Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)

02-22-10

Munich (dpa) – Obese people lose weight at high altitudes and keep it off for at least four weeks, according to a team of German scientists.

Independent of any other change in lifestyle, high altitudes appear to increase metabolism, decrease appetite and lower diastolic blood pressure, the researchers report in the journal Obesity.

Understanding the mechanisms behind this weight loss could provide a basis for new treatments for obesity, they say.

Florian Lippl and colleagues at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich studied the effect of living in high altitudes for one week on the body weight of 20 obese males, while no other change was made to their exercise routine or food availability.

At the end of the week, their body weight, food intake, and diastolic blood pressure had been significantly lowered, effects that were still present four weeks after returning from high altitude.

The low levels of oxygen present at high altitudes could be responsible for an observed increase in leptin, a hormone thought to suppress appetite, though the causes of this need to be further studied, the researchers say.

The lasting weight reduction seen at high altitudes is primarily due to an increased metabolism and decreased food intake, though the reasons behind these changes remain unclear and may be a temporary effect of the body acclimatizing to new surroundings.

An article in the journal Obesity reported the findings of Chinese scientists who noticed improvements in weight and body composition in men and women who consumed green tea that contained high amounts of catechins.

Researchers at Fudan University divided 182 moderately overweight Chinese men and women to receive beverages containing varying amounts of catechins for 90 days.  By the end of the study, total body fat and body fat percentage were lower in the group that received the highest amount of catechins compared to the control group.  In the highest catechin group, intra-abdominal fat area and weight were lower, and waist circumference averaged 1.9 centimeters less than those who received the control beverage.

“In this latest research, green tea providing significant catechin levels helped promote weight loss and positively affected body shape,”  lead researcher Dr. Niels Boon concluded.

You can get my recommendation for green tea capsules here.

According to researchers at the University of California at San Diego and Harvard, if your friends or family are overweight, there is an increased chance you are (or will be) overweight as well. A 32-year study tracked the weight records of more than 12,000 people, and found that the chances of becoming obese went up if a friend, sibling or spouse also gained too much weight – an increased risk of 57 percent, 40 percent and 37 percent, respectively. Researchers concluded that the participants were influenced by similar attitudes, behaviors and acceptance of obesity – in other words, you may not feel so bad about being fat if your best friends and closest relatives are fat. The researchers suggested that their findings may have implications for how to better deal with obesity – rather than treating individuals, it might be more useful to treat groups of friends and relatives together.

According to researchers at the University of California at San Diego and Harvard, if your friends or family are overweight, there is an increased chance you are (or will be) overweight as well. A 32-year study tracked the weight records of more than 12,000 people, and found that the chances of becoming obese went up if a friend, sibling or spouse also gained too much weight – an increased risk of 57 percent, 40 percent and 37 percent, respectively. Researchers concluded that the participants were influenced by similar attitudes, behaviors and acceptance of obesity – in other words, you may not feel so bad about being fat if your best friends and closest relatives are fat. The researchers suggested that their findings may have implications for how to better deal with obesity – rather than treating individuals, it might be more useful to treat groups of friends and relatives together.

A fat belly certainly makes you a big man – and also less of a man, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.  Researchers studied over 580 men for almost 20 years, and found that a 4-point increase in body mass index – a (somewhat-flawed) calculation used to determine obesity – accelerates your natural decline in testosterone by 10 years!  This corresponds to a gain of 30 pounds for a man who is 5 feet 10 inches tall.  It’s not just the testosterone levels that suffer – the deficiency also increases your risks of diabetes, bone fractures and Alzheimer’s disease.

So what to do if you are putting on weight?  Grab a copy of my diet program that I personally used to drop 80 pounds in 8 months at http://burritodiet.com to get rid of that belly fat and preserve your manhood!