Smoking to Reduce Weight: No Kidding?

I don't want to promote smoking. I had heard that rumours that smoking can reduce weight. I started smoking 10 years ago, but it never give me ideal weight. Once I was very satisfied to my shape, it is due to diet and very much exercise. But at least, finally I know that the rumours have background.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Offering clues to why smokers often gain weight after quitting, a new study suggests that smoking enhances the activity of a gene that helps break down body fat.
Researchers found that compared with non-smokers, a group of healthy smokers showed greater activity in a gene called AZGP1 in cell samples taken from their airways.
Because the gene is thought to be important in breaking down fat and controlling weight, the findings point to one possible reason that smokers tend to weigh less than non-smokers -- and why people often put on pounds after quitting.

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The waist size influence a person's risk of heart failure

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Both body mass index (BMI) and waist size influence a person's risk of being hospitalized with heart failure or dying of the condition, new research shows.
"This study reinforces the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight through diet and exercise," Dr. Emily B. Levitan of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a researcher on the study, told Reuters Health.
In heart failure, the organ becomes too weak to pump blood efficiently through a person's body, leading to fatigue, swelling of the legs, and difficulty breathing. Heart failure is the top cause of hospitalization among Americans 65 and older, Levitan and her colleagues note in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.
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Omega 3 Diet Reduce Cancer Risk

LONDON (Reuters) - An omega 3 fatty acid found in fish oils reduced the size of tumors in mice and made a chemotherapy drug more potent while limiting its harmful effects, Egyptian researchers reported on Thursday.
The findings, published in publisher BioMed Central's peer-reviewed Cell Division journal, add to evidence showing a range of health benefits from eating the fatty acids found in foods such as salmon.
A.M. El-Mowafy and colleagues from Mansoura University in Egypt looked at how an omega 3 fatty acid called docosahexanoic acid, or DHA, affected solid tumors growing in mice and how well it interacted with the chemotherapy drug cisplatin.
In March, U.S. researchers showed that a diet high in omega 3 fatty acids -- the kind found in fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring and sardines -- protected against advanced prostate cancer even in men more at risk of the disease.
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USA people: the best informed about food and enjoy it the least

If you’re a well-informed, health-conscious New Yorker who has put on some unwanted pounds in the past year, it might not be entirely your fault. Here’s a possible alibi: The health halo made you do it.
I offer this alibi after an experiment on New Yorkers that I conducted with Pierre Chandon, a Frenchman who has been studying what researchers call the American obesity paradox. Why, as Americans have paid more and more attention to eating healthily, have we kept getting fatter and fatter?
Dr. Chandon’s answer, derived from laboratory experiments as well as field work at Subway and McDonald’s restaurants, is that Americans have been seduced into overeating by the so-called health halo associated with certain foods and restaurants. His research made me wonder if New Yorkers were particularly vulnerable to this problem, and I asked him to help me investigate.
Something which is interesting is the comment in the last paragraphs in the article:
More generally, Dr. Chandon advises American consumers, food companies and public officials to spend less time obsessing about “good” versus “bad” food.
“Being French, I don’t have any problem with people enjoying lots of foods,” he said.
“Europeans obsess less about nutrition but know what a reasonable portion size is and when they have had too much food, so they’re not as biased by food and diet fads and are healthier. Too many Americans believe that to lose weight, what you eat matters more than how much you eat. It’s the country where people are the best informed about food and enjoy it the least.”

Cost of Junk Food

The organization’s dieticians reviewed so-called value menus at five of the largest fast food chains in the nation, awarding points for such unhealthy characteristics as sodium, fat and low-fiber content.
Jack in the Box’s junior bacon cheeseburger topped the list as the worst offender. The burger costs just one dollar but is packed with 23 grams of fat, including 8 grams of saturated fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol and 860 milligrams of sodium and just one gram of fiber.
The Cancer Project is affiliated with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which aggressively promotes a low-fat, vegetarian diet. The organization’s list was spurred in part by a concern that during tough economic times, more people will resort to eating inexpensive fast foods, said Krista Haynes, a dietitian with the project.
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Money is the god of motivation, also in diet

Losing weight is easier when there is money on the line, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.They said weight-loss programs that reward people with money -- and remind them of the cash they stand to lose if they fail -- provided a powerful incentive to lose weight compared with more conventional approaches.Everything is more effective if shown the money to it.

Still, money is the god of motivation., because the study says that it is highly effective at producing short-term weight loss, but when the money stopped flowing, the weight begin to creep back on

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The benefit of cabbage

Cabbage is a very economical vegetable that is easy to find in any supermarket and it gives you a huge nutritional bang for your buck. This humble food has always been a mainstay for the poor and in cold climates people of all classes have relied on it to feed themselves through many a winter.

Cabbage is “the most important [vegetable] in the world from the point of view of nutritional benefits and cancer-fighting ability.” Cabbage possesses phytochemicals including sulforaphane, which studies suggest protects the body against cancer-causing free radicals, and indoles, which help metabolize estrogens. It’s also an excellent source of vitamins K and C, and a very good source of dietary fiber, vitamin B6, folate, manganese and Omega 3 fatty acids.

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Sodium Diet: Not only salty foods

We have to give more attention to our sodium diet. We may have reduced our salty foods, but, according to an analysis of supermarket products by a consumer group, some sweet snacks, breakfast foods and low-fat foods contain high levels of sodium even though they may not taste salty.
Salt increases the risk of developing high blood pressure and related cardiovascular problems, and federal dietary guidelines recommend limiting salt intake to 2,300 milligrams a day. The average American consumes 2,900 to 4,300 milligrams of natrium/sodium a day. It has been too much, actually.
The American Medical Association has estimated that 150,000 lives could be saved each year if Americans cut their salt intake in half, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer watchdog group, has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to regulate salt in foods.
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Study: Junk Foods Lead to Alzheimer?

A study show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of alzheimer.
They come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, which show that mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday.
It is now suspected that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language.
While the most advanced drugs have focused on removing clumps of beta amyloid protein that forms plaques in the brain, researchers are also now looking at therapies to address the toxic tangles caused by an abnormal build-up of the protein tau.
"All in all, the results give some indication of how Alzheimer's can be prevented, but more research in this field needs to be done before proper advice can be passed on to the general public," she said.

Eat Grapes: It may lower your blood pressure

Reuters released a report about a findings, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, that grapes might help people with high blood pressure. It was a sponsored research by California grapes producers. tested to some lab rats.

"The inevitable downhill sequence to hypertension and heart failure was changed by the addition of grape powder to a high-salt diet," Dr. Steven Bolling, the head of University of Michigan lab. He thought that flavonoids, beneficial chemicals found in grapes, green tea, cocoa and tomatoes, could be having an effect on blood pressure. Flavonoids have been shown in other studies to have heart-health benefits.

The California Table Grape Commission provided financial support for the study and supplied the grape powder. Other sponsors included the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, can lead to heart attack, heart failure, stroke and kidney failure.
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Positive eating, not fats avoiding

Following my posting about fats, I want to add that the most important in diet success is positive eating. Do not focus on your fats consuming! There are the reports of it.

In 2007 the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported on a study of 97 obese women, all of whom were avoiding high-fat foods. Half the women were instructed to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. By the end of a year, the women who were focused on adding vegetables lost an average of 17 pounds, 20 percent more than the women who were just paying attention to fat consumption.

See, it is about better eating habbit, not about fats only. There are good fats and bad fats, but don' t ever try to bribe bad fats. No, deal with both, but do not focus your diet on them.

Two sides of Junk Food

I think it's not a good point of junk food. It just shows you how dangerous it is. It can manipulate you to take it as medicine pill to relieve your stress. It does. But it kill you slowly.

It is from ABC news that says junk food may lower stress according to research , by national medical reporter Sophie Scott

Good for what ails you? Junk food like burgers could make you less stressed, new research suggests (AFP)

New Australian research has found that eating foods high in fat and sugar reduces anxiety levels. But while it might make you feel calmer, that does not mean it is good for you.

Our increasing reliance on junk food is one of the reasons behind Australia's growing waistlines.

But it seems there might be a scientific reason why people turn to high fat and high sugar foods when they are stressed.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales gave young rats who had been taken away from their mothers a diet of either junk food or healthy food.

Professor Margaret Morris from the University of New South Wales says they noticed a difference in the animals' behaviour.

"What we found was that the animals that had the junk diet were much less anxious than those that who ate the junk food, so what we think is that animals are using junk food to relax themselves," she said.

Animals given the low fat diet had double the stress levels of the junk food eaters.

And while it might seem quite a leap from mice to humans, researchers say brain pathways controlling appetite are similar in both species.

"People do use food in this way as a kind of a medication to soothe themselves," Professor Morris said.

Overseas studies have shown that people who like junk food tend to choose sweet foods and chocolate when stressed.

"Individuals who enjoy eating certain types of food will seek out that type of food for comfort eating following an unpleasant or stressful experience, and that's a remarkable finding," Professor Andrew Lawrence from the Howard Florey Institute said.

The findings might also explain why many people fail when they go on diets.

Researchers will now look at whether exercise can be as good as junk food at relieving stress.

Now Let's Talk About Weight

If you're currently at a healthy weight, you're already one step ahead of the game. To stay at a healthy weight, it's worth doing a little planning now.
Or maybe you are overweight but aren't ready to lose weight yet. If this is the case, preventing further weight gain is a worthy goal.
As people age, their body composition gradually shifts — the proportion of muscle decreases and the proportion of fat increases. This shift slows their metabolism, making it easier to gain weight. In addition, some people become less physically active as they get older, increasing the risk of weight gain.
The good news is that weight gain can be prevented by choosing a lifestyle that includes good eating habits and daily physical activity. By avoiding weight gain, you avoid higher risks of many chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, and some forms of cancer.

The tips are:
Choosing an Eating Plan to Prevent Weight Gain

Get Moving

Self-monitoring

Ask yourself—Has my activity level changed? Am I eating more than usual?