Tag Archives: Heart Disease

“1 in 5 US Young People will be Obese by 2020″

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In order for the nation to achieve goals set by the federal government for reducing obesity rates by 2020, children in the United States would need to eliminate an average of 64 excess calories per day, researchers calculated in a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This reduction could be achieved by decreasing calorie intake, increasing physical activity, or both. Without this reduction, the authors predict that the average U.S. youth would be nearly four pounds heavier than a child or teen of the same age was in 2007-2008, and more than 20% of young people would be obese, up from 16.9% today.

“Sixty-four calories may not sound like much individually, but it’s quite a consequential number at the population level, and children at greatest risk for obesity face an even larger barrier,” says Y. Claire Wang, MD, ScD, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and lead author of the study. “Closing this gap between how many calories young people are consuming and how many they are expending will take substantial, comprehensive efforts.”

The daily difference between how many calories young people consume and how many they expend through normal growth, body function and physical activity is known as the energy gap. The 64-calorie difference between consumption and expenditure is an average for the population. Dr. Wang and her colleagues note it is not intended to represent a change for any individual young person, and that many young people would need to see even greater reductions.

In particular, children and teens who currently have higher obesity rates would require larger energy gap reductions to reach the obesity rate goal. For instance, based on their current obesity rates, white youths would need a 46-calorie reduction, on average, in their energy gap to reach the goals. But given their higher obesity rates in 2008-2010, the average reduction needed to close the energy gap for Mexican-American youths is 91 calories and, for black youths, it is 138 calories. Youths in lower-income communities also need greater reductions than their peers in higher-income areas, again due to higher rates of obesity. Additionally, an earlier study by several of the same researchers found that the problem is especially acute for teens who are already overweight.

In order to project how many young people would be obese in 2020, Dr. Wang and her colleagues analyzed decades of data on obesity rates. Height and weight among U.S. youths ages 2-19 were taken from National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1971 to 2008. Based on the trends, the authors projected that the childhood obesity rate would be about 21% in 2020, up from 16.9% now.

Dr. Wang and her colleagues then compared the projected rate of 21% to the goal of 14.6% set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a 2010 report titled Healthy People 2020 and calculated how much of a daily energy gap the average youth would need to close in order to achieve that goal. A childhood obesity rate of 14.6% has not been seen since 2002.

“Reaching the 2020 goal will require significant changes to calories consumed and expended,” said C. Tracy Orleans, PhD, co-author of the study and senior scientist at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Because we know that children and teens who already are overweight or obese will need larger reductions, and that preventing obesity will be more effective than treating it, we must focus our attention on the policy and environmental changes likely to have early, broad, and sustainable impacts.”

The authors outline several policy strategies that could help to close the daily energy gap for American youths. For instance, they point to research showing that:

  • replacing all sugar-sweetened beverages in school with water and not consuming any additional sugary beverages outside of school could reduce the energy gap by 12 calories per day;
  • participating in a comprehensive physical education program could eliminate 19 calories per day among children ages 9-11; and
  • engaging in an after-school activity program for children in grades K-5 results in an additional 25 calories expended per day.

In a commentary accompanying the study, William H. Dietz, MD, PhD, director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, writes that the research “provides important data that highlight the promise of prevention and raise the challenge of treatment in children and adolescents.”

Steven L. Gortmaker, PhD, Professor of the Practice of Health Sociology at Harvard School of Public Health was senior author of the study. Funding for the study was provided by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U48/DP00064-00S1) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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High Protein Breakfast Curbs Snacking Later in the Day!

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Body weight is one of the most basic issues of human life. Medically speaking, not all overweight people are obese. Obesity is defined as weight that exceeds 15 percent of normal weight for height and body type. “Morbid” obesity exceeds 20 percent of optimum weight. An obese or overweight person is at high risk for a number of serious health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, varicose veins, dementia, psychological stress, depression, osteoarthritis, high cholesterol, and diabetes. The body mass index (BMI) is a widely used formula to calculate obesity because body fat is considered within the calculated result. BMI must be 24 or less in order for one’s weight to be considered healthy. An individual with a BMI 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight. Obese individuals have a BMI greater than 30.

 

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Each serving of Elite Whey™ contains 21 grams of protein from soy free New Zealand whey protein concentrate and 2 grams of fiber from Fibersol-2™ (a water-soluble digestion resistant fiber).

 

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  • Contains NO artificial sweeteners
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  • Combine with 2 g of Fibersol-2™ brand fiber to support regularity*
  • Low in calories and Lactose

 

 

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Don’t Be Bitter About Weight Loss! Try Bitter Orange Extract!

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Body weight is one of the most basic issues of human life. Self-esteem, acceptance among peers– and perhaps lifelong success or failure—are, unfortunately, all tied to our physical appearance. Medically speaking, not all overweight people are obese. Obesity is defined as weight that exceeds 15 percent of normal weight for height and body type. “Morbid” obesity exceeds 20 percent of optimum weight. An obese or overweight person is at high risk for a number of serious health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, varicose veins, dementia, psychological stress, depression, osteoarthritis, high cholesterol, and diabetes. The detrimental health effects of obesity are more than just a matter of weighing too much. Body composition–the amount of fat in the body compared to the amount of lean muscle–is also important. Body weight and composition are to a large degree determined by the “basal metabolic rate” (BMR), the amount of energy the body burns while at rest. Exercise builds lean muscle. As the ratio of lean muscle to body fat increases, so does the BMR. The higher our BMR, the more calories we burn.

Bitter orange refers to a citrus tree (citrus aurantium) and its fruit. Many varieties of bitter orange are utilized for their essential oil, which is used in perfume and as a flavoring. Bitter orange is also employed in herbal medicine as a stimulant and appetite suppressant. Slivers of the rind are used to give marmalade its characteristic bitter taste.

Researchers from Creighton University Health Sciences Center, Omaha Nebraska investigated the potential of p-synephrine (primary protoalkoloid of bitter orange extract) alone, or p-synephrine plus naringin, or p-synephrine plus naringin and hesperidin, compared to placebo, on the metabolic rate of 50 volunteers. Results of this double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial showed that p-synephrine alone increased the metabolic rate by 7 percent in comparison to placebo. When 50mg of p-synephrine was consumed with 600 mg naringin and 100 mg hesperidin the metabolic rate was almost 18 percent higher than the control group. None of the participants in any of the treatment groups exhibited changes in heart rate or blood pressure relative to the control group and there were no differences in self-reported mood changes between the treatment groups and the control group. In conclusion the authors stated “This unusual finding of a thermogenic combination of ingredients that elevated metabolic rates without corresponding elevations in blood pressure and heart-rates warrants longer term studies to assess its value as a weight control agent.

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Spinach The Leafy Green Super-Food!

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How smart is Popeye? Smarter than you think. Popeye attributes his amazing strength to eating spinach but he is also protecting himself against osteoporosis, heart disease, colon cancer and arthritis. The Journal of Nutrition recently published a report that spinach fights prostate cancer while The Nurses Health Study reveals women whose diets are high in kaempferol, a nutrient in spinach, have a 40 percent less risk of ovarian cancer.

Spinach, like other leafy green vegetables, provides more nutrients than most other foods. Vitamin C and Vitamin A, two nutrients in spinach, are important antioxidants that work to reduce free radicals in the body known to cause blocked arteries, heart attacks, or strokes. Spinach’s Vitamin K promotes bone health. add the iron and calcium and you have the mighty spinach. Make your spinach organic and you even increase the healthy nutrients of the mighty spinach. according to a study by Rutgers University comparing conventionally grown spinach with organic spinach, organic spinach has 97 percent more iron and 99 percent more manganese than conventionally grown spinach. Many of the essential trace elements that are absent in the conventionally grown spinach are rich in the organic. The United States—notably California and Texas—is one of the largest commercial grower of spinach. Help the economy and yourself, have organic spinach for dinner.

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Is Your Salad Organic?

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Recent news that First Lady Michelle Obama and her family intend to grow an organic vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House means that the entire First Family will be enjoying organic salads.

Hopefully the news will prompt increased popularity for organic salads everywhere.

Recent statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture show that the percentage of total acres devoted to organic vegetable production for three common salad vegetables, lettuce, tomatoes and carrots, ranks higher than other organic food production categories such as fruit and grains. Still, organic vegetable production remains a very small part of the total vegetable market.

In 2005, 98,870 acres of land were devoted to carrot production and 5.80% or 5,737 acres, were organic carrot production. The percentage of the organic lettuce crop came in at 3.69%, or 11,986 out of 324,500 acres planted. Organic tomatoes rounded out the list with 1.62% or 6,655 out of a total 411,840 acres planted. Figure 1 shows a similar six year trend in organic salad production statistics.

Figure 1

 

 

 

 

Except for a sudden surge and drop in organic lettuce production in 2001-2002, production of the three common salad items held steady over the first half of the decade. In sum, the numbers suggest that less than four percent of all the lunch and dinner salads consumed over this time could possibly be labeled organic.

The strengths and weaknesses of the organic salad market have straight forward supply and demand explanations. The supply side deals with growing issues. Leaf lettuce and carrots, for example, often place high on most gardeners, easiest to grow vegetables list. Large scale production does little to hurt their ease of growing. Growing most of the popular tomato varieties requires more maintenance, and large scale organic tomato production is no different (see Organic Tomato Production).

Demand for organic salad produce, as with other organic products, supports the current market. Price is one factor commonly cited as keeping a lid on demand. For example, according to the Department of Agriculture, in June 2006, a 48 pound sack of carrots conventionally grown cost $10.27. A similar 48 pound sack of organic carrots cost $18. A walk through the produce section of any grocery story backs up those statistics. Organic vegetables are double or triple the price of their non-organic counterparts.

Taking the supply and demand factors into account suggests that organic salads are not a staple of the average American diet. If they are a part of your diet, chances are you’ve grown most of the vegetables in your own garden.

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Why We Should All Eat More Organic Food!

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Organic Food is More Nutritious
  • Organic foods, especially raw or non-processed, contain higher levels of beta carotene, vitamins C, D and E, health-promoting polyphenols, cancer-fighting antioxidants, flavonoids that help ward off heart disease, essential fatty acids, and essential minerals.
  • On average, organic is 25% more nutritious in terms of vitamins and minerals than products derived from industrial agriculture. Since on the average, organic food’s shelf price is only 20% higher than chemical food, this makes it actually cheaper, gram for gram, than chemical food, even ignoring the astronomical hidden costs (damage to health, climate, environment, and government subsidies) of industrial food production.
  • Levels of antioxidants in milk from organic cattle are between 50% and 80% higher than normal milk. Organic wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce have between 20% and 40% more nutrients than non-organic foods.
  • Organic food contains qualitatively higher levels of essential minerals (such as calcium, magnesium, iron and chromium), that are severely depleted in chemical foods grown on pesticide and nitrate fertilizer-abused soil. UK and US government statistics indicate that levels of trace minerals in (non-organic) fruit and vegetables fell by up to 76% between 1940 and 1991.
Organic Food is Pure Food, Free of Chemical Additives
  • Organic food doesn’t contain food additives, flavor enhancers (like MSG), artificial sweeteners (like aspartame and high-fructose corn syrup), contaminants (like mercury) or preservatives (like sodium nitrate), that can cause health problems.
  • Eating organic has the potential to lower the incidence of autism, learning disorders, diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease, allergies, osteoporosis, migraines, dementia, and hyperactivity.
Organic Food Is Safer
  • Organic food doesn’t contain pesticides. More than 400 chemical pesticides are routinely used in conventional farming and residues remain on non-organic food even after washing. Children are especially vulnerable to pesticide exposure. One class of pesticides, endocrine disruptors, may be responsible for early puberty and breast cancer. Pesticides are linked to asthma and cancer.
  • Organic food isn’t genetically modified. Under organic standards, genetically modified (GM) crops and ingredients are prohibited.
  • Organic animals aren’t given drugs. Organic farming standards prohibit the use of antibiotics, growth hormones and genetically modified vaccines in farm animals. Hormone-laced beef and dairy consumption is correlated with increased rates of breast, testis and prostate cancers.
  • Organic animals aren’t fed slaughterhouse waste, blood, or manure. Eating organic reduces the risks of CJD, the human version of mad cow disease, as well as Alzheimer’s.
  • Organic animals aren’t fed arsenic.
  • Organic animals aren’t fed byproducts of corn ethanol production (which increases the rate of E. coli contamination).
  • Organic crops aren’t fertilized with toxic sewage sludge or coal waste, or irrigated with E. coli contaminated sewage water.
  • Organic food isn’t irradiated. Cats fed a diet of irradiated food got multiple sclerosis within 3-4 months.
  • Organic food contains less illness-inducing bacteria. Organic chicken is free of salmonella and has a reduced incidence of campylobacter.

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Sedentary Behavior Before Adolescence May Be Increasing!!!

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Get your kids up off the couch and encourage them to be active!  Your children’s healthy and their weight is your responsibility as a parent.  Help you kids by being a role model.  Set the example for your kids, eat healthy and get active.

Sedentary behavior before adolescence may be increasing, according to the results of a longitudinal study reported online December 20 and in the January 2011 print issue of Pediatrics.

“Physical activity is thought to decline during childhood, but the extent of the decline is unknown,” write Laura Basterfield, PhD, from Newcastle University, Leech Building Medical School in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom, and colleagues. “We made objective measures of 2-year changes in physical activity and sedentary behavior in English children who participated in the Gateshead Millennium Study to explore the nature, timing, and extent of changes in physical activity and sedentary behavior before adolescence.”

The study cohort consisted of 405 children, including 207 girls, aged 7 years who were evaluated at study entry in 2006/2007 and again 24 months later with the Actigraph GT1M accelerometer to measure physical activity and sedentary behavior. In 2010, data were analyzed to determine changes in total volume of physical activity, measured in accelerometer counts per minute; in moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA); and in sedentary behavior. Linear regression allowed determination of factors associated with changes in physical activity and sedentary behavior, and rank-order correlation allowed tracking physical activity and sedentary behavior during the 2-year follow-up period.

At baseline, the percentage of daily time spent in MVPA was low, and it further decreased by 0.3% (interquartile range [IQR], −1.4 to 0.9) in 2 years, whereas the mean daily volume of physical activity decreased by 83 counts per minute (IQR, −189 to 31). Similarly, the percentage of daily time spent in sedentary behavior was high at study entry and increased from 78.0% to 81.1% of the day (change, 3.1%; IQR, −0.3 to 6.0). Girls and participants of both sexes with higher baseline body mass index z scores had significantly greater decrease in MVPA and increase in sedentary behavior. During the 2-year period, there was moderate tracking of physical activity and sedentary behavior.

“We report here new evidence of low and declining levels of physical activity and MVPA and increasing sedentary behaviour before adolescence,” the study authors write. “Strategies to prevent the decline in physical activity should be considered and started for both sexes before adolescence.”

Limitations of this study include the possible lack of generalizability to other settings and samples, some sample attrition from baseline, and a lack of consensus on the appropriate accelerometer cut points to use for children to quantify intensity of physical activity.

“However, taking into account these limitations, the reported findings were consistent with several other recent studies that also used objective methods to measure physical activity,” the study authors conclude. “Longer-term follow-up will be required to investigate the extent to which the patterns observed in the present study are generalizable to other groups of children and to assess whether most of the decline in physical activity that occurs before adulthood occurs before, rather than during, adolescence.”

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Highest Mortality Risk Seen With High-Fat Dairy and High Sugar Intake!!!

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Two specific eating patterns increase the risk of death for older adults, a 10-year study finds.

Compared to people who ate healthy foods, men and women in their 70s had a 40% higher risk of death if they got most of their calories from high-fat dairy foods or from sweets and desserts.

University of Maryland researcher Amy L. Anderson, PhD, and colleagues monitored the eating patterns of 2,582 adults aged 70 to 79. They found that these diets  fell into six patterns or clusters.

After adjusting for risk factors such as sex, age, race, education, physical activing, smoking, and total calories, “the High-Fat Dairy Products cluster and the Sweets and Desserts cluster still showed significantly higher risk of mortality than the Healthy Foods cluster,” Anderson and colleagues found.

The six dietary patterns were:

  • Healthy Foods: Higher intake of low-fat dairy products, fruit, whole grains, poultry, fish, and vegetables. Lower intake of meat, fried foods, sweets, high-energy drinks, and added fat.
  • High-Fat Dairy Products: Higher intake of ice cream, cheese, and 2% and whole milk and yogurt. Lower intake of poultry, low-fat dairy products, rice, and pasta.
  • Sweets and Desserts: Higher intake of doughnuts, cake, cookies, pudding, chocolate, and candy. Lower intake of fruit, fish and other seafood, and dark green vegetables.
  • Meat, Fried Foods, and Alcohol: Higher intake of beer, liquor, fried chicken, mayonnaise/salad dressings, high-energy density drinks, nuts, snacks, rice/pasta dishes, and added fat. Lower intake of low-fat dairy products, fiber/bran breakfast cereal, and other breakfast cereal.
  • Breakfast Cereal: Higher intake of fiber/bran and other breakfast cereals (especially the latter). Low intake of nuts, refined grains, dark yellow vegetables, and dark green vegetables.
  • Refined Grains: Higher intake of refined grains (such as pancakes, waffles, breads, muffins, and cooked cereals such as oatmeal) and processed meat (such as bacon, sausage, ham, and other lunchmeats). Lower intake of liquor, breakfast cereals, and whole grains.

Several of the groups got an unusually large amount of their total calories from just one food group:

  • The sweets and desserts cluster got 25.8% of its total energy from sweets.
  • The refined grains cluster got 24.6% of its total energy from refined grains.
  • The breakfast cereal group got 19.3% of its total energy from cold cereals other than those full of fiber and bran.
  • The high-fat dairy products group got 17.1% of its total energy from higher-fat dairy foods.

Healthy Eaters Live Longest

Overall, people in the healthy foods cluster had more years of healthy life and a lower death rate than all other groups. Moreover, their blood tests came back with significantly more indicators of health than the other groups.

But not all of the study findings were so predictable.

“Unexpectedly, in this and in several other studies, a [dietary] pattern higher in red meat was not significantly associated with increased risk of mortality,” Anderson and colleagues note.

It’s also not entirely clear why the Meat, Fried Food, and Alcohol cluster didn’t have a significantly higher death risk, as most diets warn people to limit or avoid such foods.

“In our study, the Meat, Fried Food, and Alcohol cluster did have a slightly higher percentage of total energy from vegetables, fruit, and whole grains than both the High-Fat Dairy Products and Sweets and Desserts clusters, which showed higher risk of mortality,” Anderson and colleagues suggest.

This was by far the most common eating pattern seen in the study: 27% of participants were in the meat, fried food, and alcohol cluster. But Anderson and colleagues do not recommend such a diet.

Instead, they point to the fact that 14.5% of study participants were in the healthy foods cluster.

“Adherence to such a diet appears a feasible and realistic recommendation for potentially improved survival and quality of life in the growing older adult population,” Anderson and colleagues conclude.

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Is Junk Food “Marketing” Making Kids Obese? New Government Guidelines Coming Soon!

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Governments must work with industry to restrict advertising of foods high in salt, sugar and dangerous fats targeted at children to tackle an epidemic of obesity and other diseases, health officials said on Friday.

The call is part of a focus on combating non-communicable diseases — cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease — that are a growing cause of premature death in poor countries.

Non-communicable diseases will be the focus of global health policy this year, culminating in a debate of heads of state at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.

The World Health Organization’s executive board, meeting this week, has been discussing how to make use of the leaders’ attention, and a set of new recommendations tackling marketing of harmful food to children is part of that effort.

Dr. Timothy Armstrong, who heads the WHO’s efforts on promoting healthy diet and physical education, said non-communicable diseases now account for 90% of premature deaths in low- and middle-income countries, where obesity is a rising problem.

Of the 42 million children worldwide aged below 5 who are overweight or obese, 35 million are in poor countries, he told a news conference.

Recognition that advertising of junk foods and drink rich in salt, sugar and saturated and trans fats can encourage children to consume them, while advertising can also promote a healthy diet, led the WHO’s assembly last may to call on the U.N. health agency to draw up the recommendations.

The WHO’s 193 member states told it to work with the private sector as well as governments and civil society.

The recommendations aim to tackle both the frequency of advertising and its “power” — for instance, the use of cartoons that appeal to children.

LEADING COMPANIES

WHO officials consulted leading companies in the sector — Coca-Cola, Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft, McDonald’s, Mars, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever and the World Federation of Advertisers.

The companies agreed to draw up a code of conduct and committed not to market unhealthy products to children under the age of 12, he said.

In some markets companies were living up to this pledge.

“There are other markets where perhaps companies are not adopting the same policies in terms of not advertising their products to children,” he said.

Armstrong declined to name the companies or markets concerned but said the WHO had a sense that companies were not fulfilling their commitment in poor countries in the way that they appeared to be in developed markets.

The different results underlined the importance of governments monitoring the implementation of any agreements reached with the industry.

“The concept is that governments must lead this process,” he said.

It was up to governments to choose the best approach. Some might prefer to legislate a ban on advertising; others could agree independently monitored self-regulation with industry. But the WHO was aware that legislation and enforcement was beyond the capacity of some small, poor states, he said.

Norway’s director-general of health, Dr. Bjorn-Inge Larsen, said much advertising reached children through international television channels, so domestic legislation could be ineffective.

Dr. Larsen said governments had a range of options and these recommendations were a first step. Pressure on the companies to curb advertising and ultimately production of the products would grow in the same way as efforts to limit the consumption of tobacco and alcohol had done, he said.

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Whey Protein Helps to Lower Blood Pressure!!!

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To reduce the risks of stroke and heart disease, some researchers are focusing on effective ways to safely lower elevated blood pressure in at-risk populations.  Beverages supplemented by whey-based protein can significantly reduce elevated blood pressure, reducing the risk of stroke and heart disease. Susan Fluegel, from Washington State University (Washington, USA), and colleagues reported that daily doses of commonly available whey yield a greater than six-point reduction in the average blood pressure of men and women with elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressures. As well, the whey-supplemented beverage also significantly decreased total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations.  The team concludes that: “Whey protein beverages may be useful for the dietary treatment of prehypertension and/or stage 1 hypertension.”

I personally use Optimum Nutrition’s Natural 100% Whey Protein.  Whey protein Isolates are 90% pure protein by weight. They are the purest and most expensive form of whey protein that exists. That’s why they are the first ingredients you read on the 100% Natural Whey Gold Standard label. By using Whey Protein Isolates as our primary protein source, we’re able to pack 24 grams of the purest, muscle-building protein per serving, with a lot less of the fat, cholesterol, lactose, and other stuff that you can do without. What’s more, 100% Natural Whey Gold Standard contains no artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners. There’s no question this is the standard by which other whey proteins are measured.

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Low Vitamin D Levels Linked to Obesity!!!

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New research adds to the evidence linking obesity with lower levels of vitamin D, and the finding could help explain why carrying extra pounds raises the risk for a wide range of diseases, researchers say.

The study suggests that people who are obese may be less able to convert vitamin D into its hormonally active form.

Researchers measured levels of vitamin D and its hormonally active form 1,25(OH)2D in almost 1,800 people being treated at a weight loss clinic in Norway.

Most of the people were overweight and 11% were considered morbidly obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher.

The more the study participants weighed, the lower their vitamin D levels tended to be, study researcher Zoya Lagunova, MD, of the Rikshospitalet-Radiumhospitalet Medical Center in Oslo, Norway, tells WebMD.

She says it makes sense that obesity is associated with lower vitamin D levels since vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin.

The study appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

“Much of the vitamin D produced in the skin or ingested is distributed in fat tissue,” she says. “So obese people may take in as much vitamin D from the sun, food, or supplements as people who are not obese, but their [blood] levels will tend to be lower.”

Vitamin D and Obesity

Along with calcium, vitamin D has long been recognized as important for bone health. But in recent years studies have suggested that the vitamin plays a part in a host of diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers.

Perhaps not coincidentally, obesity is a known risk factor for many of these diseases, Lagunova says.

The researchers concluded that 1,25(OH)2D levels might be a better measure of vitamin D in obese people than circulating levels of the vitamin.

But Clifford J. Rosen, MD, of the Maine Medical Center Research Institute, is unconvinced.

Rosen tells WebMD that 1,25(OH)2D is more difficult and costly to measure and is not a very good indicator of vitamin D status.

He adds that while people who are obese do tend to have lower vitamin D levels, the clinical relevance of this is unclear.

Lagunova and colleagues conclude that people who are obese may need more vitamin D in their diets or greater exposure to the sun than thinner people.

“Obese people may need more vitamin D to end up with the same levels as a person whose weight is normal,” Lagunova says.

Vitamin D: Too Much of a Good Thing?

But it is far from clear if taking large doses of vitamin D in supplement form is beneficial or even safe, regardless of a person’s body weight, says Rosen.

An osteoporosis researcher, Rosen served on an expert panel that reviewed the vitamin D research and concluded that most people get enough of the vitamin without taking supplements.

The panel, convened by the independent health policy advisory group Institute of Medicine (IOM), published its findings late last month.

The IOM committee found the evidence suggesting a role for vitamin D supplementation in the prevention of non-bone related diseases to be inconclusive. It also warned that intake of vitamin D over 4,000 IU (international units) per day increases the risk for harm to the body.

Rosen says there was no suggestion that obese people needed extra vitamin D to maintain adequate levels.

Rutgers University professor of nutritional sciences Sue A. Shapses, PhD, also served on the IOM panel. She calls the research suggesting a protective role for vitamin D against non-bone-related disease “compelling” but far from conclusive.

“We know that vitamin D deficiency is not good, but most people are not deficient,” she says. “And there are just too many unanswered questions to recommend that people take high doses of vitamin D in supplement form.”

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Obesity at 9 to 12 Years Predicts Heart Disease Risk Factors in Adolescence!!!

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Greater adiposity in childhood, at ages 9 to 12 years, is associated with increased cardiovascular risk factors in adolescence, ages 15 to 16 years, although the risks can be decreased in obese children by achieving normal weight by adolescence, a new study has found.

Debbie A. Lawlor, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, and colleagues reported their findings online November 25 in the BMJ.

“BMI has been criticised as an inadequate measure of adiposity, particularly in children, in whom annual increases in BMI can reflect increases in lean mass more so than fat mass,” Dr. Lawlor and colleagues note. However, the study found that BMI is just as suitable as waist circumference or fat mass in children for identifying adverse cardiovascular profiles.

The study used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and included 2747 girls and 2488 boys. Participants were prospectively evaluated for the association between BMI, waist circumference, and fat mass; this association was directly assessed at ages 9 to 12 years and at ages 15 to 16 years.

The cardiovascular risk factors of systolic and diastolic blood pressure; concentrations of fasting glucose, insulin, and triglycerides; low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels; and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels were examined when the participants reached ages 15 to 16 years.

Among those who were overweight or obese in childhood (ages 9 – 12 years), reaching normal weight by adolescence (ages 15 – 16 years) was associated with better cardiovascular risk profiles vs those who remained overweight, the analysis found.

The study also found that the association between adiposity measured in childhood (ages 9 – 12 years) and cardiovascular risk factors in adolescence (ages 15 – 16 years) was stronger in boys vs girls. The study authors suggested that this finding “might have been influenced by sex differences occurring during the transition to puberty and might be related to where fat is placed—that is, preferentially more subcutaneous and ‘safe’ weight gain in girls than in boys.”

Girls who were overweight or obese at ages 9 to 12 years but were normal weight at ages 15 to 16 years achieved similar risk factors for cardiovascular disease as girls who were normal weight at both ages. However, boys who similarly lost weight by ages 15 to 16 years had higher systolic blood pressure, higher triglyceride and lipid concentrations, and lower HDL cholesterol levels than those who were normal weight at both ages. The boys who lost weight did have better cardiovascular risk profiles than those who remained overweight at ages 15 to 16 years.

Risks for cardiovascular disease were increased markedly for the children at the upper end of the weight distribution. The authors stated that the linear nature of the risk highlighted the “importance of prevention strategies aimed at shifting population distribution of childhood adiposity downwards.”

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