Saturday, 30 March 2019

Why Does Obesity Cause Diabetes?

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic disorder that can change carbohydrate, protein, and fat metabolism. It is caused by the absence of insulin secretion due to either the dynamic or stamped failure of the β-Langerhans islet cells of the pancreas to produce insulin, or due to defects in insulin uptake within the peripheral tissue. DM is broadly classified into two categories, which include type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Obesity is accepted to hold for 80-85% of the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Particularly, overeating pressurizes the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). When the ER has more supplements to handle than it can handle, it sends out an alert signal telling the cell to lower the insulin receptors on the cell surface. This translates to insulin resistance and to persistently high concentrations of the sugar glucose in the blood -- one of the beyond any doubt signs of diabetes.



Three particular mechanisms have been proposed to link weight to insulin resistance and incline to type 2 diabetes: 1) expanded production of adipokines/cytokines, counting tumor rot factor-α, resistin, and retinol-binding protein 4, that contribute to insulin resistance as well as decreased levels of adiponectin; 2) ectopic fat deposition, especially within the liver and perhaps also in skeletal muscle, and the dysmetabolic sequelae; and 3) mitochondrial dysfunction, apparent by diminished mitochondrial mass and/or function.

Treating Obesity Will Treat Type 2 Diabetes

Weight-loss is a vital goal for people affected by excess weight or obesity, especially those with type 2 diabetes. Weight-loss to five percent to 10 percent of body weight can progress insulin activity, decrease fasting glucose concentrations and diminish the requirement for some diabetes medications. A program of diet, work out and behavior alteration can effectively treat weight, but pharmacotherapy and/or surgery may be justified.



Managing body weight by bariatric surgery

Body mass index features a strong relationship to diabetes and insulin resistance. Bariatric surgery ought to be considered by those who have a BMI more prominent than 40 or have a BMI of 35-39.9 and medical issues such as diabetes, heart disease or sleep apnea. Bariatric surgery changes the typical digestive process. There are three sorts of surgery: prohibitive, malabsorptive and combined restrictive/malabsorptive.
Preventing and treating obesity will offer assistance within the prevention and treatment of diabetes. Promoting a healthy way of life in children and teenagers will put them on a way that will decrease their risk of diabetes and its complications.

Monday, 11 March 2019

Hypertension and Obesity

What is Hypertension?

Hypertension or the high blood pressure refers to the pressure that the amount of blood the heart pumps and the amount of resistance to blood flow in the arteries blood applies. Most people with high blood pressure generally have no signs or any symptoms, even if blood pressure readings reach dangerously high levels.

Hypertension and Obesity

The most important issue to remember is that obesity is associated with hypertension, and hypertension is associated with numerous other metabolic diseases that can affect the overall health and the life expectancy of an individual. Anti-hypertension medications should be started if hypertension is diagnosed along with weight-loss. A significant fall in blood pressure may permit a decrease in the number and the amount of medication taken. Prevention by maintaining a good lifestyle would be better than any drug.
Use lifestyle changes with weight reduction by maintaining BMI, DASH diet by eating fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products with reduced content of saturated and total fat, a decrease in dietary sodium, an increase in physical activity for about 30 minutes per day and moderate consumption of alcohol. The weight-loss is the most important step in reducing both hypertension and improving a better and healthy life.


Obesity-related hypertension often is accompanied by:

Organ damage can be done by obesity hypertension. The elevated blood pressure due to obesity can cause long-term damage to the body's vital organs and their functions.
Diastolic dysfunction is evident early in obesity and characterized by impaired ventricular filling dynamics and relaxation and there may also be systolic dysfunction and an enlarged heart with prolonged obesity. Obesity and hypertension worsen the symptoms of left ventricular hypertrophy in a synergistic manner, and this translates into a greater risk of congestive heart failure. The weight loss improves systolic and diastolic function and reduces left ventricular mass.
There is a potential association between obesity hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea. Obesity is an important risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea but this may be more closely associated with the enlarged abdomen than overall body obesity. Obstructive sleep apnea has been linked to hypertension in both epidemiological studies and clinical.

Complications leading to uncontrolled high blood pressure include:

Heart attack or stroke:  High blood pressure can cause hardening and thickening of the arteries known as atherosclerosis, which can lead to a heart attack, stroke or various other complications.
Aneurysm: The increased blood pressure can cause blood vessels to bulge and weaken, forming an aneurysm. If an aneurysm ruptures, it can be life-threatening.
Heart failure: To pump blood against the higher pressure in the vessels, the heart has to work harder by causing the walls of the heart's pumping chamber to thicken known as the left ventricular hypertrophy. Eventually, the thickened muscle may have a hard time pumping enough blood, which later can lead to heart failure.
Weakened and narrowed blood vessels in the kidneys can prevent these organs from functioning normally.


In the eyes causes thickening, narrowing or torn blood vessels which can result in vision loss.
Metabolic syndrome: This syndrome is a cluster of disorders from the body's metabolism, including increased waist circumference; high triglycerides; low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol; high blood pressure and high insulin levels. These conditions will likely later develop diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

The uncontrolled high blood pressure affects the ability to remember, think and learn and further cause’s trouble with memory or understanding concepts is more common in people with high blood pressure.


Dementia:  Narrowed or blocked arteries can limit blood flow to the brain, leading to a certain type of dementia known as vascular dementia. A stroke interrupts the blood flow to the brain which also causes vascular dementia.

Friday, 1 March 2019

Impact of Obesity on Cardiovascular diseases

Obesity and Diet

The role of diet is crucial in the development and prevention of cardiovascular disease and is the key modifiable risk factor for heart diseases. The obesity is an epidemic which is spreading from low- to the middle-income countries as a result of new dietary habits and sedentary ways of life, fuelling chronic diseases and premature mortality.

This sneaky inflammation and the inflammatory factors when released increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis and the build-up of plaque in the walls of the arteries. Obesity also releases substances in the blood that can make plaque rupture, which then leads to heart attacks. The extra weight carrying does put the heart under increased stress, in particular during the relaxation phase of the cardiac cycle, which is known as the diastole. As the heart fills with blood, there’s higher pressure in the heart valves, which with over time, can lead to causing people to have heart failure symptoms.


Association between Obesity and Cardiovascular outcomes

As Obesity increases there are adverse cardiac events occurring in many ways, which may be indirectly mediated through risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome like diabetes, dyslipidemia, glucose intolerance, hypertension, and or effects from sleep disorders associated with obesity.  Metabolic syndrome is associated with central or abdominal obesity, which is associated with the distribution of fat predominantly in the abdominal viscera rather than the extremities in the body. Waist circumference or waist-hip ratio is useful ways of assessing this type of fat distribution and increased values confer additional cardiovascular risk. In abdominal obesity, there is an increase in the level of various inflammatory markers along with the occurrence of a prothrombotic state. The Obese patients have increased concentrations of many adipokines and other chemical mediators like interleukin-6, resistin, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, retinol binding protein, acylation stimulating protein, lipoprotein lipase, cholesteryl ester transport protein, estrogens, leptin, angiotensinogen, and insulin-like growth factor-1, but these proteins have various adverse effects on the cardiovascular system by creating a pro-inflammatory and prothrombotic state as well as causing endothelial damage and vascular hypertrophy. There is also a higher incidence of sleep apnea/hypoventilation syndromes in obesity, which can also affect the heart in different ways.
Obesity also poses considerable challenges in making a precise cardiovascular diagnosis because of limitations in the physical examination as well as with various investigations like imaging studies, electrocardiograms (ECGs), and cardiac catheterization.
The direct effect of Obesity on the heart in obese individual results in cardiomyopathy which is also known as the adipositas cordis. Initially, it increases the fat content of the heart because of a metaplastic phenomenon and is not an infiltrative process. The various tissues of the heart, like the atrioventricular node, sinus node, right bundle branch, and the myocardium near the atrioventricular ring, are replaced by fat cells. The conduction defects can occasionally occur in the sinoatrial block, bundle branch block, and, rarely, an atrioventricular block which results in irregular bands of adipose tissue which may separate and cause pressure-induced atrophy in the myocardial cells. These adipose cells surrounding the heart valves may also secrete active molecules like adipokines, which indirectly cause injurious effects on the adjacent myocardial cells or the heart cells. Accumulation of triglycerides in nonfat cells like myocytes can also directly cause cell dysfunction due to lipotoxicity.


Heart Disease and Obesity Treatment

In addition to weight loss, the sodium restriction may be helpful in the treatment of heart disease, since high intake of sodium increases fluid retention in the body. There a number of series of medically supervised weight loss programs, starting from alterations in dietary and physical habits to pre-packed meals, pharmacotherapy and weight loss surgery, which can be used to make an impact on both cardiovascular diseases and obesity.

Saturday, 23 February 2019

Childhood obesity starts in the womb?

The environmental pollutants which may also interfere with the fetal growth and influence health later, maternal exposure to especially traffic pollutants like as nitrogen dioxide, which can lead to babies being born with low birth weight may predispose the child to ill health to infant and adulthood.


Gestational diabetes
Gestational diabetes only happens during pregnancy. It means high blood sugar levels, but those levels were normal before pregnant. Sometimes after the baby is born, gestational diabetes usually goes away. Gestational diabetes makes more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, but it won’t definitely happen.
During pregnancy, the placenta makes hormones which can lead to a build-up of glucose in the blood. Usually, the pancreas can make enough insulin to metabolize. If not, the blood sugar levels in the blood will rise and can cause gestational diabetes. 


In any case, there are more deceptive impacts which aren't instantly known. There is an expanding theory that proves that the mothers eat less, weight and weight pick up in pregnancy, and complications of pregnancy such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia can all affect the health of the child to be born. This happens in the longer term and to be a really imperative determinant of the risk of common infections like obesity and diabetes in later life.
In the last 20 or 30 years, researchers have followed up that the children born to those mothers and found that the experience of famine in utero was associated with quite significant defects on the health of the child such as increased obesity which in turn increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and abnormal blood lipids.
The emphases have now changed from the developed countries and are more likely recently to developing countries too, to the effects of maternal obesity, which is remarkably prevalent in the population. Any high-income country or a developed country now has the biggest man-made problem known as obesity. Those geographical reasons which are now showing the greatest rise obesity are those which historically have been undernourished or have suffered feminine. Countries like South Africa, for example, now have a new growing problem called maternal obesity, as the region transitions from dietary deprivation to dietary plenty.
Researchers have therefore been looking at the relationship between maternal obesity, the weight the mother puts on in pregnancy which leads risks to the child. The first thing to be noted is that there is an immediate and very obvious risk to the obese mother in relation to a heightened chance of developing diabetes in pregnancy. In turn, this can lead to a child being born too large or heavy.
Large for gestational age infants, as these babies are also known to have problems at delivery in that there a higher risk of the mother might not be being able to deliver the baby vaginally, with a greater chance for a cesarean section, and a higher risk of damage during delivery and of stillbirth and various other problems.
Babies that are born too large tend to become overweight adults and suffer from Obesity. There is a close association of adiposity at birth, that's the amount of fat, and adiposity in later childhood.
Children who are overweight at nursery school age tend to become obese adolescents, and obese adolescents have a higher risk of obesity in adulthood which leads to a variety of health conditions. Increasing evidence, therefore, suggests that being developed in the womb in the face of maternal obesity and maternal diabetes, the unborn has to experience a persistent effect of obesity and diabetes.
The mother is feeding the child the same diet as she might feed herself, so of course that's going to be the case, but the statisticians have adjusted for many of those socioeconomic and family environment factors, and still find that there is a relationship between development in utero in relation to obesity and excessive maternal weight gain and gestational diabetes in turn leading to the risk of obesity and diabetes developed in the offspring.
According to the few recent studies that mean the utero environment can definitely lead to obesity in the child, observational, longitudinal studies like these can never really conclusively recommend causality.

Friday, 15 February 2019

The tantalizing link between obesity and depression

What is Depression?
Depression also is known as the major depressive disorder is a common and serious medical illness which negatively affects how a person feels, the way they think and how they act and it is curable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and a loss of interest in activities once a person enjoyed. It will lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and may decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home. Defining depression has always been a puzzle. Many people are depressed but mostly unaware of it.
To understand depression is considering the two consisting factors or primary components. The Depression is the psychological or “cognitive” component which affects the mood, and the physical or “somatic” component which influences areas such as appetite and sleep and viewing depression as sometimes that helps to determine the primary cause of the problem.

Both obesity and depression have become a significant global health problem.
However, based on observational studies has not been able to demonstrate whether obesity causes depression, as there are many competing factors to consider. Obesity is a risk factor for a number of conditions, and it might be dealing with other health issues which increases the likelihood of becoming depressed, rather than the obesity being the cause and some researchers have argued that the relationship might be vice versa: depression is a risk for obesity.

Obesity might make depression occur more likely at initially, but once depressive symptoms arise, they might be compound obesity by making it harder for the individual to exercise.


Childhood obesity and Depression:
Childhood obesity can lead to a host of physical problems in children and adolescents, including type II diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, the latter becoming more frequently seen in teens and young adults. Sleep apnea which is caused by obesity and early onset of puberty is also seen. Aside from the physical problems stemming from obesity, parents should also be on alert for depression in their children.
Children who are obese at ages 10 through 13 have an 80% chance of being obese as an adult, However, along with that will come to the serious diseases caused by obesity, resulting in adult depression. The causes of obesity are complex and include biological, behavioral, genetic, and cultural factors. Obesity occurs when a person eats more calories than the body actually burns up.


The genomic study directly links depression to obesity
Researchers separated the psychological impact of obesity and the effect of obesity-related health problems on depression by selecting and testing genes associated with higher BMI and lower risk of related disease like diabetes. These genes were which are strongly associated with depression as those genes associated with higher BMI and diabetes. According to this, being overweight might causes depression in both with and without related health issues especially in women.
Brain chemicals are both involved in mood and weight gain which often overlaps. Hormones for weight metabolism and depression, including stress hormones, might be a major play in increasing body weight. These hormones including cortisol which is also known as the so-called stress hormone, and leptin, which also regulates the body fat storage.
Treatment
Some weight-management therapies can lead to emotional ups and downs that can cause or worsen depression. A “diet” has a lot of opportunities for failure or setbacks, which can challenge a person who’s already dealing with mental health issues.
However, with a team of experts could guide, encourage, and hold accountable, it’s possible to find a treatment plan that works for both conditions.
Depression and obesity are both chronic conditions that require long-term care and attention and really important to focus on changing lifestyle behaviors.


Thursday, 7 February 2019

Will eating slowly help you to lose weight?

Numerous individuals eat their food quick and carelessly. In any case, eating gradually may be a much more brilliant approach. In reality, considers appearing that slower eating can assist you to feel more full and lose weight. Individuals who portray themselves as quick eaters tend to be heavier than those who say they eat more gradually. In truth, quick eaters are up to 115% more likely to be suffering from obesity, when compared to slower eaters. They too tend to pick up weight over time, which may be somewhat due to eating as well quick. In one consider, analysts studied over 4,000 middle-aged men and ladies, inquiring them how quick they ate their food. Those who said they ate "exceptionally quick" tended to be denser, and had chosen up the primary body weight since age 20. Another study looked at the weight changes of 529 men over an 8-year period. Those who reported being "quick" eaters picked up more than twice as much as self-described "moderate" or "medium" eaters.

Appetite and calorie utilization are generally controlled by hormones. Ordinarily after ingestion, gut overwhelms a hormone called ghrelin, which controls appetite. It also releases the anti-hunger hormones peptide YY (PYY), glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and cholecystokinin (CCK). These hormones transmit a message to the brain; permitting it to know that have eaten and those supplements are being retained. This cuts appetite makes feel full and makes a difference halt eating. Patently, this progression takes approximately 20 minutes, so slowing down gives the brain the time it needs to get these signals. Eating too rapidly often indicates to overeating, as the brain doesn't have the time it needs to receive the fullness signals. Furthermore, eating slowly has been shown to fall the amount of food consumed at a meal. This is moderately due to a rise in the level of anti-hunger hormones that occurs when meals aren't rushed.


Those who eat their meals steadily, retain a strategic distance from night time snacking, and don’t go to rest till at least two hours passed since dinner, are more likely to see their waistlines shrink. Compared to those who wolfed down their food rapidly, those who ate at a typical speed were 29% less likely to be obese. Individuals who ate slowly were 42% less expected to be obese. Eating rapidly has already been connected to disabled glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, which can influence the digestion system and fat-burning. Quick eaters may moreover proceed to scarf down food indeed after they’ve devoured satisfactory calories, while moderate eaters might feel full on less food overall. Slow eaters moreover tended to be more advantageous and to have more advantageous habits, than their faster-eating peers. But undoubtedly after governing for other possibly affecting components, it is found that eating speed showed up to be a free factor in weight and body mass index measures.

Sunday, 3 February 2019

By Blocking Single Gene, Obesity Could Be Prevented

Obesity may be a major worldwide health epidemic that's evaluated to decrease life expectancy by 6–20 a long time, and is related with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. The regulation of whole-body digestion system includes the integration of multiple organ systems, and disrupting this homeostatic balance underlies the developing epidemic in obesity, metabolic disease, and associated comorbidities.

Researchers have long worked to develop approaches that can boost non-shivering thermogenesis (NST)—the process by which calories are used as heat, rather than stored as fat—as a mechanism to burn excess calories and so offer assistance treat obesity. In any case, the body operates numerous feedback mechanisms that generally act to suppress unnecessary caloric consumption. In evolutionary terms, these forms have helped to preserve energy in times of hardship. Mammals have had to cope with pressures of limited nourishment resources and environmental exposure, developing mechanisms for both long-term storage of calories and their use for functions such as thermogenesis when required.




When a single gene called as the RCAN1 was removed in mice and in turn were fed, they failed to gain weight, even after gorging on high-fat foods for prolonged periods. A comparative approach that restrains this quality will too be compelling with people to combat corpulence and genuine diseases like diabetes. The study used a large genetic screen in rodents to identify novel genetic candidates which will cause obesity, potentially paving the way for new sedate therapies. We know a lot of individuals battle to lose weight or indeed control their weight for a number of different reasons. The discoveries in this study may mean creating a pill which would target the function of RCAN1 and may result in weight loss.

Obesity could be a major worldwide health plague, resulting in expanded hazard of genuine maladies like sort 2 diabetes, and heart infection, but roads for compelling helpful medications are lacking. There are two sorts of fat within the human body – brown fat burns vitality, whereas white fat stores vitality. Blocking RCAN1 makes a difference to convert undesirable white fat into brown

fat, showing a potential treatment method within the fight against obesity. We have already developed an arrangement of drugs that target the protein that this quality makes, and we are present in the handle of testing them to see on the off chance that they repress RCAN1 and whether they might speak to potential new anti-obesity drugs. In light of our results, the drugs we are developing to target RCAN1 would burn more calories whereas individuals are resting.




It implies the body would store less fat without the requirement for an individual to reduce food utilization or work out more. Brown fat tissue is especially inexhaustible in newborns and in hibernating mammals. It additionally shows and metabolically active in adult people, but its predominance diminishes as human’s age. Its primary work is thermoregulation. In expansion to warm created by shivering muscle, brown fat tissue produces heat by non-shivering thermogenesis. The researchers say these discoveries open up a potentially simple treatment but further considers are required to determine in case they translate the same comes about to people.