Forget dieting. Shedding a few pounds could be as easy as having a lie-in, turning down the lights and getting vaccinated
THE holidays are a time of excess. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. Or perhaps not. Unfortunately, we don't all have the self-discipline and determination it takes to cut back on cake and hit the gym. But fear not. There could be other ways to shift the fat and stay trim.
Just to get this straight, if you overeat and under-exercise you will gain weight. However, growing evidence suggests that other factors also contribute to excess adiposity. Last year, David Allison at the University of Alabama at Birmingham highlighted this when he discovered that humans are not alone in piling on the pounds. He looked at wild animals, lab animals, even animals kept on the same highly controlled diets for decades, and found that all were becoming heavier (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 278, p 1626). Allison concludes that whatever factors are fattening up the animals that live around us might also help explain the human obesity epidemic.
That being the case, identifying these alternative factors should give us new ways to fight the bulge. The good news is that researchers worldwide are beginning to do just that. It is not yet known how much each factor contributes to obesity, but we can nevertheless suggest ways of avoiding them - and some are far less painful than dieting or pounding the tarmac.
Get vaccinated
If you catch a cold this holiday season you may have to stock up on new clothes as well as tissues. That's because at least one common cold virus has been linked to obesity. Nikhil Dhurandhar of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana discovered that adenovirus-36 (Ad-36) boosts both the number of fat cells in the body and the amount of fat inside these cells. He also found that obese people are nearly three times as likely as those of healthy weight to test positive for Ad-36 antibodies, indicating current or past infection (Obesity, vol 14, p 1905). Another study reported that children with Ad-36 antibodies weighed an average of 23 kilograms more than children without them (Pediatrics, vol 126, p 721).
The "fat effect" of Ad-36 might persist for several years in humans, although nobody knows for sure. Meanwhile, another 10 microbes have been reported to make animals fatter. While it sounds alarming, this could actually be good news in the fight against flab. "If indeed some infections contribute to obesity in people, we could have a potentially very simple and effective prevention strategy - vaccination," says Dhurandhar.
Chill!
While extreme stress tends to make people lose weight, the everyday kind can have the opposite effect. So, for the sake of your waistline, take a deep breath, and don't let the festive family bickering get to you.
Failing that, try giving the new-year diet a miss. One recent study found that moderate calorie restriction made mice much more sensitive to stress, and this effect persisted once the diet was over. The mice went on to choose more high-fat food than those that had never had their food restricted (Journal of Neuroscience, vol 30, p 16399).
Brain imaging studies by Rajita Sinha, director of the Yale Stress Center at Yale University showed that stress increases activity in the ventral striatum, a region associated with reward and habits (Neuropsychopharmacology, vol 36, p 627). "So it increases craving for high-calorie foods in those who have a habit of consuming them," she says. Instead of counting calories, she recommends mindfulness, stress reduction and meditation techniques to cultivate an awareness of how your thoughts and behaviours can undermine your health. "They can help with taking control over the urges and stress-related eating of high-calorie food." Everybody say "om".
Chill some more
Over the past three decades, homes in the US and UK have become warmer. Fiona Johnson at University College London and colleagues think this may be making us fatter (Obesity Reviews, vol 12, p 543). Simona Bo of the University of Turin, Italy, agrees. In a study of more than 1500 middle-aged adults, her team found that those whose home temperatures ranked in the top third were about twice as likely to become obese over the six-year period of the research (International Journal of Obesity, vol 35, p 1442).
Shivering obviously burns energy, but you don't need to be freezing for your body to chew through extra calories. Most fat on our bodies is a type called white fat. But when temperatures get down to about 18 ?C, brown fat - which is abundant in babies and which adults mostly carry around their necks - starts burning energy to warm you up. Unfortunately, if you are not regularly exposed to cold, your brown fat deposits shrink and so too does your capacity to burn off that extra holiday treat. Any change will help, though, says Johnson. You burn steadily less energy as environmental temperatures rise from 15 ?C to 28 ?C. "So turning down the thermostat by any amount is likely to have some small effect," she says. Do try this at home.
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