Weighing the Evidence on Exercise. Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index for Weight-Loss Maintenance. The Workout Enigma. Erik Isakson/Getty Images Recently, researchers in Finland made the discovery that some people’s bodies do not respond as expected to weight training, others don’t respond to endurance exercise and, in some lamentable cases, some don’t respond to either.
In other words, there are those who just do not become fitter or stronger, no matter what exercise they undertake. To reach this conclusion, the researchers enrolled 175 sedentary adults in a 21-week exercise program. Some lifted weights twice a week. Others jogged or walked. Some did both. Hidden away in the results of almost any study of exercise programs is the fact that some people do not respond at all, while others respond at an unusually high rate.
The implications of such wide variety in response are huge. But what is it about one person’s body that allows it to react so vigorously to exercise, while for others the reaction is puny at best? In other words, this issue is as intricate as the body itself. Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart. Eat less saturated fat: that has been the take-home message from the U.S. government for the past 30 years. But while Americans have dutifully reduced the percentage of daily calories from saturated fat since 1970, the obesity rate during that time has more than doubled, diabetes has tripled, and heart disease is still the country’s biggest killer. Now a spate of new research, including a meta-analysis of nearly two dozen studies, suggests a reason why: investigators may have picked the wrong culprit.
Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year. The finding joins other conclusions of the past few years that run counter to the conventional wisdom that saturated fat is bad for the heart because it increases total cholesterol levels. Carotenoid bioavailability is higher from salads ingested with full-fat than with fat-reduced salad dressings as measured with electrochemical detection — Am J Clin Nutr. Exercise and company: Fitter with friends. Abstract | Weight Science:Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift.
Dieting and other weight loss behaviors are popular in the general population and widely encouraged in public health policy and health care practice as a solution for the "problem" of obesity. There is increasing concern about the endemic misrepresentation of evidence in these weight management policies [5, 8]. Researchers have demonstrated ways in which bias and convention interfere with robust scientific reasoning such that obesity research seems to "enjoy special immunity from accepted standards in clinical practice and publishing ethics" [5, 8, 31]. This section discusses the assumptions that underlie the current weight-focused paradigm, presenting evidence that contests their scientific merit and challenges the value of promoting weight management as a public health measure. Assumption: Adiposity poses significant mortality risk Evidence: Except at statistical extremes, body mass index (BMI) - or amount of body fat - only weakly predicts longevity [32].
The Checkup - Weight loss's link to better health questioned. Posted at 7:00 AM ET, 01/24/2011 By Jennifer LaRue Huget We as a nation have put a lot of stock into the notion that being (or becoming) thin equates to better health and longer lives. But some experts have called into question whether that connection -- or, conversely, the connection between overweight and poor health -- is all that strong, and even whether it exists at all. One of the leading voices in the debate is Linda Bacon, associate nutritionist in the University of California, Davis department of nutrition. Today she and a colleague, Lucy Aphramor, released a report in the online Nutrition Journal reviewing the key assumptions regarding the link between weight status and health. Bacon's report suggests that changing eating and physical activity behaviors without regard for their effect on weight is more likely to improve our health, and that focusing on weight loss alone can have damaging consequences.
And there's this: Previous: Is that right? 'Staying fat may be good for you', says newspaper - Health News. Monday January 24 2011 Health at 'every' size? The says that “staying fat may be better for your health”. The newspaper reports that there is evidence that “overweight people live longer than normal” and that they “are also more likely to survive certain health conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and kidney failure”. The news is based on a research article that discusses the merits of promoting “health at every size”. Suggesting that individuals should be encouraged to have healthy behaviours at any weight does seem to make sense, but there needs to be more research to determine the long-term health benefits of this approach before it can be recommended over conventional appraoches. Where did the story come from?
The review in question was written by two researchers from the University of California and Coventry University. The reported on this article, saying that it “includes analysis of 350,000 people in the US”. What kind of research was this? They found that: Conclusion.