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Mayo Clinic study finds explanation for postmenopausal belly fat

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Weight was never a concern for Stephanie Brondani, 52, of Minnetonka. Until last year, when she hit menopause.

Suddenly, she noticed her midsection thickening. “I think everybody feels [like], ‘I’m eating the same way I always have been and yet I’m getting this roll.’ What is that about?” she said.

Scientists have long known that lower estrogen levels after menopause can cause fat storage to shift from the hips and thighs to the abdomen. Now, a groundbreaking study, co-authored by the Mayo Clinic, has determined why: Proteins, revved up by the estrogen drop, cause fat cells to store more fat.

The study also revealed a double whammy: These cellular changes also slow down fat-burning by the body.

Even though the research doesn’t provide weight-loss solutions, it may bring a sense of relief to millions of middle-aged women who have been fighting an often losing battle against the dreaded “post-meno belly.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re absolutely doomed,” said Dr. Michael Jensen, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic and one of the study’s authors, “but it does mean it’s going to be harder, probably” to lose weight.

That comes as welcome news to Brondani, who has tried a new exercise program, wears a pedometer and has cut back on sugar and junk food.

“There’s that sense of ‘Oh, this is just normal,’ ” she said. “While you don’t have to just lay down and take it, you know you’re not doing anything wrong. At least you feel like it’s OK, everybody is going through this. Not just me.”

Sudden changes

More than 50 million U.S. women are 50 or older; 75 percent of women age 50-55 are post-menopausal, according to the Menopause Center of Minnesota. Most — if not all — of them will have to confront post-menopausal weight gain.

How much weight a woman gains after menopause varies. According to a 2010 study in the International Journal of Obesity, women gain an average of 12 pounds within eight years of menopause. But even women who maintain the same weight say they notice their waistline expanding.

Cassandra Clay-Chapman started putting on pounds soon after she entered menopause a few years ago. Before she knew it, she was 10 pounds heavier.

“It just happens,” she said. “You just blow up like a balloon.”

Clay-Chapman, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., is one of 24 women who participated in the Mayo study, the results of which were published recently. The group included Minnesota women who were both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal. They were all about the same age — 49 to 50 — and had the same body fat levels, Jensen said.

Beyond beauty

Weight gain, especially around the abdomen, is one of the top complaints women have when they come to the Menopause Center of Minnesota, said Sandy Greenquist, the center’s director.

But beyond vanity concerns, there are health risks associated with having an extra layer of padding around the waist.

Belly fat is a sign of visceral fat around vital organs and increases a person’s risk for obesity-related illness. According to the Mayo Clinic, a waist measurement of 35 inches or more can lead to a greater risk of problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

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Why Phil Mickelson’s Fat Putter Grip Could Be an Advantage at Augusta National

In golf there are two really bad words. Words that are unspeakable. Not curse words. Regular, ordinary words that make professional golfers quake in their soft spikes or nubs. One starts with an S and one starts with a Y. And with those clues, you know it’s Shank and Yip.

Some golfers are so superstitious that if they see anyone hit an S-word, they turn away, fearful they’ll catch it. However, the S-word can be overcome. The Y-word, which leads to muttering, moaning, a lot of missed putts and sometimes a new life off the PGA Tour, is, according to medical experts, incurable. That’s what makes it the worst word in golf.

With Phil Mickelson’s latest Rubik’s Cube of strokes and putters, you have to ask, does he or doesn’t he have it? Or is this revolving door of weapons something else entirely?

Mickelson’s experimentation may just be Phil being Phil. What he is on record saying as recently as last week is that using the claw grip is more to do with his forward press.

“I’ll go back and forth because, again the claw grip, what it does is gets me in a better address position where I get rid of too much forward press. I want a little bit but not as much as I’ve been getting,” he explained.

The claw grip he said also keeps his hands higher while keeping his forward press minimized. Those are his two bad habits with putting, he said.

He didn’t say why he went to the fat grip. But here’s what the fat grip does:

According to experts who make them, it removes some of the wristy twitches.

And it lessens excess and unwanted movement in a putting stroke.

At a course as severe as Augusta National that could reduce a tendency to pull or push a putt. If it saves a golfer a stoke a day, four strokes over the week, that may be the difference between planning a champions dinner or eating a menu served by someone else. And let’s face it, most golfers would putt with anything short of a nuclear missile if it shaved strokes.

Now, here’s the thing about the Y-word. People used to say it was in a golfer’s head. And it can be. But it’s also a medical condition. It is called a dystonia, specifically a focal dystonia.

Focal dystonia is an overuse condition that, according to the Mayo Clinic, causes involuntary muscle contractions during a specific task, like putting.

Mayo even singles out who typically gets it:

Golfers who are of an older age, who have more experience playing golf and who have a lower handicap.

And guess what, stress aggravates it. Like the constant stress of making putts to make a cut or making putts to win a tournament or making putts to win a match.

It’s not just a condition of golfers. Anyone who makes repetitive movements can be affected. Musicians are most often cited, certainly more often than golfers. Instrumental musicians typically complain of poor coordination in the fingers or hand. Woodwind or brass musicians get stiffness, cramping or fatigue in the muscles of the tongue, lips or jaw. You may remember joking about writer’s cramp? That’s actually the same condition, where someone’s hand cramps up from writing.

For musicians, treatments using Botox shots in the hands and arms have been used. But with golfers, how do you paralyze a set of muscles for one stroke, like putting and then expect them to work properly for the full swing?

Golfers are left with work-around treatments, prescriptions, as it were, suggested by the Mayo Clinic. Their advice:

“Change your grip. This technique works for many golfers because it changes the muscles you use to make your putting stroke. However, if you have the type of yips related to performance anxiety, changing your grip likely won’t make much difference.

“Use a different putter. A longer putter allows you to use more of your arms and shoulders and less of your hands and wrists while putting. Other putters are designed with a special grip to help stabilize the hands and wrists.”

Mayo even has a photograph demonstrating the Bernhard Langer “blood pressure cuff” style of putting on their web site as an alternative method. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/medical/IM00864

( See the entire article at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/yips/DS00969)

Answering the Mayo suggestion is the oversized SuperStroke grip used by Jason Dufner and K.J. Choi and by Mickelson at the Shell Houston Open. It fits the Rx of a putter with a special grip to help stabilize the hands and wrists.

According to the company that makes them, the large grips “take away the tendency to squeeze too tightly; at the same time, most unnecessary wrist action is eliminated.” They also say it creates a “more consistent putting stroke, a more-square putter face at impact, and a better feel for distance.”

Their grips were tested with golfers at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. The results showed a 32% reduction in grip tension with the oversized grip compared to a conventional size grip. Does that translate to more holed putts?

K.J. Choi proved it works in competition. He switched to the Tri-Hot2/ SuperStroke combo grip, with a 1.67 inch diameter–about twice the size of a regular grip–and won The Players in 2011. Choi bought the grip himself after watching an infomercial.

Jason Dufner, who recently became famous for his ability to strike a pose, also uses the SuperStroke in an oversized model. He is the only player who is a paid endorser and so his is the only name the company can use.

Andy North, who has endorsed the SuperStroke, has said in the past that it can help any golfer have a better putting stroke. The reason is that having the larger grip somehow eliminates a lot of the wrist action, the small muscles that have been overused for years, the ones that cause the problems for many golfers over 40. (www.supersstrokeusa.com)

It’s makes a person wonder. What is the value of an oversized grip that calms the hands and wrists at a tournament when golfers are most prone to be tense, putting on greens that are likely the most treacherous they face all year?

Forget supersizing the soft drink. It may be time to supersize the putter grip.

Kathy Bissell is a Golf Writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand or from official interview materials from the USGA, PGA Tour or PGA of America.

Article source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1590908-why-phil-mickelsons-fat-putter-grip-could-be-an-advantage-at-augusta-national

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Do white foods make you fat, or did you do that all by yourself?

Do white foods make you fat and lethargic?

A lot of diet gurus would have you think so: Eliminate the white foods and watch the pounds melt away. White flour, sugar, salt, milk, white rice and potatoes are all on the avoid list.

The Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet and the Zone are all based roughly on this premise. And every one of those foods are forbidden under the so-called Paleolithic Diet, the premise being that grains like wheat are such a recent addition to the human diet that we are not physiologically equipped to consume them. Pancakes and pasta simply were not on the menu for cavemen.

White foods are also commonly found — along with white-ish foods like corn and soy — in almost all modern convenience foods, what I like to call square foods. Square foods are just about anything in a package with more than one ingredient. Apples have one ingredient; cookies from a box are made mainly with those dreaded white foods.

So, are white foods addictive? Or simply cheap and tasty? Do they make you fat? Or did you do that yourself?

When I put the question to UBC nutritionist Judy McLean she laughed. Simply put, too many calories make you fat. If white foods made people fat, virtually everyone in south and East Asia would be obese. Rice makes up 80 per cent of a person’s total calories in some countries.

So why is this myth so persistent? Simply put, carb reduced diets work and they usually work fast because they quickly drop your caloric intake by eliminating your body’s main fuel source and they promote immediate water loss. But water or not, when the pounds drop away quickly people get excited.

The extra protein and fat in these diets also help keep you feeling full, but you can get that same feeling of satiety with a high-fibre, low-calorie diet without the potential health risks of extreme low-carb diets. According to the Mayo Clinic a diet high in meats and fats can increase your risk of cancer, heart disease and kidney problems.

And a joint McGill/University of Alberta study found that low-carb systems can greatly increase your blood cholesterol and warned that such diets may not be safe for people with type 2 diabetes. Despite their popularity, these diets are radical. Talk to your doctor before you consider trying one.

Article source: http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/03/28/do-white-foods-make-you-fat-or-did-you-do-that-all-by-yourself/

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When You Eat Is Why You’re Fat

At this point, it’s practically conventional wisdom: If you skip breakfast, you’re going to have trouble losing weight, probably because you overeat later in the day (the Mayo Clinic offers a handful of other reasons why). A new study in the International Journal of Obesity takes the notion of timing and weight loss even further, claiming that when you eat meals throughout the day affects how easily you drop pounds.

The study, performed by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the University of Murcia, and Tufts University, split 420 overweight participants into groups of early and late eaters. All of the participants followed a weight-loss diet, but half had lunch before 3 p.m., and half had lunch afterwards. It’s culturally important that the study focused on lunch; all the participants lived in Spain, where it’s the main meal of the day (and where 40% of the day’s calories are eaten).

Even though diet, energy intake, estimated energy expenditure, appetite hormone levels, and sleep duration were basically the same for all participants, the people who ate late lunches lost less weight–and lost it at a slower rate, too. The participants dropped weight at the same pace for the first five weeks of the 20-week study, but after that, those eating later saw their weight loss sputter to a halt. By the end of the study, they had lost 22% less weight than the earlier eaters.

The study summary points out that the later eaters often skipped breakfast and had higher insulin resistance, but not enough to explain the dramatic results.

And so, the authors conclude, “Eating late may influence the success of weight-loss therapy. Novel therapeutic strategies should incorporate not only the caloric intake and macronutrient distribution–as is classically done–but also the timing of food.” In many parts of the world where dinner is the main meal of the day, eating earlier isn’t so easy. But for anyone serious about weight loss, it’s worth considering how timing might affect you.

Article source: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681294/when-you-eat-is-why-youre-fat

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Trans Fat Ban starts January 1st

CLEVELAND – The City of Cleveland is trying to help people get healthier in the new year. Starting Jan. 1, 2013, the Trans Fat Ban goes into effect in the city.

The ban will apply to all restaurants, grocery and bakery take-out items. Still not too many people know much about it, or even know what trans fats are.

So just what are trans fats?

Ask around the NewsChannel 5 newsroom and the answer you’ll get is, “… something really gross?”

According to folks at the Mayo Clinic, trans fats are considered by doctors to be the worst type of fat. It is said to occur naturally in certain meats and dairy products, but most develop from a process called hydrogenation, which the Mayo Clinic said makes oil less likely to spoil.

Trans fats are used in ingredients and manufactured foods to give them a longer shelf life, the exact opposite of what Chef Anthony Hamilton of the Rocco Whalen Restaurant Group said, you should want.

“Generally speaking, if your food doesn’t perish it’s a bad thing. Like, your food should go bad eventually, you know,” said Chef Hamilton.

Chef Hamilton is a Corporate Chef who sometimes works at Rocco Whalen’s Fahrenheit Restaurant location in the Tremont section of Cleveland. There, they’ve already taken strides to provide healthier meals, inspired by Chef Whalen’s appearance on the Food Network’s show “Fat Chef.”

With the ban looming, Chef Hamilton says the change is not something that’s easy for restaurants to incorporate.

“With trans fats,” said Chef Hamilton, “…they make things cheaper, more attainable, supply is up, demand is down, it makes it cheaper obviously, but us as chefs, we have to carry a social responsibility to avoid um, we find it very unhealthy, they promote heart disease.”

Trans fats can raise your “LDL” or “bad” cholesterol and lower you “HDL” or “good” cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease according to Web MD. Folks there say trans fats will tantalize your taste buds, but turn into sludge once it hits your arteries.

So how do health-conscious eaters avoid trans fats when dining out?

“We pretty much look for salads,” said Susan Rydzinski.

The trans fat ban in the City of Cleveland should provide more healthy options, not a bad idea said Chef Hamilton, ” …being mindful of people’s health is not a bad idea. If we want a return customer, you know, giving people heart disease is not exactly the best business model ever heard of!”

Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman was a large supporter of the Trans Fat Ban.

Article source: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_cuyahoga/trans-fat-ban-starts-jan-1st