De-Stress with the Natural World By Megan McConnell

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National Geaographic

Some Couch Potatoes Born That Way, Fat Study Says James Owen for National Geographic News

Are sedentary obese people intentionally lazy? Not according to a new study, which says some people are natural-born couch potatoes. The study also finds that people who are overweight can take some easy steps to shed pounds.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, found that obese people with sedentary lifestyles appear to have a genetic inclination to sit around a lot.

The study, to be published tomorrow in the journal Science, investigated the link between inactivity, low energy expenditure, and obesity. The research was part of a program to devise new treatments for obesity, which is fast becoming an epidemic in the United States and other Western nations.

Researchers say there is a factor more important than strenuous exercise in determining who is fat and who is lean. They call it non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT. The term refers to the calories people burn during everyday activities such as walking, fidgeting, or even just standing.

The study's lead author, James Levine, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, said, "Our patients have told us for years that they have low metabolisms. We have never quite understood what that means. The answer is they have low NEAT."

While most people think they must perform physical exercise, such as gym workouts, to burn off excess calories and lose weight, Levine says this isn't the case.

"Our study shows that the calories that people burn in their everyday activities—their NEAT—are far more important in obesity than we previously imagined," he said.

Levine adds that couch potatoes aren't necessarily intentionally lazy. Low NEAT, he says, most likely reflects genetic differences, because his study showed that even after obese people lose weight, they are still inclined to sit for the same amount of time.

Not Lazy

Citing the lower obesity rates of 50 years ago, Levine says environmental factors are also at work.

"What has changed in 50 years?" he said. "Not our biology but our environment. This promotes sedentary

behaviors."

The study tracked the posture and body position of 20 sedentary volunteers for ten days. This was done via a special undergarment that incorporated technology used in fighter jet control panels. Embedded sensors allowed researchers to monitor even the smallest movements of volunteers every half second, 24 hours a day.

While all subjects were self-proclaimed couch potatoes, ten were lean and ten were mildly obese. On average, the lean individuals stood and moved about for two hours longer than those who were obese.

The same results were found over a second ten-day period—after the lean group was overfed by a thousand calories a day to make them put on weight. Also before the second round, the obese volunteers had been put on a crash diet and lost weight.

The study team concluded that the obese people in the study are predisposed toward sedentary behavior, perhaps as a result of a neurological defect caused by brain chemical imbalances.

The researchers say rodent studies support this idea. For example, physical activity increased in rats when injected with orexin, a brain chemical associated with sexual arousal.

The researchers say that if the obese volunteers had adopted the NEAT-enhanced behavior of their lean counterparts, they could burn an extra 350 calories a day. Over a year, that would mean weight loss of around 33 pounds (15 kilograms)—without undertaking any strenuous physical activity.

Levine says our calorie expenditure increases 10 percent if we stand up instead of sit down. He adds that even walking at 1 mile an hour (1.6 kilometers an hour) increases calorie use 100 percent.

Beating Obesity

The researchers believe the discovery of the strong effects of NEAT on obesity could make a big difference in helping people beat the condition.

"This is entirely doable, because the kind of activity we are talking about does not require special or large spaces, unusual training regimens, or gear," Levine added. "Unlike running a marathon, NEAT is within the reach of everyone."

Levine has a treadmill in his office, which he walks on while using his PC. He also recommends activities such as vacuuming, home repair, and walking the dog. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now promoting non-exercise activity, or NEAT, as part of a campaign to address the country's chronic obesity problem.

HHS published a report last year stating that 400,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2000 were related to poor diet and physical inactivity. The toll represents an increase of 33 percent since 1990. Two out of three Americans are currently described as overweight or obese.

Non-exercise activity is being promoted via initiatives such as www.smallstep.gov, a Web site created in partnership with HHS. It includes simple physical and dietary advice to help Americans lose weight.

Tips include: skating to work instead of driving, mowing the lawn with a push mower, sitting up straight at work, taking the wheels off suitcases, and taking the stairs instead of the escalator.

The HHS obesity campaign is designed for a general audience, including disadvantaged communities.

Speaking at the campaign's launch in the spring of 2004, departing HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said, "It provides entertaining and achievable ideas for healthier living, and includes activities that we can all make time for."
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Pravda.ru

Smoking cause cancer and rates - 2005.01.20/13:06

More Americans than ever before are surviving cancer and rates in general are falling, mostly because fewer people are smoking, the American Cancer Society reported on Wednesday.

The group predicts that 1.372 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and 570,280 will die of it. This does not include a million cases of two not very threatening forms of skin cancer called basal and squamous cell carcinoma.

This compares to 1.368 million cases in 2004 and 563,700 deaths. Overall numbers are up from 2005 because the population is growing in size and growing older, the group said, noting that 76 percent of cancer cases are diagnosed in people over the age of 55.

"When deaths are aggregated by age, cancer has surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death for persons younger than 85 since 1999," the group's 2005 report on cancer reads, informs Reuters.

The news is contained in the American Cancer Society's annual statistical report, released yesterday. In 2002, the most recent year for which information is available, 476,009 Americans younger than 85 died of cancer compared with 450,637 who died of heart disease.

That trend began in 1999, said Ahmedin Jemal, a cancer-society epidemiologist and main author of the report.

Those younger than 85 comprise 98.4 percent of the population, said Dr. Eric Feuer, chief of statistical research for the National Cancer Institute who also worked on the report.

That means that only the very oldest Americans continue to die of heart disease more often than of cancer, a trend that is expected to reverse by 2018, said Dr. Harmon Eyre, the cancer society's chief medical officer.

One-third of all cancers are related to smoking, and an additional third are related to obesity, poor diets and lack of exercise, all factors that also contribute to heart disease, write the Seattle Times.

Smoking among adults plummeted between 1965 and 2000, from 42 percent to 22 percent. Federal goals are to cut the rate to 12 percent by 2010.

People with heart disease also have benefited from better surgical techniques and devices and from better drugs to treat heart problems and control factors such as high blood pressure, Eyre said.

Cancer-death rates have declined about 1 percent a year since 1999, thanks to earlier detection, prevention efforts and better treatments, experts said.

©1999 "Pravda.RU".
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