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Sleep Habits Linked to Fat Gain in Younger Adults

James Hetfield.
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Researchers found that among adults younger than 40, those who typically slept for five hours or less each night had a greater accumulation of belly fat over the next five years.
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But those who logged eight hours or more in bed each night also showed a bigger fat gain, although it was less substantial than that seen in “short sleepers.”

On average, short sleepers showed a 32 percent gain in visceral fat, versus a 13 percent gain among those who slept six or seven hours per night, and a 22 percent increase among men and women who got at least eight hours of sleep each night.

A similar pattern was seen with superficial abdominal fat. Even when the researchers considered factors like calorie intake, exercise habits, education and smoking, sleep duration itself remained linked to abdominal-fat gain.

The study does not prove that too little or too much sleep directly leads to excess fat gain. But the findings support and extend those of other studies linking sleep duration — particularly a lack of sleep — to weight gain and even to higher risks of diabetes and heart disease.
Resources:
Reuters March 1, 2010
Sleep March 1, 2010 :

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When ‘Baby Fat’ is Good for Health

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Want to shed your baby fat? Wait, don’t do it just yet, for a new study has revealed that such a fat is good – as long as it is calorie-burning -”Brown Fat”.

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Brown fat burns off calories and generates heat in babies and small mammals.

Most of the body fat is white fat, which also provides insulation but stores calories. It becomes “bad” fat when an individual have too much. The “good” fat-brown fat-was considered essentially nonexistent in human adults.

The new study has found that adults have much more of this type of fat than previously believed.

“We now know that it is present and functional in adults,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Aaron Cypess, MMSc, of the Joslin Diabetes Centre in Boston.

“Three ounces of brown fat can burn several hundred calories a day,” he added.

In the new study involving 1,970 study participants, researchers measured the patches of brown adipose tissue-brown fat-in people with the help of high-tech imaging method that combines positron emission tomography and computed tomography, called PET/CT.

By evaluating biopsy tissue of what appeared to be brown fat, the authors confirmed that they were, indeed, looking at stores of brown fat.

The researchers found that brown fat was located in an area extending from the front of the neck to the chest.

Of the subjects who had detectable brown fat, about 6 percent had 3 ounces or more of the fat.

“We believe that this percentage greatly underestimates the number of adults in the population who have a large amount of brown fat,” said Cypess.

They also discovered that brown fat is most abundant in young women and least frequent in older, overweight men. In fact, women were more than twice as likely as men to have substantial amounts of brown fat.

“One theory for this is that women may have less muscle mass overall, so they need more brown fat to generate heat and keep warm,” Cypess said.

Source: The study appears in New England Journal of Medicine.

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Exercise Cuts Negative Effects Of Belly Fat

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Moderate exercise can reduce the negative effects of belly fat, which is linked to metabolic syndrome, says a new study. Metabolic  syndrome increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

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“The benefits of exercise were apparent, even without a change in diet. We saw improvements in insulin sensitivity, less fat in the liver, and less inflammation in belly fat,” said Jeffrey Woods, a professor at the University of Illinois (U-I) who led the study.

Inflammation is the response of body tissues to injury or irritation; characterized by pain, swelling, redness and heat. Kinesiology is the science of human movement and it focuses on how the body functions and moves.

Belly fat is particularly dangerous because it produces inflammatory molecules that enter the bloodstream and increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes, he said.

Woods and his colleagues examined the effects of diet and exercise on the inflammation of visceral or belly fat tissue in mice. A high-fat diet was first used to induce obesity in the animals.

After six weeks, mice were assigned to either a sedentary group, an exercise group, a low-fat diet group, or a group that combined a low-fat diet with exercise for six or twelve weeks so the scientists could compare the effects in both the short and long term, said an Illinois release.

“The surprise was that the combination of diet and exercise didn’t yield dramatically different and better results than diet or exercise alone,” said Vicki Vieira, study co-author.

Woods said that it is a promising finding. “The benefits of exercise were apparent even if the animals were still eating a high-fat diet. That tells me that exercise could decrease or prevent these life-threatening diseases by reducing inflammation even when obesity is still present.”

“The good news is that this was a very modest exercise programme. The mice ran on a treadmill only about one-fourth of a mile five days a week. For humans, that would probably translate into walking 30 to 45 minutes a day five days a week,” he noted.

Sources: The Times Of India

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A Big Bottom Can Cut Diabetes Risk

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Here’s some good news for women who find it hard to squeeze into their skinny jeans, courtesy their big bottoms: a generously proportioned derriere could be good for health, say scientists.
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Accord to research, the fat in buttocks and hips may protect against type 2 diabetes.

Scientists at Harvard Medical School in America reckon that the type of fat that accumulates around the hips and bottom may offer some protection against developing the condition.

Fat found commonly around the lower areas, known as subcutaneous fat, or fat that collects under the skin, helps to improve the sensitivity of the hormone insulin. Insulin is responsible for regulating blood sugar and therefore a big bottom might offer some protection against diabetes.

The boffins said that fat which collects around the stomach can raise a person’s risk of diabetes and heart disease. But, people with pear-shaped bodies, with fat deposits in the buttocks and hips, are less prone to these disorders.

Lead researcher Dr Ronald Kahn said that the research on mice had shown that not all fat was bad and could help to prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes.

The team is trying to find the substances produced in subcutaneous fat that provide the benefit because they could lead to the development of drugs, reports the Daily Express.

The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Sources:The Times Of India

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Type of Body Fat ‘Boosts Health’

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Body fat found under the skin – and particularly on the buttocks – may help reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, research suggests.

Subcutaneous fat often collects on the buttocks and legs:–

The study contrasts this subcutaneous fat with visceral fat, which is wrapped around the organs, and raises the risk of ill health……...CLICK & SEE

It is thought subcutaneous fat may produce hormones known as adipokines which boost the metabolism.

The Harvard Medical School study appears in the journal Cell Metabolism.

The researchers, who worked on mice, transplanted fat from one part of the animals’ body to the other.

“The surprising thing was that it wasn’t where the fat was located, it was the kind of fat that was the most important variable.” says Professor Ronald Khan,Harvard Medical School

When subcutaneous fat was moved to the abdominal area, there was a decrease in body weight, fat mass, and blood sugar levels.

The animals also became more responsive to the hormone insulin, which controls the way the body uses sugar. A lack of response to insulin is often the first stage on the path to type 2 diabetes.

In contrast, moving abdominal visceral fat to other parts of the body had no effect.

Lead researcher Professor Ronald Khan said: “The surprising thing was that it wasn’t where the fat was located, it was the kind of fat that was the most important variable.

“Even more surprising, it wasn’t that abdominal fat was exerting negative effects, but that subcutaneous fat was producing a good effect.”

Previous research has suggested that obese people with high levels of both abdominal and subcutaneous fat are more insulin-sensitive than those with only high levels of abdominal fat.

Professor Khan said it was possible that subcutaneous fat offset the effects of visceral fat.

Dr David Haslam, of the National Obesity Forum, said the finding cast new doubt on the merits of Body Mass Index (BMI) as a way to assess whether somebody was unhealthily overweight, as it did not differentiate between different types of fat.

He said it was still important that people tried to control their weight, as healthy lifestyle choices like a balanced diet and taking exercise would overwhelmingly impact on visceral, and not subcutaneous fat levels.

Women have a tendancy to lay down more subcutaneous fat, particularly on their legs and buttocks than men.

Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of the charity Weight Concern, said: “If there is something about subcutaneous fat which is protective, and actually decreases insulin resistance, this could help open up a whole new debate on the precise role fat has on our metabolism.”

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RELATED INTERNET LINKS:->
Cell Metabolism
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Weight Concern

Sources: BBC NEWS:7Th. May,”08

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