This week, cable TV channel TLC aired a documentary highlighting one man’s weight difficulties on the island of Guam. Titled 900 Pound Man: The Race Against Time, the documentary chronicles Ricky Naputi’s struggle with his size, the troubles he encounters in finding help, and the difficulty he has sticking to doctors’ recommendations.

Naputi is, for the most part, bedridden and has not been able to go out of the house or shower for “years.” The documentary follows him and his wife as they seek out specialists and try to arrange for a flight to the U.S. mainland, where Naputi could receive life-saving surgery.

Though Naputi’s weight is disabling, he’s nowhere near the heaviest person ever recorded. The record for world’s heaviest man currently belongs to a U.S. man named Jon Minnoch, who weighed around 1,400 lb. at his peak. He also holds the record for weight loss, after he shed 920 lb. Minnoch died in 1983 at the age of 41 weighing nearly 800 lb.

A new study has found that DBS in a specific brain region in mice can activate a dopamine type-2 receptor. The process was shown to reduce both the caloric intake and weight of obese mice. The study has been published in in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“Based on this research, DBS may provide therapeutic relief to binge eating, a behavior commonly seen in obese humans, and frequently unresponsive to other approaches,” said Tracy Bale, a neuroscience professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “These results are our best evidence yet that targeting the nucleus accumbens with DBS may be able to modify specific feeding behaviors linked to body weight changes and obesity.”

According to the study’s authors, almost 50% of obese people binge eat. The researchers define binge eating as “uncontrollably” consuming high-calorie food within a short period of time. The mice that received DBS were shown to eat “significantly ” less high fat food. The long-term effects of DBS on obese mice also showed their glucose sensitivity improved.

DBS is currently used to reduce tremors in Parkinson’s disease patients.

“Once replicated in human clinical trials, DBS could rapidly become a treatment for people with obesity due to the extensive groundwork already established in other disease areas,” said Casey Halpern, lead author of the study and a resident in the Perelman School’s Department of Neurosurgery.

This week, one Target shopper stumbled onto what seemed to be a tacit criticism of overweight people. Susan Clemens was shopping on Target’s website when she noticed that the color for a plus-size dress was listed as “Manatee Gray.” She checked the non-plus-size version of the dress and found that the same color was listed as “Heather Gray.”

Clemens tweeted her findings and, as these things tend to do on the internet, it began to spread. The comment sparked debate over whether the garment industry disapproves of overweight people, while also fueling a debate about how women are portrayed in media.

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Susan Clemens
@suZen

What the. Plus sized women get “Manatee Grey” while standard sizes are “Dark Heather Grey.” @Target#notbuyingithttp://t.co/nzHNYoytnp

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2 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Within a day Target responded to Clemens, telling her they had a team looking into the matter. The store later told Forbes that “Manatee Gray” is a color used for many different products, and that in this particular case the people responsible for creating the listings had not communicated properly. Though the proper color for both sizes of the dress is “Manatee Gray,” the color is now listed as simply “Gray.”

Target has issued a direct apology to Clemens via Twitter:

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Target
@Target

@suZen We apologize for this unintentional oversight & never intend to offend our guests. We’ve heard you, and we’re working to fix it ASAP.

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1 day ago via Spredfast · powered by @socialditto

“I’m making this video because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried losing weight on my own, I’ve tried doing everything possible – been on diets, been hospitalized. And I’ve always done what needed to be done at the time, then i’d always just gain the weight back,” he said in March of 2012.

Soon after posting, the video went viral, racking up over a million views and prompting a Twitter trend. The video made its way to reddit, where it received even more attention.

Well, he’s just posted an update in the form of a live weigh-in. And he says he’s down over 300 pounds.

In his original plea, Robert said that he was somewhere between 600-700 pounds. He must have started at over 700 pounds, as being down 300+ still leaves him at over 460 pounds.

We all know that YouTube commenters can be a cruel lot sometimes, but in Robert’s case the top comments are nothing but encouragement.

Humanity win.

[via reddit]

“Estimates of the relative mortality risks associated with normal weight, overweight, and obesity may help to inform decision making in the clinical setting,” said the study’s authors.

Researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compiled the results of 97 studies that analyzed the affects of body mass index (BMI) on mortality. The studies included more than 2.88 million patients and more than 270,000 deaths from all over the world, but primarily from North America and Europe.

The patients were classified into four different categories based on their BMI. The overweight category included patients with a BMI of 25 to under 30, grade 1 obesity included those from 30 to under 35, and grades 2 and 3 obesity included patients with a BMI of 35 or greater.

The study found that patients who were classified as being the most obese (grades 2 and 3) had a 29% higher risk of death. Those with grade 1 obesity had a lower risk of death (5% lower), as did those classified as overweight (6% lower).

“Possible explanations have included earlier presentation of heavier patients, greater likelihood of receiving optimal medical treatment, cardioprotective metabolic effects of increased body fat, and benefits of higher metabolic reserves,” said the study’s authors.

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, analyzed the body composition of overweight or obese adults without diabetes who took on one of three different exercise regimins. The researchers state that it is the largest randomized trial to have done so.

“Given that approximately two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight due to excess body fat, we want to offer clear, evidence-based exercise recommendations that will truly help people lose weight and body fat,” said Leslie Willis, lead author of the study and an exercise physiologist at the Duke University Medical Center.

234 overweight or obese adults were enrolled in the study. The participants were randomly assigned to either aerobic training, resistance training, or a combination of the two. Aerobic training consisted of approximately 12 miles per week of aerobic exercise, such as walking, running, or swimming. Resistance training consisted of lifting weights three days per week, lifting three sets of 8 to 12 repetitions. Participants assigned to the combined training completed both the aerobic and resistance training goals.

The results show that the participants assigned to the aerobic and combined training groups lost more weight than those who did resistance training only. Unsurprisingly, participants assigned to the resistance training group actually gained weight, with a corresponding rise in lean body mass.

Aerobic exercise alone was shown to be a more efficient way to lose body fat. Even though the combination group participants spent more time exercising, they did not significantly reduce fat mass over those in the aerobic group. The combination group did, however, see the largest decrease in waist circumference. The resistance group also did not see significant decreases in fat mass.

“No one type of exercise will be best for every health benefit,” said Willis. “However, it might be time to reconsider the conventional wisdom that resistance training alone can induce changes in body mass or fat mass due to an increase in metabolism, as our study found no change.”

Previous studies have shown that poor TV viewing habits during childhood carry on into adulthood, leading to obesity and elevated total cholesterol. According to the study’s authors, the average U.S. child from age 8 to 18 watched 4.5 hours of TV each day, and 70% of them have a TV in their bedroom. Around 1/3 of Americans from age 6 to 19 are considered obese.

“The established association between TV and obesity is predominantly based on BMI,” said Dr. Peter Katzmarzyk, lead investigator on the study. “The association between TV and fat mass, adiposity stored in specific depots (including abdominal subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue), and cardiometabolic risk, is less well understood. It is hypothesized that higher levels of TV viewing and the presence of a TV in the bedroom are associated with depot-specific adiposity and cardiometabolic risk.”

The study looked at 369 Baton Rouge children aged 5 to 18 from 2010 to 2011. The kids’ waist circumference, resting blood pressure, fasting triglycerides, “bad” cholesterol, glucose, fat mass, and stomach fat were all measured.

The results showed not only that children with a TV in their bedroom were likely to watch more TV, but they also had more fat and a higher waist circumference than children who did not. Kids with a TV in the bedroom were three times more likely to have an elevated heart and metabolic risk; elevated waist circumference; and elevated triglycerides.

“There was a stronger association between having a TV in the bedroom versus TV viewing time, with the adiposity and health outcomes,” said Dr. Amanda Staiano, co-author of the study. “A bedroom TV may create additional disruptions to healthy habits, above and beyond regular TV viewing. For instance, having a bedroom TV is related to lower amounts of sleep and lower prevalence of regular family meals, independent of total TV viewing time. Both short sleep duration and lack of regular family meals have been related to weight gain and obesity.”

The team, led by Dr. Matthias Tschöp, from the Technical University of Munich and the Helmholtz Center, and Richard DiMarchi, a chemist at Indiana University, was able to engineer natural gut peptides to carry small steroids known to act at the cell nucleus. Their hope was to deliver the steroid only inside cells.

The researchers started with a gut hormone that is known to act on pancreas and brain cells to improve insulin secretion, blood glucose, and body weight. They engineered the hormone to reversibly bind estrogen, which is known to provide metabolic benefits at the same target cells. The results show that the team was able to “multiply” the metabolic benefits to mice, without the side effects that large doses of estrogen normally have on reproductive organs, such as an increased cancer risk. Likewise, there was no evident impact on the growth of estrogen-sensitive tumors.

The effect on pancreas and brain tissue in the mice were evident, however. This suggests the researchers have succeeded in the targeted delivery of steroids to specific cells. With more development, the technique could be used to more accurately treat diabetes and metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and obesity). A study based on the results of the team’s experiments has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

“Our novel GLP-1/estrogen molecules seem to outperform more traditional therapeutics in mouse models of obesity and type 2 diabetes” said Brian Finan, lead author of the study and researcher at the Helmholtz Center. “What we are even more excited about is the opportunity to use targeted steroid hormone for other diseases, where side effects had prevented therapeutic use in the past.”

(Image courtesy the Technical University of Munich)

The study, published this week in the journal Cancer, looked at 289,866 men enrolled in the Metabolic Syndrome and Cancer Project at Umeå University in Sweden. Researchers found that during an average follow-up time of 12 years, 961 men died from prostate cancer, out of 6,673 diagnosed with the disease. Of those men, those in the highest category of body mass index had a 36% higher risk of dying from their prostate cancer, and those in the highest category for blood pressure had a 62% higher risk of dying from their prostate cancer.

“These observations suggest that cardiovascular risk factors such as overweight and hypertension are involved in stimulating the progression of prostate cancer,” said Dr. Pär Stattin, lead author of the study and a Urologist at Umeå University.

The study does not link metabolic factors to a risk of developing prostate cancer, only a higher risk of dying from the disease.

Earlier this year, metabolic abnormalities were also linked to more rapid cognitive decline as people age.

BPA is a manufactured chemical found in consumer products. The study’s authors stated that, to their knowledge, this is the first report, in a nationally representative sample, of an association of childhood obesity with an environmental chemical exposure.

“In the U.S. population, exposure [to BPA] is nearly ubiquitous, with 92.6 percent of persons 6 years or older identified in the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) as having detectable BPA levels in their urine,” said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, associate professor at New York University School of Medecine. “A comprehensive, cross-sectional study of dust, indoor and outdoor air, and solid and liquid food in preschool-aged children suggested that dietary sources constitute 99 percent of BPA exposure. In experimental studies, BPA exposure has been shown to disrupt multiple metabolic mechanisms, suggesting that it may increase body mass in environmentally relevant doses and therefore contribute to obesity in humans.”

The researchers stopped short of saying BPA causes obesity in children, saying only that a link is plausible. When the children in the study were separated into quartiles based on their urinary BPA levels, 10.3% of the children in the quartile with the lowest concentrations of BPA were obese, compared to 22.3% in the highest quartile. Oddly, further analysis showed that the results were only statistically significant for white children and white adolescents.

“We note the recent FDA ban of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, yet our findings raise questions about exposure to BPA in consumer products used by older children,” said researchers. “Last year, the FDA declined to ban BPA in aluminum cans and other food packaging, announcing ‘reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the human food supply’ and noting that it will continue to consider evidence on the safety of the chemical. Carefully conducted longitudinal studies that assess the associations identified here will yield evidence many years in the future.”