Chewing Gum Can Reduce Calorie Intake, Increase Energy Expenditure, Nutritionist Finds

A nutrition professor at the University of Rhode Island studying the effects of chewing sugar-free gum on weight management has found that it can help to reduce calorie intake and increase energy expenditure.

Kathleen Melanson, URI associate professor of nutrition and food sciences, compared gum chewing to non-gum chewing in healthy adult volunteers who came to her lab for two standardized tests in random order. When study subjects chewed gum for a total of one hour in the morning (three 20-minute gum-chewing sessions), they consumed 67 fewer calories at lunch and did not compensate by eating more later in the day. Male participants also reported feeling significantly less hungry after chewing gum. Melanson also found that when her subjects chewed gum before and after eating, they expended about 5 percent more energy than when they did not chew gum. In addition, her subjects reported feeling more energetic after chewing gum.

"Based on these results, gum chewing integrates energy expenditure and energy intake, and that's what energy balance is about," Melanson said. According to the URI researcher, nerves in the muscles of the jaw are stimulated by the motion of chewing and send signals to the appetite section of the brain that is linked to satiety, which may explain why the act of chewing might help to reduce hunger.

Melanson said that she expected that chewing would increase the amount of energy her subjects expended. "However, what makes the energy expenditure data particularly interesting is that this study simulated real-life gum chewing, with the subjects chewing at their own relaxed, natural pace and for realistic time periods," she said.

In her study, 35 male and female subjects made two visits to the URI Energy Metabolism Lab after having fasted over night. During one visit, they chewed gum for 20 minutes before consuming a breakfast shake and twice more during the three hours before lunch. During both visits, participants remained as still as possible as measurements were conducted of their resting metabolism rates and blood glucose levels at regular intervals before and after breakfast and lunch. They also conducted periodic self-assessments of their feelings of hunger, energy and other factors during both visits.

"This was a short term study, so the next step is to do a longer study and to use subjects who need to lose weight," said Melanson. "But based on these initial results, one could hypothesize that gum chewing may be a useful adjunct to a weight management program."

The study was supported by a $25,000 research award from the Wrigley Science Institute that was presented during the 2007 annual meeting of The Obesity Society.

3 Vegetables That Fight Against Stomach Fat

A unique way that a few specific vegetables can actually stimulate the burning of abdominal fat...

article by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist

I bet you didn't know that there is a specific class of vegetables that contain very specific phytonutrients that actually help to fight against stubborn belly fat.

Let me explain what these unique vegetables are and why they help to burn stomach fat...

Chemicals that force your body to hold onto belly fat

Something you may have never heard about is that certain chemicals in our food supply and our environment, such as pesticides, herbicides, and certain petrochemicals from air and water pollution, household cleaners, cosmetics, etc can react with your body and make your body store excess abdominal fat.

These chemicals are known as xenoestrogens.

Xenoestrogens are chemicals that you are exposed to (and are hard to avoid in the modern world) that have an estrogenic effect in your body. Excess exposure to these can cause hormone balance disruptions for both men and women. So these can wreak havoc in the body for both guys and gals.

These estrogenic chemicals that we are exposed to on a daily basis can stimulate your body to store belly fat, along with many other problems (including cancer risks in the long term).

So here's where this specific class of vegetables comes in handy...

One of those cool tricks that I teach my clients that hire me for nutritional counseling is the use of cruciferous vegetables to help fight against stomach fat.

Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, etc. contain very specific and unique phytonutrients such as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that help to fight against these estrogenic compounds...

And by fighting against these belly fat stimulating estrogenic chemicals, this is just 1 more step in helping you to win the battle against abdominal fat!

So there you go... just another excuse to do what mom always told you and eat more broccoli!

I've really learned to like brussells sprouts in the last year too... Melt a little grass-fed cheese on them and some garlic and they're great!

Pumpkin Skin May Scare Away Germs

1. The skin of that pumpkin you carve into a Jack-o'-Lantern to scare away ghosts and goblins on Halloween contains a substance that could put a scare into microbes that cause millions of cases of yeast infections in adults and infants each year. That's the conclusion of a new study.

In the study, Kyung-Soo Hahm, Yoonkyung Park and colleagues note that some disease-causing microbes are becoming resistant to existing antibiotics. As a result, scientists worldwide are searching for new antibiotics. Past studies hinted that pumpkin, long used as folk medicine in some countries, might have antibiotic effects.

The scientists extracted proteins from pumpkin rinds to see if the proteins inhibit the growth of microbes, including Candida albicans (C. albicans). That fungus causes vaginal yeast infections, diaper rash in infants, and other health problems. One protein had powerful effects in inhibiting the growth of C. albicans, in cell culture experiments, with no obvious toxic effects. The pumpkin protein could be developed into a natural medicine for fighting yeast infections in humans, the report suggests. The protein also blocked the growth of several fungi that attack important plant crops and could be useful as an agricultural fungicide, they add.

Deadly Stomach Infection Rising In Community Settings

Clostridium difficile is a serious bacteria that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. These findings were presented October 26 at the 2009 American College of Gastroenterology (Clostridium difficile, often called C. difficile or "C. diff," is a bacterium that is resistant to some antibiotics and is most often contracted by the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes.

"Recent reports have shown increasing incidence and severity ofC. difficile infection -- especially in the older population," says Darrell Pardi, M.D., Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist and senior author on the study. "Our study examines why the cases are on the rise and who is getting the infection."

In this population-based study, researchers studied 385 cases of C. difficile bacterial infection from 1991-2005 to determine how many cases were hospital-acquired versus community-acquired infections. Of the cases, 192 were hospital-acquired and 35 were residents of nursing homes. Of these hospital-acquired cases, the median age of infection was 72 years; in contrast, 158 cases were community-acquired and the median age was 50 years. Thirty-five percent of the hospital infections had a severe illness compared to 22 percent of community infections who had a severe illness.

The patients with community-acquired infection were also less likely than the hospital-acquired group to have been exposed to antibiotics before their infection. Thus, many of the community-acquired infections lacked the traditional risk factors for infection, namely recent hospitalization and exposure to antibiotics.

There were no differences between community- and hospital-acquired infections in terms of what patients were treated with (primarily metronidazole), response rates, or recurrence rates after treatment.

"We are seeing more cases of C. difficile in the community, but they tend to be less severe and in a younger population," says Dr. Pardi. "The growing incidence of C. difficile infection in both inpatient and outpatient settings could be linked to the increasing usage of antibiotics and to the possibility that C. difficile may be getting resistant to some of our newer antibiotics."

There are hundreds of kinds of bacteria found normally in the intestines. Many play beneficial roles in the body. When a patient takes an antibiotic to treat an infection, it often destroys beneficial bacteria as well as the bacteria that are causing the illness. Without enough healthy bacteria, dangerous pathogens such as C. difficile can quickly grow out of control. Once it takes hold, C. difficile can produce two virulent toxins that attack the lining of the intestine.

"Doctors have gotten better at spotting C. difficile in hospitals and nursing homes; however, now doctors and patients need to be more aware that you can get this infection as an outpatient and that a case of diarrhea or abdominal cramps at home could become serious," says Dr. Pardi.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year in the United States, C. difficile is responsible for tens of thousands of diarrhea cases and at least 5,000 deaths.

Children Can Complete Treatment For Peanut Allergies And Achieve Long-term Tolerance, Studies Suggest

It appears these children have lost their allergies," says Wesley Burks, MD, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke. "This gives other parents and children hope that we'll soon have a safe, effective treatment that will halt allergies to certain foods."

Long-term tolerance in children with peanut allergies was documented for the first time by the presence of key immunologic changes, according to researchers at Duke and Arkansas Children's Hospital who presented their findings at the American Academy of Asthma and Immunology meeting in Washington, DC March 15.

This procedure is not currently recommended for patients as it has not been fully tested, and it should never be attempted without full medical supervision.

Tests of several immunologic indicators suggest the body builds tolerance quickly.

"At the start of the study, these participants couldn't tolerate one-sixth of a peanut," Burks said. "Six months into it, they were ingesting 13 to 15 peanuts before they had a reaction."

About four million Americans have food allergies, and allergies to tree nuts and peanuts are the most common. Life-threatening reactions can occur from exposure to even a trace amount of peanuts, and nearly half of the 150 deaths attributed to food allergies each year are caused by peanut allergies.

Duke and Arkansas Children's Hospital began enrolling patients in studies five years ago to determine if incremental doses of peanut protein could change how the body's immune system responds to its presence. The doses start as small as 1/1000 of a peanut. Eight to 10 months later, the children are ingesting the equivalent of up to 15 peanuts per day. The children stay on that daily therapy for several years and are monitored closely.

Nine of the 33 children participating in the study have been on maintenance therapy for more than 2.5 years. After a series of food challenges, four of those children were taken off the treatment and continue to eat peanuts. Some have been off treatment for more than a year. Doctors keep tabs on any potential changes in their immune system via skin, blood and immune studies.

One of the tests used in the study looks at immunoglobulin E (IgE), a protein the body makes in response to peanut allergens. "If you have it, you're likely allergic, if you don't, you aren't," explained Burks. Children in this study generally started with IgE levels greater than 25. "At the end of the study, their peanut IgEs were less than 2 and have remained that way since we stopped the treatment," he said.

Because the pool of children now off treatment is so small, Burks says it's hard to say whether these children simply outgrew their allergies or if the therapy did something to enhance that outcome. The next step is a blinded study in which children on treatment are compared to a control group. First year results were presented at the meeting by Stacie M. Jones, MD, a pediatric allergist at Arkansas Children's Hospital. So far, the oral immune therapy appears to be working.

"We see initial desensitization effects of the treatment are real," Burks says. "Those children are now able to eat up to 15 peanuts with no reaction, but the children not on treatment have symptoms early on in the study."

Despite the news, Burks insists this research is still ongoing and cautions parents and professionals against trying any version on their own. "In my clinic, I would do the same things I've always done. Once diagnosed with a food allergy, I would recommend they avoid the food. We have to wait for the studies to show the treatment is safe, and to see desensitization start to work. We also want to know the therapy works long term."

FDA Approves Twynsta (telmisartan/amlodipine) for Hypertension

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