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4 surprising reasons women can’t lose weight

February 16, 2012 By

Most of us already know that eating less and moving more are the keys to dropping extra pounds. But if you’re already doing everything “right” and can’t seem to lose weight — or are even gaining it — you may have a hidden health condition that’s sabotaging your efforts. And the symptoms may be so subtle that even your doctor can miss them. Here, some possible weight-loss blockers — and how to get the help you need.

A Sluggish Thyroid
Your thyroid gland makes hormones that regulate the way your body uses energy. An underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) disrupts your metabolism, as well as many other aspects of your health. Some estimate that as many as 10 percent of adults have hypothyroidism, which is more common in women and is most often diagnosed in the 40s and 50s.

Could this be you? Besides weight gain or an inability to lose weight, you may notice fatigue, hair loss, dry skin, joint pain and muscle weakness, heavy periods, increased sensitivity to cold, even depression. Many people with low-grade hypothyroidism just feel “off,” with no obvious signs of being truly sick.

How to get tested: Ask your internist to run a TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) screening. In general, the higher your TSH level, the slower your thyroid is. “While traditional ‘normal’ values are between .45 and 4.5, if your level is above 2, you might still struggle to lose weight,” explains Dr. Jamie Kane, M.D., medical director of Park Avenue Medical Weight and Wellness in New York City. Your doctor may also want to check your levels of T-3 and T-4, the two main thyroid hormones. But hypothyroidism isn’t always a straight numbers game; more and more doctors are now treating the symptoms, not just the blood-test results. “If a patient isn’t feeling well, it’s often because her thyroid isn’t functioning as well as it should for her body,” says Dr. Erika Schwartz, M.D., an internist in New York City.

How it’s treated: Your doc will usually start by prescribing a low-dose T-4 thyroid hormone like Synthroid. If your symptoms don’t improve, discuss upping your dosage or switching to a combination of T-3 and T-4.

Out-of-Whack Hormones
As many as 1 in 10 women of childbearing age have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a condition in which a woman’s ovaries produce an excess of male hormones. In addition to causing ovulation problems and infertility, PCOS may go hand-in-hand with insulin resistance, a glitch in the way your body processes blood sugar, which is often associated with excess fat storage, especially around the waist. Left untreated, insulin resistance can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Could this be you? You may have irregular periods, excess facial and body hair, acne, some male pattern balding, and trouble getting pregnant, along with unexplained weight gain (though not everyone with PCOS has weight issues).

How to get tested: Your gynecologist or internist can test your levels of sex hormones for an imbalance of testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen, says Dr. David Katz, M.D., director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. She may then test your blood sugar and insulin levels or perform an ultrasound to check for cysts on your ovaries.

How it’s treated: Lifestyle changes are usually the first step. If you’re already eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, you may have to kick it up another notch to see results. If you have insulin resistance, Katz says, you’ll also want to cut out refined carbs and added sugars. If you’ve made these changes and still don’t notice a difference, your doc may prescribe a drug called metformin, which is used to treat insulin resistance as well as assist with ovulation (if you’re trying to get pregnant).

Trouble-Making Foods
Most people know if they’re allergic to certain foods like nuts or shellfish, but many aren’t aware of food intolerances. While a true food allergy results when your immune system mistakenly identifies a food as harmful and mounts an immediate response, food intolerances can have a variety of causes, including lack of a certain digestive enzyme (as with lactose intolerance) or sensitivity to food additives, and tend to manifest over time, says Dr. Elizabeth W. Boham, M.D., R.D., a family practitioner at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Eating a “trouble food” — the most common being dairy, gluten, eggs, soy, corn and nuts — can lead to bloating and water-weight gain, among other symptoms. Experts estimate that food intolerances affect as many as 1 in 10 people.

Could this be you? You may regularly have bloating, gas, diarrhea, and constipation — as well as seemingly unrelated symptoms like mild asthma, eczema, headaches, muscle and joint pain, and fatigue.

How to get tested: An internist or gastroenterologist can help you diagnose the problem, but you can begin to figure it out for yourself through an elimination diet. Boham suggests that you start by removing gluten and dairy (these are the biggest culprits) from your diet for two to three weeks. If you don’t notice a difference, also eliminate eggs, corn, soy, and nuts, and consider nixing additives such as food coloring and preservatives. After a few weeks, slowly reintroduce the possible culprits, one at a time, noting any reactions.

How it’s treated: If the reaction is severe, you’ll need to cut the offending food from your diet. For mild reactions, try a daily probiotic supplement, which restores the good bacteria in your gut necessary for digestion and can help prevent bloating and water weight gain. Boham recommends one with at least 10 billion live bacteria per pill.

Pills That Pack on Pounds
Weight gain can be an unwelcome side effect of some drugs, including antidepressants, steroids, and, more rarely, birth-control pills (due to a temporary increase in water retention).

Could this be you? You may notice weight gain within a few weeks of starting a new medication, though it could take several months before you see any effects, Kane says.

How to get tested: No special test is needed; you know if you’re gaining weight.

How it’s treated: Talk to your doctor, who may be able to prescribe an alternative. In the case of anti-depressants, bupropion has been shown to cause less weight gain and possibly even lead to weight loss. With birth control pills, switching to a version with a lower dose of hormones might minimize weight gain. But remember, treating the condition you’re taking the drug for is your biggest priority, so you should never go off any meds on your own.

Copyright Health Magazine 2011

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Filed Under: Nutrition, Women's Fitness & Health

Study finds supplement may help pregnancy problem

May 20, 2011 By

Scientists studying the pregnancy complication pre-eclampsia say a dietary supplement containing an amino acid and antioxidant vitamins given to expectant mothers at high risk could reduce occurrence of the disease.

In a study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Friday, researchers found that pregnant women taking supplements with the amino acid L-arginine plus vitamins were significantly less likely to develop pre-eclampsia compared with those taking just vitamins, or those taking a placebo supplement.

Pre-eclampsia is a serious condition marked by abnormally high blood pressure and high protein levels in the urine. It affects about 5 percent of all first-time pregnancies and is dangerous for both mother and child.

Experts estimate that the cost of treating women with pre-eclampsia is $45 billion a year in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In developing countries, an estimated 75,000 women die of it each year.

If mothers and their babies survive, the women later have a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes. The babies are often born prematurely and can suffer complications later in life.

Pre-eclampsia is thought to be linked to a deficiency in L-arginine, an amino acid that helps to maintain a healthy blood flow during pregnancy. Some experts also think that antioxidant vitamins can help protect against the condition.

This study took place at a hospital in Mexico City. Pregnant women at high risk of pre-eclampsia received either daily food bars containing both L-arginine and antioxidant vitamins, bars containing vitamins only, or placebo “dummy” bars containing no L-arginine or vitamins. The supplements began when women were around 20 weeks pregnant and continued until delivery.

The proportion of women developing pre-eclampsia was 30.2 percent in the placebo group, 22.5 percent in the vitamin only group, and 12.7 percent in the L-arginine plus vitamin group.

“This relatively simple and low cost intervention may have value in reducing the risk of pre-eclampsia and associated preterm birth,” the researchers, from Mexico and the United States, wrote in their study.

Two British experts commenting on the work in the BMJ said it was an important finding but crucial questions remained.

Before any more trials were started, they said, researchers should seek to establish how L-arginine and vitamins work together, what the potential harmful effects might be, and what the results might be in other populations and places.

 

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Most women don’t need vitamin A pills: study

May 18, 2011 By

(Reuters Health) – A new study from Bangladesh has experts concluding that most of the world’s women don’t need vitamin A supplements.

In the developing Asian nation, giving vitamin A supplements to pregnant women in the rural north didn’t cut down on their chance of pregnancy-related death, or on infant deaths, according to a new study.

Still, the researchers say making sure pregnant women get enough vitamin A through diet or supplements is “an important public health goal” for other reasons.

But experts debate whether vitamin A supplements are helpful.

“At the moment I think there’s very little evidence to support the supplementation of women with vitamin A,” Anthony Costello, of the University College London Institute for Global Health, told Reuters Health.

“It seems likely that either it doesn’t have an effect, or it only has an effect in populations where there are really serious levels of vitamin A deficiency,” said Costello, who has studied vitamin A in the past but was not involved in the current research.

“For most women in the world, that probably doesn’t apply.”

In the Bangladeshi study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Keith West of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and colleagues followed a population of about 600,000 people for more than five years.

The research team identified every household in that region that had a married woman between age 13 and 45. Every 5 weeks, female staff members visited those households to find out — through discussion and urine tests — if any of the women were pregnant.

If they were, the staff began giving them a weekly dose of vitamin A, beta carotene, or a vitamin-free placebo pill every week until 12 weeks after they gave birth. The staff also gave all women educational materials about care and diet during pregnancy. The assignments to the various groups were done randomly, based on household location.

There were about 60,000 pregnancies during the study period, with mothers evenly distributed between the vitamin A, beta carotene, and placebo supplements.

A total of 138 women in the study died of any pregnancy-related cause. That worked out to 20 to 25 women per 10,000 pregnancies, regardless of what supplement they were taking.

Rates of stillbirths and infant deaths also did not vary based on the type of supplements pregnant women were given. Each supplement group had between 45 and 51 stillbirths for every 1,000 births, and between 65 and 70 infant deaths in the 12 weeks after birth per 1,000 live births.

CHANGING NEED?

Vitamin A deficiency has been linked with night blindness in pregnant women and with maternal death in some regions. The World Health Organization says those risks are highest in the last three months of pregnancy. In the Bangladesh study, anyone with night blindness was treated with vitamin A, regardless of her assigned supplement.

Costello, however, thinks vitamin A deficiency in the developing world has become less of a problem over the last 30 years, in the wake of economic and agricultural changes that also affect nutrition.

Previous studies, including those by West and colleagues, looked at the effect of giving vitamin A to pregnant women in Ghana and Nepal and also found no effect on rates of stillbirth or infant mortality. The Nepal studies, however, did find that fewer pregnant women died when they were given vitamin A or beta carotene supplements.

Women in Bangladesh may already consume more foods rich in vitamin A compared to Nepalese women, West says. They have a generally smaller chance of dying in pregnancy for other reasons too — for example, they may be more likely to have a health care worker present at their delivery.

Costello said that while vitamin A deficiency is becoming less common, supplementation is still important — especially for warding off infection — in people who are deficient, including young children.

“I think you can still make a case for supplementing children,” he said. “But we have to be aware that as the situation changes … the benefits of supplementation programs may gradually decline.”

And, Costello said, “There’s no need to go rushing off giving vitamin A to every woman in the world.”

West too believes nutrition is improving in many parts of the developing world, possibly making vitamin A supplementation less essential in some places, including rural Bangladesh.

“It’s still a vital nutrient. If you don’t have it along with other micronutrients, things will go wrong. But the dietary profiles are changing,” West told Reuters Health. “Is that true everywhere? I would say no, but it’s probably a general trend.”

Still, he added, “We need to remain vigilant to the nutritional needs of the rural poor…in the developing world, and prevent deficiencies.”

NO MAGIC BULLET

Dr. Prakesh Shah, who has also studied micronutrient supplements and pregnancy, takes a different message from the findings.

“Looking at one single micronutrient to have an effect on a mother dying or not dying is a little bit too much to expect,” Shah, a University of Toronto researcher who was not linked to the new study, told Reuters Health.

If women and babies are going to benefit from supplements, he continued, it’s going to be from a supplement with more nutrients — including vitamin D, folic acid, and iron.

Maternal and infant death rates are still much higher in the developing world than in places like the U.S. and Canada. However, Shah said, “Are we going to find one single bullet like vitamin A and that’s going to cure all the problems? That’s probably not going to happen.”

 

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Liposuction Doesn’t Last; Your Fat Loves You Too Much To Leave

May 2, 2011 By

Liposuction has been around since 1974, so by now you’d think someone would have figured out whether it works or not. However, doctors only completed this research recently, and the news isn’t good: All the fat removed by liposuction comes back within a year — and in a strange new location!

The new study was conducted by University of Colorado researchers and published in the journal Obesity. The New York Times reports:

In the study, the researchers randomly assigned nonobese women to have liposuction on their protuberant thighs and lower abdomen or to refrain from having the procedure, serving as controls. As compensation, the women who were control subjects were told that when the study was over, after they learned the results, they could get liposuction if they still wanted it. For them, the price would also be reduced from the going rate.

The conclusion: As promised, fat didn’t return to the thighs and lower abdomen. Instead, it was “redistributed upstairs” to the upper abdomen, shoulders and triceps within a year. The researchers said they weren’t surprised by this result, and pointed to the body’s tendency to “defend” its fat. The body is constantly replacing fat cells, but they relocate after liposuction because the procedure destroys the net-like structure under the skin where fat cells are located.

Scientists have actually performed liposuction on rats and found the same results, but it still took them decades to study the phenomenon in humans. The study required doctors to scan and measure fat precisely, which is difficult. Also, unlike studies involving patients taking a simple pill, every surgeon performs the procedure in a slightly different way.

Dr. Rudolph Leibel, an obesity researcher at Columbia University, described the finding as, “another chapter in the “‘You can’t fool Mother Nature’ story.” But don’t expect humans to give up their quest for a quick weight loss solution so easily. After the study, the women who had the procedure said they were still happy — they just wanted to get rid of fat on their hips and thighs, even if it came back elsewhere. They have good reason to rationalize their decision, but most of the women in the control group felt the same way. Even after they heard the results of the study, more than half still had liposuction.

With Liposuction, The Belly Finds What The Thighs Lose [NYT]

 

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Wisdom Tooth Pain During Pregnancy

May 1, 2011 By

Wisdom tooth pain during pregnancy is not an uncommon ailment. However, any dental pain is unbearable and bring a lot of frustration during pregnancy. Here are a few safe and effective remedies to relive the pain of wisdom tooth.

During pregnancy, a woman goes through a lot of physical and psychological changes. This is already a reason enough for an expectant mother to become restless and anxious. Irrespective of the changes happening in the body, wisdom tooth pain is among the unbearable pain, which can trigger anger during pregnancy. These set of molar teeth grow during the late teens or early twenties. However, this is not always the case and even grow in the later stage of life. Many women observe this problem during the time of their pregnancy. When wisdom teeth grow in proper alignment, they prove to be a valuable set of molars. However, improper alignment can cause excruciating pain and additional stress to the body. The additional stress that is created on the body might even affect the unborn baby. Therefore, seeking immediate help from a dentist will save the expectant mother from the unwanted pain. Recognizing the symptoms of any ailment can help you take immediate steps towards curing it.

Symptoms
Wisdom teeth are the last set of molars and is experienced during teenage and sometimes adulthood. Many complain of improper alignment of these teeth, which has caused decaying of the adjacent teeth, the nerves and even the jawbone. Sometimes it poses a threat to the second molars, making them prone to plaque and decay. In some cases the wisdom teeth grow under the jawbone or grow a little out of the gum. Improper growth of wisdom teeth can also lead to bacterial infection in the gum. These infections cause swelling and pain in the jawbone, gum and nerves. Due to the pain and swelling, even cleaning becomes difficult leading to various gum diseases.

If the alignment of the rest of the teeth is right then the wisdom teeth might have enough space to develop and even cause less pain. However, in some cases, the patient might have to face prolonged pain. If the pain turns unbearable, then the problem might be severe. Sometimes these appear partially and soon get covered by a layer of soft tissue. Also the food that we eat gets stuck in the gaps near the wisdom teeth and causes decaying, which might increase the pain and also its duration. The infections that generate out of decaying causes bad breath too. Other signs of wisdom tooth pain could be swelling of cheeks, bleeding of gum and irritation of the skin around the teeth. The problem of wisdom tooth pain during pregnancy might take a toll on the health of the unborn baby. Swelling of gum and pain in the jawbone and nerves, restricts the movement of the mouth and cause pain while eating. Therefore, the expectant mother might face difficulty in eating and eat less food. Consumption of less food would result into weakness and poor health of the mother as well as the baby.

Natural Remedies to Cure Wisdom Tooth Pain
Though tooth aches are common during pregnancy, using the right methods to cure the pain is essential. Taking the help of the dentist is wiser than seeking your own remedies to subside the pain. If you think taking local pain killers can reduce your pain, think again! These drugs might numb the pain, but it might have drastic impact on the unborn child. In case visiting a dentist is not possible, try some natural home remedies for toothache relief that might prove safe and effective during pregnancy.

Your first step towards reducing the wisdom tooth pain is maintaining hygiene. Ginger, honey and lemon tea have anti bacterial properties, which prevents further infections near the teeth. Therefore, rinse the mouth with the mixture of these natural ingredients. Salt water is another home and natural remedy that rinses the harmful bacteria that is settled in the gum and and the gaps of the teeth. Try to rinse the mouth with either salt water or former given mixture, which will help you keep the mouth free from infection causing bacteria. These ingredients also act as good cleansers keeping the mouth from bad breath.

Sage oil or tea is another effective remedy which works best for pregnancy toothache. Take the tea leaves and boil it in water for 5-8 minutes and use it as a mouth wash. Even peppermint leaves can work wonders to relieve the toothache. Use a soft brush and floss to keep the area clean all the time.

These are some of the simple and safe remedies that can be used for wisdom toothache during pregnancy. To take better and wiser precautionary measure, take the advice of the dentist and the gynecologist to avoid unwanted problems.

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How much should you exercise?

November 27, 2010 By

(CNN) — The headlines sounded promising — 20 minutes of interval exercise can provide the same benefits as many hours of conventional workouts. But soon after came another study, this one suggesting that women should work out an hour every day just to maintain their weight.

“It does get confusing,” Janice Bissex, mother of two and regular exerciser, said after the studies were released in the past two weeks.

The contradictory information can be disconcerting, said Stephen Ball, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. “It makes it look bad – like physical activity scientists, we’re changing what we’re saying all the time. We’re really not.”

Exercise experts say the most important message is to be active, regardless of the latest studies. How much one should exercise depends on personal fitness goals, they said.

But experts recommend that an average person stick to existing public health guidelines, which recommend that children and teenagers exercise one hour every day and adults get a weekly minimum of two hours and 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity (such as brisk walking, dancing, gardening) or one hour and 15 minutes of vigorous activity (jogging, aerobic dancing and jumping rope).

The key to exercise is that “some is better than none. More is better than some. Too much is difficult to get,” Ball said.

The two seemingly conflicting studies (20 minutes versus an hour of exercise) examined different populations: young men versus middle-aged women.

A study published in the March edition of the Journal of Physiology found that short periods of high-interval training was just as effective as long durations of endurance training, based on the results from seven young, healthy men.

Researchers from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, had the seven subjects pedal for one minute on a stationary bike at the highest intensity they could muster.

This one-minute burst was followed by about a minute of rest, another minute of intense exercise, and so on, until participants reached 20 minutes total — 10 exercising, 10 resting.

Working out harder for less time effective

The study suggested that quick, high-interval training “may represent an alternative to endurance training to improve metabolic health and reduce the risk for chronic diseases.”

But, interval training isn’t easy. It cuts down on time, but many people find the intense bursts of vigorous exercise difficult.

“It’s uncomfortable exercise. It’s high intensity, so it hurts,” said Martin Gibala, lead author of the study.

While interval training might be attractive for athletes or time-crunched, twentysomethings who already work out, it may be daunting for others.

“It’s tough to get people [in their 50s] to do moderate exercises,” Ball said. “For intense exercises, it hurts. People don’t like to do it.”

Gibala, chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster, said the results of his research are not intended to replace existing guidelines.

“We’re certainly not suggesting this is the optimal approach to fitness,” he said. “Public health guidelines are based on very good science, so the recommendations are very sound. But we also know the number one barrier for exercise is the lack of time. It’s incumbent on scientists to look at other potential ways that we can get many of the same benefits in a time-efficient manner.”

Another research getting attention was a March article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that women who exercised an hour every day were better able to stave off weight gain.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School studied 34,000 women, with the average age of 54.

Keeping weight down means more than a few minutes of activity a day

Over a 13-year period, the women gained an average of 5.7 pounds. The women who successfully maintained their weight (13 percent) exercised an hour a day at moderate intensity.

Hearing that left some women feeling discouraged.

“To say that most women need an hour a day, it puts it into the category of an unattainable goal,” said Bissex, a working mother and a dietitian in Melrose, Massachusetts. “That’s frustrating. Getting that hour of exercise, while being a successful career woman, while taking care of kids, a partner or spouse, and parents, we’re going to all end up getting two hours of sleep.”

That reaction is fairly common.

“When I see studies that say one hour of exercise a day, people freak out and say, ‘I don’t have that kind of time,’ ” Pete McCall, an exercise physiologist at the American Council on Exercise.

“We can argue about vigorous, moderate intensity and time. The fact is if you don’t do anything, you’re going to significantly increase risks for disease and other things that can take years off your life.”

How much should a person exercise?

When looking for basic guidelines, exercise specialists recommend the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A committee of doctors and scientists reviewed the scientific literature to develop the recommendations.

The amount of time a person should exercise depends on his or her fitness goals, whether it’s for weight loss, health maintenance or performance training. And that person also needs to fit diet and nutrition into the equation.

“If you take in lots of calories, it doesn’t matter how much you exercise,” Ball said. “It takes a lot of exercise if you don’t watch what you eat.”

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Weights plus walking equals more fit in less time

November 27, 2010 By

(Health.com) — Walkers who squeeze a bit of light weight training into their workout get more bang for their buck in terms of being fit and trim without increasing their total workout time, according to a new study of sedentary people with type 2 diabetes.

What’s more, those who mixed up their workouts showed the greatest improvement in blood sugar control after nine months, says Timothy S. Church, MD, Ph.D., of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who led the study.

“Our findings really support the 2008 federal physical activity guidelines, and our findings support those guidelines for everybody,” Church says.

These guidelines recommend people get at least 150 minutes of walking or 75 minutes of running a week, along with two or more days a week of resistance training.

Health.com: Could you have Type 2? 10 diabetes symptoms

And that two days a week means a couple of 15- to 20-minute sessions on weight-training machines in the gym.

“It’s actually a pretty quick undertaking,” Church says.

Although exercise has long been recommended for people with diabetes because it can lower blood sugar almost as much as some medications, the best “prescription” for physical activity hasn’t been determined, Church and his colleagues write in the November 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

How are you managing your diabetes? Take a test

To find out, the researchers randomly assigned 262 sedentary men and women with type 2 diabetes to a control group that remained sedentary; an aerobic group that walked on a treadmill each week (equivalent to a brisk, 4 mph walk for 50 minutes 3 times a week); a resistance group that did three weight-training sessions per week (2 to 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions of 9 exercises); and a combo group that walked on the treadmill (42 minutes 3 times a week at 4 mph) and did two weight lifting sessions each week (1 set each of 9 exercises per session).

Health.com: How to estimate carbs in 10 common foods

The workouts were designed so that each would take about the same amount of time.

After nine months, the researchers estimated that the aerobic group worked out for an average of 140 minutes a week, the resistance group for 141 minutes, and the combination group for 140 to 150 minutes (110 minutes on the treadmill and 30 to 40 minutes lifting weights).

The key measurement Church and his team were looking at was hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), a blood test that looks at the percentage of red blood cells that have glucose “stuck” to them and is a good measure of how well a person’s blood sugar has been controlled over the past two or three months.

The average HbA1c for the group was 7.7 percent at the beginning of the study. (Most guidelines recommend people with type 2 diabetes shoot for an HbA1c level of 7 percent or less.)

Health.com: 15 exercise tips for people with Type 2 Diabetes

Although HbA1c didn’t change significantly for people who did aerobic training only or resistance training only, it fell by 0.34 percent in the combination exercise group.

People in this group were also the only ones who showed a significant increase in their maximum oxygen consumption (which measures the capacity for aerobic exercise) compared to the non-exercising control group.

Men and women in all the exercise groups trimmed their waists by 2 to 3 centimeters (0.8 to 1.2 inches). The weight lifters lost an average of 1.4 kilograms (3.1 pounds) of fat compared to the control group, while the combination exercisers lost 1.7 kilograms (3.7 pounds) of fat compared to their sedentary peers.

The reduction in HbA1c seen in the combination exercisers would translate to a 5 percent to 7 percent reduction in heart disease risk, according to Church and his colleagues.

It would also slash the risk of so-called microvascular complications, such as damage to the eyes, nerves, and kidneys, by 12 percent, the researchers say.

Although several studies have looked at exercise for diabetes, the current investigation is unique for its long duration, as well as the fact that it included an ethnically diverse group of patients, says Ronald J. Sigal, M.D., of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. African Americans made up 44 percent of study participants; nearly two-thirds were female.

Health.com: 8 tips for controlling portion sizes

Sigal co-authored an editorial accompanying the new study, but wasn’t involved in the current research. In 2007, he and his colleagues published the DARE trial, which showed that resistance training plus aerobics was the most beneficial approach for people with diabetes.

“Unlike the DARE trial, they made a real effort to keep the total time involved the same” in the new study, Sigal says.

Resistance exercise likely increases the size of muscle fibers, while aerobic exercise boosts muscle’s efficiency in using glucose, which explains why combining the two has the strongest effect on blood sugar control, Sigal says.

“What’s the biggest consumer of blood sugar in the human body? Well, it’s muscle,” Church says. “If your body chews up more sugar, you’ve got less sugar in the blood and your diabetes is better. You’re kind of stimulating two different systems in the muscle.”

Sigal says the kind of resistance training people did in his study and Church’s study isn’t something you can accomplish at home with a few sets of dumbbells. (The study participants did their exercises under a trainer’s supervision at a gym.)

“It’s not realistic for most people to have the quality and variety of equipment at home that they could get at a gym,” he says.

Another benefit of going to the gym, he added, is that you can get help from trainers, who will push you to do more.

Health.com: How exercise lowers blood sugar in Type 2 Diabetes

Although trainers are great for some people, Church says, other people want nothing to do with them.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about exercise, it is such a personal thing,” he adds. “What’s the best type of aerobic exercise? The one that you’ll do.”

About 24 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and 90 percent of those cases are type 2 diabetes, which is more likely to occur with aging, excess weight and a sedentary lifestyle.

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Elastic Bands Increase Muscle Endurance, Build Muscle and Cut Fat in Middle-Aged Women

November 27, 2010 By

Many middle-age women lose muscle and gain fat as they age. Work and family responsibilities make it difficult for them to get back that smoking hot body they had in high school or college, before they had kids. Many are self-conscious and intimidated by training on machines in sophisticated health clubs dominated by 20-something year old kids. Elastic band training provides a simple, inexpensive way for women to get back into shape and restore old exercise habits. A study from Appalachian State University, by Juan Colado and Travis Triplett, showed that middle-aged women who trained with elastic bands or weight machines for 10 weeks made similar improvements in body composition and muscle endurance. Elastic band training increased muscle endurance by nearly 25 percent (knee push-ups, free squats), decreased fat by nearly 3 percent, and increased lean mass (mainly muscle) by nearly 2 percent. Elastic band training is wellsuited for sedentary middle-aged women because it’s cheap, safe, effective and they can do it at home. (Journal Strength Conditioning Research, 22: 1441-1448, 2008)

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1 in 4 Overweight Women Think They’re Normal Size: Study

November 26, 2010 By

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MONDAY, Nov. 22 (HealthDay News) — Almost one-quarter of young women who are overweight actually perceive themselves as being normal weight, while a sizable minority (16 percent) of women at normal body weight actually fret that they’re too fat, according to a new study.

The study found these misperceptions to be often correlated with race: Black and Hispanic women were much more likely to play down their overweight status compared with whites, who were more apt to worry that they weighed too much (even when they didn’t).

Although the study looked mostly at low-income women attending public-health clinics in Texas, the findings do mirror other studies in different populations, including a recent Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll.

That survey found that 30 percent of adult Americans in the “overweight” class believed they were actually normal size, while 70 percent of those classified as obese felt they were simply overweight. Among the heaviest group, the morbidly obese, 39 percent considered themselves merely overweight.

The problem, according to study lead author Mahbubur Rahman, is the “fattening of America,” meaning that for some women, being overweight has become the norm.

“If you go somewhere, you see all the overweight people that think they are normal even though they’re overweight,” said Rahman, who is assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMBG).

In fact, “they may even be overweight or normal-weight and think they are quite small compared to others,” added study senior author Dr. Abbey Berenson, director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health at UTMBG.

The new findings are published in the December issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The study looked at more than 2,200 women who had arrived at a public-health clinic for reproductive assistance, such as obtaining contraceptives.

According to the study authors, more than half of these reproductive-age women (20 to 39 years), who were the subject of this trial, were above a normal body mass index (BMI). An even higher proportion of black Americans (82 percent) and Mexican Americans (75 percent) were overweight or obese.

Women were classified into one of four groups: “overweight misperceivers,” meaning overweight women who thought they were normal-weight or even underweight; “overweight actual perceivers,” who accurately perceived their size; “normal-weight misperceivers” who worried they were too heavy; and “normal-weight actual perceivers,” meaning those whose perceptions were in sync with the weigh-scale.

According to the study, 23 percent of overweight women saw themselves as being smaller than they were, while 16 percent of normal-weight women worried they were too big.

Race seemed to play a role in self-perceived weight. Among overweight women, 28 percent of blacks and about 25 percent of Hispanics considered their weight within the normal range, compared to 15 percent of overweight white women. The trend was the opposite among normal-weight women, with more whites (16 percent) believing they were fat, compared to just 7 percent of blacks.

Women who had more education and surfed the Internet were more likely to be in tune with their actual body size, the researchers said.

Mistaken notions of one’s weight status can have implications for behavior, and perhaps health, the researchers noted. For example, women who were overweight but thought they were normal size were less likely to try to lose any excess weight by dieting or other means. On the other hand, women who saw themselves as fatter than they were, were more likely to use diet pills or diuretics, to induce vomiting or to smoke cigarettes, often as ways to control or lessen their weight.

“Unfortunately, women can’t do anything to lose weight if they don’t perceive themselves as overweight. It does start there,” said Keri Gans, a registered dietician based in New York City and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. “If they don’t perceive themselves as overweight, they’re not going to adopt healthy behaviors to lose weight and prevent disease. Meanwhile, the normal-weight people who don’t recognize they’re at normal weight are engaging in behaviors that put them at risk for illness.”

Women need to be aware of what “normal” actually is, in terms of numbers. And weighing yourself isn’t the only way, and may not even be the best way, to monitor creeping weight gain, Gans said.

“I don’t think the only way to maintain body weight is to weigh yourself,” she said. “You know when your pants are too tight. You don’t need a number to tell you that.”

More information

To check your BMI, head to the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

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