New Way to Lose Fat

Feb 05, 2010 No Comments »

We all know that when we consume more than we burn, we gain weight. The key lies in the fact that we have to burn that extra fat to lose weight. Researchers have found a new method to trick the body into consuming more energy. This can be done with the help of an enzyme known "energy master switch." This is an enzyme known as Fyn kinase. This enzyme inhibits burning more fat.

Claire Bastie of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Neuroscience and her team showed that mice lacking Fyn kinase altogether burn more fatty acids and expend more energy to become leaner. They also showed other metabolic improvements, including increased insulin sensitivity. Those effects were the effect of higher levels of the master energy switch AMPK in their fat and muscle tissue.

Those findings can help in developing a new kind of weight loss drug. Now, the researchers are lobbying around the idea by showing that chemical inhibition of Fyn kinase with an experimental drug known only as SU6656 does have significant metabolic benefits for mice. Ultimately, the animals seem to be extremely fit because it lose fat and keep the lean. The researchers explained how the Fyn kinase works. It acts on another component of the energy pathway, which leads to a change in AMPK levels.

Bastie said that SU6656 itself isn’t a model drug candidate for clinical trials in humans. Because Fyn kinase and AMPK both have effect the brain as well as fat and muscle. Scientists should have to find out a new drug that doesn’t have these undesirable side effects. Bastie said, "Our next goal is to design something extremely specific to muscle and adipose."

She said she wants to figure out what are the functions of Fyn kinase and AMPK in the brain. She thinks they may play some role in appetite control. She also wants to find out what usually controls Fyn kinase levels.

Keep Your Diet Plan Simple

Jan 18, 2010 3 Comments »

People who are trying to lose weight often go on guilt trip when they falter or eat something extra. Often the diet plans are successful for a while but later on most of the lost weight is regained. We often blame themselves that we don’t have the enough resolve to stick to the diet plan. Sticking to your diet requires more than will power and dedication. It is something more complex.

 

If you want your diet regimen to be successful, keep your diet plan simple. Don’t follow a complex diet program. Some finer aspect of the diet plan can make you give up your lose weight resolve. This is not some wistful thinking but researchers of from Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin have find this out through a study. According to them much more subtle aspect of the diets themselves can also have a big influence on the pounds shed. If you are following a complex diet plan, chances are that you will chuck it sooner or later.

Peter Todd, professor in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences,says, "For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of quantities and items eaten, their subjective impression of the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it."

Cognitive scientists from Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin compared the dieting behavior of women. These women were given two radically different diet plans to follow and it was more than obvious that the more complicated people thought their diet plan was, the sooner they were likely to drop it.

Jutta Mata, now a professor of psychology at Stanford University, expresses her opinion, "Even if you believe you can succeed, thinking that the diet is cognitively complex can undermine your efforts."

Now the crux of the matter is, Dieting is not all in one’s head. Forces of external environment play their roles too. The physical environment has to be set up properly. You have to put calorie laden snacks out of site. But now scientists say that you have to take cognitive environment into account too.This cognitive environment must also be appropriately constructed, by choosing diet rules that that one finds easy to remember and follow.

For people interested in following a diet plan, Mata suggests they take a look at several diet plans with an eye toward how many rules the plans have and how many things need to be how many things need to be kept in mind.

Mata says, "If they decide to go with a more complex diet, which could be more attractive for instance if it allows more flexibility, they should evaluate how difficult they find doing the calculations and monitoring their consumption. If they find it very difficult, the likelihood that they will prematurely give up the diet is higher and they should try to find a different plan."

While losing weight initially isn’t that difficult but keeping it off remains a challenge to dieters. It generally is believed that the longer people can adhere to their diet plan, the more successful they will be long-term with their weight loss maintenance.

Research on the prevention of Obesity and Diabetics with Interleukin-6

Sep 01, 2009 1 Comment »

The newly discovered molecule, called Interleukin-6, has apparently paved way for inventing new drugs to combat diabetes and obesity. This was concluded in an international project where researchers from Vitagenes, a company that is a part of the Campus program promoted by the University of Granada (UGR).

The technical director, Jose Luis Mesa, of Vitagenes (situated in the Technological Park of Health Sciences (PTS)), collaborated in this project in conjunction with other distinguished scientists of the University to Melbourne and the Baker Heart Research Institute (Australia). Jose Luis Mesa was among the main authors of this study. The most pertinent result of the project that corroborated the statement ‘a potential treatment to prevent diabetes and obesity’ found a place for itself in the international scientific journal of Endocrinology.

The misconceived molecule

The amazing aspect about this study is that, erstwhile the evidence showed that the molecule Interleukin-6 that was chronically high in diabetic and obese people was considered a threat to diabetes and obesity, but this study negated that evidence completely.

In the words of Jose Luis Mesa, "No study had tried to inject interleukin-6 directly to analyse if this molecule was really harmful or, to the contrary, could help to prevent obesity and diabetes". He further states, “our hypothesis was that interleukin-6 was naturally high in diabetic and obese persons precisely to combat such diseases. In order to prove it, we injected human recombinant interleukin-6 daily for two weeks and analysed its behaviour and its effects on the metabolism".

The statement of Mark Febbraio, scientific director in the Baker Heart Research Institute and a member of the Advisory Scientific Committee of Vitagenes, further confirms the validity of this study. He stated, “…we obtained surprising results. The exogenous administration of interleukin-6 improved insulin sensitivity and the absorption of glucose, essential for diabetics".

In connection with obesity, Jose Luis Mesa points out that “interleukin-6 also increased the expression of important genes related to fats metabolism, such as PPAR and UCP2. This suggests that interleukin-6 could be involved in the metabolic control of body weight".

Vitagenes, though managed to find a better use of the molecule Interleukin-6, still maintain that this is a preliminary study conducted in animal models and that further studies are required to be conducted in humans to establish definite conclusions.