A compound in the drink, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), significantly slows down weight gain associated with a high-fat diet, a study found.

Obese mice on a fatty diet that were given EGCG gained weight 45 per cent more slowly than a control group eating the same food without the green-tea supplement.

The mice fed the supplement also appeared to absorb 30 per cent less fat.

‘There seem to be two prongs to this,’ said Dr Joshua Lambert, a food scientist at Penn State University in the U.S.

‘First, EGCG reduces the ability to absorb fat and, second, it enhances the ability to use fat.’

The study, published in the online journal Obesity, found the green-tea supplement did not suppress appetite, as both groups of mice were fed the same amount of high-fat food.

‘There’s no difference in the amount of food the mice are eating,’ said Lambert.

‘The mice are essentially eating a milkshake, except one group is eating a milkshake with green tea.’

A person would need to drink ten cups of green tea a day to match the amount of EGCG used in the study, Dr Lambert said.

But recent research indicated that just a few cups of green tea could help to control weight.

‘Human data – and there’s not a lot at this point – shows that tea drinkers who only consume one or more cups a day will see effects on body weight compared to non-consumers,’ said Dr Lambert.

Lambert said that other experiments have shown that lean mice did not gain as much weight when green tea is added to a high fat diet.

However, he said that studying mice that are already overweight is more relevant to humans because people often consider dietary changes only when they notice problems associated with obesity.

‘Most people hit middle age and notice a paunch; then you decide to eat less, exercise and add green tea supplement,’ said Lambert.

Source: Claire Bates, Daily Mail

Fat itself is not bad. Our bodies need fat. Our fatty tissue stores up energy, regulates hormone function, helps us absorb vitamins and minerals, and provides us with built-in insulation. In fact, 20% to 35% of our daily calories should come from fat. Yep, our bodies need fat – just not too much, and not in certain parts of our bodies. Too much fat, especially saturated and trans-fats, and our bodies can become vulnerable to disease.

You may be asking yourself why belly fat can cause more harm than, say, the fat that dimples the thighs or heaps onto the hips. To answer that, you need to get to know the two kinds of fat we all have in our belly region: subcutaneous fat and visceral fat.

Subcutaneous fat is that fat you can see and grab onto – all those beer bellies, spare tires, pouches, and love handles. It’s the fat that makes a person look fat. Visceral fat, that’s the fat that hides inside. Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds the abdominal organs. Visceral fat is more insidious because it’s so hard to detect, and because it is also affected by genetics in addition to an unhealthy diet and physical inactivity.

Wondering now if you have visceral fat lurking inside? Researchers use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), where a magnetic field and energy pulses are used to create an image of the inside of the belly. Since MRIs are not practical for most people, you can use other methods to assess the amount of belly fat you have.

One way is to measure your waist-to-hip ratio. Apple-shaped people – those who carry more of their weight around their waist – are more likely to be storing up visceral fat. Another way is to feel your belly: is it flabby or firm? If it’s firm, you may have visceral fat. But visceral fat is not just a burden of the obese and the beer-bellied. A thin person can have too much visceral fat and be at as great of a health risk as someone twice their weight.

5 Tips For Banishing Hidden Belly Fat

• Mind your middle. Keep track of your waist-to-hip ratio as well as your body mass index (BMI). Make a note on your calendar to measure your waist and hips every other month or so. If measurements reveal that your waist is wider than your hips, take it as an urgent signal to try to lose some of your belly weight. Women, watch out if your waist expands beyond 35 inches. And men, your upper limit should be 40 inches. If your waist size falls into the danger zone and your BMI is 25 or more, you’re at risk of heart disease.
• Chew the good fat. If 20% to 35% of your daily calories should come from fat, make most of it the good kind of fat – either mono- or polyunsaturated fats. Tasty foods with healthy fats include salmon, avocados, olives, and walnuts. Cook with vegetable oils, like canola, olive, or sunflower oil. Avoid foods high in saturated fats and carbohydrates.
• Move it to lose it. Routine, moderate exercise helps to fend off the fat, and more strenuous activity burns off existing fat. And phew, there are some good news about visceral fat: it’s the first fat to go once you start shedding pounds! Keep the bigger picture in mind when you’re working out since spot weight loss is tough. Just doing a bunch of crunches won’t get to the underlying layers of visceral fat. Go for fat-burning cardiovascular exercise as well as moves that firm up and strengthen the abdominal area. You should check-in with your doctor before starting any vigorous exercise program.
• Lighten up. Now, don’t let this tension-belly fat connection stress you out, and find ways to unwind. Research has shown that body stress levels may be related to belly fat. And looking at the stress levels of people today, you’d think we were all being chased by wild animals. Exercise can help you to de-stress and avoid belly fat buildup (see tip no. 3). Yoga also works the body and the breathing and meditative components can help to calm the mind.
• Get tested. If you’re worried about your risks, check with your doctor. Doctors track visceral fat by the tape measure or with an MRI or CAT scan (a series of X-ray images of the body that are compiled by a computer to produce a 3-dimensional image). A blood test can also be given to measure the presence of a protein called retinol binding protein 4 (RBP 4) in the blood, which is an indicator of potential health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

Source: Amy Toffelmire, Red Orbit

The study was published in the August issue of Cell Metabolism, most prestigious journal in Metabolism and further details were described in the 25th August of SciBX, the Biocentury/Nature publication. The researchers found that the administration of cardiotrophin 1 accelerates the elimination of fat from the adipose tissue and increases the rate at which fat is burnt in muscles. Treatment of obese and diabetic mice with cardiotrophin 1 increases energy expenditure, reduces food intake and corrects obesity and diabetes. Investigators noticed that, in addition to its effects on fat metabolism, cardiotrophin 1 promotes the entrance of glucose into the cells and increases the sensitivity to insulin. The investigation has been led by M. Bustos, J. Prieto and MJ Moreno-Aliaga at CIMA.

Cardiotrophin 1 is co-developed for its use in organ transplantation and tissue regeneration by Digna Biotech and Biotecnol (The Consortium). Both of the companies signed an Exclusive License and Option Agreement with Genentech, Inc (a fully owned subsidiary of the Roche group) on September 2009. Pablo Ortiz remarked: “Cardiotrophin 1 showed a very interesting effect on fat metabolism which deserves to be explored in a clinical setting. We are ready to recruit healthy volunteers in the Phase I trial before the end of the year. Phase II in liver resection is scheduled for the second quarter of 2012. We are also confident that these new applications and the progress on the clinical development will allow us to forge partnerships with other biopharmaceutical companies to reach the patients as soon as possible”. According to Pedro de Noronha Pissarra, CEO of Biotecnol: “expanding the use of such a promising molecule to other fields of use, where unmet needs exist, will build additional value to the current work. Its clear from the current findings on the mechanism of action of Cardiotrophin 1 in fat metabolism, that clinical work should be pursued and potentially new partnerships in order to expand such work can now be equated”.

Pre-clinicial and clinical development of cardiotrophin 1 was funded by private and public Spanish entities: ClaveSuan, the Center for Industrial and Technological Development (CDTI), and the Government of Navarra. Only in liver resection and transplantation, cardiotrophin 1 may generate revenues of 350 millions of euros per year.

Source: Nuria Safont, Digna Biotech S.L, via EurekAlert

However, a Finnish paper, published in the same issue, says that bariatric surgery is a more cost-effective way of tackling rising morbid obesity rates than non-operative care. Researchers state that it increases health-related quality of life and reduces the need for further treatment and total healthcare costs among patients who are very obese.

“In England, more than 30,000 deaths a year can be attributed to obesity alone, taking an average of nine years off a person’s normal life expectancy” say the lead author of the UK paper, consultant surgeon Mr Khaled Hamdan, from the Digestive Diseases Unit at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals.

“As a result of the current, largely ineffective, non-surgical options for treating obesity, the past decade has witnessed an exponential increase in the number of bariatric operations performed.”

Mr Hamdan and colleagues reviewed the most recent research on late postoperative complications after bariatric surgery, including procedures involving laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB)

Their findings include:

• Long-term complications should be taken into consideration when deciding what type of surgery to undertake.
• The most common long-term complications are band slippage after LAGB, which affects 15% to 20% of patients, and erosion from pressure on the stomach wall, which can affect up to 4% of patients who have received LAGB.
• Megaoesophagus (dilation of the oesophagus) is a rare but well reported late complication, occurring in one in every 200 patients after LAGB.
• Between 13% and 36% of patients develop cholesterol gallstones after surgery, due to rapid weight loss, but only 10% develop symptoms requiring surgical intervention.
• Up to one-third of patients experience intermittent gastrointestinal disturbances, particularly if they don’t adhere to the dietary advice and nutritional supplements they are given after surgery.
• 8% to 10% of patients developed incisional hernias after open bariatric surgery.
• Less than 5% to 10% of patients have chronic problems with dumping syndrome, which can cause facial flushing, lightheadedness and diarrhoea after eating carbohydrate-rich meals. Most patients find that reducing their intake of carbohydrates and avoiding drinking liquids half an hour before and after eating improves their symptoms.

The authors say that their review suggests three key pointers for clinical practice:

• Complications after bariatric surgery should be thoroughly assessed and investigated. It is important to consider that the patient’s symptoms may not necessarily relate to their gastric surgery.
• The attending surgeon should be familiar with bariatric procedures and gastrointestinal alterations following surgery. Managing these patients can be challenging for a non-bariatric surgeon and timely liaison with a bariatric unit is advisable.
• Functional problems affecting the gastrointestinal tract may pose a diagnostic conundrum, requiring specialist intervention and liaison with a gastroenterologist to spare patients unnecessary surgical interventions.

The study on cost-utility, led by Ms Suvi Mäklin from the Finnish Office for Health Technology Assessment, suggests that the average cost of treating an obese patient with bariatric surgery in Finland is €33,870, compared with €50,495 for non-operative treatment. These cost savings are due to reductions in other health conditions after surgery.

The research team adds that bariatric surgery also increased the number of quality-adjusted life years – the extra time a patient can expect to live as the result of an intervention – by about half a year during the ten-year time frame they studied, when compared with non-surgical interventions.

“Our study compared bariatric surgery with the current practice in treating morbid obesity in Finland, which is ordinary treatment ranging from intensive conservative treatment to brief advice from a doctor to lose weight” says Ms Mäklin. “This was evaluated using data on healthcare resource use in patients with a body mass index of 35 kg/m2 or more from a large representative population survey.

“Surgery for morbid obesity improves health-related quality of life and reduces the need for further treatments and total healthcare costs. The present results suggest that, compared with surgical treatment, non-operative care will on average be more costly for the Finnish healthcare system five years after surgery. In Canada the corresponding time has been estimated to be three-and-a-half years.”

Source: Annette Whibley, Wiley-Blackwell, via EurekAlert

The survey results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show how far consumer habits must change to help fight the nation’s obesity epidemic, with nearly two-thirds of Americans either overweight or obese.

Coinciding with the data, city health departments from Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Seattle announced plans for a new campaign to encourage cutting down on sugary beverage consumption.

“We’re concerned about sugary drinks because they are the only foods and beverages that have directly been linked to obesity … Reducing their consumption is the perfect place to start to reduce the epidemic,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) that is spearheading the campaign.

The CSPI is working with city officials on the new campaign, along with the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association.

CDC researchers interviewed 17,000 Americans about their diets. The average male in the survey consumed 175 calories in a day from drinks containing added sugar, while the typical female consumed 94 calories from such drinks.

Boys aged 12 to 19 consumed 273 calories a day from sugar-sweetened drinks, or the equivalent of about two 12-ounce cans of carbonated cola — more than any other group. Men aged 20 to 39 consumed 252 calories a day from beverages containing added sugar, the second-highest amount.

The American Heart Association recommends getting no more than 450 calories a week from sugar-sweetened beverages, or less than three cans of soda. They include sodas, fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports and sweetened bottled waters.

“This is one area that people can look to if they are trying to limit their consumption of added sugars,” study author Cynthia Ogden said in an interview.

The survey also found that non-Hispanic black children and adolescents obtained 8.5 percent of their daily calories from sugar-sweetened drinks, higher than the 7.7 percent among non-Hispanic white children and teens and 7.4 percent for Mexican-American youths.

For adults 20 and over, the percentage of daily calories obtained from sugar drinks rose to 8.6 percent for non-Hispanic blacks and 8.2 for Mexican-Americans but declined to 5.3 percent for non-Hispanic whites.

The study also found that lower-income children and adults consumed more daily calories from sugar-added drinks than those with higher incomes.

The new campaign in cities, dubbed “Life’s Sweeter with Fewer Sugary Drinks,” aims to limit consumption to about three cans a week by 2020.

Such campaigns have attracted legal attack by leading beverage makers, who have also been resisting efforts to propose taxes on sugary drinks. New York City, which has been at the forefront of public awareness campaigns on the ills of drinking too much soda, was sued in July by the American Beverage Association (ABA).

In response to the CDC’s new findings, the ABA argued that sugar-sweetened beverages are just one contributor, and at that small and declining, to Americans’ poor state of health.

“Contrary to what may be implied by the introductory statement of this (CDC) data brief that reaches back 30 years, sugar-sweetened beverages are not driving health issues like obesity and diabetes,” the ABA said in a statement, highlighting the declining of both sales of full-calorie drinks and U.S. consumption of added sugars.

Close to 26 million Americans have diabetes, and most have Type 2, the kind linked to poor diet and lack of exercise.

“If you wouldn’t eat 22 packs of sugar, why are you drinking it?” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, public health director in Los Angeles, highlighting the question from his city’s own campaign launching next month.

Source: Fox Health News