Fast food can initiate diabetes/Teenage Obesity Is a Ticking Time Bomb

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Fast food can initiate diabetes

http://newsfromrussia.com/science/2004/12/31/57662.html

 

04:46 2004-12-31

The research, published in this week's Lancet medical journal, should

bolster the arguments against those in the food industry who claim that the

obesity is caused not by what you eat but how little exercise you take.

Although burger bars and chippies have been heavily criticised, there has

been little real investigation to establish whether there is a link between

fast food and the twin scourges of obesity and type 2 diabetes, both of

which are soaring in the UK and other affluent nations.

The study was carried out by researchers in the US, where obesity is further

advanced than it is here - although we are catching up fast. At the turn of

the millennium, 30% of Americans were clinically obese. The condition is now

responsible for an extra 300,000 deaths and costs $100bn (?51bn) in the US

per year.

Mark Pereira, from the University of Minnesota, and David Ludwig, from the

Children's Hospital, in Boston monitored the diets of more than 3,000 black

and white adults aged between 18 and 30.

They found that over 15 years, those who went more than twice a week to fast

food restaurants weighed an average of 4.5kg more than those who went

infrequently. They also had a twofold greater increase in insulin

resistance, making them more prone to developing diabetes, publishes the

Guardian Unlimited.

Fast-food meals are causing consumers to gain weight, according to a 15-year

study on the health effects of the diet pattern.

Researchers in the U.S. followed 3,000 people aged 18 to 30 who were given

medical checkups and asked about their diet, physical activity and

lifestyle.

They found people who ate fast food more than twice a week gained an extra

4.5 kilograms compared to those who ate the high-calorie meals less than

once a week, tells the CBC News.

The frequent fast-food consumers also showed a doubling in insulin

resistance, a disorder linked to diabetes.

 

 

Teenage Obesity Is a Ticking Time Bomb

http://newsfromrussia.com/science/2005/01/02/57685.html

 

20:07 2005-01-02

The American Heart Association's warning last week that more children than

ever are heading toward heart trouble is primarily due to the nation's

obesity epidemic.

 

But the damage caused by too much weight isn't limited to the heart.

 

In its annual assessment of cardiovascular disease, the top killer in the

United States, the AHA reported that about 1 million children between 12 and

19 years old, or about 4.2 percent, now have metabolic syndrome. This is an

umbrella term for a host of controllable risk factors for heart disease such

as abnormal blood lipids, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and

overweight or obesity.

 

However, those same teens may also be flirting with another health condition

called insulin resistance, which is also marked by obesity. Insulin

resistance is closely related to a condition called Syndrome X and to

metabolic syndrome. In fact, all three terms are so similar they are often

used synonymously.

 

The notion of Syndrome X -- a constellation of insidious symptoms

characterized by the body's inability to use insulin or blood sugar -- was

first proposed in 1988 by Dr. Gerald M. Reaven, an endocrinology

 

professor at Stanford Medical School.

 

Insulin resistance accounts for many of the interlocking serious side

effects that often spin off from obesity. These include type 2 diabetes,

high blood pressure, and the ravages of bad cholesterol (LDL), which can all

lead to heart disease. Diabetes, which can make heart disease worse, has its

own set of terrible complications, such as blindness and amputations. Adults

with diabetes are two to four times more likely to have heart disease or a

stroke than adults without diabetes.

 

The fact that insulin resistance was already at work in teenagers was

reported in October by a group led by Dr. Alan Sinaiko, a professor of

pediatrics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

 

" This study shows that insulin resistance is present at a very young age, "

Sinaiko said. " Even though children don't have the same degree of heart risk

factors as adults, the findings suggest that insulin resistance has an early

influence on what happens to people as adults. "

 

By monitoring teenagers every five years, Sinaiko and his colleagues found

that insulin resistance was associated with higher systolic blood pressure

and obesity. It was also associated with more ominous levels of cholesterol

and other lipids.

 

The study participants were 357 healthy children recruited through the

Minneapolis school system whose average age was 13 when the research began.

Over the next 5.5 years, all the teens had three evaluations of their body's

response to insulin: at enrollment, at age 15 and at age 19.

 

At the start, none of the participants had high blood pressure, and the

average blood pressure for the study group was 109/55 mm Hg in 198 boys and

106/58 mm Hg in 159 girls. Recent federal guidelines set an acceptable

standard of 115/75 mm Hg for adults.

 

By age 19, blood pressure was higher, as one would expect in older kids, but

it had an extra rise for each unit of insulin resistance and another boost

for each unit increase in body mass index, the standard measurement of

obesity.

 

A study of Louisiana youngsters, called the Bogalusa Heart Study and first

reported in 1991 by Dr. Gerald S. Berenson and his colleagues at Tulane

University School of Public Health, found grossly visible fatty streaks in

the aortas of children after age 3 and in the coronary arteries beginning

after age 10.

 

So researchers consist for everyone teenager be careful with fast food

products.