CDC survey: South leads nation in obesity

• Story Highlights
• More than 30 percent of adults in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee are obese
• Colorado's ranked lowest, with 19 percent
• Results based on answers in telephone survey of 350,000 adults

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The South tips the scales again as the nation's fattest region, according to a new government survey.

More than 30 percent of adults in each of the states tipped the scales enough to ensure that the South remains the nation's fattest region.

Colorado was the least obese, with about 19 percent fitting that category in a random telephone survey last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 2007 findings are similar to results from the same survey the three previous years. Mississippi has had the highest obesity rate every year since 2004. But Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and Louisiana have also clustered near the top of the list, often so close that the difference between their rates and Mississippi's may not be statistically significant.

Why is the South so heavy? The traditional Southern diet -- high in fat and fried food -- may be part of the answer, said Dr. William Dietz, who heads CDC's nutrition, physical activity and obesity division. iReport.com: How can we fight obesity?

The South also has a large concentration of rural residents and black women -- two groups that tend to have higher obesity rates, he said.

Colorado, meanwhile, is a state with a reputation for exercise. It has plentiful biking and hiking trails, and an elevation that causes the body to labor a bit more, Dietz said.

Obesity is based on the body mass index, a calculation using height and weight. A 5-foot, 9-inch adult who weighs 203 pounds would have a BMI of 30, which is considered the threshold for obesity.

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/07/17/obesity.states.ap/index.html

Battle Of The Bulge: Low Leptin Levels Undermine Successful Weight Loss

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2008) — Individuals who are obese are at increased risk of many diseases, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. As 75%-95% of previously obese individuals regain their lost weight, many researchers are interested in developing treatments to help individuals maintain their weight loss.

A new study, by Michael Rosenbaum and colleagues, at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, has provided new insight into the critical interaction between the hormone leptin and the brain's response to weight loss.

Leptin levels fall as obese individuals lose weight. So, the authors set out to see whether changes in leptin levels altered activity in the regions of the brain known to have a role in regulating food intake.

They observed that activity in these regions of the brain in response to visual food-related cues changed after an obese individual successfully lost weight. However, these changes in brain activity were not observed if the obese individual who had successfully lost weight was treated with leptin. These data are consistent with the idea that the decrease in leptin levels that occurs when an individual loses weight serves to protect the body against the loss of body fat.

Further, both the authors and, in an accompanying commentary, Rexford Ahima, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, suggest that leptin therapy after weight loss might improve weight maintenance by overriding this fat-loss defense.

The Canadian Press

Updated: Wed. Jun. 18 2008 2:47 PM ET

TORONTO — Canadians who are spending lots of their leisure time in front of screens -- especially TV screens -- are more likely to be obese, a new study suggests.

It's been known for awhile that rising screen time, as it's called, is contributing to childhood obesity. But this study, drawing from data in Statistic Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey, is one of the first looking to see if there is a link between screen time and obesity among Canadian adults.

And there appears to be.

Adults who watch more than 21 hours of TV a week were 80 per cent more likely to be obese than people who watched five hours or less television. Men who spent a lot of their leisure time in front of a computer screen were 20 per cent more likely to be obese and women were 30 per cent more likely than people who didn't send much time in front of a computer.

"From this, we would suggest that decreasing television viewing time in particular may be to the advantage of people at risk of overweight or obesity,'' said Mark Tremblay, one of the authors and the director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Institute at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

The study, based on a survey of 42,600 men and women aged 20 to 64, found that in 2007, nearly three out of every 10 Canadian adults reported they watched an average of 15 or more hours of television a week and nearly two in 10 said they watched 21 or more hours a week.

Frequent leisure time computer use was less common, with about 15 per cent of adults reporting they averaged 15 or more hours a week at their computers. Only six per cent reported 21 hours or more a week of leisure computer screen time and nearly a third said they spent none of their leisure time in front of a computer screen.

The survey also asked about time spent reading, to see if sedentary behaviour in general raises the risk of obesity, or if there is something particular about TV and computer screen time that increases the likelihood a person will be obese.

Interestingly, rates of obesity were not higher among people who spent a lot of their leisure time reading than among infrequent or non-readers.

The researchers can't say why they saw the pattern they did. Because of the way the study was designed, it can't answer questions about cause and effect. It can only point out that there are associations between increased screen time and weight.

But obesity experts have a number of theories, including the overt prompting one gets to eat in commercials and the subliminal prompting of watching characters eating or drinking.

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http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080618/tv_obesity_080618/20080618/?hub=Canada