Belly fat, known clinically as central obesity, has been linked to the development of asthma in a new study.

The findings have shown central obesity as a risk factor for the disease.

Excess abdominal fat has been linked with a number of health effects, such as diabetes and heart disease, but there has been little focus on its link with lung disease.

Previous studies have found a link between asthma and body mass index (BMI), which is a marker for overall obesity. This new study looked at waist circumference, which is a marker for central obesity, to see whether this form of obesity could also contribute to asthma risk. The research is one of the first prospective studies to investigate the individual and combined effect of central and overall obesity on incident asthma in adults.

Researchers followed 23,245 adults without asthma, aged 19-55 years from the second Norwegian Nord-Trondelag Health Study (HUNT), for 11 years. The participants had their BMI measured along with their waist circumference to test overall obesity and central obesity, respectively. They were also asked to report incidence of asthma.

The results showed that people who were centrally obese but not overall obese were 1.44-times more likely to develop asthma. Additionally, people who were both centrally obese and obese overall were 1.81-times more likely to develop asthma.

Ben Brumpton, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said: "Asthma can affect people of all sizes, but our study has highlighted both the individual and combined effect of central obesity and overall obesity on asthma development. Both these measures have an individual impact on asthma and an additive effect when they are combined.

It is not yet clear why this association exists. Central obesity is closely associated with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. These factors may play important roles concerning central obesity-related asthma. We will evaluate the effects of these factors on the development of asthma in future studies.

European Lung Foundation

 

The effects of obesity - both on our bodies and on the health budget - are well known, and now, scientists are getting closer to understanding how the disease progresses, providing clues for future treatments.

Researchers have revealed how resistance to the hormone leptin, a key causal component of obesity, develops.

According to the study, our bodies produce leptin in response to increasing fat deposits.

Acting on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, leptin instructs the body to increase energy expenditure and decrease food intake, and so helps us maintain a healthy body weight.
The body's response to leptin is diminished in overweight and obese individuals, giving rise to the concept of 'leptin-resistance'. We've discovered more about how 'leptin-resistance' develops, providing new directions for research into possible treatments.

Two proteins are already known to inhibit leptin in the brain and Professor Tiganis' team have discovered a third. In mice, this third protein becomes more abundant with weight-gain, exacerbating leptin-resistance and hastening progression to morbid obesity. The study showed that the three negative regulators of leptin take effect at different stages, shedding light on how obesity progresses.

The study showed that high fat diet-induced weight gain is largely prevented in genetically-modified mice when two of the negative regulators are deleted in the brain.
"We now have to determine what happens when all three negative regulators are neutralised. Do we prevent high fat diet-induced obesity?"

Humans have a deep-seated attraction to overeating and nutrient-rich food, inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Now that food is more readily available and our lifestyles are less active, our evolutionary drive to overeat is becoming problematic.

More than four million Australians are obese and if current trends continue, by 2020, more than 80 per cent of adults and almost one third of children will be overweight or obese. Studies indicate that obesity and related health issues cost Australians more than $56 billion a year.

Simply telling people to eat less and exercise more is not going to be sufficient to reverse the obesity trend. There is a pressing need to develop novel drugs that complement diet and exercise to both prevent and treat this disease.

Monash University

A study has found that the leg strength and power of overweight older women is significantly less than that of normal-weight older women, increasing their risk for disability and loss of independence. With more Americans aging and becoming overweight or obese, the study dispels the popular image of the bird-thin elder being at greatest risk of becoming disabled due to loss of muscle mass.

The researchers sought to measure the impact of excess weight on subjects' leg strength, walking speed, and power, the factors that affect activities of daily living like rising from a chair or climbing stairs. They found very little difference in the absolute strength of the overweight and normal-weight participants, but when their strength-to-weight ratio was calculated, the overweight women had an average of 24 percent lower strength than the normal-weight study participants.

The deficits were even worse when you looked at power, power – the rate at which strength is applied – is more closely related to physical functions and fall risk than strength. The overweight women demonstrated 38 percent less power than the normal weight women. Walking speed was significantly slower – about 20 percent – for the overweight participants, as well.

Everything pointed to the fact that it was the extra fat that these people were carrying that was really limiting their mobility. Being of a normal body weight lets you perform activities of daily living and live on your own longer.

Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that normal-weight adults should work to maintain their weight and strength as they age. Older adults who are overweight can improve their strength-to-weight ratio by either losing weight or gaining strength. Perhaps surprisingly, data suggest the latter is the easier route. While most people are not successful at losing weight, even the oldest old people can have dramatic increases in strength. The key to building strength is to fatigue the muscle with eight to fifteen repetitions, an aspect many new to weight training overlook.

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21824789 

The large majority of weight loss solutions try to motivate persons with warnings of the long term health repercussions of obesity: greater chance for cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure levels, heart disease and also asthma. Immediate health gains, for example decreased pain, may well be the very best motivating element for assisting obese patients to shed excess weight as well as commit to keeping it off, indicates new research.

Scientists established that 21 percent of people in a local dietary weight reducing routine declared substantially less pain in the lower extremities and back when getting rid of an average of 10 pounds. Also, participants noted a 20 to 30 percent decrease of all round physical pain following weight reduction.

Research workers claim the results suggest that even small weight reduction could certainly lessen pain and decrease the burden extra weight puts on the musculoskeletal system.

By putting an emphasis on an immediate benefit which is felt, like pain reduction, instead of the future health effects of obesity, weight loss programs may be able to inspire overweight people to lose weight.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 44 million Americans are reported to be clinically obese. Since 1975, the quantity of obese Individuals in america has gone up from 47 percent to 66.3 percent. Earlier studies have estimated obesity attributable medical-related expenses in America at $75 billion.

Obesity has become a national health crisis, but compliance with weight reduction plans is notoriously low. One potential cause of this is that present day programs focus on long term medical conditions, with little direct relevance to the person's present day health position. The study results question people to rethink the way they structure weight loss programs.

With this research thirty two women between the ages of 22 and 76 participated in the research and data was obtained over the course of a 12 week dietary weight reduction regimen.

Researchers obtained baseline individual weight and musculoskeletal pain information linked with nine body locations. People were subsequently tracked each week to record any weight-loss and asked to rate their pain with a scale of zero to 10 every other week.

Substantial relationships were established between weight loss and total pain reduction, as well as pain reduction in the elbow, hip region and upper and lower back.

Researchers claim that these preliminary results will have ramifications for businesses with a higher prevalence of overweight workforce with musculoskeletal disorders, specially in industries that need manual or repetitive weight bearing labor.

From an ergonomics perspective, we can only do so much to improve the work environment to remove body stressors. Abnormal weight adds a lot more stress on the musculoskeletal system and that is only able to be relieved by way of weight reduction.