Two researchers discuss the latest obesity research, provide helpful health and fitness tips, and review the evidence behind popular weight loss products.
Travis Saunders is a PhD student, obesity researcher, and Certified Exercise Physiologist.
Peter Janiszewski has a PhD in Exercise Physiology. He's a published obesity researcher, lecturer, and an advocate of scientific knowledge translation.
The opinions expressed here belong
only to Peter and Travis and do not reflect the views of any
organization. Any medical discussion on this page is intended to be of a
general nature only. This page is not designed to give specific medical
advice. If you have a medical problem you should consult your own
physician for advice specific to your own situation.
Some unfortunate, but probably unsurprising news today - Peter and I have decided that we will no longer be publishing Obesity Panacea on Scienceblogs. Future posts will be found on our new site at http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypancea. We have come to this decision for a number of reasons, but the recent PepsiCo advertorial played the largest part.
For a full explanation of our decision, click here.
The RSS feed has been updated, so subscribing to our feed here on Scienceblogs will still bring you all of the content at our new home. If you experience any problems with the feed, please don't hesitate to contact us by email, twitter, or by leaving a comment on either site.
I would just like to say that aside from the past week, our time here at Scienceblogs has been extremely positive thanks to the terrific readers here at Scienceblogs and to our former sciblings. Thanks especially to Abbie from ERV and Scicurious (formerly of Neurotopia), for openly campaigning for our addition to the network, as well as Bora Zivkovic and Dave Munger for their advice during the move.
Thanks again, and we hope you will continue the discussion at our new digs.
As our regular readers will recall, my partner, Marina, and I are travelling for the summer throughout South America as a means to celebrate the successful defense of both of our PhDs (Read about our travel adventures and reflections here).
I know things are hitting the fan at SciBlogs with the whole PepsiCo sponsored blog fiasco. I only superficially understand the ensuing controversy.
Alas, I have VERY limited internet access available, and thus would prefer to discuss another issue which I have noticed while moving through Bolivia for the past 2 weeks.
I've previously discussed the issue of wealth and obesity, from a historical perspective. In essence, throughout most of history, only those individuals with plentiful disposable income could afford to eat enough and move little enough to accumulate significant girth.
Accordingly, one's weight was a direct positive indicator of their wealth and power.
Today, the situation is largely reversed. The richest people also tend to be the leanest.
Last year I posted results from a study which suggest that having a breakfast high in fibre may be more satiating for a smaller number of calories, and thus may be one important way to help manage hunger and thus caloric intake. Today I came across another new study which suggests that a breakfast high in fibre and with a low glycemic index (the degree to which an ingested food causes a spike in blood glucose levels) may enhance fat oxidation during a subsequent bout of exercise.
Regular readers of the Scienceblogs network will know that a new "advertorial" blog run by Pepsi has just been opened up on the network. Since then, we've lost at least 2 of my favourite bloggers (here and here). I'm actually on a self-imposed blog break at the moment (the posts this week were scheduled a while back), so I haven't had a chance to check out the new Pepsi blog, or decide how I feel about it, or at least how to present my thoughts in a coherent blog post. So I would suggest that anyone interested in the issue check out the Pepsi Blog here, and read PalMDs thoughts here, or visit my recent (and brief) discussion of Coke's sponsorship of an international physical activity conference.
This is a hugely important issue, so hopefully we'll get back to it ASAP here on Obesity Panacea. But not this week.
Today we have Scibling Showdown # 2 - the pros and cons of grad school. This episode includes Jason Goldman of the Thoughtful Animal, Christie Wilcox of Observations of a Nerd and Scicurious of Neurotopia. We talk about how we chose our current labs, things we wish we had known before we started grad school, and where we plan to end up (spoiler: none of us have any idea!).
We also discuss how blogging plays into the graduate school experience, and here it sounds like we've all had overwhelmingly positive experiences. I think any student will admit that grad school is a bit bipolar - periods where everything is going amazingly smoothly, followed by rough patches where nothing seems to go the way you want. It can get especially tough in the final stages of a thesis, when you have spent literally months writing and re-writing the same few pages of text. Performing revision after revision (after revision) on a manuscript, only to have it rejected, can also put you into a bit of a funk. Blogging is a great way to stay excited about research, since you only have to discuss the papers that you think are interesting! I can't say enough about the ways that blogging has enriched my graduate school experience, and it seems that almost every other blogger I talk to has had a similar experience.
The other feeling I got from the discussion was that although grad school has its ups and downs, we all seem to generally enjoy the experience. I know I wouldn't still be in school if I didn't really enjoy it! Grad school sometimes gets a bad rap, but it really is a lot of fun when you find the right lab.
Jason, Christie, and Scicurious are all cross-posting the podcast today, so I'd encourage you to check out their sites to see their thoughts on our discussion. We're hoping to make these chats a semi-regular feature, so any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I know that there are quite a few grad students/former students that read our blogs as well, and it would be great to hear about your experiences.
To listen to the podcast, you can use the audio player below, or download the podcast itself by clicking here. And don't forget that you can also subscribe in iTunes to have all of our
future podcasts delivered directly to your ipod.
Happy Canada Day! It looks like a pretty nice day here in the capital as well as the rest of the country - a great chance to get in some physical activity with your friends and family! Enjoy the long weekend!
When many people set out to exercise, they do so with the primary goal of losing fat mass. There is much advice floating around about how to optimize or maximize fat loss during exercise; one of the most commonly touted is that of the fat burning zone. Essentially, it is suggested that when performing aerobic exercise (walking, jogging, swimming, etc.) one should work at a fairly low intensity - the fat burning zone - to augment fat oxidation and thus fat loss (pictured above). The fat burning zone target exercise intensity varies from source to source but is approximately 50-60% of your maximal heart rate (maximal heart rate calculated simply as 220 - your age [with plenty room for error]).
Today is the first day of summer vacation here in Ontario, and I assume that the summer break has begun in most other parts of North America as well. That means that millions of kids are looking at 8 gloriously school-free weeks in July and August. Now while physical activity promotion folks like myself would hope that all of these kids are going to spend their summer outside being physically active, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that that is not the case for most kids.
Since these are kids, parents obviously have a huge amount of control over the way they spend free time. So what do parents look for when making summer plans for their kids? According to a new survey by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario/Environics, physical activity doesn't play into the decision making process for most parents.
By now, readers of Obesity Panacea have hopefully learned that excess weight is not directly predictive of health risk, and that excess fat mass is not in itself unhealthy. Recall that approximately 30% of individuals who are classified as obese by their body weight turn out to be metabolically healthy, and in fact seem not to get much metabolic benefit (or may even get worse) when they lose weight. Also consider that individuals who have NO fat tissue (e.g. lipodystrophy) have extremely elevated metabolic risk factors, meanwhile others who can apparently indefinitely grow more fat mass (multiple symmetric lipomatosis - think Michelin man) have metabolic profiles we'd all like to have.
Travis Saunders is a PhD student, obesity researcher, and Certified Exercise Physiologist.
Peter Janiszewski has a PhD in Exercise Physiology. He's a published obesity researcher, lecturer, and an advocate of scientific knowledge translation.
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