Entries Tagged 'Obesity' ↓

A study at National Cancer Institute USA, has linked obesity with Ovarian cancer.According to them,Obese older women who never took postmenopausal hormones are at almost double the risk of developing ovarian cancer compared to their normal weight peers.But among all older women, however, obese women were only at slightly higher risk for ovarian cancer than those of normal weight.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute looked at differences among women who had never used hormone replacement therapy because it may play a role in the development of cancer.“We speculate that what may be driving the increased risk among the obese is the surplus estrogen produced by the fat cells in the body,” said Dr. Michael F. Leitzmann, a former investigator at the National Cancer Institute and first author of the paper.

Oral contraceptive use and having had children are associated with a decreased risk of ovarian cancer, while a family history of the disease and hormone therapy use are associated with an increased risk.

This study has to be conducted in other parts of the world before the findings can be generalised according to the researchers.

The Union Health ministry on Tuesday released the first India-specific guidelines for prevention and management of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

As per the new standards released by the Ministry

A  person with a body mass index of 23 kg/m2 will be considered overweight and below that as one with normal BMI - unlike the cut-off limit of 25 kg/m2 earlier. Now, those with BMI of 25 kg/m2 will be clinically termed obese (as opposed to 30 kg/m2 at the international level) and those with BMI of 32.5 kg/m2 will require bariatric surgery to eliminate excess.

The guidelines were released jointly by the health ministry, the Diabetes Foundation of India, the All-India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), Indian Council of Medical Research, the National Institute of Nutrition and 20 other health organisations.

Releasing the guidelines, Dr Anoop Misra, director and head, department of diabetes and metabolic diseases, Fortis Hospitals, New Delhi and Noida said, “Indians have a very different body, genetic and metabolic composition from westerners. Therefore, the parameters for obesity also have to be very different. This will bring more people under the overweight and obesity bracket. The revised guidelines would benefit 6 to 8 crore people. That in turn would lead to substantial prevention of diabetes and heart disease.”

The new guidelines released by the Health Ministry would soon be compiled and published by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

According to an estimate, those suffering from diabetes in the country would increase by 170% in the next 20 years. At present, India has the largets number of diabetes people in the world.

Obesity is the cause of most of lifestyle related diseases  we deal with. Hypertension ,diabetes,heart diseases are just a few of them.Fighting obesity has been one of the main objectives in controlling these lifestyle diseases.There are many anti obesity pills available in the market but yet a controlled diet and regular exercise has been used mainly to control obesity.

When it comes to anti-obesity pills, there are few choices on the market and no one can guarantee you they will really work. But US scientists have now identified a fatty substance that exists naturally in our body which blocks hunger and weight gain. Mice and rats, and presumably humans, produce the chemical after eating a fatty meal.

German Shulman, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a professor of internal medicine and of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University School of Medicine, gave mice an extra dose of this chemical, called N-acylphosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE) and found that they ate less and shed weight, with no side effects. Tests will have to be made on larger animals, but if they turn out to be well, humans might be next. 

 He and his colleagues are well known for their work on understanding how insulin resistance develops and leads to diabetes. 

In this study, rats were given NAPE for five days and there was a continuous reduction in food intake and a decline in body weight. To be more explicit, they ate 30 percent less food and lost a quarter of their weight. “It suggests NAPE or long-acting NAPE analogs may treat obesity,” Shulman said. 

The study is the first of its kind. It clearly showed that injecting NAPE into the rats’ bloodstream lowered their food consumption without making food unappealing to them. The study also found a connection between injecting NAPE directly into the rats’ brain and a drop in calorie consumption. 

If these findings apply to humans too, they will be a salvation for the 300 million adults who suffer from obesity worldwide and who are at high risk for life-threatening illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, all consequences of obesity. 

“We have this epidemic of obesity and we have very few agents that are able to effectively treat obesity. We’d be quite interested in trying a clinical trial to see if giving back would reduce food intake in humans,” Shulman said.

Who knows this may develop into a new wonder pill that cures obesiy!