Scientific Study

One of the worst things about exercise is you just can't make time for it. If you don't have the right equipment and space to lose weight at home, you have to go to the gym.

Let’s say you work out for an hour at the gym. If you add that hour to the time it takes to get all your stuff ready, leave the house, travel to and back from the gym, get changed, have your shower… you’re easily looking at 2 hours.

With everyone being as busy as we are, who on earth has 2 hours a day to spare for exercise?

I mean it’s easy for athletes, sportspeople and celebrities to tone up - these people can dedicate their whole DAY to exercise. But for everyday folk like you and me with a busy life and hectic schedule, doing regular effective exercise and sculpting a chiseled body we can be proud of, can seem like nothing more than a pipe dream.

Yet new research by the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan, suggests that pipe dream may not be as unattainable as we previously thought.

The study took 94 adolescent boys and pided them into one control group, who went about life as usual, and one training group. The training group did 100 bodyweight squats a day, 4-5 days per week for 8 weeks. Each session took less than 10 minutes.

Our diets and lifestyle are of course to blame for being overweight or obese and these have been considered the main factors responsible. However, scientists have now turned their eyes to something much less obvious but which possibly carries almost equal weight–our genes. Geneticists have recently discovered a genetic component to obesity. The past two decades have in fact seen a number of studies in mice as well as humans that have attempted to identify exactly which genes play a role in the development of obesity. Obesity and obesity-related illnesses are a huge burden on health care systems across the world. Thanks to research, this global problem is now better understood on a genetic level. This understanding will enable more effective treatments to be developed.

Some interesting facts about obesity

Obesity is defined as the excessive accumulation of fat to the point where it interferes with health and well-being. Just a few established facts will show the extent of the obesity pandemic.

Who would have thought that being overweight and obese can be prevented using a vaccine? We all have various vaccines to protect us from certain diseases and infection, but a new research has revealed that being overweight is indeed preventable using a vaccine.

This study was published in the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology, an open access journal of BioMed Central. This new research could well be the answer to the weight loss problems people encounter especially those who have a genetically-rooted obesity in which dieting and exercise may not be the solution.

The research involved taking a look at the effectiveness of two somatostatin vaccines. These include JH17 and JH18, which are thought to reduce weight gain while promoting weight loss. The study involved mice that responded to these two vaccines.

We live in a shallow society, and this trend is evident everywhere- from magazine covers, to movies, and the comments that people make about someone who loses or gains weight quickly.

According to a study published by the Journal of Applied Psychology, as well as a variety of other studies, a person’s weight can also influence the amount of money he or she makes in a year. Although most employers are not supposed to make decisions based on a person’s appearance, often someone’s appearance plays a much larger role in their salary than most people believe.

Surprisingly enough, the size to income ratio is not the same for men and women. Women and men command their maximum salary when they are at different weights from each other.

Lighter Women Get Paid More

According to the study, women who weigh about 25 pounds lighter than the average weight for a woman can make up to $15,000 more than a woman weighing an average weight. Oddly enough, if a thin woman gains a few pounds, her salary has a chance of dropping significantly due to the few extra pounds of weight that she has put on.

We have heard of countless methods for weight loss, from the traditional ones (exercise, diet, lifestyle change) to the not so conventional ones (hydration therapy, botanical slimming, use of appetite mitigating agents, etc.). Despite the growing number of these weight-loss methods, obesity rates have still doubled and adults whose weights are tipping off the scale are still exceeding the 25% mark. The statistics are plain and simple; there is definitely a loophole in how we manage our weight.

Recent studies have revealed that obesity is contagious, in a sense that if you are friends with people who are obese then you are way more likely to become overweight or obese yourself.

Right now in American over 33% of the population are obese and it is strongly believed that in 40 years time this figure will rise to 42%. A person will fit into this category if they have a BMI of more the 30.

Having all this excess weight can cause so many weight related illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol, not to mention the depression and low self esteem it can cause. It is also believed that a massive 17% of all medical costs are blamed on obesity!

So now that you have some of the facts relating to this weight epidemic, lets take a closer look at the findings of the study that was carried out to determine whether being overweight is contagious among friends.

Study Findings

The findings where that if you had four obese friends, it made you 50% more likely to become over weight yourself compared to people who had no obese friends.

A study published on September 21, 2012 in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that the “replacement of a sugar-containing beverage with a sugar-free beverage significantly reduced weight gain and body fat gain in healthy children.”  It confirms what we already should have known, that sugary beverages cause weight gain – duhhh.

The Study

Researchers conducted a double blind, randomized study of 641 Dutch children from 4 to 12 years of age.  The study ran over an 18 month period.  They started with healthy children who already consumed sugar-sweetened beverages and split the children into two groups.

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.

Do you want to lose weight instantly, but fear the pain you might experience in undergoing liposuction? Are you concerned about that flab on your waistline, but doctors always recommend painful procedures? Now, there’s another way to lose that fat instantly with no pain at all.

A spa in New York and Florida offers this painless weight loss treatment that promises to reduce the flab on your waistline and other areas of your body in an instant. This treatment is known as FatGirlShrink, which is a detoxifying treatment that reduces the water in the adipose tissues through the use of an electrical stimulation in the skin.

Source - ehealthwall.com

Since it is non invasive, it is advertised as pain-free. The electrical currents applied to the skin cause muscle-stimulation that helps burn fat as well as eliminate water to reduce the size of the adipose tissues.

While it’s no longer news for anyone remotely interested in a healthy lifestyle, dieting, or fitness that an active life will keep you relatively illness-free in your olden years, recent research has gone on to confirm this long-held assumption.

A recent study, published by the Archives of Internal Medicine also answers a question that many have asked, in light of other recent scientific investigation: if you’re fit when young, will you really benefit from lower risks of illness past the age of 65, or does fitness in youth simply delay the onset of chronic health problems?

It appears that the team of scientists at the Medical Center with the University of Southwestern Texas, led by Dr. Jarrett Berry, has managed to answer this pressing question. By staying active and fit in your middle age (i.e. at and around the age of 50), you statistically stand better chances of contracting such difficult diseases as coronary disease, heart failure, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, kidney issues, and several types of cancer, among which those of the lung and colon.