Children and teens who get less sleep, especially those who spend less time in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, may be more likely to be overweight, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The obesity rate has more than tripled among children six-to-11 years in the past 30 years, and approximately 17 percent of U.S. adolescents are now overweight or obese, according to background information in the article.
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Tributyltin, a ubiquitous pollutant that has a potent effect on gene activity, could be promoting obesity, according to an article in the December issue of BioScience. The chemical is used in antifouling paints for boats, as a wood and textile preservative, and as a pesticide on high-value food crops, among many other applications.
Affecting sensitive receptors in the cells of animals, from water fleas to humans, tributyltin can, at very low concentrations — a thousand times lower than pollutants that are known to interfere with sexual development of wildlife species.
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At the intersection of two U.S. health epidemics — obesity and chronic pain — researchers found black patients with chronic pain were less likely to have their weight or body mass index (BMI) recorded, even though they are at higher risk for having obesity when compared with their white counterparts.
This new study also revealed that obesity is related to greater disability and poorer functioning, over and above the impact of a person’s pain level.
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University of California at Irvine researchers have found a molecular link between circadian rhythms — our own body clock — and metabolism. The discovery reveals new possibilities for the treatment of diabetes, obesity and other related diseases.
Paolo Sassone-Corsi, distinguished professor and chair of Pharmacology, and his colleagues have identified that an essential protein called CLOCK that regulates the body’s circadian rhythms, works in balance with another protein called SIRT1 that modulates how much energy a cell uses.
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Girls moving through adolescence may experience unhealthy levels of weight gain, but the reasons for this are not always clear. In fact, many potential causes of weight gain are easily overlooked. A study soon-to-be published in The Journal of Pediatrics analyzes the effect of Internet usage, sleep, and alcohol and coffee consumption on weight gain in adolescent girls.
Dr. Catherine Berkey and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and Washington University led the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), which surveyed more than 5000 girls between the ages of 14-and-21 years of age from all 50 states.
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A new study is the first attempt to quantify the strength of the cross-sectional relationships between duration of sleep and obesity in both children and adults. Cross-sectional studies from around the world show a consistent increased risk of obesity among short sleepers in children and adults, the study found.
Francesco P. Cappuccio, MD, of Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom, and colleagues performed a systematic search of publications on the relationship between short sleep duration and obesity risk. Criteria for inclusion were: report of duration of sleep as exposure, body mass index (BMI) as continuous outcome and prevalence of obesity as categorical outcome, number of participants, age and gender.
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Women who sleep five hours or less per night weigh more on average than those who sleep seven hours, according to a study. The study demonstrated that women who slept for six hours were 12 percent more likely to have major weight gain and six percent more likely to become obese compared with women who slept seven hours a night.
Other findings from the study showed women who slept for five hours per night were 32 percent more likely to experience major weight gain (defined as an increase of 33 pounds or more) and 15 percent more likely to become obese over the course of the 16-year study compared with women who slept seven hours.
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The recent rise in obesity may be partly due to the reduced amount of time we spend asleep, according to new research from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Shahrad Taheri from Bristol University, and colleagues in the United States, examined the role of two key hormones that are involved in regulating appetite — ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin increases feelings of hunger while leptin acts to suppress appetite.
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