raise their risk of being obese by one third.

If people have two copies of this variant in the FTO gene, which is the case in one in six of the population, then they will gain almost 7lb more than those who lack the variation and are at a 70 per cent higher risk of obesity.

According to the 2001 Health Survey for England, more than a fifth of males and a similar proportion of females aged 16 and over were classified as obese.

Half of men and a third of women were classified as overweight.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Younger Women Often Miss Signs of Heart Attack

Many younger women ignore or simply don't recognize the warning signs of a heart attack, often because it doesn't resemble the typical "Hollywood heart attack."

So say the authors of a study being presented Friday at the American Heart Association's annual Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke, in Baltimore.

"So many women said, 'We wish we had a better stereotype, you never see anything in the media,'" said study author Judith Lichtman, an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale School of Medicine. "I personally would love to see some cutting-edge TV series of, for example, a young person having a heart attack with atypical symptoms."

"The classic image of someone having a heart attack is someone like John Belushi. It's a heavy man clutching his chest. We never think of young women as having heart disease, so the image is not part of their consciousness," added Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of Women & Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "It's so important that we not only tell women that heart disease doesn't necessary have to look like [a Hollywood script], but they have to understand what makes them at risk."

Heart disease is the leading killer of American women, claiming almost half a million lives a year, or about one death per minute. According to background information from the authors, 16,000 young women with heart disease die every year and 40,000 are hospitalized.

Last year, a study from the same group of researchers found that women under the age of 55 often fail to recognize the symptoms of a heart attack until it's too late.

Eighty-eight percent of women in that trial reported traditional symptoms of severe chest pain. Yet only 42 percent suspected something was wrong with their heart.

Only half of the women experiencing heart attack symptoms sought care within the first hour, apparently because they thought their symptoms weren't real or weren't serious.

For this study, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women aged 55 and older a week after they had been discharged from the hospital following a heart attack.

Many didn't realize the symptoms were due to a heart attack. For example, one woman said she was told she was experiencing symptoms of acid reflux. Others attributed symptoms to fatigue, overexertion or stress.

Often, the symptoms just didn't line up with how heart attacks are presented in the popular media.

"I had probably seen a show or something with somebody having a heart attack," said one woman. "And they fall. They grab their chest. And then they grab their arm... I mean, you don't see anybody saying I have pain in my jaw or especially a heart attack, you don't see them vomiting... I did not know that and it's probably because of television, I would say is why I thought it would just be in the chest."

Similarly, another woman told investigators, "It's like... I didn't have any of the typical heart attack symptoms that you always hear about on TV and the ER hospital shows."

Some delayed treatment because symptoms went away for a while, or because they were too busy or had experienced prior, negative encounters with the health-care system ("...they throw you out, you know," said one woman. "If you don't have the money right there, then in two days you're gone").

One woman said she called her doctor about chest pains but was scheduled for a regular appointment in five days. Another woman who went to the emergency room spent an hour trying to find a supervisor to help her after a "rude" nurse just kept telling her to have a seat.

"A lot of women were triaged for a regular visit or, even in the ER, were being looked up for a lot of things other than a heart attack," Lichtman said.

Ironically, for some women, it was actually a relief to know that they were having a heart attack, that finally the mystery was over, Lichtman said.

Lichtman and her colleagues will be looking at this issue in more depth in a U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded study enrolling 2,000 women under 55 and 1,000 men in the same age range.

"A little bit of empowerment goes a long way," Steinbaum said. "Knowing your risk and knowing the potential for heart disease, seeking early care for symptoms that are really unclear and then saying, 'I am at risk for heart disease, please help me' becomes important in the paradigm of how this needs to develop."

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Chocolate May Cut Diabetes Risk

Scientists are to investigate whether eating chocolate can reduce the risk of heart disease in women with diabetes.

Volunteers - postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes - will be asked to eat a bar of chocolate a day for a year.

Cocoa is rich in compounds called flavonoids, which are thought to benefit the heart.

The University of East Anglia is using a specially formulated form of chocolate which contains more flavonoids than usual.

This compensates for the fact that many flavonoids are destroyed in the process of turning cocoa into chocolate.

Soy - another source of flavonoids - has also been added to the special bars.

The scientists are testing the theory that adding flavonoids to the diet may give added protection against heart disease on top of that provided by prescription drugs.

Deaths due to heart disease among women increase rapidly after the menopause and having type 2 diabetes increases this risk by a further three-and-a-half times.

If the trial confirms the hypothesis then it could have a far-reaching impact on the advice given to at-risk women.

Additional protection

Lead researcher Professor Aedin Cassidy said: "Despite postmenopausal women being at a similar risk to men for developing cardiovascular disease, to date they are under-represented in clinical trials.

"We hope to show that adding flavonoids to their diets will provide additional protection from heart disease and give women the opportunity to take more control over reducing their risk of heart disease in the future."

The researchers aim to recruit 150 women under the age of 70 with type 2 diabetes who have not had a period for at least a year, and who have been taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for at least 12 months.

Dr Iain Frame, director of research at the charity Diabetes UK, said: "We certainly don't advise people to start eating a lot of chocolate as it is very high in sugar and fat.

"We would always recommend that people with diabetes eat a diet low in fat, salt and sugar with plenty of fruit and vegetables."

"However, there are compounds found in chocolate, called flavonoids, that are thought to provide some protection from heart disease.

"A successful outcome of this research would hopefully mean being able to offer people at high risk better protection over and above that provided by conventional drugs."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk