Clinical Study

Dieting is mostly an unending cycle of losing weight momentarily and regaining it within a few weeks. There are numerous diet plans in existence each with different success stories (or stories of utter failure). The question which consistently baffles dieters is “which diet plan suits me best and which will work?” Nothing is more disheartening than rigorous and careful dieting efforts all in vain. The reply to the question posed may probably lie in your DNA. Latest innovations and discoveries in genetics and DNA testing have revealed that the best diet is that which is suited to the personal DNA makeup of a given individual.

Ninety percent of popular diet regimens fail according to studies and health experts. The latest data on weight-loss and diet reveal that almost a third to two-thirds of overweight individuals regain the weight they have lost after a year dieting, and go back to their full weight in a span of five years. According to experts, this indicates a loophole in the current approaches to weight-loss, and that includes diet. What are the reasons behind this failure?

We Might Be Believing Too Much

According to a review done for the Scientific and Technical Council in Turkey, weight-loss programs might be deviating away from the hands of true experts. The review described how specialists such as endocrinologists are rarely called to give their expert views about obesity, while non-physicians and non-specialists often appear in the media, talking about obesity issues. The review also described how people are greatly influenced by the media, and how quickly people believe a claim without examining it if appropriate evidence is indeed available.

Bliss Spa is a well-known resort in the United States. The operators claim to have found an innovative procedure to help patients lose weight. According to a spokesperson who applies the procedure, patients can lose weight by applying electric currents over their muscles.

The new treatment has been hailed as a revolutionary approach to promote weight loss. Rather than discouraging the patient from eating by manipulating his or her senses, the treatment (known as FatGirlShrink) is believed to promote weight gain directly by targeting excess water weight.

PHOTO: The new weight loss technique,  which claims to remove inches within minutes, stimulates muscles through electrical currents and gets rid of water weight (source).

While it has been practiced and observed in China for centuries, acupuncture has never found mainstream acceptance in the US. To many, this ancient practice was merely the placebo effect in action, an unproved method of alleviating pain by harnessing the power of the mind through unsubstantiated claims to true medical benefit.

A new study however shows that acupuncture delivers a 30% decrease in chronic pain. While not the first medical study to show demonstrate this, the new study is unprecedented in its size and thoroughness.

Acupuncture's Recent Growth

Acupuncture has grown rapidly in the last decade, with over 3 million Americans using it to help alleviate chronic pain of all kinds. The military now prescribes it as part of the rehabilitative treatment given to wounded war veterans, and California recently passed legislation that includes acupuncture in the list of treatments covered by the nation’s new health law.

Over the last decade the word ‘organic’ has changed from being an obscure one to a general buzzword that everybody seeks to smack on their produce. These days you can even find organic food in Walmart, and everywhere people are extolling the benefits of eating ‘organic’, from local farmers to news anchors to foodies.

Yet a recent meta-analysis of hundreds of different studies on the part of Stanford researchers just revealed that on a purely nutrition-related level organic food isn’t superior to conventionally grown food. What does this mean for you, and should you stop buying organic?

The researchers looked at over 200 separate studies on the nutritional value of organic food and concluded that other than phosphorous, organic food is not superior to conventional food. This study was independently funded so that the researchers could not be accused of bias.

A new study released this week in Neurology contains good news for chocolate lovers: research conducted in Sweden has found a positive correlation between men who consume large amounts of chocolate with a reduced tendency toward strokes. While the connection between chocolate and health has been illustrated before by past studies, this new research brings focused attention to the correlation due to the sample size of the men observed and the clear connection between chocolate consumption and reduced risk of stroke.

The numbers are striking: an analysis of the results of the study that involved over 37,000 men and women found that those who consumed the most chocolate had a 17% lower chance of suffering from a stroke, while a meta-analysis raised this figure to 19%. Researchers however were quick to point out that this was simply an ‘observational study’, and that further research will have to be done to conclusively prove the connection.

Your body weight may be normal and yet your risk to die of heart attack may be high. New research shows that it's not just your weight but your body shape (waist-to-hip-ratio) that determines your death risk.

As the obesity rate in the country continues to creep up, with over a third of all adults in the United States classified as obese, there is a tendency to think that being generally obese is the greatest risk to your health and chance of living a long and productive life.

New research presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Munich however shows that people with big bellies, also known as the ‘metabolic syndrome’ and otherwise normal weight bodies suffer from greater risk of death.

Being overweight is rapidly becoming a problem for most Americans. According the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, 33.9% of Americans are obese, while 34.4% of Americans are overweight. That’s an incredible total of 68.3% of Americans who weight more than they should, and a recent study has shown a new health problem associated with mental performance.

While recent focus has been on the effects that excess weight has on the development of diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other problems, this new study brings into focus a whole new set of problems for people who are overweight.

The study was published in Neurology, and followed more than 6,000 people in Britain between the ages of 35 and 55 for over a decade. They consistently took memory tests and had their cognitive skills checked, and people who were obese or had unhealthy metabolic changes were shown to have experienced a faster decline in cognitive skills compared to the other participants in the study.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has long been feared as one of the most insidious and terrible of diseases to contract. Not only does it rob you of your sense of self, your memories and personality, but it has historically been nearly impossible to predict; for many people, it simply manifests late in life, and that uncertainty as to who will contract it or not has only added to the fear its name causes.

This is in part due because for many years Alzheimer’s has withstood our comprehension; we don’t know what causes it, or why it manifests in whom it does. Yet studies are being published providing new insight into the nature of this disease, and promising ever greater awareness of not only what it is, but why it occurs. The latest research suggests that this degenerative brain disease is actually a type of diabetes.

You probably know that diet and exercise are important parts of losing weight. And while sticking to both of these may be difficult, two new studies show that doing one makes the other easier, and gives you a better night’s sleep at the same time.

Exercise Improves Sleep

A recent study by Paul D. Loprinzi and Bradley J. Cardinalat has shown that getting 150 minutes of exercise a week leads to better sleep. This study involving 2,600 men and women showed that just two and a half hours of exercise a week resulted in a sixty five percent improvement in sleep quality. This is important as over a third of Americans have problems falling asleep or feeling tired during the day.

The sixty five percent relates to the decrease in feelings of being overly sleepy during the day for subjects who were physically active. Other benefits of the minimum weekly exercise were decreases in leg cramps while sleeping, and reduced problems concentrating when tired.