-From Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic researchers found that healthy young people who put on as little as 9 pounds of fat, specifically in the abdomen, are at risk for developing endothelial cell dysfunction. Endothelial cells line the blood vessels and control the ability of the vessels to expand and contract. “Endothelial dysfunction has long been associated with an increased risk for coronary artery disease and cardiovascular events,” says Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic. “Gaining a few pounds in college, on a cruise, or over the holidays is considered harmless, but it can have cardiovascular implications, especially if the weight is gained in the abdomen.” For the study, which was published in this week’s Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Somers and his team recruited 43 healthy Mayo Clinic volunteers with a mean age of 29 years. … Continue reading
-An article from Reuters Women, try not to think of this if you lie awake at night: having trouble sleeping means you’re likely to gain weight. As if simply getting older weren’t hard enough, new research shows that middle-aged and older women who have trouble falling or staying asleep may pack on more pounds than their well-rested contemporaries. A number of studies have found that sleep-deprived children and adults are more likely to be overweight than those who usually get a full night’s rest. But many of those studies assessed people at one point in time, so it was hard to know which came first, the sleep problems or the excess pounds. A few studies have followed people over time, but they’ve disagreed about whether poor sleep is linked to expanding waistlines. The new findings, reported in the International Journal … Continue reading
