Belly Fat Linked to Stroke Risk

Belly Fat Linked to Stroke Risk

Study Says Wide Waistlines Increase Risk of Strokes

By Kelley Colihan
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Elizabeth Klodas, MD, FACC

Aug. 14, 2008 -- We know that being overweight or obese can contribute to heart disease and heart attacks, but does extra weight around your belly increase your risk of stroke?

A new study says that may be the case.

Led by Yaroslav Winter, MD, researchers from the University of Heidelberg looked at whether people who were obese or overweight had a greater stroke risk than those who were normal weight. Researchers zoned in specifically on expanding waistlines.

There were 1,137 German adults in the study; 379 of those were stroke patients, and 758 comprised a control group matched for age, gender, and place of residence. The stroke group included 141 women and 238 men, with an average age of 67.

Of the stroke group, 301 had suffered a full-blown stroke, 37 had bleeding in the brain, and 41 experienced what is often called a "mini-stroke" or transient ischemic attack (TIA). A TIA occurs when blood flow to the brain is temporarily blocked and then is spontaneously restored. It's often a precursor to a full stroke and is considered a warning sign.

Obesity was measured using some of the following parameters:

• Waist circumference (measured at the level of the belly button).
• Body mass index (or BMI, defined as body weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared). A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.

Waist-hip ratio (or WHR, defined as waist circumference divided by hip circumference). An abnormal WHR for women is defined as anything greater than or equal to 0.85. For men, an abnormal WHR is anything greater than or equal to 1.0.

Belly Fat and Stroke Risk

Obesity was more common in individuals who had suffered a stroke or TIA, affecting 30% of this group. The BMI, however, was not independently associated with an increased risk of stroke.

The risk association for waist measurements was far more powerful. People with bigger waist circumferences (greater than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women) had four times the stroke risk when compared with people with typical waistlines. Participants with the highest WHR had nearly eight times the risk of stroke when compared to people with the lowest ratios. These striking results were noted even after adjusting for other risks, like whether participants were inactive, smoked, or had diabetes.

"While gaining too much weight can present health risks, it's even more dangerous to have the abdominal type of obesity. People should measure their waistline from time to time and avoid the accumulation of abdominal fat," study senior author Tobias Back, MD, at Saxon Hospital Arnsdorf, says in a news release.

Back also calls for doctors to become aware of the waistline connection: "Physicians should measure patients' waistlines and use the waist-to-hip ratio to estimate stroke risk. World Health Organization-defined categories of WHR or waist circumference should be used. Doctors should also consider the whole vascular risk profile to minimize or modify all possible factors contributing to coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral artery disease."

In the news release, Back urges people to do all those things we know contribute to good health, "Physical activity was much more common in the controls than in the stroke and TIA patients."

Back stressed a link between healthy eating and fewer strokes. "A Mediterranean diet containing fish and olive oil can lower your risk of coronary heart disease and possibly also lower stroke risk."

The results are published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

View Article Sources

SOURCES:

Winter, Y. Stroke, January 2009; manuscript received ahead of print.

News release, American Heart Association.

© 2008 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

Runners' High: Joggers Live Longer

August 12, 2008 by Hilary Hylton

That runner's high may translate into a lot of other long-lasting health benefits, a new report from an ongoing study suggests. Researchers have found that regular jogging, or any consistent aerobic exercise, in middle age and late in life may reduce people's risk of disabilities and help them live longer and healthier.

more............

Short-term dieting linked to long-term control of diabetes

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The Oregonian

Short-term dieting linked to long-term control of diabetes.

Short-term dieting success can help people control diabetes for years -- even if they regain all the lost weight, a new study suggests.

Portland-based Kaiser Permanente researchers tracked the weight gain and loss patterns of more than 2,500 patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. While most lost no weight, about 300 managed to shed more than 20 pounds in the months after diagnosis.

Four years later, members of the weight-loss group had significantly better control of their blood pressure and blood sugar than the other study volunteers, even though their weight loss was short-lived, reversing after about 18 months. Nearly all had returned to their starting weight by the end of the study.

The findings suggest that people who develop diabetes have a critical window of opportunity to get the upper hand on the disease.

"It might be that your body remembers a healthy state, that if you can get your weight down to a certain point, your body remembers that," said co-author Gregory Nichols, an investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.

Nichols said the finding matches a pattern in which other early steps to control diabetes have produced long-lasting benefits. For instance, he said, studies have shown that people who achieve rigid blood sugar control soon after diagnosis tend to resist the disease better than people who didn't lower their blood sugar as effectively at the outset.

"I would quickly add, there isn't any bad time to lose weight," Nichols said. It's not clear from the study whether regaining the weight might trigger delayed harmful effects that will show up later. Previous research makes clear that losing weight at any stage, except advanced kidney failure, can reduce the risks of heart disease, blindness, nerve and kidney damage, amputations, and death in type 2 diabetes patients.

-- Joe Rojas-Burke

Breakfast Eggs Increase Weight Loss 65 Percent

Breakfast Eggs Increase Weight Loss 65 Percent

Wednesday, August 6, 2008 9:08 AM Article Font Size

A study published online today in the International Journal of Obesity shows that eating two eggs for breakfast, as part of a reduced-calorie diet, helps overweight adults lose more weight and feel more energetic than those who eat a bagel breakfast of equal calories. This study supports previous research, published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, which showed that people who ate eggs for breakfast felt more satisfied and ate fewer calories at the following meal. "People have a hard time adhering to diets and our research shows that choosing eggs for breakfast can dramatically improve the success of a weight loss plan," said Nikhil V. Dhurandhar, Ph.D., lead researcher and associate professor in the laboratory of infection and obesity at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, a campus of the Louisiana State University system. "Apparently, the increased satiety and energy due to eggs helps people better comply with a reduced-calorie diet." Significant Weight Loss Related to Egg Breakfast Compared to the subjects who ate a bagel breakfast, men and women who consumed two eggs for breakfast as part of a reduced-calorie diet: lost 65 percent more weight exhibited a 61 percent greater reduction in BMI reported higher energy levels than their dieting counterparts who consumed a bagel breakfast more....