Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

While not a very busy week health-news wise there were four obesity-related news items. Normally that would not be surprising because each week, researchers come up with newly discovered direct consequences of being overweight (like this week’s story about how Asthma Takes Tougher Toll on the Obese). But there are also two items that, while they are related to obesity, do not describe a direct consequence of the excess weight itself but rather of, what I can only describe as, its “side-effects”.

First Overweight people get less out of exercise describes how among 687 adults who embarked on a 12-week regimen of strength training, although all participants gained strength and muscle, the overweight/obese volunteers gained 4-17% less than their normal-weight co-participants. In a strong co-relation with the earlier post that taled about how obesity could be a function of genetics, researhers claimed that the differences in the results could also be genetic:

“People with overweight and obesity have alterations in skeletal muscle structure and function compared to those who are normal weight that could also contribute to variability in the exercise response,” they wrote.

The story above could still be be forgiven for being somewhat partially due to the actual excess weight itself (although it’s not an illness/ disability or disease that resulted). But, the second story I want to highlight has more to do with self-perception and acceptance (a more mental demand) than the excess weight. Severely Obese Women More Likely to Skip Cancer Scans says the Forbes article, even though obese women are more likely to be diagnosed with this deadly disease. Almost a year ago, news surfaced that Americans are too fat for X-Rays, and while one could be forgiven for assuming that there could be a similar reason preventing obese women from getting scans, it turns out that may not be the whole story:

Jeanne Ferrante, from New Jersey Medical School, plans to survey doctors to find out whether there are barriers that prevent severely obese women from being screened for cancer, such as a lack of proper equipment to examine severely obese patients.

She is also gathering information from patient focus groups, and has found that severely obese women feel embarrassed because of their weight.

“They don’t like to be examined. They don’t like to wear two gowns or have a scale inadequate to weigh them,” Ferrante said in a prepared statement.

Surely the second reason is far more serious.

People embarrassed to take their t-shirts off at the beach is one thing. Avoiding potentially life-saving scans because of a poor body-image and being conscious of one’s excess weight is simply way too dangerous. It could turn out that the mental effects of obesity might be as equally devastating as the physical!
Read on for more health and fitness stories from this week:

1. Snacking can be good for the elderly: Researchers say such snacking is OK - in fact, regular nibbling can be good for older people.
2. Coffee may cut risk of gout, study finds: If men ever needed a reason to justify that extra cup of coffee, here it is: four or more cups of coffee a day appear to reduce the risk of gout, Canadian researchers said on Friday.
3. Overweight people get less out of exercise: Overweight and obese people get less out of resistance training than leaner people do, researchers said on Friday in a study that suggests the overweight may have to try harder to get results.
4. How to feed and fuel young athletes: Parents typically love the attention to fitness that stems from their children playing sports, but they’re often uncertain about the best way to provide fuel and fluid for their young athletes.
5. Lift weights, stay young: Resistance training turns back the clock - literally making muscles younger through regular workouts, new research by an Australian scientist shows.
6. High-salt diet link to ulcer risk: The bug that causes stomach ulcers may be more likely to cause disease when exposed to high concentrations of salt, a US team of researchers has said.
7. For This Week, a Simple Challenge: Step It Up, and Add Some Calcium: Staying active can sometimes take creativity.
8. Asthma Takes Tougher Toll on the Obese: Severe, persistent asthma is more likely to strike obese individuals than people who are not overweight, U.S. researchers report.
9. Severely Obese Women More Likely to Skip Cancer Scans: Severely obese woman are more likely than other women to skip cancer screenings, even though being severely obese increases their risk of developing and dying of cancer.
10. Big trouble in little Puerto Rico: Obese kids: Studies show 26 percent of youngsters in Puerto Rico are obese, worse than on the U.S. mainland where the figure is estimated to be 18 percent.
11. Pre-birth apples ‘benefit babies’: Children of mothers who eat plenty of apples during pregnancy are less likely to develop asthma, research suggests.

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Have a great weekend!

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, health news, fitness news, health links, fitness links, del.icio.us

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… that you heard for the first time today!

At the outset let me begin by saying that if you ever hear someone tell you “Eat This To Lose Weight”, then you should ask that person to wait for a minute while you replace your regular ears with a pair of “skeptic” ones! Note that the operative word in “Eat This To Lose Weight” is “To” which implies that eating that particular food by itself can cause you to lose weight.

Here’s something that is so painfully obvious that it hurts me to even write it: If you put something in your mouth other than air or water and swallow it, it will (repeat: will) add to your weight. Obviously at the end of the day if you have eaten a total number of calories that is less than what you have expended (by exercising, walking around, doing your chores and even just plain breathing) then you would have lost weight compared to what you weighed yesterday; but the first statement still stands: food itself will (always) add to your weight.

OK, now that I have that out of my system, let’s get onto the topic at hand! Last week saw the announcement from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which also oversees product advertising, that ads suggesting eating dairy will make a person lose weight are finally coming to an end. The FTC said that although it did not actually enforce this, the dairy industry behind the ads finally gave in to a group of doctors called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (disclaimer: this purportedly vegan group promotes the absolute abolishment of animal based foods) who claimed that such a cause-and-effect relationship simply did not exist.

The two marketing campaigns at issue involve the “Milk your diet. Lose Weight!” ads on television, Internet and in magazines, and the “3-A-Day. Burn More Fat, Lose Weight” ads, which are now mostly Web-based.

- Lose the ads, not the weight, say doctors

Now when Yoplait features a plump girl lose weight by simply gobbling down loads of yogurt with the song “It Was An Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” playing in the background, you just have to know there’s something wrong with this message. Heck, they even built a website around this fallacy!

Granted, the site has the mandatory “As Part Of A Regimen Of Exercise And A Low Calorie Diet” (or some similar phrase) tagged on to the bottom, but who reads disclaimers anyway? All viewers see is someone losing weight as they eat something sweet. And they think: Sweet!

And so I am sure we have hordes of people at home wasting away on their couches, gulping down yogurt and wondering when they need to weigh themselves again so they can see the pounds drop off. Well, here’s some news folks, it ain’t happening. You eating, you gaining. You use more energy than you take in, you losing. Simple.

This site itself has twice before commented on the benefits of milk, but in both cases I have always been particularly wary of calling milk a “weight-loss food” (there’s no such thing). Got Milk is my first post on the topic of dairy and although I have mentioned studies that show calcium plays a part in preventing the body from easily storing food as fat, nowhere will you see outlandish claims that milk will actually help you lose weight. Infact, I said (and i quote):

Believe you me: It is; but don’t get me wrong: If you really drink milk all day (especially the “whole” kind), you will not only not lose weight but add some artery-clogging saturated fat in the process.

In the very next paragraph I mention the milk study that only shows that adding calcium to an already planned-out calorie-restricted diet helped in reducing fat stored - but there’s obviously no way the calcium (or the dairy products themselves) can cause weight loss.

Even when I gave you “5 Reasons You Should Drink A Glass Of Milk Before Bedtime” not one of the reasons was anywhere close to “Milk will help you lose weight!”.

What can we learn from all of this?

• If it sounds too good to be true it probably is (the only itsy bitsy bikinis I see these days are on lifeless store mannequins - and I know they don’t eat a lot of yogurt)
• Just because you discovered people were attributing outlandish magical powers to good foods does not mean you should stop eating those foods in protest. Remember, dairy products (especially the low-fat and fat-free varieties) are still excellent sources of whey protein and function as good snack fillers (in lieu of other fatty snacks).
• Keeping the attributes “moderation” and “common sense” uppermost in our minds will enable us to see through the hype on either side of this issue (No, Yoplait - we are not going to believe that eating your yogurt alone will help women get into itsy-bitsy bikinis - not until your ad shows that woman burning some calories as well! And No to you too Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine - granted milk may not have weight-loss powers, but that does not mean you ask people to become vegan!)

Let’s hope we are all granted the wisdom to understand the motives behind the actions and comments of others and, more importantly, figure out for ourselves what is best for our bodies and ourselves.

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