Obese children with weight-related diabetes should be given gastric band surgery as young as 15

Experts say it can knock up to 20 years off a child's life expectancy. In addition, 60,000 children under 16 are thought to have weight-related metabolic syndrome - a combination of conditions including high blood pressure and raised cholesterol- which is said to be a precursor to type 2 diabetes.



Losing weight can help control the illness but many children cannot stick to the necessary healthy diet and exercise regimes.
Professor Shield believes gastric banding - in which an inflatable silicone ring is fitted around the top part of the stomach to make it smaller - could be the answer.
'The children we see with type 2 diabetes who really struggle to lose weight with other methods have all the health issues that adult diabetics have,' he said yesterday.

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Bariatric surgery to reduce obesity can completely eliminate all manifestations of diabetes

In a study published in the March 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, investigators analyzed 621 studies from 1990 to April of 2006, which showed that 78.1% of diabetic patients had complete resolution and diabetes was improved or resolved in 86.6% of patients as the result of bariatric surgery.




The primary risk factor for type 2 diabetes is obesity, and 90% of all patients with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese. The dataset included 135,246 patients where 3188 patients reported resolution of the clinical and laboratory manifestations of type 2 diabetes. Nineteen studies with 11,175 patients reported both weight loss and diabetes resolution outcomes separately for the 4070 diabetic patients in those studies. Clinical findings were substantiated by the laboratory parameters of serum insulin, HbA1c, and glucose.

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Reduced-calorie diets helps you lose weight, no matter what proportions of fat, protein or carbohydrate it contains

The study was the work of researchers from the Preventing Overweight Using Novel Dietary Strategies (POUNDS LOST) study, and was based at Harvard University School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisianna to reflect the diverse range of culinary preferences from the two regions. The study was published online in the 26 February issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.

The last few decades have seen an unprecedented surge in different kinds of diet for weight loss, with different emphases on protein, fat and carbohydrate intake, but there are no prolonged studies that compare the relative advantages of such regimens.For this study the researchers randomly assigned 811 overweight adults aged 30 to 70 to one of four diets, each with different calorie targets for fat, protein and carbohydrate, as follows:

- Low-fat, average protein: 20 percent fat, 15 percent protein, 65 percent carbohydrate.
- Low-fat, high protein: 20 percent fat, 25 percent protein, 55 percent carbohydrate.
- High-fat, average protein: 40 percent fat, 15 percent protein, 45 percent carbohydrate.
- High-fat, high-protein: 40 percent fat, 25 percent protein, 35 percent carbohydrate.

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Most commercial weight-loss providers are manipulating vulnerable people with unrealistic and 'fantastical' claims

"Consequently, we regularly see preposterous claims," the journal says, including that vitamin B injections speed up the breakdown of fat — a claim the journal says lacks "published medical evidence" — and "magical" herbal supplements promising to curb appetite, reduce cravings and accelerate metabolism.




Regulations are needed to protect consumers, the Canadian Medical Association Journal says. People have died from medically unsupervised, very low-calorie diets, and over-the-counter supplements containing ephedra.

"Neither public health agencies nor the medical community are doing enough to solve the problem of obesity," the editorial says. "Those suffering with obesity are often desperate for solutions and hence prone to exploitation. It's time we put an end to this nonsense."

Read more on: Canada.com

The OFT warned consumers about the adverts for Slim-Choc

Slim Coc helps you to lose weight? Unfortunately for anyone who spent £37 on a 40-day supply of Slim Choc, the idea is nothing more than fantasy. The product was one of a host of 'miracle cures' marketed to Britons which had no evidence to back up their grandiose claims, according to the Office of Fair Trading. The consumer watchdog said that such schemes affect 200,000 of us a year, at a cost £20million. Some 78 per cent of the victims are female, but a significant number of men are also taken in by 'cures' for impotence and hair loss. OFT Director of Consumer Protection Mike Haley said: 'Miracle health scams target vulnerable people who are desperate to lose weight or find a cure.


'The products are often worthless and can even be dangerous with untested and potentially harmful ingredients.' The OFT yesterday warned consumers about the adverts for Slim-Choc, which were contained in junk mail sent to thousands of homes across Britain.

The manufacturers claimed that eating the 'slimming chocolate' could help users lose 20lb in just 20 days, without exercising or cutting back on food. The hype claimed this was a 'brand new revolutionary cure for the obese and overweight', and it was 'the first and only chocolate that burns off fat and cellulite'. Thousands were conned into paying £37 for a 40-day supply.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

Trial for Weight-Loss device BioEnterics® Intragastric Balloon (BIB) system

"The investigational device could provide a much-anticipated opportunity for Americans ineligible for adjustable gastric banding procedures because they do not have a body mass index of 35 or above," Smith said. "It is a tool that could offer an advantage to obese individuals who have been excluded for years because they don't meet that magic number but who have a desire to lose the weight."

Participants in the study are men and women between 18 and 65 years of age with a body mass index of between 30 and 40 and have at least a two-year history of obesity without success in attempting more conservative weight-reduction alternatives.

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People who eat cereal for two out of their three daily meals could lose more than 4lb in six weeks

To reach the conclusion, the research team asked volunteers to eat only cereal for breakfast and lunch but allowed them to have whatever they wanted for dinner. They found that those who combined different varieties of cereal lost most weight but many of those who stuck to one type also weighed less by the end. The study published by the British Nutrition Foundation found that two thirds of those who ate a single cereal and 78 per cent of those who opted for a combination had lost weight by the end of the period.

While those on a combined diet lost an average of 4.4lb, those who stuck to their favourite brand lost only 1.3lb."The results of this study are very interesting and further evidence of the benefits of breakfast cereal as part of a weight-management programme," the Telegraph quoted Lynne Garton, a nutritionist, as telling the Daily Express."Breakfast cereals are easy to incorporate into the diet and can contain substantial amounts of fibre, iron, folic acid and zinc as well as being low in fat,' the expert added.

Source: NewKerala.com