Microbes—usually bacteria, fungi, or protists—made a big splash of news when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the new National Microbiome Initiative (NMI) last month. The NMI’s aim is to advance the understanding of microbiome, which refers to all the microbes in a particular environment. The initiative particularly focuses on restoring […]
High-fat diets have long been known to increase the risk for heart disease and stroke, but there is new evidence to link diets high in fat with a range of psychiatric disorders. Central to this newly recognized mind-gut relationship are the microorganisms that inhabit our intestines – the gut microbiome. Increasingly, scientists are finding the […]
It’s long been known that human fat cells are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. What’s just been discovered by Australian scientists is that when we “burn” fat, almost all the broken-down fat molecules are exhaled through the lungs as carbon dioxide. The research team, led by Ruben Meerman and Andrew Brown of the […]
Today, obesity is considered to be undesirable, but in the past getting more fat and more energy from the diet might have been important to survival in cold places. This, according to a new study in the journalBiology Letters, might explain the dramatic differences in gut bacteria observed in people from different latitudes. Researchers at […]
Skyrocketing obesity and an epidemic of type-2 diabetes look likely for developing countries, as researchers at Simon Fraser University find a striking correlation between disease prevalence and ownership of TVs, computers, and cars. The findings, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, are based on data from more than 150,000 adults from 17 countries, ranging […]
Previous studies have shown that obesity can lead to alterations in the brain, but in new research, scientists have found that being severely overweight alters our sense of taste at the most fundamental level: by changing how our tongues react to different flavors. The intriguing new findings, based on experiments with mice, appear in the […]
A new University of Illinois study has established a possible link between high-fat diets and childhood cognitive conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and memory-dependent learning disabilities. The research, published inPsychoneuroendocrinology, found that altered dopamine signaling (previously associated with anxiety behaviors in children) in the brain is common to both ADHD and the […]
An analysis of traffic collision fatalities showing that obese drivers are far more likely to die than drivers of normal weight has prompted researchers to suggest that car designs might need to change to better protect obese drivers. The researchers, from the University of California and University of West Virginia used data from the US […]
German scientists investigating why mice given Viagra were resistant to obesity say they have discovered a “quite amazing” anti-obesity effect related to a cell signaling pathway that tells the body how to store fat. The researchers say that sildenafil (the active ingredient in Viagra) converts white fat cells intobrown fat, which burns caloric energy much […]
On the list of unwelcome medical conditions, a parasitic worm infection ranks fairly high. But according to an international team of scientists, the sugar-based anti-inflammatory molecule that many parasitic worms secrete inside the human body might actually help treat the metabolic disorders associated with obesity. The researchers, from the University of Georgia, the Harvard School […]
