Soaring BMI Rates

I perused the most recent issue of the International Journal of Obesity and found a very interesting article on BMI rates over the past decade or so.  The article is titled, "Morbid obesity rates continue to rise rapidly in the United States."  It is (2013) 37, 889-891.  It is a little hooky because they rely on phone calls to get people's BMI.  However, they carried out a large number and have good statistics.  BMI is simply your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters.  The lower the number the less fat you are.  So over 30 is considered obese and then over 40 and over 50 are two cutoffs that signal extreme obesity.  There are a lot of interesting facts in the paper; I'll list some that I found interesting.  The worldwide BMI has increased by nearly 0.5 every decade over the last 3 decades.  Of the high income nations, the U.S. has the highest mean BMI (no surprise there).  One in three adults have a BMI over 30.  BMIs over 40 are come with much more severe health problems than 30 (although they don't expound on what they are).  From 2000-2010 people with a BMI over 40 increased by 70% while that over 50 was even higher.  BMI numbers are higher among Hispanics and blacks.  I found this odd as these groups generally have less money.  I guess it boils down to cheaper food is generally worse for you, especially things like McDonald's.  In 2010 nearly 7% of the American population had a BMI over 40.  In 2000, the prevalence of BMIs over 30 was 19.8% while in 2010 the same number was reported as 27.2%.  So, in summary, obesity rates as measured in BMI are increasing and increasing fast.  People are getting fatter year after year.  I'm not surprised at the number of fat people, but I am surprised that number of fat people is increasing.  I figured that the rates would have plateaued by now.

On another note, I published my first scientific paper that was directly related to obesity (it even had the word obesity in the title) this past month.  Not a first or last author paper though so not that big of an accomplishment.

My diet has suffered with relatives visiting and my child's birthday.  Now time to get back into it.  Hopefully not too much damage was done.

Bloody Gums

It's been a while since I have posted.  I have had relatives vising from over seas.  The trip was great but I didn't do so well with the diet.  I broke it more than once.  I've noticed that in situations with work and situations with out of town visitors like this I tend to find myself in situations where it is very difficult to stay on a diet.  Situations where it would just look plain weird not to indulge in carbs.  Then inevitably once you get off the wagon, it's a slippery slope.  You think to yourself, "well, I have already cheated, why not just one more time, why not wait until tomorrow."  Then it goes on and on.  Even more frustrating is that I don't have a functional scale yet to measure the damage done.

As an aside, I thought I would explore a problem that has always interested me.  Bloody gums and heart disease.  I have always wondered what is the scientific basis for the connection for bloody gums and heart disease.  There is a correlation between bloody gums and the risk of heart attack.  As with many bodily ailments, correlation does not equal causation.  I have bloody gums and would like to know the risk I am running and exactly why.  I have done some research on the subject and it doesn't seem very well proven, but there seem to be consensus on the causes.  Bleeding gums allow bacteria into the blood stream.  Bloody gums create a passage for bacteria to go from the mouth to the blood stream.  Once in the blood stream, bacteria get bound to platelets.  These complexes and perhaps others clog arteries.  Once the arteries are clogged you get a situation very similar to other heart diseases with plaques causing clogged arteries and heart attack.

Looks like I need to go to the dentist.  It would really suck to die by bleeding gums because I couldn't take care of my dental hygiene.

Insulin and Cancer

I was sitting in a talk today and saw some data that showed that insulin is involved in cancer.  This probably should have been obvious to me previously but it wasn't.  That's just one more example of how an excess of insulin is bad for you.  Cancer cells learn how to hijack multiple systems in order to proliferate, and the insulin signaling pathway is one of them.  In order to produce results and downstream signaling events, insulin has to bind to a receptor on the outside of cells called the insulin receptor.  This insulin receptor then turns on a cascade of all kinds of events including those advantageous to proliferating cells.  In fact, insulin receptor is highly upregulated in a lot of different types of cancer cells (meaning there is more of it to help proliferation).  There are many different types of cancer cells that the insulin receptor is upregulated including lung cancer cells and breast cancer cells.  What I would like to see is if there  is data correlating obesity and cancer. Furthermore, many anticancer drugs induce or maker worse insulin resistance.

No weigh in today since I still haven't gone out to get a new scale. Probably will join the gym this week.  I had to skip breakfast since I woke up too late.  Had 3 sausages for lunch.  Had chicken wings for dinner.  No soda all day, just water.

Sugar Blues showed up today, so I will start reading it tonight and give a review as soon as possible.

Dominos Low Carb Pizza

I think I have found the greatest thing since sliced bread- sliced low carb pizza!  Dominos is selling low carb pizza now.  When you are low carbing, sometimes you get desperate for things like this, and it's nice to have alternatives to the real thing so as not to loose your head.  The idea here, though, is not to take it as something of a staple in your diet.  Based on the ingredients and the carb count it is something you would want to eat sparingly, maybe as a treat.  There is about 8 grams of carbs per slice (I think this boils down to about 20-25% of the normal stuff).The major ingredients are modified wheat starch, water, and wheat flour. So it's not something I can recommend for the hard core low carber but it sure is nice to know it exists.  Now, only of McDonalds had something like this!  I just ordered a low carb cheese pizza, and it tastes great (to me).  You can tell a difference but its not huge.  It still has all the grease and cheese of regular pizzas, and tomato sauce has few carbs.  So if you make an order of wings and then add to it a couple pieces of low carb pizza you will be in good shape carb count wise and will have been able to satisfy a real craving.

I weighed in at 129.9 kg this morning but then upon reweighing I bounced around in the low 130's now matter how many times I tried I got a different number.  So, I think my scale is hosed.  I will pick up a new one soon.  I had the usual eggs and cheese this morning and then a seafood salad for lunch (no greens, just shrimp, crab, celery, mayo).  I felt tired after lunch so I think there may have been carbs hiding in the salad.  Then for dinner of course I had Dominos.

Adaptive Thermogenesis

I decided to peruse the International Journal of Obesity to find an interesting article. Most of the articles looked at things from a more macroscopic vantage point than I am used to (not so much on the protein or atomic level) highlighting the necessity for more research later more in depth. Better protein chemistry could later lead to more drugs. However, there was plenty that looked interesting. I choose the article, "Adaptive thermogenesis can make a difference in the ability of obese individuals to lose body weight" by A. Tremblay et al. First we should define thermogenesis. Originally thermogenesis related to the energy expenditure related to when an organism heats its body. This is accomplished largely through stimulation of norepinephrine which stimulates the betaadrenergic receptor and finally lipases to feed fatty acids into energy expenditure. Caffeine, ephedrine, and green tea are all known to stimulate this process. This paper explores one important observation: why do people that were fat and have lost weight show a decrease in the ability to loose weight (in the form of adaptive thermogenesis). One hypothesis is that adaptive thermogeneis (a decrease in thermogenesis) is a means to protect your body from depleting its energy stores (in the form of fat). Seems reasonable from an evolutionary stand point. Obese individuals that have lost weight show a decrease in leptin plasma levels which could contribute to the decrease. Another hypothesis is that pollutants interfere with thyroid function, a hormonal control over energy expenditure. Interestingly, probiotics may have a role. Mice that have lactobacillus (releasing conjugated linoleic acid)showed increased energy expenditure. Dietary calcium was also shown to increase thermogenesis, by means of inhibiting lipogensis and increasing lipolysis. The biochemical pathways associated with increased thermogeneis associated with calcium intake seemed weak to me (not necessarily untrue, just not well explained). One depressing factor described by the paper is that 80% of people that loose weight eventually go back to pre-weight loss levels. Also, people that have lost weight have an increased desire to eat food and have a more difficult time reaching satiety, The most direct conclusion towards weight loss recommended by the authors is the administration of leptin to people that have lost weight. I need to make a future post on leptin as it is extremely important in the obesity epidemic.

 Today I weighed in at 132.2 kg. My weight really seems to be bouncing around a lot. I had the usual eggs .and cheese for breaky. Sausages for lunch. Taco salad for dinner

 

Quick Loss

The purpose of this blog is not only to learn/share science. It is also to share my experiences with low carbing (or whatever diets I chose) so that you can get a human experience of what it is really like to do these diets (instead of just reading the facts in a book). Today I didn't feel light headed any more. I felt great and filled with energy this morning and then felt exhausted in the afternoon. I can feel the ketosis and fat burning starting. I felt a bit thinner, but that could just be the water loss. I weighed in this morning at 129.6 kg(285.7lbs). This seems amazingly too good. I did shed a lot of water through urination yesterday, but this seems too high a loss. There must be something up with my scale. I did weigh myself multiple times and got the same number. We'll see what tomorrow holds. It's been a week, so I should be losing now. My craving for sweets were pretty high today. My next science reading/posting (until Sugar Blues arrives) is to check out the Int. Journal of Obesity, pick an article, and review major findings here in my blog. If it is not too boring it will be something I do regularly.

Taco Mix and the Human Condition

A bit of a disappointing day. Woke up and weighed in at 134.4kg. Seems like my scale is jumping around a bit. I made taco meat yesterday. I used store bought powder mix to put on it. I know that many of the Atkins sites say that powders like this are often hiding places for sugar. So I had a look at the ingredients listed on the taco mix package: maize flour, salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated vegetables, anti-caking agent, food acid, herbs, colour. It is disturbing that flour and sugar are in the top 3 ingredients, given that it is just supposed to be spices for meat. Then if you look at the numbers sugar is 1 g, but then it says there are 12 servings per package! I spread the seasoning over 2kg meat, so it definitely was more than 1 serving but it was not anywhere near 12 (maybe 3-4). I know in the U.S. you can find Atkins packages like this or stuff on the diabetic aisle. Not here though, it's kind of this or make it myself. This is a good example of how commonplace just dumping sugar on things has become in the food industry. Now I am going to be making up batches of taco seasoning. Low carb diets can be a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes. Most things that are allowed on the diet have to be prepared.

Calories

There has been debate over whether or not calories are a useful tool in determining whether one will gain weight or not. The prevailing idea is that if one consumes more energy than one expends, one will gain weight. The measure of this energy has been calories (interestingly though now that I am in Australia all the food labels measure every thing in Joules). One can estimate the number of calories one needs per day based on gender, height, weight, muscle content, etc. This gives the bmi, or the basal amount of calories needed for basic life every day. To loose a pound of fat most estimate that you need to burn 3000-3500 calories. Many in the low carb camp think that the calorie idea is a myth. It will be interesting to explore the derivation of what a calorie is in a future post, but at this point I want to find evidence that simple calories in, calories out is flawed. I think I have found two studies which show this. The first was done with rats. The reference is J Nutr 2004, 134 (10):2646-2652. They showed that rats fed a high fat diet with no carbs gained less weight than rats fed an equal amount of calories on a high fat diet that included carbs. The second study (reference: Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2007, AR Kennedy et al.) showed that a low carb (ketogenic) diet in rats could reverse obesity that was caused by a high fat diet that included carbohydrates in the form of sucrose. So very quickly I have found two scientific studies that show that eating carbs and eating things other than carbs is not the same metabolically. Obviously it is not a clear cut case. The studies were done in rats, not humans. There also has to be some truth to the fact that ingesting more energy than you should will catch up to you sooner or later. For example, I bet rats fed 10,000 calories a day on a high fat diet with no carbs still gain weight as compared to those on 1000 calories (the rat equivalent number of calories, not sure what that is so I used human numbers in the example). However, I am glad I found this information and will strive to find more and perhaps answers as to why this is. It makes sense to me though. Fatty acids and sugar are metabolized through very different pathways in the human body so it makes sense that when ingested they will lead to different end points. As for me, I am still in the grumpy induction phase of my low carbing. I had to endure watching my family eating McDonalds in front of me and not have any. I had the usual eggs with cheese for breakfast and then taco salad for dinner. I weighed in at 132.4kg this morning (it was 132.7kg yesterday). So I must have really been retaining water before I started the diet. I was unusually grumpy today. This reminds me of when I quit smoking. My blood sugar must really be out of whack. (It's been 4 and a half years now without any nicotine by the way!).

Light headed

I weighed in this morning at 132.9 kg (293 lbs). Seems like way too much weight to have lost in more than one day. This tells me that my scale is not that great or I was really retaining water like crazy. We'll see how it compares tomorrow. I had sausage for breaky, for lunch, and for dinner. That's one thing about this type of diet, you really have to be prepared ahead of time. You have to have food stocked in the fridge, time to cook, and food prepared ahead of time for lunches. I started feeling a bit light headed. This is day three so I should be bottoming out my carb stores about now. Hopefully I'll feel better in a few days. The book Sugar Blues is not available on Kindle. So I bought a hard copy online from England. Will be a while before I get it, so no review on that any time soon. But, in the meantime I have some science journals up my sleeve. My problem is that pop culture books are full of epidemiology, hearsay, opinions, and soft science. In contrast, scientific journals have plenty of facts but are just plain boring and require reading through tons of material to find something useful. My next post will have some science in it.

James Salisbury

I weighed in this morning at 136kg (299lbs). The heaviest I have ever measured myself at is exactly 300 in 2006. Depressing. I'm not sure exactly how this happened. The obvious answer is diet and exercise, but the part I don't get is that before moving to Australia I was eating fast food about 2 times a day and not exercising. Here I have cut out a lot (but not all) of that fast food and am walking at least 2km a day. Well, I am going to get back on track. Why did I chose low carb again? Because I know it works. I want a guaranteed thing. The only problem is that inevitably I go off it. The best I can hope for is to slowly add carbs back into my diet after I lose weight and follow a sensible exercise routine. This will require some serious thought, but it won't matter until I get the weight off in the first place. In my research today I found something funny. Ever heard of the Salisbury steak? The inventor, James Salisbury, was one of the first proponents of the low carb diet. So he gave us the hamburger with no bun. He was a physician and believed diet was the key to human health. He even went as far as saying TB was related to diet (probably completely wrong). He died in 1905. I didn't realize that low carb started so long ago. I need to transition from pop culture to real scientific journals at some point for my posts, but in the mean time I'd like to check out a book called sugar blues. If I can find it cheaply I will buy it and write my review here. So, today I had the usual eggs for breaky. No lunch, and then chili and sausage for dinner. I felt fine most of the day, then a little light headed starting in late afternoon. I can't wait to get rid of this fat....

On the wagon again

I woke up this morning and began my weight loss journey again. As my previous posts show, most of my previous success was achieved with the low carb method. Now that I think about it, most weight loss methods fall into one of the following categories: Low-carb: limits carbohydrates. These include atkins, the zone, the south beach diet, and even the paleolithic diet and scarsdale diet. Calorie restriction: These limit calories. This includes things like weight watchers and the hcg diet. Crazy diets: This includes all kinds of crazy ideas. The banana and water diet, the cabbage soup diet, etc. These will be fun to explore. Pure exercise: Not necessarily a diet, but some expose just exercising to lose weight. Vegetarian: There are many diets that claim eating only fruit and vegetables is good. To some degree the raw diets fall under this heading. I guess I could add low fat diets, but those usually fall into the calorie restriction diets. I have a new strategy. I am not going to switch through diets on a monthly diet as before. I am going to stick with what worked for me before- low carb. When I feel I have made some progress, I may dabble in other things like vegetarian. I will study interesting ideas and post them as I go along. I am especially interested in the biochemistry of obesity in general (pathways, metabolism, etc) and will keep reading and writing. I will also use my blog as a bit of a journal to keep track with what I am doing. I will also use it as a motivator to keep going. I didn't weigh in this morning. I will try to remember in the morning. A new aspect is that all the scales for sale here are in kilograms. I will have to convert them for the blog. I had eggs with cheese for breaky and chili for dinner. No lunch. I don't feel bad at all. From my recollection the first 3-5 days are the worst. I have added a few things to the blog. There is a bmi calculator on the right side. I thought I would point it out because it might be confused with an advertisement. It is actually very handy, but it is a cheap and simple bmi calculator. I might make a post on how to do a thorough bmi calculation later. I also added a gadget that will allow you to follow my blog by email.

I'm back!

I'm back! It's been a long time. So what have I been up to? I have moved across the world. I have moved from America to Australia. Quite a big move. I have also taken my first faculty position. I now have my own lab to run. I can research whatever I would like. Very exciting and very scary. I do intend to do some obesity research as time unfolds. Things have been stressful. I had to apply and interview for my positions, not knowing what I would get. I had to make my research packages. I had to interview. I had to move. I had to start teaching. I had to adapt to a new culture. I had to write grants to fund my lab. A lot of stress. IN the shuffle, my weight loss plans have gone to crap. I am certain I am as fat as when I started. I am now hoping to get back on the wagon. I am also interested in taking some reflection on what happened. The good news is that life is a bit healthier here. There is no Taco Bell, taquerias, or Whataburger. I also walk a lot more than before. Unfortunately I haven't seen these small changes help in staying trim. It's strange, I have cut fast food (not nearly as much as I need to cut though) and am walking a lot more, but still feel really fat. I think I will need to take some drastic measures to correct this. Most importantly I will need to put some serious thought into the mental and emotional reasons for getting fat again. More soon.