Obesity
Friday, February 01, 2008
Feeling fat may be worse for you than being fat
Obesity’s health effects could have more to do with feeling bad about being fat than actually being overweight, a new study shows. Researchers who looked at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 US adults found the difference actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than body mass index (BMI).
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Overweight People May Not Know When They’ve Had Enough
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have found new clues to why some people overeat and gain weight while others don’t. Examining how the human brain responds to “satiety” messages delivered when the stomach is in various stages of fullness, the scientists have identified brain circuits that motivate the desire to overeat. Treatments that target these circuits may prove useful in controlling chronic overeating, according to the authors.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Obesity, Depression Often Coexist in Middle-Aged Women
Middle-aged women are much more likely to be depressed if they are obese, and vice versa, a new study finds. Rising excess weight goes along with less physical activity, higher calorie intake — and depression — according to the research. What is the reason? Depression and obesity likely fuel one another, said lead author Gregory Simon, M.D. “When people gain weight, they’re more likely to become depressed, and when they get depressed, they have more trouble losing weight,” said Simon, a psychiatrist and researcher at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Happy? It may help keep you healthy
A happy heart just might be a healthier one as well, new research suggests. In a study of nearly 3,000 healthy British adults, led by Dr. Andrew Steptoe of University College London, found that those who reported upbeat moods had lower levels of cortisol — a “stress” hormone that, when chronically elevated, may contribute to high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and dampened immune function, among other problems.
Hormones • Hypertension • Immune System • Obesity • Stress • (0) Comments • Permalink
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Emotional Eaters Susceptible to Weight Regain
A new study finds that dieters who have the tendency to eat in response to external factors, such as at festive celebrations, have fewer problems with their weight loss than those who eat in response to emotions (internal factors). The study also found that emotional eating was associated with weight regain in successful losers.
Friday, August 24, 2007
A parent’s depression can weigh heavy on children
A parent’s struggle with stress or depression can lower a child’s quality of life — and it could hinder an overweight youngster’s attempts to lose weight, too, University of Florida researchers say. Parent distress, peer bullying and childhood depression can propel a cycle that makes it more difficult for children to adopt healthier lifestyles.
Children • Depression • Obesity • Parenting • Stress • (0) Comments • Permalink
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Lighten Up
New studies show that stress not only makes you gain weight, but it affects what you eat and even where you pack on those extra pounds. What you can do to stop it. Does emotional stress make you fatter or thinner? Both. It appears that short-term, acute stresses may help you lose weight, whereas chronic stresses cause you to put on pounds, especially around your belly, where it’s most harmful.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Way to Shrink, Grow Fat Is Found - Tests Also Show Link to Stress
Scientists reported yesterday that they have uncovered a biological switch by which stress can promote obesity, a discovery that could help explain the world’s growing weight problem and lead to new ways to melt flab and manipulate fat for cosmetic purposes. In a series of experiments on mice, researchers showed that the neurochemical pathway they identified promotes fat growth in chronically stressed animals that eat the equivalent of a junk-food diet.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
HeartMath’s emWave Personal Stress Reliever
Our emWave Personal Stress Reliever is on sale until the end of the April for $20.00 off. If you’re interested in realtime stress reduction and peak performance, please take a look at the two-minute demo.
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Saturday, April 21, 2007
Study Reports Changing To A Low-Fat Diet Can Induce Stress
Changing one’s diet to lose weight is often difficult. There may be physical and psychological effects from a changed diet that reduce the chances for success. With nearly 65% of the adult population currently classified as overweight or obese and with calorically dense foods high in fat and carbohydrates readily available, investigating those factors that contribute to dieting failures is an important effort. In a study in the May 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers found that mice withdrawn from high-fat or high-carbohydrates diets became anxious and showed changes in their brains indicating higher stress levels.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Is office stress making you gain weight?
Being stressed out at work can make you fat, a new study suggests. The more job strain men and women reported, the more likely they were to become obese, Dr Eric J. Brunner of the Royal Free and University College London Medical School and colleagues found. Higher stress levels were also tied to excess fat around the middle, which is particularly harmful for health.
Obesity • Organizational Climate • Productivity/Performance • Stress • (0) Comments • Permalink
Monday, January 15, 2007
Big belly may be matter of stress
In the world of metaphorical body image, apples are not the fruit of choice. People with “apple-shaped” bodies—usually defined by a thick waist or a pot belly—are more likely to have the most dangerous kind of fat in their abdominal cavities than those with a pear shape, in other words, those who carry their weight in their thighs, hips and butts. The difference between the two physiques may be a matter of stress.
HeartMath • Hormones • Obesity • Stress • (1) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Are You Really Ready To Clean Up Your Act?
We’re fat. We smoke. Drink too much. Don’t exercise enough. And our stress levels are off the charts. We’re killing ourselves, and we know it. And yet we carry on—overeating, lighting up, slumping in front of the television and throwing back another beer—inspiring some of the greatest thinkers in the worlds of genomics, neuroscience, biochemistry and evolutionary psychology to ponder the Big Mac of medical questions: Why is it so hard for people to change? In the end, what doctors and studies and experts have pointed out is that the thing that really helps to change behavior is something hard to measure but ultimately powerful. Change comes from the heart, not the head.
Addiction • Emotions • Obesity • Psychology • Relationships • (0) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
When your body breaks down, it may be from stress
When Cathy Perry’s blood pressure and cholesterol began climbing and her waist expanded by a few inches, she blamed middle age. When her memory became fuzzy and she frequently forgot familiar names and phone numbers, she attributed it to impending menopause. And when she seemed to catch every cold and virus that went around, she pointed to her two kids. Her doctor, however, said just one culprit could be responsible for many of her symptoms: stress.
Aging • Anger • Anxiety • Brain • Burnout • Cardiovascular Health • Cognition • Depression • Emotions • Happiness • Health at Work • Hormones • Immune System • Memory • Obesity • Productivity/Performance • Sleep • Stress • Women • (0) Comments • Permalink
Friday, August 11, 2006
Study links stress to eating disorder onset
Stress could help trigger the onset of eating disorders, a new study shows. Multiple factors, including psychological ones, can influence the onset and development of an eating disorder. Stress is thought to be an important precursor of eating disorders. Rojo and his team studied the connection between stress and eating disorders, as well as the influence of psychological problems, in 32 teens with eating disorders and 32 matched, healthy controls from the same community. Close to half (46.9 percent) of the teens with eating disorders had some other type of psychiatric disorder, the researchers found, compared to just 9.4 percent of controls. Individuals with eating disorders also reported more difficulties. During the year before eating disorder onset, the researchers found, the adolescents with eating disorders reported more acute stressful events, as well as more accumulation of acute stress.