Diseases

Fat cells may shrink or grow in size, but not in number, a new study shows.

The findings, published in the advance online edition of Nature, hint that it might be possible to create new weight loss drugs that reduce the number of fat cells.

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Among respondents who were severely obese -- having a body mass index

(BMI) of 35 or higher -- 40 percent reported instances of weight discrimination. A body mass index is the ratio between height and weight commonly used to classify individuals as over- or underweight.

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They reveal that added growth in early life can cause a metabolic rate in adults 20% faster than if the individual had grown more steadily.

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That abdominal fat, sometimes described as making people apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped, has already been linked to higher risk of developing diabetes, stroke and heart disease.

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Obesity needs to be tackled in the same way as climate change, a top nutritional scientist has said.

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Doctors blamed a sluggish thyroid but Bering said that was only part of the problem. She also admitted to bad eating habits, which included a lot of carbohydrates.

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Two years ago, Phill Novak weighed 387 pounds.

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Gunderson, an epidemiologist with Kaiser Permanente, in Oakland, California, and colleagues found that women who got less than an average of 5 hours of sleep daily during the first 6 months after childbirth were likely to weigh at least 5 kilograms (about 11 pounds) more than their pre-pregnancy weight at one year after childbirth.

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A £372m strategy aimed at cutting levels of obesity in England has been launched by the government.

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Patients who had surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs were five times more likely to see their diabetes disappear over the next two years than were patients who had standard diabetes care, according to Australian researchers.

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When body mass index (BMI) was used to measure excess weight, the pattern was similar. Irrespective of which measure was used, however, the prevalence of diabetes was consistently higher among Asians than whites at any given level of excess weight, "in agreement with earlier findings," the authors note.

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The process is thought to be crucial for enabling cells to use fat as an energy source, but if too much fat is stored obesity results.

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The rise in obesity may be going hand-in-hand with increases in severe gum disease, US research suggests.

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The researchers found, in most cases, hitting the gym alone isn't enough to take off the extra weight. The big problem: We sit too much. Researchers say when we sit, the enzymes that are responsible for burning fat just shut down.

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Carrying extra weight can do a number on your knees. (Jodi Hilton for The New York Times)

For people carrying extra pounds, the news last week was good. Obesity doesn’t increase cancer risk, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported.

But that doesn’t mean it’s time to celebrate a fuller figure. The same issue of JAMA reported that old age is a particularly treacherous time for the obese.

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