So is the solution as simple as not hanging out with big people, a solution that, presumably, would result in fewer and fewer big people to hang out with and, eventually, no big people to hang with?

No, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham obesity researcher David B. Allison. In another study, this one appearing in the Nov. 24 British journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B,” Allison says it’s not even as simple as moving more or eating less. In fact, he claims, why we keep growing is a complex mystery.

Allison’s fascination with the obesity epidemic was piqued after checking out the marmoset population at the Wisconsin Non-Human Primate Center. He noticed that the entire population showed “pronounced weight gain” over time, yet after checking with staff at the center there was no obvious reason why. He began looking at other populations of mammals that lived with or around humans, from monkeys and chimps in research labs to feral cats in Baltimore. He wound up studying 24 sets of animals in all — and in all 24 sets the animals gained weight.

“The consistency of these findings among animals living in different environments, including some where diet is highly controlled and has been constant for decades, suggests the intriguing possibility that increasing body weight may involve some unidentified or poorly understood factors,” Allison told Science Daily.

Allison and Yann Klimentidis, Ph.D., a post-doctoral trainee in the School of Public Health and co-author of the study are investigating some of those “unidentified or poorly understood factors.” Among their initial suppositions, expressed to Science Daily:

Light. “Studies have shown that subtle changes in the amount of time spent in light or dark environments changes eating habits. Allison wonders if increased light pollution in our industrial society may play a role.”
Viruses. Infection with adenovirus-36 is associated with obesity, and the presence of antibodies to AD36 correlates to obesity in humans. Could AD36 or other infectious agents be contributing to obesity in populations?”
Epigenetics. “Genetic modifications brought about by any number of environmental cues such as stress, resource availability, release from predation or climate change.”

Again, Allison says the reasons behind our growing waistline are likely numerous and complex: don’t expect a silver bullet to emerge. Upshot for you: Keep eating well, keep moving.

Photo: What’s making this marmoset fat?

The post The mystery of fat appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Hot workouts, cool results: You know this blazing hot, record-setting summer we just endured? The one when every workout seemed like it was taking place in an equatorial rain forest under a sunlamp? If you gutted out your summer workouts, you should be an animal in fall’s cooler weather.

According to a University of Oregon study published in the October issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, athletes who train in hot weather benefit from the ergogenic benefits of their hot workouts and perform better. Researchers tested 12 top cyclists — 10 guys, two gals — before and after a 10-day heat acclimation program. They also tested eight athletes who trained under cool conditions. After their respective training sessions, the hot athletes performed 7 percent better.

“In terms of competitive cycling, 7 percent is a really big increase and could mean that cyclists could use this approach to improve their performance in cooler weather conditions.” Specifically, hot workouts improve the body’s ability to control its temperature, improve sweating, and increase blood flow.

Read more here.

Train your heart, for the long run: Thinking of blowing off that marathon training run this afternoon because of the rain? Think again, if you know what’s good for your heart.

Researchers with the Heart and Stroke Foundation used magnetic resonance imaging — MRIs — to determine that the hearts of runners who trained less for marathons took a bigger hit than the hearts of runners who didn’t let a little rain get in their way. Running a marathon is hard on the heart and occasionally one of its 17 segments get damaged. But because the heart is a team player, the other 16 segments pitch in to take up the slack. As a result, performance isn’t greatly affected and the runner may have no idea there’s a problem. Thus, an undertrained, over-stressed heart may appear healthy even when it’s not.

How to determine if your heart is up to the task? MRIs for all aren’t practical, in part because they’re dang expensive. Instead, the HSF folks suggest taking a VO2 max test, which, according to Science Daily, “is the best test to provide an accurate measure of a safe maximum heart rate … for runners.”

Read more here.

Make your next marathon a calculated run: Finally, because this last item involves extensive math, we’ll keep it short. Basically, an MD/PhD student/runner in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences (those credentials alone should give you get a sense of the math involved) has come up with a mathematical model to help marathoners figure out exactly how much fuel they’ll need to go 26.2 miles and at what exact pace they should run.

You and your calculator can read more about it here.

Photo: If you didn’t clown around with your training runs over the hot summer, you should perform well this fall.

The post Your next race: train hot, train consistently, take a calculator appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Read more here.

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Another reason not to obsess over your Body Mass Index, that sometimes misleading indicator of one’s health:  According to a long-term study by two Australian institutions, the Menzies Research Institute and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the circumference of a child’s waist is a better indicator than BMI of whether he or she will have cardiovascular issues down the line. In 1985, 2,188 Australian kids ages 7 to 15 had their waists measured. Twenty years later, the kids with a high waist circumference (in the top 25 percentile for their age and sex) were five to six times more likely to develop metabolic syndrome — various key cardiovascular risk factors — than kids in the bottom 25 percentile.

Read more here.

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Office jobs have become less physically demanding over the past 30 or so years and that’s why we’re getting fatter. That’s the conclusion of a study out of the Universite de Montreal which examined various Statistics Canada databases trying to figure out why we keep getting bigger. Quoted in the online Science Daily, lead author Carl-Etienne Juneau said: “People eat better and exercise more today than they did in the 1970s” — these are Canadians, remember — “yet obesity rates continue to rise. My professional hypothesis is that our professional life is linked to this seemingly contradictory phenomenon.” More evidence, perhaps, for Instant Recess?

Read more here.

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Finally, clinching your muscles is not only good for you isometrically, it can help you with everything from just saying no to a decadent desert to drinking an unsavory but healthy tonic to resisting pain. This from a study in the Journal of Consumer Research by  National University of Singapore and the University of Chicago. According to Medical News Today, researchers “put study participants through a range of self-control dilemmas that involved accepting immediate pain for long-term gain.” For instance, drinking a healthy but nasty-tasting vinegar drink and being tempted with a tasty but calorie-rich desert. Participants were then instructed to clench their muscles — any muscles. The clenchers  managed to down the elixir, pass on the desert — with one caveat: They had to want the benefits of the healthy drink, and they had to want to avoid the excess calories.

Say the authors: “The mind and body are so closely tied together, merely clenching muscles can also activate willpower.”

Read more here.

The post Another reason to walk, another to downplay BMI appeared first on GetGoing NC!.