Drew Carey debuted a strikingly slim figure at a party in Los Angeles last night, picture above right. The photo on the left is from a mere five months ago, when Carey celebrated his 500th episode of ‘The Price is Right.’ This new development is arguably the healthiest that Carey, 52, has ever looked in his 15-plus years on TV. Kind of reminds us of John Goodman’s recent transformation!

Congrats on the great look, Drew. We want to hear your secret!

110diggsdigg In May, the National Enquirer wrote that Carey was using appetite-suppressing injections prescribed by a nutritionist. The Enquirer reported Carey as saying, “I now have no desire to eat…I can hardly even get down the tiny portion of fish I’m supposed to have for dinner.”

“Carey claims to have shed all his weight the old fashioned way, through diet and exercise,” the UK’s Daily Mail reports.

The former ‘Drew Carey Show’ star has hosted ‘The Price Is Right’ since 2007, when he took over for five-decade host Bob Barker. The 86-year-old Barker supposedly took a jab at Carey’s hosting style when grilled by a TMZ cameraman earlier this week, but quickly cleared things up the next day, telling Entertainment Weekly, “He’s a charming man, and kind and gracious. To think that I would say anything derogatory about him is idiocy.”

Oral phentermine Hydrochloride (HCL) is sold for weight loss. It is in the Sympathomimetic family of appetite suppressants (used for the short-term management of exogenous obesity.)

When used in conjunction with diet, exercise, and behavior therapy, phentermine may help you to lose weight while you are learning new ways to eat and to exercise.

Three forms of phentermine are available:

Tablets

Capsules

Resin Capsules

How does Phentermine work?

Phentermine works by stimulating the hypothalamus gland and affecting certain neurotransmitters to decrease appetite.

The hypothalamus is the region of the brain that controls the autonomic nervous system, regulating sleep cycles, body temperature, appetite, etc.

Phentermine should NOT be used as a substitute for proper diet or exercise. For maximum effects, it must be used in conjunction with a reduced-calorie diet and/or exercise.

Any modifications in your diet, activity level, and behavior must be developed and continued long-term in order to continue losing weight and prevent the lost weight from returning.

Read more about Phentermine at:

Thankfully the use of tapeworms as a diet aid is illegal in the US and for good reason. Tapeworm infestation can result in the formation of cysts in the liver, eyes, brain, and spinal cord with potentially lethal consequences.

Tapeworm Diet Basics

Although it is not possible to attempt the Tapeworm diet in most countries, it is being offered at some places in Mexico. When you arrive at the treatment location you are given beef tapeworm cysts that have been identified microscopically. This is vitally important because some cows may host pig tapeworms, which are very dangerous.

The tapeworm interferes with your digestion and absorption of nutrients, which means that you can consume more calories and still lose weight. However the parasite also competes for vitamins and other important nutrients, which may result in a nutritional deficiency.

According to some scientists, tapeworm infestation can result in a loss of one to two pounds per week. Once the target weight loss is reached, an antibiotic is given, which kills the tapeworm so it can be expelled.

Recommended Foods

None.

Sample Diet Plan

None.

Exercise Recommendations

None.

Costs and Expenses

It appears that the treatment is only available in Mexico at the time of this review and the approximate cost is $1500.

Pros of the Tapeworm Diet

• Weight loss is very likely.
• Some scientists believe that tapeworms can also help to alleviate allergies such as hay fever.

Cons of the Tapeworm Diet

• Extremely dangerous, can cause unpleasant side effects and in some cases can be lethal.
• Does not appear to be adequate protection for consumers in regard to regulation and safety analysis.
• Rebound weight gain is most likely once the tapeworm is expelled.
• Tapeworms can cause a swollen stomach which is not physically attractive and goes against the desired result.
• Not available in most countries.
• Treatment is expensive and will also need to include travel expenses.

Conclusions

It goes without saying that the Tapeworm Diet is extremely risky and can cause a wide rage of undesirable side effects including death. In addition to this, dieters will probably regain all the weight that is lost if they continue with the same eating habits after the tapeworm is expelled.

Dieters are advised to stick with proven weight loss methods such as consuming less calories and increasing physical activity, rather than risking their lives with a technique that is harmful and unlikely to yield positive long term results by trying the tapeworm diet.

taken from:

She promised she would come back with her own program, and here it is.

From what I can gather the program includes:

“online weight loss tools customized to fit YOUR needs. Whether it’s planning meals, counting calories, discovering new recipes, locating places to shop for organic groceries or interacting with the Organic Liaison community through blogging and Kirstie Alley’s Phitter”

Phitter is a micro-blogging community built on top of the Twitter toolset.

Dig deeper though, and she is selling a series of supplements (all USDA organic approved). The main product is Rescue me which “replenishes your body with high-quality organic ingredients, including nutrients, natural herbs, fiber and antioxidants…” One month’s supply sells for $62.50. Membership to the program is $10 per month (+ 10 startup fee) – you also need to by the Startup Kit of supplements ($139).

If you can handle it, here is her own video intro to the program. Alley is also doing a reality TV series shortly on A&E – Kirsty Alley’s Big Life.

So here’s to entrepreneurship, and the gravy train called celebrity yo-yo dieting.

Those are the findings of the study “Weight status as a predictor of being bullied in third through sixth grades,” which is available online now and will be published in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics. Julie C. Lumeng, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, is lead author of the study.

Childhood obesity and bullying are both pervasive public health problems. Obesity among children in the United States has risen to epidemic proportions with 17 percent of 6 to 11 year olds estimated to be obese between 2003 and 2006. In addition, parents of obese children rate bullying as their top health concern and past studies have shown that obese children who are bullied experience more depression anxiety and loneliness.

The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between childhood obesity and being bullied in third, fifth, and sixth grades. While studies on bullying and obesity in children have been conducted before, none had controlled for factors such as socioeconomic status, race, social skills and academic achievement.

Further, this study is unique in that it specifically looks at the age range when bullying peaks – ages 6 to 9.

Researchers studied 821 children who were participating in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. These children were recruited at birth in 10 study sites around the country.

Researchers evaluated the relationship between the child’s weight status and the odds of being bullied as reported by the child, mother, and teacher. The study accounted for grade level in school, gender, race, family income-to-needs ratio, racial and socioeconomic composition of the school, and child social skills and academic achievement as reported by mothers and teachers.

Researchers found that obese children had higher odds of being bullied no matter their gender, race, family socioeconomic status, school demographic profile, social skills or academic achievement.

Authors conclude that being obese, by itself, increases the likelihood of being a victim of bullying. Interventions to address bullying in schools are badly needed, Lumeng adds.

“Physicians who care for obese children should consider the role that being bullied is playing in the child’s well-being,” Lumeng says. “Because perceptions of children are connected to broader societal perceptions about body type, it is important to fashion messages aimed at reducing the premium placed on thinness and the negative stereotypes that are associated with being obese or overweight.”

While the study did not look into interventions to address bullying in this population, the hope is that these results could prove useful in doing so, Lumeng says.

Additional authors: Patrick Forrest, B.S., of the University of Michigan; Danielle P. Appugliese, M.P.H., of the Boston University School of Public Health; Niko Kaciroti, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan; Robert Corwyn, Ph.D., of the University of Arkansas in Little Rock; and Robert Bradley, Ph.D., of the Arizona State University.

Funding source paragraph: This work was supported in part by the American Heart Association Mid-west Affiliate Grant-in-Aid 0750206Z to Dr. Lumeng.

Patents/conflict disclosures: None

Journal reference: DOI: 10.1542/peds.2009-0774

Source
University of Michigan Health System

Dr David Heber, Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA Center for Human Nutrition in Los Angeles, and colleagues, presented their findings at the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting that took place from 24 to 28 April in Anaheim, California. An abstract of their study was also published in the The FASEB Journal.

For the study, Heber and colleagues tested the weight-reducing potential of dihydrocapsiate or DCT, a non-burning but structurally similar version of capsaicin, a spicy compound found in hot peppers.

DCT occurs naturally in a non-pungent pepper called CH-19 Sweet and is often used in studies instead of its spicy cousin capsaicin because it has none of the side effects.

Heber and colleagues recruited 51 male and female volunteers and asked them to follow a very low calorie diet based on a liquid meal replacement product for 28 days (800 Cal and 120 g per day).

At the end of the 4 weeks of dieting, the researchers then randomly assigned the volunteers to one of three groups: one took a a high dose pill of DCT (9 mg), another took a low dose pill of DCT (3 mg), and the third group took a placebo pill, three times a day.

The researchers took measures of body weight, body fat and how quickly the participants burned energy, at the start of the study, and at the end, after eating a single high protein test meal (400 Cal/60 g protein) of the same product they had been using in their diet.

Complete data was available for 33 of the subjects at the end of the study.

The results showed that for several hours after consuming the test meal, the group on the high dose of DCT (13 subjects) burned significantly more energy, at almost twice the rate of the placebo group (9 subjects).

They also showed that in both the DCT groups (24 subjects), fat oxidation increased significantly, which results in more fat being used for energy.

The researchers concluded that after following a low calorie diet, people may benefit from using DCT to “provide metabolic enhancement to weight management efforts”.

In other words, although this is a small study, and the results are based on one analysis after a single test meal, which may not be borne out in a larger study with repeated tests, the findings suggest DCT, like its cousin capsaicin, may cause the body to burn energy faster, which could boost metabolism.

Good news, perhaps, for people who like their chili peppers.

“Effects of dihydrocapsiate on diet-induced thermogenesis following 4 weeks of very low calorie dieting.”
T.Y. Amy Lee, Alona Zerlin, Gail Thames, Zhaoping Li, and David Heber.
The FASEB Journal, MeetingAbstracts, 24: 343.7, accessed online 29 April 2010.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD

In a study designed to test the weight-loss potential of this DCT containing, non-spicy cousin of hot peppers, researchers at the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition set out to document its ability to increase heat production in human subjects consuming a weight-loss diet. Under the direction of David Heber (Professor of Medicine and Public Health), they recruited 34 men and women who were willing to consume a very low-calorie liquid meal replacement product for 28 days. The researchers then randomized the subjects to take either placebo pills or supplements containing the non-burning DCT pepper analog. Two dosage levels of DCT were tested. At the beginning and end of the study, body weight and body fat were assessed, and the researchers determined energy expenditure (heat production) in each subject after he or she consumed one serving of the test meal. On Tuesday April 27, Heber and his research team will present their results at the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting in Anaheim, CA. This presentation is part of the scientific program of the American Society for Nutrition, home to the world’s leading nutrition researchers.

Their data provided convincing evidence that, at least for several hours after the test meal was consumed, energy expenditure was significantly increased in the group consuming the highest amount of DCT. In fact, it was almost double that of the placebo group. This suggests that eating this pepper-derived substance that doesn’t burn can have the same potential benefit as hot peppers at least in part by increasing food-induced heat production. They were also able to show that DCT significantly increased fat oxidation, pushing the body to use more fat as fuel. This may help people lose weight when they consume a low-calorie diet by increasing metabolism.

Note, however, that a limitation to this study was that the researchers only tested the effect of DCT on the thermic response to a single meal. Heber and colleagues also point out that that there might be a different effect in lean vs. obese subjects. But to their credit, this was the first study ever conducted to examine the potential health benefits of DCT consumed together with a very low calorie diet. The bottom line: don’t be afraid to pile on the peppers.

Dr. David Heber, Dr. Amy Lee, Alona Zerlin, Gail Thames, and Dr. Zhaoping Li are all researchers at UCLA’s Center for Human Nutrition in Los Angeles, CA and were coauthors on this paper.

Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)

These findings were presented at this week’s Experimental Biology conference in Anaheim, Calif. They showed that people who ate organic cookies labeled as “organic” believed that their snack contained 40% fewer calories than the same cookies that had no label, according to Jenny Wan-Chen Lee, a graduate student with the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

“An organic label gives a food a ‘health halo,’ said coauthor, Brian Wansink, Cornell professor and author of the book, Marketing Nutrition. It’s the same basic reason people tend to overeat any snack food that’s labeled as healthy or low fat. They underestimate the calories and over-reward themselves by eating more.”

The study even identified two personality types most likely to make these low estimates – people who claim to “usually buy organic foods,” and those who typically read labels for nutritional information.

What if you don’t want to overeat an organic food?

“Take your best guess at its calorie count. Then double it. You’ll end up being more accurate, and you’ll probably eat a lot less,” explained Wansink.

Source:
Tom Rushmer
Cornell Food & Brand Lab

You can read about the investigation Drs Jo Barton and Professor Jules Pretty from the University of Essex conducted into how a walk a day might keep the doctor away, in Environmental Science and Technology, where it appeared online on 25 March and will appear in print later this month.

Pretty, who is Professor of Environment and Society at Essex, told the media that:

“For the first time in the scientific literature, we have been able to show dose-response relationships for the positive effects of nature on human mental health.”

Barton, a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at Essex, said encouraging people to take a walk a day would help keep the doctor away and save the country money.

“There is a large potential benefit to individuals, society and to the costs of the health service if all groups of people were to ’self -medicate’ more with green exercise,” she added.

Barton and Pretty had alread established in earlier studies that links existed between green exercise, which they defined as activity in the presence of nature, and long term health benefits, but this meta-analytical study (a study that pools and re-analyzes results from other studies as if they came from one large one) is the first to measure what the best exposure “dose” might be.

For their research they pooled data covering 1,252 participants of varying ages, gender, and mental health status, drawn from 10 UK studies covering outdoor activities like gardening, walking, cycling, boating, fishing, horse riding and farming that showed green exercise was linked to improved mental and physical health.

In their calculations they looked at the links between two types of dose response: intensity and duration of activity, and two types of mental health indicators: scores on mood and self-esteem.

The biggest effect was seen in just 5 minutes of activity:

“The overall effect size for improved self-esteem was d = 0.46 (CI 0.34-0.59, p < 0.00001) and for mood d = 0.54 (CI 0.38-0.69, p < 0.00001).”

“Dose responses for both intensity and duration showed large benefits from short engagements in green exercise, and then diminishing but still positive returns,” they wrote.

It appears the effect was even greater in the presence of water, such as a lake, stream or pond, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the most beneficial environment is a blue and green one.

When they looked at age, the authors found the greatest improvement in self-esteem was in the youngest participants, and diminished with age, while for mood the smallest change was in the young and old.

The biggest change in self-esteem occurred in the mentally ill, and while both men and women showed similar boosts in self-esteem after green exercise, men showed a difference for mood.

Barton and Pretty concluded that:

“This study confirms that the environment provides an important health service.”

They recommended that green exercise should be considered for therapy (green care), planning authorities give more thought to creation and design of green space, and educators should give children more opportunity to learn outdoors.

Pretty said that we often make recommendations like these to public policymakers but they rarely adopt them. To make a significant impact in whole populations, the shift needs to be in areas as diverse as urban design, transport, social care, parenting and what we expect from our doctors, he said.

The authors said the UK population has a “natural health service” that complements the National Health Service and is there for everyone.

“What is the Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise for Improving Mental Health? A Multi-Study Analysis.”
Jo Barton and Jules Pretty.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Published online ahead of print 25 March 2010.
DOI: 10.1021/es903183r

Source: University of Essex.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD

They focus on choosing healthier foods and exercising more, but they never answer a key question: how can people who have eaten to cope with emotions change their eating habits, when they haven’t learned other ways of coping with emotions?

Researchers at Temple’s Center for Obesity Research are trying to figure out the answer as part of a new, NIH-funded weight loss study. The new treatment incorporates skills that directly address the emotional eating, and essentially adds those skills to a state-of-the art behavioral weight loss treatment.

“The problem that we’re trying to address is that the success rates for long-term weight loss are not as good as we would like them to be,” said Edie Goldbacher, a postdoctoral fellow at CORE. “Emotional eating may be one reason why people don’t do as well in behavioral weight loss groups, because these groups don’t address emotional eating or any of its contributing factors.”

The study has already had one wave of participants come through, and many participants have seen some success in the short term, but have also learned the skills to help them achieve long term success.

Janet Williams, part of that first cohort, said she lost about 17 pounds over 22 weeks, and still uses some of the techniques she learned in the study to help maintain her weight, which has not fluctuated.

“The program doesn’t just help you identify when you eat,” said Williams. “It helps you recognize triggers that make you eat, to help you break that cycle of reaching for food every time you feel bored, or frustrated, or sad.”

Williams said that the program teaches various techniques to help break that cycle, such as the “conveyor belt,” in which participants, when overcome with a specific emotion, can recognize it and take a step back, before reaching for chips or cookies, and put those feelings on their mental “conveyor belt” and watch them go away.

“I still use the skills I learned in the study,” she said. “I’ve learned to say, ‘I will not allow this emotional episode to control my eating habits.’”

Source:
Temple University