Nutrition Frenzy

Kids & Meds

Given the increase in childhood obesity and diabetes in the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends routine screening for heart disease in children between the ages of 2 and 10.

“The children who are most concerning are those who are already overweight or obese,” said Dr. Jennifer Shu, a spokesperson for the AAP and Maddie’s pediatrician. She said other risk factors include diabetes, high blood pressure and a family history of early heart disease. Health Minute: Watch more on kids and cholesterol

When a young patient fits the risk profile, Shu recommends testing blood cholesterol levels with a simple finger prick. If the results are normal, she suggests a follow-up test in three to five years.

But if the cholesterol reading is high, Shu refers the patient to a cardiologist and strongly suggests some immediate changes at home.

“Lifestyle is always first,” Shu said.

When Maddie tested positive for high cholesterol at age 7, Zacks made sure her daughter started a daily exercise regimen. She also took a close look at the family diet.

“We’re not perfect,” admitted Zacks. “I try to lead by example. I cook with healthier foods.”

When diet and exercise don’t seem to make much difference, some doctors may turn to cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. Based on clinical trials, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a handful of statin medications for use in children.

Lab tests find unlisted ingredients that can cause heart attacks, strokes

If you’re looking for a little help shedding extra pounds after the holidays, the government is warning you to stay away from nearly 30 weight-loss products that contain unlisted and possibly dangerous ingredients.

The pills are advertised as “natural” fat busters and have intriguing names like Imelda Perfect Slim and Zhen de Shou. Some suggest they are innovative “herbal” remedies from Asia.

But the Food and Drug Administration on Monday said the concoctions contain unlisted ingredients, including powerful appetite-suppressing drugs and a suspected carcinogen.

FDA lab testing found 28 dietary supplements that could land unsuspecting users in the emergency room.

Many contain sibutramine, a powerful appetite suppressant that’s a chemical cousin of amphetamines. It can cause heart attacks, strokes, heart palpitations and other problems. Some contain phenolphthalein, a chemical long used as a laxative, but which is now being withdrawn from the market because of cancer risks.

None of the supplements lists the dangerous ingredients on the label. “Consumers have no way of knowing that these products contain powerful drugs that can cause serious health consequences,” Woodcock said.

The FDA is considering criminal charges against some of the companies, because they have not responded to requests for recalls.

The products are:

Fatloss Slimming, 2 Day Diet, 3x Slimming Power, 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming, 3 Day Diet Japan Lingzhi, 24 Hours Diet, 7 Diet Day/Night Formula, 7 Day Herbal Slim, 8 Factor Diet, 999 Fitness Essence, Extrim Plus and GMP.

Also:

Imelda Perfect Slim, Lida DaiDaihua, Miaozi Slim Capsules, Perfect Slim, Perfect Slim 5x, Phyto Shape, ProSlim Plus, Royal Slimming Formula, Slim 3 in 1, Slim Express 360, Slimtech, Somotrin, Superslim, TripleSlim, Zhen de Shou, Venom Hyperdrive 3.0

I lost 41 pounds in 2008, by carefully watching what I ate, all healthy meats, low starchy-carbohydrate vegetables and exercising more. It can be done. Is the weight loss fast? No, but it is healthier.

Want to lose weight? Try eating. That’s one of the strategies being developed by scientists experimenting with foods that trick the body into feeling full.

Personally, Atkins bars are a godsend! With only five grams of carbs per bar, they make a great snack.

At the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, England, food expert Peter Wilde and colleagues are developing foods that slow down the digestive system, which then triggers a signal to the brain that suppresses appetite.

“That fools you into thinking you’ve eaten far too much when you really haven’t,” said Wilde. From his studies on fat digestion, he said it should be possible to make foods, from bread to yogurts, that make it easier to diet.

While the research is preliminary, Wilde’s approach to curbing appetite is one that some doctors say could be key in combating the obesity epidemic.

Wilde’s research hinges on the body’s mechanisms for digesting fat.

Fat normally gets broken down in the first part of the small intestines. When you eat a high-fat meal, however, the body can only digest the fat entirely further down in the intestines. That sparks a release of hormones that suppress appetite.

Wilde’s approach copies what happens with a high-fat meal: He coats fat droplets in foods with modified proteins from plants, so it takes longer for the enzymes that break down fat to reach it.

That means that the fat isn’t digested until it hits the far reaches of the intestines. At that point, intestinal cells send a signal telling the brain it’s full.

Even though the body hasn’t had a high-fat meal, it suppresses the appetite as if it has. If the fat had been digested earlier in the intestines, no such signal would be sent.

Wilde said the technique should work with any foods that contain fat, like dairy products, precooked sauces, mayonnaise, breads and pastries, and that taste would probably not be affected.

If all goes well, products could be on shelves within a few years, he said.

In another technique, scientists at the University of Newcastle have been testing a seaweed extract called alginate that reduces fat absorption by cutting the level of glucose digested by the body before it gets broken down in the large intestine.

That is somewhat similar to how some diet drugs work, such as orlistat, marketed as Xenical by Roche Holding AG, and Alli by GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

I’ve been lucky in the respect I’ve lost my weight through watching what I eat with no medications, such as these, and exercising. Friends of mine have lost significant weight with medications, OTC & prescription, but failed to include an exercise regimen, thus, gaining it all back (plus).

Tesofensine Helps Obese People Lose Weight in Early Studies

An experimental diet drug may prove to be twice as effective as currently available weight loss medications if results from an early study are confirmed.

Researchers did not compare the drug tesofensine head-to-head with currently approved weight loss medications. But researcher Arne Astrup, MD, of the University of Copenhagen tells WebMD that the weight loss in the study was roughly double that reported in trials of these drugs.

Danish biopharmaceutical company Neurosearch A/S, which hopes to market tesofensine as a weight loss drug, paid for the study.

“Normally the drugs now on the market give you at best a weight loss of 5 kilograms (11 pounds) with diet and exercise,” Astrup says. “In this study we doubled that weight loss.”

Tesofensine Targets Appetite Centers
Astrup says the drug works on three different appetite regulatory centers of the brain — the neurotransmitters noradrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin.

The phase II study, reported today in The Lancet, included 203 obese patients whose average weight was about 220 pounds.

All the participants were placed on a calorie-restricted diet and all were asked to increase their physical activity to between 30 minutes to an hour a day.

Participants were treated with either a placebo, 0.25 milligrams of tesofensine, 0.5 milligrams of the drug, or 1 milligram of the drug daily.

In all, 161 of the participants completed the six-month study, with average weight loss ranging from a low of around 5 pounds in the placebo group to 28 pounds among patients taking the highest dose of the tesofensine.

But patients on the highest dose of the experimental drug also showed significant increases in blood pressure.

Because of this, patients who participate in a planned phase III study of the drug will be treated with the 0.5 milligram dose, which rivaled the higher dose in terms of weight loss in the phase II trial but elicited only a slight increase in pressure over placebo.

A spokeswoman for Neurosearch A/S tells WebMD that the phase III trials are planned for both the U.S. and Europe. Assuming the trials are positive, the company hopes to have the drug on the market within four years.

Checking the Drug’s Safety
Thomas Wadden, PhD, who directs the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Center for Weight and Eating Disorders, tells WebMD that the phase III study should help answer important questions about the safety of the experimental weight loss drug.

“The phase II results are very promising, but larger studies are needed to confirm the findings and tell us more about the safety profile,” he says.

Wadden says the blood pressure finding is particularly troubling, as was the finding that study participants treated with tesofensine reported more anger, hostility, and confusion than participants in the placebo arm of the study.

“We need to do more extensive assessment of the psychiatric effect of medications like this one that operate on the central nervous system,” he says.

Possible psychiatric side effects may have doomed companies’ research

French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis said Wednesday it is halting all research on a diet drug sold in Europe, Acomplia, and rival Pfizer Inc. hours later said it is ending research on an experimental weight-loss drug in the same class.

Both drugs work by blocking the pleasure centers that give marijuana smokers the “munchies” — the cannabinoid type 1, or CB1, receptors.

Given that obesity and related complications are arguably the world’s biggest public health problem, the demise of both drugs will be a big disappointment for patients and doctors, and possibly for investors. The decisions leave New York-based Pfizer, the world’s top drugmaker by sales, and Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis, ranked No. 4, suddenly without drugs in a category all but guaranteed as a blockbuster.

Two weeks ago, Sanofi-Aventis temporarily stopped sales in Europe, where the pill had been marketed in 18 European Union countries since 2006. That move came after the European Medicines Agency recommended the European Commission temporarily suspend sales of Acomplia, saying its risks — depression, anxiety and stress disorders — outweighed its benefits.

At the time, Sanofi-Aventis said it “remains committed to Acomplia to bring an important therapeutic approach to obese and overweight patients,” about 700,000 of whom it said had used Acomplia and gained health benefits. The company said it planned to provide additional evidence for health officials to re-evaluate its risks and benefits in patients with diabetes and heart disease.

In the U.S., a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel unanimously rejected the drug on June 13, 2007, citing psychiatric problems including increased risk of suicidal thoughts. Two weeks later, Sanofi-Aventis withdrew its application for U.S. approval.

For the first nine months of this year, Accomplia had sales of only 81 euros, about $113 million, not even making the company’s top 15 products.

On Wednesday, Pfizer said it ended final-stage human testing of a drug known only by the designation CP-945,598 — not explicitly for safety concerns but because of “changing regulatory perspectives on the risk/benefit profile of the CB1 class and likely new regulatory requirements for approval.”