Bradley Waggoner, MD

Focusing on Immediate Health Effects May Improve Weight Loss Success

Most weight loss programs try to motivate individuals with warnings of the long-term health consequences of obesity: increased risk for cancer, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and asthma.  New research suggests the immediate health benefits—such as reduced pain—may be the most effective motivator for helping obese individuals shed extra weight and commit to keeping it off.

 

In a pilot research study, University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers found that 21 percent of participants in a local dietary weight loss program reported significantly less pain in the lower extremities and back after losing an average of 10 pounds. Additionally, study participants reported a 20 to 30 percent reduction in overall bodily pain after weight loss.

 

Researchers say their results indicate that even small weight loss can relieve pain and reduce the burden excessive weight puts on the musculoskeletal system.

 

"By focusing on an immediate benefit that can be felt—like pain reduction—instead of the future health impact of obesity, weight loss programs may be able to inspire overweight individuals to lose weight,” says Susan Kotowski, PhD, study collaborator and director of the Gait and Movement Analysis Laboratory in the UC College of Allied Health Sciences.

 

Kotowski and colleague Kermit DAvis, PhD, report their findings in the August 2010 issue of the journal Work.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 44 million Americans are considered clinically obese. Since 1975, the number of obese Americans has risen from 47 percent to 66.3 percent. Previous studies have estimated obesity-attributable medical expenditures in the United States at $75 billion, with half of these costs financed by Medicare or Medicaid.

 

"Obesity has become a national health crisis, but compliance for weight loss programs is notoriously poor. One potential reason for this is that current programs target long-term diseases, with little direct relevance to the person’s current health status,” adds Davis, senior author of the study and director of the Low Back Biomechanics and Workplace Stress Laboratory at the UC College of Medicine’s environmental health department. "Our study results challenge people to rethink the way they structure weight loss programs.”

 

For this pilot study, UC researchers partnered with a Cincinnati-based weight loss clinic to recruit study volunteers. Thirty two women between the ages of 22 and 76 participated in the study and data was collected over the course of a 12-week dietary weight loss regimen.

 

Researchers collected baseline individual weight and musculoskeletal pain data related to nine body regions: neck, shoulders, elbows, hands and wrists, upper back, lower back, hips, knees and lower legs and feet. Participants were then tracked each week to record any weight loss and asked to rate their pain on a scale of zero to 10 every other week.

 

Significant associations were found between weight loss and overall pain reduction, as well as pain reduction in the elbow, hip region and upper and lower back.

 

Researchers say these preliminary results could have ramifications for companies with a high prevalence of overweight workers with musculoskeletal problems—particularly in industries that require manual or repetitive weight-bearing labor.

 

"From an ergonomics perspective, we can only do so much to alter the work environment to remove body stressors,” explains Kotowski. "Excess weight adds additional stress to the musculoskeletal system and that can only be relieved through weight loss.”

 

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Source: University of Cincinnati . http://www.healthnews.uc.edu/news/

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

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Bariatric Surgery in Diabetic Adults Improves Insulin Sensitivity Better than Diet

Gastric bypass surgery improves Type 2 diabetes by other mechanisms in addition to weight loss and does so better than a low-calorie diet despite achieving equal weight loss, a new study finds. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.

“Our study shows that in the short term, weight loss by diet alone does not achieve the same improvements in diabetes as gastric bypass surgery,” said the presenting author, Judith Korner, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York.

Korner and her colleagues found that gastric bypass surgery better improved insulin sensitivity, the body’s ability to successfully clear glucose sugar from the bloodstream into the cells. Insulin sensitivity is impaired in people with Type 2 diabetes, and obesity adds to this problem. The result is a buildup of sugar in the blood.

The study compared the effects on diabetic adults of a low-calorie diet versus Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, the most common gastric bypass procedure. Roux-en-Y gastric bypass decreases the size of the stomach and reroutes the digestive tract to bypass most of the stomach and part of the small intestine. After gastric bypass, many diabetic patients achieve normal blood glucose control or vastly improved control, and some may no longer require diabetes medications.

In the study, seven obese patients with Type 2 diabetes received a daily 800-calorie liquid diet and no surgery, while seven other obese diabetic adults underwent gastric bypass surgery. The study ended when both groups lost the same amount of weight: an average of 8 percent of body weight. However, the surgery-treated patients lost the weight faster: in about 3.5 weeks compared with 8 weeks for the dieters.

Surgical patients were able to discontinue all of their diabetes medications by the study’s end, but the dieters reduced their medication use by 55 percent, Korner reported.

The researchers found significant improvements in the surgery group in measures of insulin sensitivity and function of beta cells, the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Improvements in insulin sensitivity in the low-calorie diet group were not statistically significant and beta cell function improved to a lesser extent.

Korner speculated that hormonal changes may be responsible for the improvements resulting from Roux-en-Y surgery in individuals with Type 2 diabetes.

“It will be important to understand how surgery works to produce these results so that we can develop medical therapies of equivalent efficacy,” she said.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases funded this study.

 

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Source: The Endocrine Society . http://www.endo-society.org

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

Study Finds Obese Women Who Undergo Bariatric Procedures Before Pregnancy Are Three Times Less Likely to Have Gestational Diabetes

Obese women who have bariatric surgical procedures before pregnancy were three times less likely to develop gestational diabetes (GDM) than women who have bariatric operations after delivery, according to new research findings published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The retrospective study also found that delivery after bariatric procedures was associated with reduced odds of cesarean section—an outcome associated with GDM.

Gestational diabetes affects at least seven percent of all pregnancies in the United States, with rates as high as 14 percent among certain populations. Its prevalence is increasing among reproductive-age women, parallel to increasing rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Currently, 33 percent of women over 19 years of age meet the criteria for obesity (body mass index [BMI] > 30 kg/m2) and seven percent for extreme obesity (BMI > 40 kg/m2). Bariatric surgical procedures are the only intervention shown to produce sustained weight reduction in the vast majority of subjects.

“The major finding of our study is that women who had bariatric surgery before they delivered reduced odds of gestational diabetes when compared with women had bariatric surgery after they delivered,” said Anne E. Burke, MD, MPH, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md.

“Despite a growing body of evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of bariatric surgery in reversing obesity-related complications, few candidates for the procedure are referred to a surgeon to discuss their options,” stated Martin Makary, MD, MPH, associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and senior author of the study.

Researchers performed a retrospective study to compare rates of GDM and related outcomes between a group of women who had bariatric operations before pregnancy (n=346) and a group who had bariatric operations after delivery (n=354) between 2002 and 2006. Women who delivered after bariatric procedures had lower incidences of GDM (8 percent vs. 27 percent, odds ratio (OR) 0.23) and cesarean section (28 percent vs. 43 percent, OR 0.53) than those who delivered before bariatric procedures.

Women who delivered after bariatric operations were slightly older (32.5 years vs. 31.1 years, p < 0.001). The median time from surgical procedure to delivery was 19.6 months, which meant that the majority of women did not adhere to the current recommendation to defer pregnancy for two years after bariatric procedures were performed. Deliveries before bariatric operations  occurred at a median time of 16.5 months, meaning that most women waited more than a year after delivery before having bariatric procedures. The majority of women in each group had a bypass procedure (75 percent in the prebariatric delivery group and 87 percent in the postbariatric delivery group). Women who had a prebariatric delivery were more likely to have an adjustable banding procedure than women with a postbariatric delivery (9 percent vs. 3 percent).

 

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Source: American College of Surgeons . http://www.facs.org

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

Lifestyle Intervention for Overweight Patients With Diabetes Provides Long-Term Benefits

An intensive lifestyle intervention appears to help individuals with type 2 diabetes lose weight and keep it off, along with improving fitness, control of blood glucose levels and risk factors for cardiovascular disease, according to a report in the September 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Improving blood glucose control and cardiovascular risk factors in patients with type 2 diabetes is critical in preventing long-term complications of the disease, according to background information in the article. Emphasis has been placed on screening and pharmacologic management of these parameters. "Lifestyle-based weight loss interventions are also recommended to improve glycemic control and risk factors, but the evidence supporting the efficacy of lifestyle approaches is limited to short-term studies of typically less than one year," the authors write.

The Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) Research Group conducted a multicenter randomized clinical trial comparing the effects of an intensive lifestyle intervention to diabetes support and education among 5,145 overweight or obese individuals (average age 58.7) with type 2 diabetes. Of these, 2,570 were assigned to the lifestyle intervention, a combination of diet modification and physical activity designed to induce a 7 percent weight loss in the first year and maintain it in subsequent years. Participants were seen and contacted by phone at least monthly for all four years. The 2,575 individuals assigned to the diabetes support and education group were invited to three group sessions each year focusing on diet, physical activity and social support.

On average, across the four-year period, individuals in the lifestyle intervention group lost a significantly larger percentage of their weight than did those in the diabetes support group (6.2 percent vs. 0.9 percent). They also experienced greater improvements in fitness, hemoglobin A1c level (a measure of blood glucose), blood pressure and levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or "good" cholesterol). Individuals in the diabetes support group, on the other hand, experienced greater reductions in low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or "bad") cholesterol, owing to greater use of cholesterol-lowering medications in this group.

At the end of four years, the lifestyle intervention group maintained greater improvements in weight, fitness, hemoglobin A1c levels, systolic (top number) blood pressure and HDL levels. "Although the differences between the two groups were greatest initially and decreased over time for several measures, the differences between the groups averaged across the four years were substantial and indicate that the intensive lifestyle intervention group spent a considerable time at lower cardiovascular disease risk," the authors write.

"The critical question is whether the differences between groups in risk factors will translate into differences in the development of cardiovascular disease," they continue. "These results will not be available for several additional years. However, effects of the magnitude that we observed for fitness, HDL-C and hemoglobin A1c levels and blood pressure have been associated with decreased cardiovascular events and mortality in previous medication trials and observational studies. Moreover, there may be long-term beneficial effects from the four-year period in which intensive lifestyle intervention participants have been exposed to lower cardiovascular disease risk factors, as seen in other clinical trials."

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Source: Reprinted from materials provided by JAMA and Archives Journals. http://pubs.ama-assn.org/media/

Journal Reference: Arch Intern Med. 2010;170[17]:1566-1575l. 

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

GSU Professor Finds Link Between Obesity and Federal School Nutrition Programs

With obesity becoming an epidemic among school-aged children in this country, a Georgia State University professor has found a link between overweight children and federal school nutrition programs.

Research reveals that children who eat lunch as part of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) have an increased likelihood of becoming overweight, according to research co-authored by Rusty Tchernis, associate professor with Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies¹. The findings also show that the School Breakfast Program (SBP) is a “valuable tool in the current battle against childhood obesity,” according to the research.

“Overweight children are more likely to become obese adults,” Tchernis said. “So the only way to reduce obesity is to prevent it from happening in children.”

The study, "School Nutrition Programs and the Incidence of Childhood Obesity,” will be published in the summer edition of The Journal of Human Resources.

The research – co-authored also by Muna Husain and Daniel Millimet, both of Southern Methodist University – was funded with a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through 2011.

For the study, Tchernis and his co-authors analyzed the relationship between the SBP and the NSLP and obesity using data on over 13,500 primary school students. Students were interviewed in kindergarten, first and third grades, and then again in later grades.

Other findings show that those who participate in both federal programs end up less heavy than those who don’t participate in either, or those who only eat lunch as part of NSLP.

The NSLP provides lunch to more than 30 million children every day in approximately 101,000 schools, with 17.5 million students receiving reduced price or free meals, according to the program’s website.

In recent years, some schools have banned soda as well as vending machines containing unhealthy snacks. Many school districts also are considering measures that could impact the government’s program, using “Farm to School” programs.

“Some children don’t know how to peel oranges,” Tchernis said. “It’s surprising how little children know about food.”

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¹Reprinted from materials provided by Georgia State University , via Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

Understanding the Relationship Between Bacteria and Obesity

Research presented last month sheds new light on the role bacteria in the digestive tract may play in obesity. The studies, which were presented at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology¹, paint a picture that may be more complex than originally thought.

"Work currently underway suggests that an interaction between genetic factors and the composition of the bacteria that inhabit the human gut may predispose certain individuals towards obesity. These results potentially provide insight into the mechanisms by which genetics may predispose some people to obesity. They could also help pave the way towards a future in which genetic screening in conjunction with individually tailored treatments could help people at risk for obesity to maintain a healthy weight," says Margaret Zupancic, of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who presented one of the studies.

Zupancic and her colleagues analyzed the gut bacterial communities of lean and obese individuals belonging to the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – a population relatively homogenous in regard to both genetics and lifestyle. Initially they found no correlation between the composition of the gut bacteria and obesity, but when they factored in the genetic makeup of the participants, certain patterns began to emerge.

One pattern was a statistically significant correlation between whether the participant carried a given variant of the FTO gene (a gene associated with obesity) and the presence of certain bacterial groups in the digestive tract.

The researchers also found that in people with certain genetic variations in taste receptor genes, a low level of bacterial diversity in the gut correlated with a higher likelihood of obesity, while a high level of diversity correlated with a lower likelihood of obesity.

"While this work is still at a relatively early stage, results such as these could lead to applications such as probiotic or antibiotic-based treatments for obesity that could be individualized based on a person's unique genetic and gut microbial makeup," says Zupancic.

Another study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center analyzed the gut microbes of women between 40 and 45 years of age. The researchers found a positive correlation between the population of one specific type of bacteria, Bacteroidetes, and body fat percentage in the participants.

Not all research presented at the meeting found differences in bacterial populations in the gut and obesity. One study, focusing specifically on children and childhood obesity, failed to identify any significant differences in the gut microbial communities of obese and normal-weight children.

The researchers subsequently analyzed the ability of the microbes to extract and convert dietary energy. They found higher levels of short-chain fatty acids in the feces of obese children.

"This suggests that although obese and normal-weight children have similar gut microbial communities, the gut microbes in obese children are more efficient at converting dietary substrates into energy," says Amanda Payne of the Institute of Food Health and Nutrition ETH, Zurich, Switzerland.

Short-chain fatty acids are converted into triglycerides and glucose by the liver, a process estimated to provide an additional 10% of dietary energy. The increased production of short-chain fatty acids by gut microbes in obese children could potentially supply more dietary energy, resulting in weight gain.

"While the importance of a balanced diet and regular exercise should not be discounted, our results may help contribute to the development of novel approaches in treating childhood obesity by modulating the composition and activity of the gut microbiota in order to reduce energy extraction from undigested food," says Payne.

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¹Reprinted from materials provided by American Society for Microbiology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

Managing the Emotions Behind Eating

How many times have you, after a particularly hard day, reached for some chocolate or ice cream? It's common for many people, but for those trying to lose weight, it can be detrimental to their long term success, and most weight-loss programs never even address it.

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 Research¹ 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.'"

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¹Temple University. http://www.temple.edu/

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

New Device Helps Monitor Low-Level Physical Activity With a Cell Phone

About two thirds of the American population is overweight or obese, putting them at higher risk for health problems such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. The obesity epidemic in America is the result of poor eating habits, genetics, and a lack of exercise. It's therefore difficult for public health officials to get people to make a conscious effort to control their weight.

The Cell Phone Device That Helps You Exercise
This is why Chinmay Manohar in the Department Endocrinology, Nutrition and Diabetes of the Mayo Clinic is designing a device to help motivate people to be more active. His team has developed a program that helps people monitor their normal day-to-day physical activity using an every day device like a cell phone or mp3 player.

Mr. Manohar is presenting his team's work at the 2010 Experimental Biology meeting in Anaheim, CA (April 24-28). His presentation, entitled "Laboratory evaluation of the accuracy of a triaxial accelerometer embedded into a cell phone platform for measuring physical activity," is based on research performed with Shelly McCrady and James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; and Yuichi Fujiki and Ioannis Pavlidis from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Houston, Houston, TX.

Designing the Right Device
The idea took hold when a study published by Manohar's department showed that under a controlled diet, leaner people tend to spend two and a half more hours per day standing than did heavier people. The results indicated that leaner people were more active in their day-to-day activities even when they weren't exercising. According to Manohar, "If that is the case, why don't we encourage people to get out of their chairs?"

Manohar's group set out to design a device to promote more physical activity. The ideal device would be something that is affordable and commercially available. The team settled on the iPhone® and the iPod Touch® because many people already own these devices and they come with built-in motion sensors. The research group created a program called the Walk n'Play that can be downloaded for free through iTunes® to distribute the technology to a wider population. More and more Smart phones are using motion sensors and making the program compatible between platforms will not be difficult.

Walk n'Play: Designed for Everybody
The current version is fairly basic, according to Manohar. The user inputs their height and weight into the program and throughout the day, their score can be monitored. The program will tell the user if they are winning or losing against the computer. There is no pressure and the game does not ask you to do any specific exercise. But turning physical activity into a game makes people more competitive and more likely to get active.

Manohar says that most off-the-shelf devices tend to be unreliable for measuring the lower speeds detected by the Walk n'Play. This is because most of the devices on the market are used for measuring exercise like jogging or running, not for the day-to-day movement for which the Walk n'Play is designed. The program was tested for the ability to detect changes in movement as little as half a mile per hour. They tested positions from 31 volunteers like sitting, standing and lying down and tested seven speeds on the treadmill to determine how precise the program was. Using the results of these movement tests, Manohar's group developed a gold standard for typical movements used in daily activities.

The iPhone® and the iPod Touch® use motion sensors called accelerometers that detect motion. The program is designed to access the accelerometer in the phone and convert the motion that is detected into activity units as a way to measure the physical activity.

A Motivational Push
Over 10,000 people have already downloaded the Walk n'Play, but Manohar knows it will take more than a basic activity monitor to keep people's interest.

"You have to put an element of fun into the whole thing to encourage people to be more active," Manohar said, "we put people into a gaming mind-set and people unknowingly do exercise and have fun doing it."

The group further modified the program to integrate basic social networking. Fitness and weight-loss in general is easier to do with a buddy. The newer features will allow a person to play against their friends or even compete with people or top performers from other countries or time zones. Users can even post their performance as their Twitter status.

According to Manohar, most people know they need more exercise to maintain a healthy weight, but getting up the motivation for a workout plan can be daunting. Using programs like the Walk n'Play can encourage people to make incremental changes in their daily activities that can add up to better health, like promoting people to take the stairs more often to get in that extra little bit of exercise for the day.

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¹FASEB. http://www.fasebj.org

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

Phosphorous in Sodas and Processed Foods Accelerates Signs of Aging Say Harvard Scientists

Here's another reason to kick the soda habit. New research published online in the FASEB Journal¹ shows that high levels of phosphates may add more "pop" to sodas and processed foods than once thought. That's because researchers found that the high levels of phosphates accelerate signs of aging. High phosphate levels may also increase the prevalence and severity of age-related complications, such as chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular calcification, and can also induce severe muscle and skin atrophy.

"Humans need a healthy diet and keeping the balance of phosphate in the diet may be important for a healthy life and longevity," said M. Shawkat Razzaque, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Medicine, Infection and Immunity at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. "Avoid phosphate toxicity and enjoy a healthy life."

To make this discovery, Razzaque and colleague examined the effects of high phosphate levels in three groups of mice. The first group of mice was missing a gene (klotho), which when absent, causes mice to have toxic levels of phosphate in their bodies. These mice lived 8 to 15 weeks. The second group of mice was missing the klotho gene and a second gene (NaPi2a), which when absent at the same time, substantially lowered the amount of phosphate in their bodies. These mice lived to 20 weeks. The third group of mice was like the second group (missing both the klotho and NaPi2a genes), except they were fed a high-phosphate diet. All of these mice died by 15 weeks, like those in the first group. This suggests that phosphate has toxic effects in mice, and may have a similar effect in other mammals, including humans.

"Soda is the caffeine delivery vehicle of choice for millions of people worldwide, but comes with phosphorous as a passenger" said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal. "This research suggests that our phosphorous balance influences the aging process, so don't tip it."

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¹FASEB Journal. http://www.fasebj.org

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.

Study Shows Exercising Just Got Easier for Busy People

If you’re the type of person who invokes the “not enough time” clause when it comes to exercising, it’s time to find a new excuse. Researchers who have been studying interval training have found that it not only takes less time than what is typically recommended, but the regimen does not have to be “all out” to be effective in helping reduce the risk of such diseases at Type 2 diabetes.

The study appears in the March issue of The Journal of Physiology.

“What we’ve been able to show is that interval training does not have to be ‘all out’ in order to be effective and time-efficient,” says Martin Gibala, professor and chair of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University. “While still a very demanding form of training, the exercise might be more achievable by the general public—not just elite athletes—and it certainly doesn’t require the use of specialized laboratory equipment.”

Since Gibala’s first study on interval training was published five years ago, a growing body of research has zeroed in on this particular style of exercise in which you train hard but for less time.

Previous research by the McMaster group involved 30 seconds of maximal pedaling on a special bike followed by four minutes of recovery, and repeated 4-6 times. The new study involves eight to 12 one-minute bouts of exercise on a standard stationary bicycle at a relatively lower intensity with rest intervals of 75 seconds, for a total of 20-25 minutes per session. The workload was still above most people’s comfort zone —about 95% of maximal heart rate — but only about half of what can be achieved when people sprint at an all-out pace.

“That is the trade-off for the relatively lower intensity,” says Gibala. “There is no free lunch; duration must increase as intensity decreases.”

While the total amount of exercise performed was higher than in Gibala’s previous interval training studies, the overall time commitment was still lower than what is typically recommended by public health agencies.

Subjects used in the study performed six training sessions over 14 days. After the two week training period, the subjects showed the same benefits that Gibala’s team has previously observed after traditional, long-duration endurance training: improved exercise performance and muscular adaptations that are linked to reduced risk of diseases such as Type 2 diabetes.

The study was made possible by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Gibala is currently taking his research a step further by studying the effects of interval training on middle-aged and elderly participants who are non-traditional exercisers.

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¹McMaster University. http://www.mcmaster.ca/opr/html/opr/media/main/NewsReleases/news_releases.html

Medical Advice Disclaimer: The content of this blog entry is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

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If you are considering weight loss surgery, you owe it to yourself to choose a physician who is not only highly skilled, but caring and compassionate as well. Many physicians out there will treat your obesity. Dr. Waggoner will treat you!

To contact us for more information and/or to reserve your seat for the next free seminar, please click here.