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Fad diets can work, but experts find no magic slimming bullet

[email protected] (Shehzad)
January 13, 2014

Resolutions to lose weight are often made in January yet almost as frequently abandoned as heavy hopefuls find diets that demand fasting, virtually no carbs or liquid food shakes notoriously hard to stick to. But even "fad" diets can lead to a slimmer, lighter New Year for those whose resolve remains robust, according to doctors and nutritionists analysing them.

Gathering for a London conference to review evidence behind popular weight loss diets - at just the time of year when slimming ideas are in peak demand - specialists concluded that food fads such as the hunter-gatherer "Paleo" plan or the 5:2 diet can deliver. But it's hard work. "If it was easy, our species would have died out years ago. As humans we have a default to eat," said Gary Frost, a professor and chair of nutrition and dietetics at Imperial College London. The results of that default are looming large in a global "wave of obesity", he said. According to the World Health Organisation, worldwide obesity - defined as having a body mass index of more than 30 - has nearly doubled since 1980. The latest global figure is that in 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults were overweight.

WAVE OF OBESITY

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 36% of American adults are obese and almost 70% are either obese or overweight. In Britain, a government health study predicts 60% of men, 50% of women and 25% of children will be obese by 2050. Against this background, experts say the search for effective diets must always take account of how easy it is for people to understand and follow, and how likely they are to abide by its restrictions.

Michelle Harvie, a research dietician from the Genesis Prevention Centre at Britain's University Hospital of South Manchester, said that on this front, fasting diets - sometimes called intermittent diets - can be successful. "Energy restriction is difficult to maintain over the long term and people tend to find it easier to follow a diet with intermittent energy restriction," she said. She said that while a regular weight loss plan might require the dieter to take in 25% fewer calories, intermittent diets may suggest two days of a 75% calorie cut interspersed with five days of normal healthy eating. But the key to these diets - such as the 5:2 diet in which followers eat as little as 400 calories on two "fasting" days per week - is that dieters won't succeed if they "pig out" and eat whatever they want on non-fasting days.

Harvie's research shows those who succeed in losing weigh on these diets find the fasting days lead them to also have a lower food intake on normal days - leading to lower calorie intake overall.

HUNTING FOR FOOD

Mark Berry, head of plant biology and biochemistry at the consumer company Unilever's research and development unit, says there are also positive signs in data from studies of "Palaeolithic" or stone-age diets - plans designed to mimic the diet of pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers of that era. A sign of its current popularity is that "Paleo diet" was one of the most "Googled" terms of 2013.

The idea is based around foods that can be hunted, fished or foraged for - meat, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. Berry said his research showed little impact on glucose response in the body in people eating a Palaeolithic diet, but did find a significant impact on hormones that signal satiety and tell the brain the eater is full. Alexandra Johnstone of the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, who has been looking into high protein and low carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins diet, said these also had a significant impact on fullness feelings - giving them the potential to help dieters control appetite and lose weight. "The high satiety effects of increased protein in the diet seems to be a contributing factor to the success of high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets," she said.

Johnstone cited data showing the amount of weight lost on high-protein diets is around double that lost on a comparable low-fat diet at the six-month mark. But there is little difference in weight loss after one year, as dieters often lose momentum and their resolve to slim down fades. "There's no magic bullet," she said. Judy Buttriss, head of the British Nutrition Foundation, said the evidence for popular diets was clearly nuanced. While there are several that can be used as tools for effective weight loss and maintenance, she said "there's currently no evidence that one is any better than another in the long term".

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Agencies
March 27,2020

New Delhi, Mar 27: The Centre has restricted sale and distribution of "hydroxychloroquine" declaring it as an essential drug to treat the COVID-19 patients and meet the requirements of emergency arising due to the pandemic.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday made the announcement making it clear that the order "shall come into force on the date of its publication in the official Gazette".

In the order, the government declared that the Central government is "satisfied that the drug hydroxychloroquine is essential to meet the requirements of emergency arising due to pandemic COVID-19 and in the public interest, it is necessary and expedient to regulate and restrict the sale and distribution of the drug 'hydroxychloroquine' and preparation based thereon for preventing their misuse".

"Now, therefore, in exercise of the powers conferred by Section 26B of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 (23 of 1940), the Central government hereby directs that sale by retail of any preparation containing the drug Hydroxychloroquine shall be in accordance with the conditions for sale of drugs specified in Schedule H1 to the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945."

The order came at a time when the novel coronavirus claimed 16 lives and infected over 600 people across India.

The announcement regarding ban of sale and distribution of the drug was made by the government earlier but it issued an official Gazette notification on Thursday signalling that hydroxychloroquine -- an anti-Malaria drug -- will work as a medicine for treating coronavirus infected patients as well.

Recently, the national task force for COVID-19 constituted by Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended hydroxy-chloroquine as a preventive medication.

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Agencies
July 7,2020

The World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing a report that suggested its advice on the novel coronavirus needs updating after some scientists told the New York Times there was evidence the virus could be spread by tiny particles in the air.

The WHO says the Covid-19 disease spreads primarily through small droplets, which are expelled from the nose and mouth when an infected person breaths them out in coughs, sneezes, speech or laughter and quickly sink to the ground.

In an open letter to the Geneva-based agency, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined the evidence they say shows that smaller exhaled particles can infect people who inhale them, the newspaper said on Saturday.

Because those smaller particles can linger in the air longer, the scientists - who plan to publish their findings in a scientific journal this week - are urging WHO to update its guidance, the Times said.

"We are aware of the article and are reviewing its contents with our technical experts," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in an email reply on Monday to a Reuters request for comment.

The extent to which the coronavirus can be spread by the so-called airborne or aerosol route - as opposed to by larger droplets in coughs and sneezes - remains disputed.

Any change in the WHO's assessment of the risk of transmission could affect its current advice on keeping one-metre physical distancing. Governments, which also rely on the agency for guidance policy, may also have to adjust public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

"Especially in the last couple of months, we have been stating several times that we consider airborne transmission as possible but certainly not supported by solid or even clear evidence," Benedetta Allegranzi, the WHO's technical lead for infection prevention and control, was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

WHO guidance to health workers, dated June 29, says that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and on surfaces.

But airborne transmission via smaller particles is possible in some circumstances, such as when performing intubation and aerosol-generating procedures, it says.

Medical workers performing such procedures should wear heavy-duty N95 respiratory masks and other protective equipment in an adequately ventilated room, the WHO says.

Officials at South Korea's Centers for Disease Control said on Monday they were continuing to discuss various issues about Covid-19, including the possible airborne transmission. They said more investigations and evidence were needed.

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Agencies
May 8,2020

As Europe and the US loosen their lockdowns against the coronavirus, health experts are expressing growing dread over what they say is an all-but-certain second wave of deaths and infections that could force governments to clamp back down.

"We are risking a backslide that will be intolerable," said Dr Ian Lipkin of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity.

Around the world, German authorities began drawing up plans in case of a resurgence of the virus. Experts in Italy urged intensified efforts to identify new victims and trace their contacts. And France, which has not yet eased its lockdown, has already worked up a "reconfinement plan" in the event of a new wave.

"There will be a second wave, but the problem is to which extent. Is it a small wave or a big wave? It is too early to say," said Olivier Schwartz, head of the virus unit at France's Pasteur Institute.

In the US, with about half of the states easing their shutdowns to get their economies restarted and cellphone data showing that people are becoming restless and increasingly leaving home, public health authorities are worried.

Many states have not put in place the robust testing that experts believe is necessary to detect and contain new outbreaks. And many governors have pressed ahead before their states met one of the key benchmarks in the Trump administration's guidelines for reopening -- a 14-day downward trajectory in new illnesses and infections.

"If we relax these measures without having the proper public health safeguards in place, we can expect many more cases and, unfortunately, more deaths," said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.

Cases have continued to rise steadily in places such as Iowa and Missouri since the governors began reopening, while new infections have yo-yoed in Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.

Lipkin said he is most worried about two things: the reopening of bars, where people crowd together and lose their inhibitions, and large gatherings such as sporting events, concerts and plays. Preventing outbreaks will require aggressive contact tracing powered by armies of public health workers hundreds of thousands of people strong, which the US does not yet have, Lipkin said.

Worldwide the virus has infected more than 36 lakh people and killed over a quarter-million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University that experts agree understates the dimensions of the disaster because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.

The US has recorded over 70,000 deaths and 12 lakh confirmed infections, while Europe has reported over 140,000 dead.

This week, the researchers behind a widely cited model from the University of Washington nearly doubled their projection of deaths in the US to around 134,000 through early August, in large part because of the easing of state stay-at-home restrictions. Newly confirmed infections per day in the US exceed 20,000 and deaths per day are running well over 1,000.

In hard-hit New York City, which has managed to bring down deaths dramatically even as confirmed infections continue to rise around the rest of the country, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that some states may be reopening too quickly.

"My message to the rest of the country is learn from how much effort, how much discipline it took to finally bring these numbers down and follow the same path until you are sure that it is being beaten back," he said on CNN, "or else, if this thing boomerangs, you are putting off any kind of restart or recovery a hell of a lot longer."

A century ago, the Spanish flu epidemic's second wave was far deadlier than its first, in part because authorities allowed mass gatherings from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

"It is clear to me that we are in a critical moment of this fight. We risk complacency and accepting the preventable deaths of 2,000 Americans each day," epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers, a professor at Johns Hopkins, told a House subcommittee in Washington.

President Donald Trump, who has pressed hard to ease the restrictions that have throttled the economy and thrown more than three crore Americans out of work, pulled back Wednesday on White House plans revealed a day earlier to wind down the coronavirus task force.

He tweeted that the task force will continue meeting indefinitely with a "focus on SAFETY & OPENING UP OUR COUNTRY AGAIN".

Underscoring those economic concerns, the European Union predicted the worst recession in its quarter-century history. And the US unemployment rate for April, which comes out on Friday, is expected to hit a staggering 16 per cent, a level last seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Governors continue to face demands, even lawsuits, to reopen. In Michigan, where armed demonstrators entered the Capitol last week, the Republican-led Legislature sued Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, asking a judge to declare invalid her stay-at-home order, which runs at least through May 15.

In hard-hit Italy, which has begun easing restrictions, Dr Silvio Brusaferro, president of the Superior Institute of Health, urged "a huge investment" of resources to train medical personnel to monitor possible new cases of the virus, which has killed about 30,000 people nationwide.

He said that contact-tracing apps which are being built by dozens of countries and companies are not enough to manage future waves of infection.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after meeting with the country's 16 governors that restaurants and other businesses will be allowed to reopen in the coming weeks but that regional authorities will have to draw up a "restriction concept" for any county that reports 50 new cases for every 100,000 inhabitants within a week.

Lothar Wieler, head of Germany's national disease control centre, said scientists "know with great certainty that there will be a second wave" of infections.

Britain, with over 30,000 dead, the second-highest death toll in the world behind the US, plans to extend its lockdown but has begun recruiting 18,000 people to trace contacts of those infected.

In other developments, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nearly 5,000 coronavirus illnesses and at least 88 deaths have been reported among inmates in American jails and prisons. An additional 2,800 cases and 15 deaths were reported among guards and other staff members.

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