A Mediterranean diet may help people avoid the small areas of brain damage that can lead to problems with thinking and memory, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010. ...

Many people think the success of dieting, seemingly a national obsession following the excesses and resolutions of the holiday season, depends mostly on how hard one tries - on willpower and dedication. While this does matter, new research has found that a much more subtle aspect of the diets themselves can also have a big influence on the pounds shed - namely, the perceived complexity of a diet plan's rule ...

Time to try Atkins again? Not so fast. A new report from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine showed that people who followed a low-carbohydrate diet lost more weight in the first year, but tended to regain most of the weight during the next two years. In contrast, people who stuck to a low-fat diet maintained their weight loss over three years. ...

While there are many benefits of losing weight, weight reduction also might negatively affect bones in the body. During weight loss, bones are being remodeled - breaking down old bone and forming new bone - at an accelerated rate. As a result, bone density is reduced, causing increased fragility. In a new study, University of Missouri researchers found that weight-bearing exercise, in this case, fast walkin ...

The adverse affects of being overweight are not limited to physical function but also extend to neurological function, according to research in the latest issue of the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological and Medical Sciences (Volume 65A, Number 1). The publication presents a collection of ten articles highlighting new findings related to obesity in older persons. ...

Obesity appears to be associated with an increased risk of depression, and depression also appears associated with an increased risk of developing obesity, according to a meta-analysis of previously published studies in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Both depression and obesity are widely spread problems with major public health implications," the auth ...

With the obesity rate rising for American adults and children, health concerns such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease are a frequent reality. Although obesity itself is a major risk factor for disease, most of the threat may be associated with a cluster of risk factors called the metabolic syndrome (MetS). Losing weight can improve health and reduce these risk factors, but many people have difficulty k ...

A two-year study led by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) found that healthy, long-term weight loss diets can significantly reverse carotid (main brain artery) atherosclerosis, a direct risk factor for strokes and heart attacks. The study is one of the first to prove the potential of moderate weight loss as a strategy to reverse atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) in overweight ...

Half of the mothers who took part in a study thought that their obese four or five year-old was normal weight, as did 39% of the fathers, according to the February issue of Acta Paediatrica. When it came to overweight children, 75% of mothers and 77% of fathers thought that their child was normal weight. More than 800 parents of 439 children took part in the study, carried out by researchers from the Univer ...

In a new study, the amount of calories selected by parents for their child's hypothetical meal at McDonald's restaurants were reduced by an average of 102 calories when the menus clearly showed the calories for each item. This is the first study to suggest that labeled menus may lead to significantly reduced calorie intake in fast food restaurant meals purchased for children. ...