The gut microbiome, allergy, addiction, leaky gut syndrome, and autoimmune disease have been shown to be connected.

In 1849, the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote words that became a proverb: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The saying is just as true in English: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Five years ago, Michael F. …

In discussing the food industry’s promise of self-policing in the realm of child-targeted advertising, we saw how Nestle wiggled out of taking responsibility for cheating when they introduced three varieties of Girl Scout cookie-based candy bars. The c …

The food industry is fighting efforts to improve nutritional value of foods traditionally marketed directly to children.

FDA approved ReShape Dual Balloon, an adults-only device implanted into stomach for six months, to combat obesity.

This year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover features a plus-size model, so size acceptance is again a hot topic.

Promoting plus-size as sexy and promoting the overweight and even the obese state — are they the same thing?

In the final quarter of 2015, the Coca-Cola Company was taking a lot of heat, what with one thing and another. The very well-respected Lancet published an editorial that illustrates the corporation’s talent for shifting blame. The source of the trouble …

Twenty-two thousand is a pretty decent-size subject pool for a study, but the result given by this one could have been arrived at through mere common sense. The University of Illinois found that… […] diet-beverage consumers may compensate for the a …

The Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery, which is known as Teen-LABS for short, aims to document “the efficacy and complications of bariatric surgery in the adolescent surgical patient and its role in the overall management of obesity pri …

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-l …

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 …

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 …

Yesterday, while looking at the relationship between children, stress, and obesity, Childhood Obesity News referenced a study that also had something to say about women and the aftermath of childhood stress. This study, financed by the National Institu …

Childhood Obesity News has been exploring factors suspected of contributing to the obesity epidemic, including low income, a virus, a medical history that includes childhood cancer, odors, distraction, and too much variety. A recent study published in …

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 mis …

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. …

  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 …

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 t …

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 studie …

Childhood Obesity News has, not surprisingly, published quite a few posts about Dr. Pretlow’s innovative W8Loss2Go smartphone application. For review purposes, here is a handy guide to many of them, all in one place. Dr. Pretlow’s Huffington Post Guest …

Journals are full of information about the microbiome, and the scientific world is getting used to the idea that the bacteria inside us are related somehow to obesity, diabetes, asthma and other manifestations that are amenable to traditional metrics. …

Dr. Martin Blaser is one of the experts interviewed by Michael Pollan for his very comprehensive overview of the microbiome, “Some of My Best Friends are Germs.” This is Pollan’s description of one of Dr. Blaser’s fundamental theories: According to the …

Two previous posts have led to a better acquaintance with the mysterious and confusing bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which turns out to be even more of an enigma than anyone suspected even a few short years ago. This member of the microbiome has many …

Yesterday Childhood Obesity News enumerated several relationships between the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and other “dots” that represent the large variety of phenomena that all seem to be connected in some elusive way. Even the relationships that H. …

Helicobacter pylori Childhood Obesity News has been following along with advances in understanding the microbiome. The “connect the dots” trope is useful here. Seemingly, a whole constellation of dots are related in intriguing ways that don’t appear to …

“Related” is such a nice neutral word, and nowhere is it needed more than in discussion of the microbiome, the interior universe where exploration is just beginning. Michael Pollan helps readers understand why the microbiome is so fascinating. Fecal tr …

The introduction for this and related posts can be found in our post, “The Microbiome – More Dots to Connect.” One professional who uses the dot-connecting simile is Dr. Noel T. Mueller, who is all in favor of diversity among the populations of bacteri …

For the title’s context, please see yesterday’s post, “The Microbiome—More Dots to Connect.” Colonies of bacteria live inside us and carry out their agendas. The first big question is how they impact obesity. The second biggest question is how obesity …

“Connecting the dots” is a figure of speech that applies to a mystery whose bits and pieces are scattered about and seem to make no sense at all. The phrase originated with picture puzzles made for small children. The object was to draw a line from one …