US scientists encouraged 20 obese people to eat extra fast food for several months and found that about a quarter stayed in good health, despite the additional weight they gained.
The study in Friday’s edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation was led by a team of scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri.
Subjects were encouraged to eat 1,000 extra calories per day, mainly by frequenting fast food restaurants, with the goal of adding 6 percent of their body weight.
“This was not easy to do. It is just as difficult to get people to gain weight as it is to get them to lose weight,” head author and assistant professor of medicine Elisa Fabbrini said.
Those not suffering from ailments typically associated with obesity at the outset of the study — such as insulin resistance, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and excess liver fat — did not have these problems even after adding about seven kilograms to their already overweight frames, the study found.
The results mirror what scientists have seen in the general population, which is that about a quarter of obese people do not appear to suffer from metabolic complications that can lead to heart attack, diabetes and stroke.
However, those who did suffer from metabolic problems before the study grew even worse when they put on extra weight.
All the research subjects were helped by dieticians to lose the weight they gained for the study, which was featured on HBO’s documentary Weight of the Nation while the research was under way.
Study authors said they now understand better how to distinguish obese people who will be more prone to ill health from those who may be more protected.
For instance, those with abnormal metabolisms accumulated fat in their livers, while the healthier people did not, even when they gained more weight.
“Another difference involved gene function in fat tissue,” the university said in a statement.
The study found that overweight people with normal metabolisms had more fat-regulating genes.
“The activity of those genes increased even more when the metabolically normal people gained weight. That wasn’t true for people with abnormal metabolism,” the study found.
Since obesity is known to contribute to dozens of health problems, more research is needed to figure out why some are particularly prone to problems from obesity.
“Could it be genetics, specific dietary intake, physical lifestyle, emotional health or even the microbes that live in the gut?” queried senior investigator Samuel Klein, director of Washington University’s Center for Human Nutrition.
“We need more studies to try to understand why obesity causes specific diseases in some people, but not in others,” Klein said.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS