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"Brown" Fat Key To Weight Loss?

Aug. 21, 2008

(WebMD)New discoveries surrounding a type of "good" fat that promotes the burning of calories could one day lead to better treatments for obesity, researchers say.

Unlike more recognizable white fat, which stores surplus energy, brown fat burns energy to generate heat.

Newborn babies have brown fat -- presumably to help regulate their body temperature -- but adults are believed to have little.

Researchers have studied brown fat for several decades in the hope that unlocking the mysteries of the unique fat could result in treatments to speed up metabolism and promote weight loss .

Two new studies to be published tomorrow in Nature may bring them closer to that goal.

"I really do believe that promoting brown fat growth is a plausible approach to weight control," researcher Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, of Harvard University's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, tells WebMD. "To me it is attractive because of its simplicity. If more of our fat were brown fat, the mouse studies suggest that we would be leaner and better able to resist obesity."


Brown Fat Derived From Muscle

In earlier research, Spiegelman and colleagues identified what he calls a "master switch" in mice, which promotes the production of brown fat.

In their latest animal studies, the researchers showed that the molecular switch, known as PRDM16, regulates the creation of brown fat from immature cells and that knocking out PRDM16 turned them into muscle cells.

"We showed that brown fat and white fat have completely different origins," he says. "Brown fat is derived from muscle. That was a huge surprise."

In the second study, researchers from Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center described a different trigger for brown fat.

Yu-Hua Tseng, PhD, and colleagues identified the protein BMP-7, which is known for promoting bone growth, as a growth factor for brown fat.

In mouse studies, the researchers found that mice genetically altered to have no BMP-7 protein had less brown fat as they developed than non-altered mice.

And developing mice treated with BMP-7 ended up with more brown fat than untreated mice and had greater energy expenditures.

Tseng tells WebMD that her lab is now studying the impact of long-term BMP-7 induction on body composition of mice.

"The hope is that this research will lead to better ways to treat obesity, especially for people who are overweight because of their genes," Tseng says. "Right now, there are not many good options for these people."


Brown Fat: Unanswered Questions

In an editorial accompanying the two studies, obesity researcher Barbara Cannon, PhD, of Stockholm University, noted that while the two studies answer some questions about the production of brown fat, they raise others about the role of BMP-7 and PRDM16 in obesity and weight control.

"Answers to these questions would take us a step closer to the ultimate goal of promoting the brown fat lineage as a potential way of counteracting obesity."

Read the rest of the article:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/20/health/webmd/printable4368185.shtml

Speed diet: Women using ADD drugs to get thin

Adderall spurs rapid weight loss, but it can lead to dangerous addiction By Judith Newman Allure updated 9:37 a.m. ET, Wed., Aug. 20, 2008

On the patio of the Sunset Tower Hotel overlooking the Hollywood Hills, on the kind of sun-blinded afternoon Raymond Chandler made famous, Amanda F.* and I are eating. Well, one of us is eating. And it's not Amanda. "I took my Adderall about an hour before I got here," says the television producer as she picks at her crab salad. "If I hadn't taken it, I would have inhaled the table."

Amanda has been diagnosed with adult Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD or ADHD), for which Adderall, an amphetamine that paradoxically allows ADD patients to slow down and concentrate, is an accepted treatment. But for her there's a notable and seductive side effect: For a body that has fluctuated between a size 14 and a size 2, Adderall — along with yoga and chain-smoking — has helped her maintain a size 6.

"I can see you have a healthy attitude toward food," Amanda says, stopping me as my fork hovers midway between plate and mouth. My pants feel curiously tight. "But let me ask you this: If you could take a drug that has almost no noticeable side effects and lose all the weight you want, wouldn't you do it? That's what Adderall's like for me. And for a lot of women. It's a godsend."

And apparently God, or at least the local pharmacy, is sending it out to the weight-obsessed in the entertainment industry, where the difference between a size 4 and a size 8 may mean a difference between working and not.

"When a high-profile celeb suddenly drops a lot of weight, the rumors start that she's on A," notes Kym Douglas, who co-wrote “The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets" (Plume). "It isn't a secret among people like the top stylists and makeup artists who work with celebrities." Indeed, several wispy young starlets have been rumored to have prescriptions for the drug.

Abusing Adderall
Since 2002, the number of prescriptions for all amphetamine-based drugs used to treat ADD — including Concerta and Strattera — have skyrocketed. Sales for Adderall XR (extended release) have more than doubled in the past five years, from 4.2 million in 2002 to 9.5 million in 2007, according to IMS Health, a health-care information company. And online, Adderall ranks right up there with Viagra in most-hawked pharmaceuticals on the Internet; indeed, type in the words "Adderall abuse" and you're likely to be directed to a site that sells the stuff.

Just why Adderall helps people with ADD is a little unclear. But scientists believe that sufferers have some imbalance of three chemicals in the brain dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin — and that Adderall helps by inhibiting the reuptake of these chemicals so they remain in the synapses longer, says Paul Thompson, professor of neurology and director of a neuroimaging lab at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. For the most part, Adderall is used exactly the way it is prescribed — to increase concentration among those with ADD. But there is a tempting yet dangerous side effect to all stimulants: They stimulate the dopamine — or pleasure — center of the brain, which causes a feeling of euphoria and a loss of appetite. So it's no great surprise that the young and beautiful, many of whom have grown up bumming their friends' Adderall to increase their mental edge at exam time, do not necessarily want to give it up when studying is no longer the issue.

Read the rest of the article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26076014

Five Financial Costs of American Obesity

We know that being overweight isn't good for our health, but carrying extra weight costs more, too.

Tina Peng Newsweek

Aug15, 2008|Updated: 1:03 p.m. ET Aug15, 2008

Last month, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health came out with another report, in what has been a parade of dire warnings about obesity in the United States. In a study published in the July issue of Obesity, they concluded that unless our eating habits or exercise habits change, 86 percent of the American population will be overweight or obese by 2030. More than a third of American adults—over 72 million people—were obese in 2005 and 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The obese are more susceptible to an array of health problems, such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Widespread obesity also means that today's children may even have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

But poor health isn't the only way Americans pay for all that extra weight, there's also a hefty financial price attached. Here are the top five costs associated with obesity:

1. Lower wages: Stanford University researchers found that obese men and women earn, on average, $3.41 per hour less than their peers. Over the course of a year, that means $7,093 in lost income. The income gap is smaller when obese workers are young, but it widens over time. The difference may be partly attributable to healthcare costs: Employers tend to pay obese workers less when they're footing the bill for their insurance, researchers said, speculating that it could be an unconscious reaction on the part of the employer to having to pay higher premiums for a more obese workforce.

2. Fewer work hours: On average, obese workers tend to lose a week of work a year due to ailments related to their weight, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. A firm of 1,000 employees loses $285,000 a year due to obese—not overweight—employees, about 30 percent of which is attributable to increased absenteeism, according to Eric A. Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman's "The Fattening of America."

3. Higher medical costs: Overweight males incur medical costs that are $170 more annually than their leaner co-workers, while overweight females incur costs $495 higher than their counterparts, Finkelstein and Zuckerman write. They also note that hospitals have to pay more to treat the obese—oversized wheelchairs can cost about $2,500, eight times the cost of an ordinary wheelchair, and operating tables that are strong enough to support the severely obese can top $30,000.

Read the rest of the article:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/153309