ScienceDaily (June 3, 2010) — The stimulatory effects of caffeine may be nothing more than an illusion, according to new research that shows there is no real benefit to be gained from the habitual morning cup of coffee.

Tests on 379 individuals who abstained from caffeine for 16 hours before being given either caffeine or a placebo and then tested for a range of responses showed little variance in levels of alertness.

The study, published online in the journal ofNeuropsychopharmacology, reports that frequent coffee drinkers develop a tolerance to both the anxiety-producing effects and the stimulatory effects of caffeine. While frequent consumers may feel alerted by coffee, evidence suggests that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal. And given the increased propensity to anxiety and raised blood pressure induced by caffeine consumption, there is no net benefit to be gained.

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Coffee consumption unrelated to alertness: Stimulating effects may be illusion, study finds.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children whose mothers developed diabetes while pregnant are at increased risk of being overweight by age 11, a new study shows.

The study also found that children born to obese mothers are more likely to have a weight problem than children born to lean mothers.

“The best advice is to get lean and fit before you get pregnant,” Dr. Lois Jovanovic of the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara, California, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.

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Combating childhood obesity may start in the womb: MedlinePlus.

Researchers reviewed the medical records of 320 patients for one year before and after they had bariatric surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The patients filled a total of 324 prescriptions for breathing medications in the year before surgery, and 154 prescriptions in the year after surgery.

“Not only do patients breathe easier, less money is spent on prescription health-care costs,” study author Dr. Naveen Sikka said in a news release. “Better quality of life, possible reduction of chronic breathing problems, including asthma, and lower health-care costs significantly benefit patients and help to reduce the national health-care crisis.”

Read the rest of this article here:  Study Finds Patients Breathe Easier After Weight-Loss Surgery: MedlinePlus.

The study authors report that one in five people born between 1966 and 1985 became obese — a step above merely overweight — when they were between 20 and 29 years old.

By contrast, those who were born from 1946 to 1955 didn’t reach the level of obesity until they were in their 30s. And those who were born between 1936 and 1945 didn’t get to that weight category until their 40s, according to the report published in the April 12 issue of the International Journal of Obesity.

Read the rest of this article here: Obesity Epidemic May Cut Life Spans of Young Adults: MedlinePlus.

Obese women, particularly those who are extremely so, face higher risks for blood pressure disorders such as preeclampsia during pregnancy. These types of disorders, also called hypertensive disorders, can cause complications and may result in infant death. They occur in about 7 percent of pregnancies in the United States.

In the study, Wendy L. Bennett and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore analyzed the medical records of 585 obese females, 16 to 45 years old, who underwent weight-loss surgery either before delivering a child (269 women) or after delivery (316 women) between 2002 and 2006.

“Women who delivered after surgery had a 75 percent lower odds of a diagnosis of a hypertensive disorder in pregnancy than women who had a delivery before surgery,” the study authors wrote in their report, published online April 14 in BMJ.

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Weight-Loss Surgery May Ease Childbirth Risks: MedlinePlus.

FRIDAY, April 9 (HealthDay News) — Obese pregnant women are at increased risk of having a baby with a congenital heart defect, a new study finds.

On average, obesity is associated with a 15 percent increased risk of having a baby with a heart defect. But the risk rises with the level of obesity. Compared to normal-weight women, the risk is 11 percent higher in moderately obese women and 33 percent higher in morbidly obese women.

In general, women who were overweight but not obese had no increased risk, said the researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the New York State Department of Health.

“The trend is unmistakable: the more obese a woman is, the more likely she is to have had a child with a heart defect,” study first author Dr. James L. Mills, of the NICHD’s Division of Epidemiology, Statistics and Prevention Research, said in a news release.

The study was published online April 7 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Read the rest of this article here: Obesity in Pregnancy Ups Risk of Heart Defect in Baby: MedlinePlus.

MONDAY, Jan. 18 (HealthDay News) — Gastric bypass surgery could have life-extending benefits for most of the five percent of Americans who are very obese, a new study suggests.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Cincinnati, concluded that the benefits of this form of weight-loss surgery far outweigh the risks for most people who are morbidly obese, which is defined as having a body mass index of 40 or higher.

But individual decisions on the surgery rely on factors such as age, and a special program to help physicians and obese people balance the benefits and risks of weight-loss surgery is on the way, the researchers said.

“In the future, we plan on having a Web-based decision support tool,” said Dr. Daniel P. Schauer, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center. “Hopefully, it will be available some time in the next year. It is in the development and testing phase.”

The program is based on a study reported by Schauer and his colleagues in the January issue of Archives of Surgery. They examined data on more than 23,000 people who underwent bariatric surgery. The study compared that data to the immediate risk of death from the procedure and the years of life expectancy added by having the surgery.

Obesity is a major risk factor for heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular problems. An increasing number of Americans who cannot control their weight by diet or behavioral changes have turned to bariatric surgery. Gastric bypass is one of several forms of bariatric surgery, which work by either preventing food from entering the stomach or diverting it past the stomach, thereby reducing food intake and absorption.

Current data indicate that a 42-year-old woman with a BMI of 45 would gain three years of life expectancy through gastric bypass, while a 44-year-old man with the same BMI would gain 2.6 years of life, according to the study. For reference, a 5-foot-9-inch man or woman weighing 305 pounds has a BMI of 45.

Read the rest of this article at: For Very Obese, Gastric Bypass May Extend Life: MedlinePlus.

SUNDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) — Obese people often say they’d like to eat less but feel almost powerless to stop indulging, and now new research suggests that explanation might be all too true.

The theory stems from a study in rats. When researchers gave the rats unlimited access to a calorie-laden diet of bacon, pound cake, candy bars and other junk food, the rats quickly gained lots of weight. As they plumped up, eating became such a compulsion that they kept chowing down even when they knew they would receive an unpleasant electric shock to their foot if they did so.

Meanwhile, rats fed the human equivalent of a well-balanced, healthy diet — and given only limited access to the junk food — didn’t gain much weight and knew enough to stop eating when they received the cue that a foot shock was imminent.

Even more startling, the researchers report, is that when they took away the junk food from the obese rats and replaced it with healthier chow, the obese rats went on something of a hunger strike. For two weeks, they refused to eat hardly anything at all.

“They went into voluntary starvation,” said study author Paul Kenny, an associate professor at Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.

So what might this say about human behavior?

Read the rest of this article at: Junk Food ‘Addiction’ May Be Real: MedlinePlus.