Obesity Villains – Insufficient Hormone; Excessive Faith
Here is the gist of interesting research from Rutgers University, as reported by Robert Gebelhoff: A new study published this week in the journal Cell Reports suggests that overeating happens when people don’t have enough of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1. The chemical is secreted from cells in both the small intestine and the […]
Visual Obesity Villains: Light and Heaviness
In regard to the worldwide obesity epidemic, Dr. Pretlow has referred to the concatenation of events and influences as the “perfect storm,” a term borrowed from meteorology that refers to large-scale synergy. It is what happens when a number of elements come together that, separately, might have been merely bad but not catastrophic. In combination, […]
What, More Obesity Villains? Yes, Salt and Protein
Humans live on one-quarter of what they eat; on the other three-quarters lives their doctor. This pithy observation is said to have been carved on an Egyptian pyramid nearly 6,000 years ago and is unmistakable proof that knowledge is not enough to save us. If humankind has known such a simple truth for all these […]
Infamous Obesity Villains – Marriage and Divorce
A very prevalent and active obesity villain is interpersonal stress, particularly the kind that originates with familial discord. Childhood Obesity News has discussed parent-child relationships extensively, but by no means definitively. In this area of life, unfortunately, there is always more to say, because of the seemingly infinite number of ways in which people sabotage even […]
Incomparable Obesity Villains – Soda Pop, Pizza and Potato Snacks
Analysis of data provided to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) by thousands of American children and teenagers revealed that on any given day, 22% of them eat pizza. Difficult as it may be to believe, this is actually an improvement over earlier reports, according to Lisa M. Powell, a health policy researcher from […]
Pessimism and Loneliness as Obesity Villains
Billi Gordon Ph.D., popularizer of neuroscience, is acutely aware of the problems holidays, as well the rest of the year, can bring to compulsive overeaters and addicts of every kind. Even in a crowd, loneliness can attack. Sometimes, it comes from missing a particular person, but there are probably a hundred circumstances that can trigger the […]
Is Ghrelin an Obesity Villain?
Ghrelin, the “hunger hormone,” reminds us to eat, in case we forget. It’s like the warning light on a car’s dashboard that tells you to add oil before the engine seizes up. Face-to-face with an opossum, “yum yum” would not be a person’s first thought. It took the survival-stimulating chemical ghrelin to make the connection […]
More Obesity Villain Suspects—Adenovirus and a Cancer History
The adenovirus AD-36, which has long been known to cause respiratory and eye infections in humans, more recently was shown to cause obesity in various lab animals—chickens, monkeys, rats, and mice. Whether it also has this effect on humans is a controversial open question, with many studies pointing to both confirmation and refutation. A […]
Proposed Obesity Villains: Low Income, Team Sports
Childhood Obesity News has been looking at possible contributing factors in the childhood obesity epidemic. Back in 2012, Rice University researchers looked at 17,000 kids from 4,700 American neighborhoods, and deduced from studying those 5-year-olds that growing up in a low-income area is an obesity risk. Nicole Etolen reports: They found that children living in […]
Proposed Obesity Villains – Distraction, Variety, and Odors
Childhood Obesity News mentioned one pioneering study on distraction as it affects appetite. The University of Liverpool study that we discuss today is a different kind, a meta-study that curated and collated the results of more than 20 previous studies. As expected, it showed that people who eat when their attention is distracted do not […]