Childhood Obesity: Understanding and Preventing

Doctors say that obesity is now reaching ‘epidemic’ proportions. According to recent figures from the National Child Measurement Programme, which assesses height and weight of children in England, more than 33% of 11-year-olds and 22% of 4- and 5-year-olds are overweight or obese. Being overweight is linked to numerous health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, as well as psychological problems, such as stress, anxiety and depression. Unfortunately, parents struggle with many problems when it comes to managing their children’s weight (i.e. lack of education about healthy eating, lack of cooking skills, financial problems, marketing campaigns for junk food). It therefore seems that one’s environment plays an important role in becoming obese.

However, do only environmental factors lead to obesity?

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science (University of Cambridge, Metabolic Research Laboratories) studied a cohort of children with extreme obesity from an early age and discovered that a number of gene mutations are directly linked with obesity. All of these genes are found in the hypothalamus, which is the region of the brain that is responsible for controlling appetite and food intake. These findings do not only indicate that obesity is biologically driven but also amenable to mechanism-based therapy. In fact, one gene defect is dramatically curable with daily injections of a protein called leptin.

Understanding obesity can hopefully open doors to research for prevention!
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For more information:

http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/research/cameos/ObeseBrain.php

http://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/press/2013/130407.html

What can neuroimaging studies teach us about gender differences in body image concerns?

Concerns about body image are a key feature of eating disorders, which have been the topic of several messages of the day by now.  Eating disorders are far more common in women than in men; in fact, women are ten times more likely than men to develop an eating disorder. To understand why women may be more susceptible to developing eating disorders than men, a team of researchers investigated how healthy men and women’s brains responded to seeing words related to a negative body image. Participants were shown sets of ‘unpleasant’ body-image related words and ‘neutral’ words, and were asked to pick the word they thought was most unpleasant / neutral in the set, respectively, while lying in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. The researchers found that women – but not men – showed enhanced activity in the amygdala for unpleasant body image words compared to neutral words. The amygdala has been associated with processing threats; thus, women might find stimuli relating to a negative body image threatening, while men do not. In contrast, men showed a greater activation in the left medial frontal gyrus when viewing the unpleasant compared to the neutral words, while women did not. This region may be involved in cognitive processing of emotional information. Overall, the authors suggest that while women may process words relating to a negative body image in a more emotional way, men may process them in a more cognitive way. A limitation of the study was that the researchers didn’t have a category of negative words NOT relating to body image, so it is difficult to know whether these effects were specific to body image. Nevertheless, pursuing this line of thinking further could shed light on why women are more likely to suffer from eating disorders than men.
You can buy Vimax Pills cialis 10mg from Sexual Performance Total to aid male virility and sexual health. Fourth, the pumping ought to be proceeded until the penis gets erect, and from that point, Kamagra Jelly was endorsed by FDD and it grasped the business sector as a surefire solution for ED. about levitra samples levitra samples Additionally, there must be no self-induced vomiting or any metabolic disorders to explain the vomiting. cialis in canada pharmacy additional info Likewise, the instance for people who are confronting dilemma associated viagra australia no prescription to liver or kidney troubles.
Source: Shirao, N., Okamoto, Y., Mantani, T., Okamoto, Y., & Yamawaki, S. (2005). Gender differences in brain activity generated by unpleasant word stimuli concerning body image: an fMRI study. The British Journal of Psychiatry,186, 48-53.

Effects of body image therapy in anorexia nervosa: An fMRI study

Beyond self-starvation, Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is characterised by body image disturbance including a misperception of one’s own body size and an extreme dissatisfaction with one’s own body (Vocks et al. 2008). Previous messages of the day have already highlighted an enhanced plasticity of the sense of self coming from the body in this clinical population (see Message of the day: 22nd of January). We have also talked about the recent developments in the potential treatments of AN by mean of the practice of Mindfulness (see Message of the day: 28th of January) and nasally inhaled Oxytocin (see Message of the day: 1st of February).

The problem: A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study (Uher et al., 2005) showed for the first time that body image disturbance in AN might be associated with dysfunctional body-image-processing brain circuits. In particular, the extrastriate body area, a brain region that is located in the occipito-temporal visual cortex and is specialised in the perception of human bodies, have shown a lower activation in patients with AN compared to healthy controls. Authors suggested that this lower activation could potentially underlie the body image disturbance, including body size overestimation and negative evaluation of one’s own body (Uher et al., 2005).

The solution: Due to the central role of body image disturbances in AN, direct interventions aiming at an improvement of body image have been applied as one component in the treatment of eating disorders (Vocks et al., 2008). This intervention consists of full-body mirror exposure plus 10 weekly sessions of cognitive-behavioural body image therapy (BIT). Although it has been demonstrated that this intervention can reduce body size overestimation and body dissatisfaction in AN, it was not clear whether there could be any change in brain activation as a result of it. Vocks et al. (2010) showed an increase in activation in the extrastriate body area following BIT. These preliminary findings provides the first evidence that the dysfunctional body-image-processing brain circuits that seem to be associated with body image distortion, preoccupation with body weight and negative body-related emotions are modifiable by cognitive-behavioral interventions.

Uher, R., Murphya, T., Friedericha, H. C., Dalgleishb, T., Brammera, M. J., Giampietro, V., Phillips, M. L., Andrew, C. M., Ng, V. W., Williams, S. C. R., Campell, I. C & Treasure, J. (2005). Functional Neuroanatomy of Body Shape Perception in Healthy and Eating-Disordered Women. Biological Psychiatry, 58, 990-997
But don’t confuse scams with generic medications. shop viagra online Don’t worry, if you are feeling uneasy to visit the institute, stand cialis generic uk frankkrauseautomotive.com in a queue and then fill up all the slots provided to cover. However, due to the amazing benefits of spinal decompression therapy are that it is a non-surgical and non-drug approach, safe and effective order viagra cheap in most cases. Both male and female may be affected by an underlying illness or medical condition equivalent to endocrine problems, diabetes, Kallmann’s syndrome, hypogonadism, hyperprolactinemia, drug and alcohol-related problems, that harms the creation of hormones needed for sperm viagra cheap pills production.
Vocks, S., Wa¨chter, A., Wucherer, M. & Kosfelder, J. (2008). Look at Yourself: Can Body Image Therapy Affect the Cognitive and Emotional Response to Seeing Oneself in the Mirror in Eating Disorders?

European Eating Disorders Review, 16, 147–154

Vocksa, S., Buschb, M., Schultea, D., Grönermeyerb, D., Herpertzc, S. & Suchand, B. (2010). Effects of body image therapy on the activation of the extrastriate body area in anorexia nervosa: An fMRI study.

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 183, 114–118

Can body image dissatisfaction be reduced by teaching people to be more critical of airbrushed ads?

Fashion advertising uses extensively airbrushing technology to change models’ body shape and appearance in general. Hundreds of studies have shown that for the majority of women, being exposed to such unrealistic figures leads to low self-esteem, body image dissatisfaction and negative feelings about the way they look. Adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the ‘airbrushing culture’.

So can we teach people to be critical of unrealistic body ideals? And can this reduce body image dissatisfaction?

The answer to both questions seems to be ‘Yes’.
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An experimental study evaluated the impact of an educational intervention concerned with the power of airbrushing at reducing body dissatisfaction among 200 women. The air-brushing intervention informed people about the extent of airbrushing used in the media and illustrated how easy it is to actually change someone’s appearance using technology. Women who did not receive the intervention, reported greater body dissatisfaction after being exposed to thin images as compared to women who were informed about airbrushing. Overall, those who received the intervention reported less change in body image dissatisfaction as measured by the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) regardless of which images (thin or fat) they had been exposed to. The results suggest that women can be taught to be more critical of the methods used by the media as a means to reduce body dissatisfaction. Incorporating such interventions into school and university health education campaigns could possibly help in minimizing the detrimental impact of media images on people’s satisfaction with their own body.

For more information: Ogden, J., and Sherwood, F. (2008). Reducing the impact of media images: an evaluation of the effectiveness of an airbrushing educational intervention on body dissatisfaction. Health Education, 108, 489-500

Enhancing Resilience from Within

As humans, we have a continuing experience of our body, so that when we look ourselves in the mirror, when we walk, or when we have a stomach ache we think of these experiences as belonging to the same body. Decades of has however shown that in fact our brain holds many different models of the body; for example there are wide differences between how the body is represented in the mind ‘from the outside’, as when seen in mirrors and ‘from the inside’, as when we experience pain, or a racing heart.

Importantly, these different representations of the body can be influenced by both external and internal sources. For example images of other bodies in the media may affect how we think about our body as viewed by others (see Message of the Day 18th of January). Interestingly, the perception of bodily feelings such as the ones accompanying joy or, enthusiasm may also influence how we view other bodies. For example, classic studies in psychology have shown that when men where tricked to think that their hearts were beating faster in response to viewing pictures of certain seminude women, they subsequently rated these women as objectively more beautiful than other women for which they thought their heart beats had not changed during the initial viewing (Vallins, 1966).

Can such internal bodily feelings also influence how we view our own body? A recent studiy conducted in the lab of Professor Manos Tsakiris’s suggest that they can. They used a measure of body ownership (namely the Rubber Hand Illusion; see Message of the Day: 22nd of January) to quantify the extent to which 46 healthy women experienced ownership over a plastic but realistic rubber-hand. They also measured the ability of these women to detect and count their own heartbeats. Based on the results on this heartbeat counting task, they divided the women into two groups. Those, whose counts closely matched their actual heartbeat as measured objectively by special equipment, formed the ‘high’ performance group. By contrast, those who were not as good on the task formed the ‘low’ performance group. The researchers then combined all the above results and found that women in the low performance group experienced a stronger illusion of ownership over the rubber hand, while the ones who were in the high performance group were less persuaded by the rubber hand illusion. Tsakiris and colleagues concluded that that people who are worse in monitoring signals from within the body may be more susceptible to externalized images of the body and hence more likely to experience body image dissatisfaction in modern society. As people with anorexia have been shown to have poor cardiac awareness (Pollatos et al., 2008), it is likely that their body image distortions may also relate to their poor awareness of internal bodily signals. Indeed, subsequent studies have shown that people with anorexia are more easily swayed by the rubber hand illusion (Eshkevari et al., 2012; see also Message of the Day: 22nd of January). These findings suggest that a possible way to reverse body image dissatisfaction and anorexia is to enhance the perception of internal body signals with either psychological or neuroscientific means. Such enhancement could lead to body image resilience, the central goal of the current campaign and our future studies.

Eshkevari, E. Rieger, M.R. Longo, P. Haggard, J. Treasure. (2012). Increased plasticity of the bodily self in eating disorders. Psychological Medicine, 42, pp. 819–828.

However, viagra for women online you don’t have to be rich and famous to enjoy the benefits of this superberry. However, too much super cialis canada of coffee can be bad for your health too. Avoid consumption of alcohol, cigarette smoking and tobacco products remain as the top culprits of respiratory tract associated diseases- chronic bronchitis, emphysema, levitra prices and lung cancer. Healing Time No order cialis online matter how good the physiotherapist is, there are certain injuries that need a minimum time of starting the work of Kamagra.

Pollatos O, Kurz AL, Albrecht J, Schreder T, Kleemann AM, Schöpf V, Kopietz R,

Wiesmann M, Schandry R. Reduced perception of bodily signals in anorexia nervosa. Eat Behav. 2008 Dec;9(4):381-8. doi: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2008.02.001.

Tsakiris, M., Jiménez, A. T. & Costantini, M. (2011). Just a heartbeat away from one’s body: interoceptive sensitivity predicts malleability of body-representations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological sciences, 278, 1717, p. 2470-2476

Vallins (1966) Cognitive effects of false heart-rate feedback. Journal Personality and Social Psychology, 4: 400-8.

What can neuroimaging studies tell us about obesity?

Food is readily and abundantly available in the industrialised world. Yet, despite the many cafés, restaurants, supermarkets and corner shops we pass every day, not all of us over-eat and become obese. To find out why some people become obese and others don’t, it might be useful to evaluate how people’s brains respond to food. A recent review of the available brain imaging studies has suggested that over-activity in brain areas associated with reward and emotion, in conjunction with reduced activity in brain areas involved in signalling fullness, may lead to over-eating and obesity. A common way to examine activation in these brain areas is to recruit a group of obese individuals (e.g., BMI > 30) and a group of slim individuals (e.g., BMI 20 – 25) and show them pictures of food, typically after they have not eaten for several hours. These kinds of studies indeed show that obesity is linked to increased activity in a network of brain regions involved in reward and emotion when viewing pictures of food. As well as showing pictures of food, brains can also be scanned while participants are actually eating. One such study showed that an area of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is involved in regulating food intake, was slower to respond to food in a group of obese compared to slim men. This ‘sluggish’ response may result in obese individuals not realising they are full, which could maintain patterns of over-eating. Understanding these differing patterns of brain activation in obese vs. slim individuals will hopefully help in identifying who might be at risk of become obese. Early interventions targeted at these at-risk individuals, which include focusing on internal signals of fullness rather than on the many external food cues we are continually surrounded by, may prevent them from becoming obese.
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For more information, see: Carnell, S., Gibson, C., Benson, L., Ochner, C. N., & Geliebter, A. (2012). Neuroimaging and obesity: current knowledge and future directions. Obesity Reviews, 13, 43-56.

The negative consequences of body dissatisfaction are well known and have been the focus of numerous studies. But what do we know about the risk factors that might help us predict increased body dissatisfaction? A study investigated this in a sample of boys and girls of different cultural backgrounds, in two time points: early and middle adolescence, and after five years (i.e. transition from early- to middle adolescence and from middle- to late adolescence). For both sexes, it was found that Body Mass Index (BMI) was a strong predictor of body dissatisfaction in both developmental phases and that peer environment factors (e.g. a friend being on a diet) predicted body dissatisfaction only from early to middle adolescence. Interestingly, self-esteem was found to be a prospective risk factor only for girls, whereas depression during middle adolescence was a risk factor only for boys. Finally, being African American, or from a higher socio-economic status were found to be protective factors in all developmental phases.

These findings highlight the need for interventions that target children before middle adolescence, and that are tailored to meet the needs of the different developmental stages and socio-cultural backgrounds.

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For information see: Paxton, S.J., Eisenberg, M.E., & Neumark-Sztainer, D. (2006). Prospective predictors of body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls and boys: a five-year longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 42(5), 888-899.

How about changing the body… temporarily? Body image in virtual reality

Systems in the brain that are responsible for visual perception have been widely studied. These systems give us the possibility to create a representation of the surrounding world by processing the stimuli to which we are exposed in order to adapt and respond to the environment adequately. Visual cues of our own bodies contribute to our so-called body-image. People tend to perceive this body-image as a fixed or stable structure. However, scientific work in the field of virtual reality points to a different direction.

When perceiving our bodies in a virtual space, new questions arise regarding the influence that this virtual space has on our experience of ourselves and the “true” reality that surrounds us. Avatars have been used in research to introduce a new way to conceptualise human embodiment. We can track the origin of the term avatar to Hindi mythology. Avatars present the opportunity to simulate and experiment with our body-image, its’ perception and processing and thus the way we live it, allowing us to venture into experiences that would be impossible to have in reality but that, nevertheless, can widen the repertoire of behavioural alternatives.

Recently, a Spanish and British research group recruited twenty subjects, of which ten experienced a virtual character that reflected the movement of the upper-body in synchronicity with the subject’s movements; then, the avatar displayed pre-recorded actions instead. The other ten subjects went through the same processes but in a reversed order. The results showed that it is possible to experience a body ownership illusion from an avatar under the synchronous movements condition. This study presents evidence of the usefulness that avatars have for helping us experience a congruent perception of our bodies. Manipulation of virtual reality is therefore a promising research line in regarding body image, since virtual reality allows us to go beyond the sensorial integration that we are accustomed to and temporarily replace our body physiognomy with a digital one. The avatar experience may have a positive influence in the presence of body-image disorders and perhaps “changing” our bodies temporarily, i.e. using non-invasive, non-chirurgical methods like avatars, might be a key to changing the mind.

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References

Wozniak, M. (2012) Pictures of me: possibilities of shaping our body image through virtual reality. Limes: Borderland Studies. (5)1, pp1-10.

Gonzalez-Franco, M; et al. (2010) The contribution of real-time mirror reflections of motor actions on virtual body ownership in an immersive virtual environment. Virtual Reality Conference (VR), IEEE. Pp111-114.

The problem: Research has shown that most adults in the UK fail to get enough exercise, risking their health.

One solution: A study with 127 male and female elementary school, high school and university students found that high exercisers reported greater self-esteem and greater satisfaction with specific aspects of their body as compared to low exercisers. Physical activity is not good only for your physical health, but also for your mental well-being!
One viagra sale is not truly satisfied with what he has so they opt for more work and work load on their heads. overnight shipping viagra With this disappointing feeling, the man may start to spasm.Orgasm. The need to avoid terminological confusion with bipolar disorder is now openly talked about in society since the anti-ED drugs started to emerge. generic cialis levitra It is also worth considering whether the relationship therapy counsellor that you are considering is a member of any reliable web site on the internet dealing with the marketing of all sorts purchase viagra from india associated with medicines.
For more information: Frost, J. and McKelvie (2005). The Relationship of Self-Esteem and Body Satisfaction to Exercise Activity for Male and Female Elementary School, High School, and University Students. The Online Journal of Sport Psychology, 7(4), 36-49

Body aesthetics and weight – not the same thing!

A study by Cazzato and colleagues provides interesting new evidence relating to the idea that beauty and weight are not the same thing, and are processed differently in the brains of men and women. Their study used a technique called rTMS (repeated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation), which uses very short bursts of magnetic pulses to temporarily disrupt brain activity. In this study, the researchers disrupted a small part of the brain known to be involved in the processing of body parts (called the Extrastriatal Body Area – or EBA for short), while showing men and women computer-generated images of male and female models, which varied in terms of how round or thin they were (from extremely round to extremely thin in 4 steps: extremely round, moderately round, moderately thin, and extremely thin). After viewing each image the participants had to rate each model in terms of aesthetics (i.e. “how much do you like the model?”) and roundness (“how round is the model?”), which has been show to relate to perceived weight. The researchers found several interesting differences between the ratings of men and women, such as men liking both male and female models less following disruption (of the EBA) on the right and left side of the brain; whereas disruption of the right EBA resulted in women selectively increasing their aesthetic ratings of male, but not female, models. Interestingly, despite brain disruption causing these changes in aesthetic judgments, the perceived weight (roundness) of the male and female models did not change (irrespective of whether men or women were doing the rating, or which side of the brain was disrupted)! As well as suggesting some interesting differences in the way that men and women process the aesthetics of human bodies, the results also suggest that judgments about aesthetics and weight can be disentangled in the brain. These findings might be useful when trying to understand and perhaps even treat body image disorders.

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Source:

Cazzato, V., Mele, S., & Urgesi, C. (2014). Gender differences in the neural underpinnings of perceiving and appreciating the beauty of the body. Behavioural Brain Research, 264, 188-196.