Cut Down On 'Carbs' to Reduce Body Fat, Study Authors Say

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2011) — A modest reduction in consumption of carbohydrate foods may promote loss of deep belly fat, even with little or no change in weight, a new study finds.

Results of the study are being presented at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston.
When paired with weight loss, consumption of a moderately reduced carbohydrate diet can help achieve a reduction of total body fat, according to principal author Barbara Gower, PhD, a professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

"These changes could help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary artery disease," Gower said, noting that excess visceral, or intra-abdominal, fat raises the risk of these diseases.

Gower and her colleagues conducted the study, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, in 69 overweight but healthy men and women. Subjects received food for two consecutive eight-week periods: first a weight maintenance intervention, and then a weight loss intervention, which cut the number of calories that each person ate by 1,000 each day.

Subjects received either a standard lower-fat diet or a diet with a modest reduction in carbohydrates, or "carbs," but slightly higher in fat than the standard diet. The moderately carb-restricted diet contained foods that had a relatively low glycemic index, a measure of the extent to which the food raises blood glucose levels. This diet consisted of 43 percent calories from carbohydrates and 39 percent calories from fat, whereas the standard diet contained 55 percent of calories from carbohydrates and 27 percent from fat. Protein made up the other 18 percent of each diet.

At the beginning and end of each study phase, the researchers measured the subjects' fat deep inside the abdomen and their total body fat using computed tomography (CT) and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans.
After the weight maintenance phase, subjects who consumed the moderately carb-restricted diet had 11 percent less deep abdominal fat than those who ate the standard diet. However, when the researchers analyzed results by race, they found it was exclusive to whites. Whites have more deep abdominal fat than Blacks even when matched for body weight or percent body fat, and may benefit from loss of this metabolically harmful depot, Gower said.

During the weight loss phase, subjects on both diets lost weight. However, the moderately carb-restricted diet promoted a 4 percent greater loss of total body fat, Gower said. "For individuals willing to go on a weight-loss diet, a modest reduction in carbohydrate-containing foods may help them preferentially lose fat, rather than lean tissue," she said. "The moderately reduced carbohydrate diet allows a variety of foods to meet personal preferences."

Soluble Fiber Strikes a Blow to Belly Fat

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2011) — All fat is not created equal. Unsightly as it is, subcutaneous fat, the fat right under the skin, is not as dangerous to overall health as visceral fat, the fat deep in the belly surrounding vital organs.

According to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, the way to zero in and reduce visceral fat is simple: eat more soluble fiber from vegetables, fruit and beans, and engage in moderate activity.

The study found that for every 10-gram increase in soluble fiber eaten per day, visceral fat was reduced by 3.7 percent over five years. In addition, increased moderate activity resulted in a 7.4 percent decrease in the rate of visceral fat accumulation over the same time period.

"We know that a higher rate of visceral fat is associated with high blood pressure, diabetes and fatty liver disease," said Kristen Hairston, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest Baptist and lead researcher on the study. "Our study found that making a few simple changes can have a big health impact."

Ten grams of soluble fiber can be achieved by eating two small apples, one cup of green peas and one-half cup of pinto beans; moderate activity means exercising vigorously for 30 minutes, two to four times a week, Hairston added.

In the longitudinal study, published in the June 16 online issue of the journal Obesity, researchers examined whether lifestyle factors, such as diet and frequency of exercise, were associated with a five-year change in abdominal fat of African Americans and Hispanic Americans, populations at a disproportionally higher risk for developing high blood pressure and diabetes and accumulating visceral fat.

At the beginning of the study, which involved 1,114 people, the participants were given a physical exam, an extensive questionnaire on lifestyle issues, and a CT scan, the only accurate way to measure how much subcutaneous and visceral fat the participants had. Five years later, the exact same process was repeated.

Researchers found that increased soluble fiber intake was associated with a decreased rate of accumulated visceral fat, but not subcutaneous fat.

"There is mounting evidence that eating more soluble fiber and increasing exercise reduces visceral or belly fat, although we still don't know how it works," Hairston said. "Although the fiber-obesity relationship has been extensively studied, the relationship between fiber and specific fat deposits has not. Our study is valuable because it provides specific information on how dietary fiber, especially soluble fiber, may affect weight accumulation through abdominal fat deposits."

Hairston's next study, expected to be in clinical trials later this summer, will examine whether increasing soluble fiber with a widely available fiber supplement will produce similar results to those obtained in this study using soluble fiber from food.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health.

It's Not an Apple a Day After All -- It's Strawberries: Flavonoids Could Represent Two-Fisted Assault On Diabetes and Nervous System Disorders

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2011) — A recent study from scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies suggests that a strawberry a day (or more accurately, 37 of them) could keep not just one doctor away, but an entire fleet of them, including the neurologist, the endocrinologist, and maybe even the oncologist.

Investigations conducted in the Salk Institute's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory (CNL) will appear in the June 27, 2011, issue of PLoS ONE. The report explains that fisetin, a naturally-occurring flavonoid found most abundantly in strawberries and to a lesser extent in other fruits and vegetables, lessens complications of diabetes. Previously, the lab showed that fisetin promoted survival of neurons grown in culture and enhanced memory in healthy mice. That fisetin can target multiple organs strongly suggests that a single drug could be used to mitigate numerous medical complications.

"This manuscript describes for the first time a drug that prevents both kidney and brain complications in a type 1 diabetes mouse model," says David Schubert, Ph.D., professor and head of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory and one of the manuscript's co-authors. "Moreover, it demonstrates the probable molecular basis of how the therapeutic is working."

Pam Maher, Ph.D., a senior staff scientist in the CNL, is the study's corresponding author. Maher initially identified fisetin as a neuroprotective flavonoid ten years ago. "In plants, flavonoids act as sunscreens and protect leaves and fruit from insects," she explains. "As foods they are implicated in the protective effect of the 'Mediterranean Diet.'"

Other celebrity flavonoids include polyphenolic compounds in blueberries and red wine.
Although her group's focus is neurobiology, Maher and colleagues reasoned that, like other flavonoids, fisetin might ameliorate a spectrum of disorders seen in diabetic patients. To test this, they evaluated effects of fisetin supplementation in Akita mice, a very robust model of type 1 diabetes, also called childhood onset diabetes.

Akita mice exhibit increased blood sugar typical of type 1 diabetes and display pathologies seen in serious human complications of both type 1 and 2 diabetes. Those include diabetic nephropathy or kidney disease, retinopathy, and neuropathies in which patients lose touch or heat sensations.
Mice fed a fisetin-enriched diet remained diabetic, but acute kidney enlargement-or hypertrophy-seen in untreated mice was reversed, and high urine protein levels, a sure sign of kidney disease, fell. Moreover, fisetin ingestion ameliorated anxiety-related behaviors seen in diabetic mice. "Most mice put in a large area become exploratory," says Maher. "But anxious mice tend not to move around. Akita mice showed enhanced anxiety behavior, but fisetin feeding restored their locomotion to more normal levels."

The study also defines a likely molecular mechanism underlying these effects. Researchers observed that blood and brain levels of sugars affixed to proteins known as advanced glycation end-products-or AGEs-were reduced in fisetin-treated compared to untreated Akita mice. These decreases were accompanied by increased activity of the enzyme glyoxalase 1, which promotes removal of toxic AGE precursors.

The discovery of an AGE-antagonizing enzyme upregulated by fisetin is very intriguing, because substantial evidence implicates high blood AGE levels with many if not most diabetic complications. "We know that fisetin increases activity of the glyoxalase enzyme and may increase its expression," says Maher. "But what is important is that ours is the first report that any compound can enhance glyoxalase 1 activity."

Interestingly, excessively high AGE levels also correlate with inflammatory activity thought to promote some cancers. In fact, studies published by others confirm that fisetin decreases tumorigenicity of prostate cancer cells both in culture and in animal models, which if supported would represent a major added incentive to eat your strawberries.

To ingest fisetin levels equivalent to those fed Akita mice, Maher estimates that humans would have to eat 37 strawberries a day, assuming that strawberry fisetin is as readily metabolizable by humans as fisetin-spiked lab chow is by mice. Rather than through diet, Maher envisions that fisetin-like drugs could be taken as a supplement.

Schubert notes that fisetin is also effective in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. "We and others have shown that diabetes may be a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, making identification of a safe prophylactic like fisetin highly significant," he says.

Maher acknowledges that the public may be suffering from flavonoid-fatigue, given media coverage of the promises of these compounds. "Polyphenolics like fisetin and those in blueberry extracts are found in fruits and vegetables and are related to each other chemically," she says. "There is increasing evidence that they all work in multiple diseases. Hopefully some combination of these compounds will eventually get to the clinic."

Schubert concurs that their findings only reinforce what common sense and our mothers told us was a healthy lifestyle. "Eat a balanced diet and as much freshly prepared organic food as possible, get some exercise, keep socially and mentally active and avoid sodas with sugar and highly processed foods since they can contain high levels of AGEs," he advises.

But he also worries that hoops that must be jumped through to bring a natural product like fisetin, as opposed to a totally synthetic drug, to clinical trials are daunting because it is difficult to protect patents on natural products. "We will never know if a compound like fisetin works in humans until someone is willing to support a clinical trial."

Also contributing to this study were Richard Dargusch and Jennifer L. Ehren, Ph.D.,of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, and Kumar Sharma, M.D., and Shinichi Okada, M.D., Ph.D., of the Department of Medicine at University of California, San Diego.

Funding for the study came from the Fritz B. Burns Foundation, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Hewitt Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

EXERCISE SELECTION

Sleep and Fat Loss.

Sleep deprivation during a low calorie diet can result in reduced fat loss, and increased muscle loss. In the study discussed, subjects lost 6.6 pounds of bodyweight in 14 days following a lower calorie diet and sleeping only 5.5 hours per night, but of that 6.6 pounds lost, 75% was muscle. Watch the video to learn how you can increase fat burning and maintain, and even gain muscle.

http://workoutsolutions.blogspot.com/2011/05/fat-loss-tips-and-tricks-repetit...

Fat Loss Tips and Tricks Facebook

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Ketogenic Diet Tips and Tricks Facebook

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Low-Carbohydrate, High-Protein Diets May Reduce Both Tumor Growth Rates and Cancer Risk

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2011) — Eating a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may reduce the risk of cancer and slow the growth of tumors already present, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The study was conducted in mice, but the scientists involved agree that the strong biological findings are definitive enough that an effect in humans can be considered.

"This shows that something as simple as a change in diet can have an impact on cancer risk," said lead researcher Gerald Krystal, Ph.D., a distinguished scientist at the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre.

Cancer Research editor-in-chief George Prendergast, Ph.D., CEO of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, agreed. "Many cancer patients are interested in making changes in areas that they can control, and this study definitely lends credence to the idea that a change in diet can be beneficial," said Prendergast, who was not involved with the study.

Krystal and his colleagues implanted various strains of mice with human tumor cells or with mouse tumor cells and assigned them to one of two diets. The first diet, a typical Western diet, contained about 55 percent carbohydrate, 23 percent protein and 22 percent fat. The second, which is somewhat like a South Beach diet but higher in protein, contained 15 percent carbohydrate, 58 percent protein and 26 percent fat. They found that the tumor cells grew consistently slower on the second diet.
As well, mice genetically predisposed to breast cancer were put on these two diets and almost half of them on the Western diet developed breast cancer within their first year of life while none on the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet did. Interestingly, only one on the Western diet reached a normal life span (approximately 2 years), with 70 percent of them dying from cancer while only 30 percent of those on the low-carbohydrate diet developed cancer and more than half these mice reached or exceeded their normal life span.

Krystal and colleagues also tested the effect of an mTOR inhibitor, which inhibits cell growth, and a COX-2 inhibitor, which reduces inflammation, on tumor development, and found these agents had an additive effect in the mice fed the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet.

When asked to speculate on the biological mechanism, Krystal said that tumor cells, unlike normal cells, need significantly more glucose to grow and thrive. Restricting carbohydrate intake can significantly limit blood glucose and insulin, a hormone that has been shown in many independent studies to promote tumor growth in both humans and mice.

Furthermore, a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet has the potential to both boost the ability of the immune system to kill cancer cells and prevent obesity, which leads to chronic inflammation and cancer.

Dietary Leucine May Fight Pre-Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome: Study Shows Improvements in Animals With Amino Acid in Diet

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2011) — A study led by researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center suggests that adding the amino acid leucine to their diets may help those with pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome.

In an animal study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, mice who had been on a high-fat diet and who also received twice the usual intake of leucine, an amino acid found in protein, showed reductions in their prediabetic conditions with lower blood sugars and less fat in their livers, two of the collection of medical problems associated with insulin resistance that make up what is known as metabolic syndrome.

"The impact on the animals on the high-fat diet, even though it didn't change how fat they got, was that their bodies were able to handle glucose better," said C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., Head of the Joslin Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism and the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kahn led the team of researchers from Joslin and Metabolon Inc. of Durham, N.C.

"Their glucose tolerance tests improved," he said. "Their bodies responded to insulin better than they would have before they got the leucine. It improved their ability to metabolize sugar and fats. It markedly improved their pre-diabetic condition. Their metabolic syndrome also improved."
Mice who were fed a normal diet and given leucine showed no significant effects from taking the dietary supplement.

Kahn said the study sought to see what effect just a small change in their environment -- in this case in just one small component of the diet -- might have on animals with prediabetes or metabolic syndrome.

"We found that adding just this one amino acid to the diet changed the metabolism in a lot of different pathways," he said. "It had effects that improved insulin sensitivity, improved their ability to metabolize sugar and fats and their overall metabolism improved."

Kahn said the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, shows that even small changes in how we interact with our environment can make a big difference. Such changes can be positive or negative. In this case, they were positive.

He said it is too soon to recommend that those with prediabetes or metabolic syndrome add leucine to their diets, but said the next step should be a study in humans.

Leucine is one of 22 amino acids that serve as building blocks of proteins. It was chosen to be tested because in vitro studies had previously shown that it has effects on insulin signaling, Kahn said. Leucine is found in all protein food sources. It is often taken in supplements by those involved in body building in order to increase muscle mass.

In addition to Kahn, others from Joslin listed as co-authors of the study were Yazmin Macotela, Brice Emanuelli, Anneli M. Bang, Daniel O. Espinosa and Jeremie Boucher. Kirk Beebe and Walter Gall of Metabolon were also listed as co-authors.

Understanding the Antiepileptic Benefits of an Atkins-Like Diet

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2011) — Some individuals with epilepsy fail to respond to treatment with conventional drugs but benefit from consuming a ketogenic diet -- a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet similar to the more commonly known Atkins diet. A team of researchers, led by Detlev Boison, at the Legacy Research Institute, Portland, has now identified in mice the molecular mechanism responsible for the antiepileptic effects of the ketogenic diet.

The team found that a ketogenic diet reduces seizures in mice by decreasing expression of the protein Adk, which is responsible for clearing the natural antiepileptic agent adenosine from the brain. The clinical relevance of these data are highlighted by the team's finding that brain tissue from patients with epilepsy that fails to respond to treatment with conventional drugs shows increased levels of Adk.
The team suggests that their data could lead to the development of less-restrictive antiepileptic diets and alternate pharmaceutical approaches to treatment, notions with which Robert Greene, at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, concurs in an accompanying commentary.

The research is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.