Weight Regain after Successful Dieting Linked to Hormones!

Online Health Expert Obesity and Dieting News Flash: An Interesting study done by Australian Doctors involving 50 overweight or obese patients without diabetes in a 10-week weight loss dieting program and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (October, 2011) showed elevated levels of hormones linked with hunger and obesity (ghrelin, gastric inhibitory polypeptide, and pancreatic polypeptide) and decreased levels of appetite suppressing hormones (leptin, peptide YY, cholecystokinin, insulin and amylin) compared to baseline levels over a period of one year after weight loss resulting from Dieting, suggesting that hormones result in the quick and high weight regain after dieting induced weight loss.


Anyone who has tried dieting and successfully lost weight as a result of it knows it is usually followed by a rebound weigh regain. This study shows that this weight regain is not merely a result of lack of willpower on their part, but is a result of several changes in the levels of homeostatic hormones linked with obesity. It clearly shows that the human body fights the lowering in body weight by quickly bringing the weight back with a rebound!


This understanding and long term means and strategies to counteract these homeostatic changes may hold the key to sustained weight loss by preventing rebound weight gain after a successful dieting program.


Online Health Expert urges "You" to share this story to help fight the rapidly growing Obesity epidemic.


Sources and References:


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Sincerely, 


Dr. Harish Malik

Online Health Expert Reports: First Lab. Brewed Blood Successfully Injected in a Human in France.

Online Health Expert Medical News Report: According to an article published in the journal Blood, November 10, 2011 issue, for the very first time in the history of Blood Transfusion Medicine, when the American Red Cross had declared a nationwide shortage of Blood, scientists in France have been able to successfully transfuse 10 homogenized fully functional and mature Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSC) derived in-vitro cultured Red Blood Cells (cRBCs) in a Human subject and showed them to be at par in quality and functionality with the natural RBCs.


Although, we are not yet technologically advanced enough to go for full scale quick and mass production of cRBCs for clinical use, this advancement promises a life saving leap in our capabilities very soon!


Sources and References:


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Thank you for updating your medical knowledge at Online Health Expert. 


Sincerely, 


Dr. Harish Malik

Learning more from Failures better than learning from Successes alone: Functional MRI Brain Scans Yield Clues to Physician Decision Making.

Online Health Expert Medical News Flash: According to an Interesting study published in the journal PLoS One done on 35 experienced Physicians using 64 virtual case studies during training and 64 virtual patients in the testing phase and Functional MRI scans of their brains to elucidate their decision making process, the research team led by Dr. Jonathan Downar, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine in Ontario, Canada showed that Doctors who learned mainly from their successes showed low performance and a tended to make sub-optimal decision making compared to their high performing colleagues who learned equally from their mistakes (failures) and successes (positive outcomes). 

High performing Doctors' brains achieve better outcomes by attending to informative failures during training rather than chasing the reward value of successes.

This finding, labelled as confirmation bias and success chasing was shown to hinder associative learning which together produced or solidified the false beliefs in low performing physicians in this study. 

This leads us to believe that disconfirmation learning might be more beneficial in teaching Medical students and Residents so that they will not become success chasers and would be able to learn from their mistakes in the simulated clinical case scenarios and would be worthwhile to incorporate as a part of their training to improve patient outcomes. Further testing needs to be done to find direct evidence to support this type of training and its benefits.

Online Health Expert recommends learning more from one's failures rather than successes alone is the key to avoid spurious learning and is true for everyone and not only Doctors.

Further Reading and Sources:

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Thank you for updating your medical knowledge at Online Health Expert's Top Medical News. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Harish Malik

Online Health Expert Medical News Flash! Diseased Hearts to Heal Themselves in the Future! Thanks to the discovery of Oncostatin M which Helps in the Dedifferentiation of the Healthy Heart Cells into Precursor Cells that Regenerate the Damaged Heart Tisssue.

Online Health Expert's Top Medical News reports that Scientists have figured out how the diseased hearts heal and are now getting ready to to use this piece of information to enhance this natural healing process after Heart attack.

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim and the Schüchtermann Klinik in Bad Rothenfelde have identified the protein Oncostatin M which fulfils a central task in the dedifferentiation (reversal) process by stimulating the regression of individual heart muscle cells into their precursor cells after Myocardial Infarction and Cardiomyopathy that limits the fatal consequences.

They now plan to improve the self-healing powers of the heart with the help of this protein and are looking for the correct time frame to use it in humans after such insults so as to minimize its adverse effects.

Further Reading and References:

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Thank you for updating your medical knowledge at Online Health Expert's Top Medical News.

Sincerely,

Dr. Harish Malik

Online Health Expert Dr. Harish Malik explains human brain, reality, sense of time & memory types.

Online Health Expert Explains Reality:

As many humans there are, as many realities. In fact just like the finger prints, DNA prints (exception of identical twins), each of us have a unique Brain print with no exceptions as no two humans can be present at one place simultaneously and experience the same reality.

Our Brain along with the spinal cord (CNS -Central Nervous System) and nerves (PNS -Peripheral Nervous System which includes the ANS ie., Autonomic Nervous System and SNS ie., Somatic Nervous System) with the help of various sensory organs (special ones - Eyes for 3D color sight/vision, Nose for Olfaction/smell, Ears - Audition/Hearing and Equilibrium/Balance and acceleration, Tongue - Gustation/Taste  and General ones - like the Touch (skin and viscera), Pressure, Vibration, Proprioception, Pain, and Temperature (hot and cold) senses the presence of energy and matter(within the human capability/limitations) and based on prior and real time knowledge base generates a sense of self and the surroundings - which we call our reality.

As the design is almost the same for all of us the our knowledge and experiences are the main confounding factors in the creation of our realities. That being said knowledge and experience are very powerful tools that can change our reality.

Our Brain does a marvelous job at Capturing and Deleting information/data almost simultaneously to keep us aware of our surroundings and self, and that is what we perceive to be "Real" and gives us a sense of "Present" time or "Real" time.


More Details at Online Health Expert available at  http://onlinehealthexpert.blogspot.com


Reference and Source:


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Online Health Expert Medical News for Easy Weight Loss! Chew Gum - Lose Weight - Coming Soon: Scientist Uses Vitamin B12 To Deliver Appetite-Suppressing Hormone PYY (Peptide YY) Via Chewing Gum or Oral Tablets.

Online Health Expert reports Weight loss to become as easy as chewing gum!


Soon, losing weight might mean chewing a stick of gum after eating a well balanced meal to suppress your appetite.

In an exciting new study, a chemist at Syracuse University, Robert Doyle and his team, demonstrated, for the first time, that a critical hormone PYY (Peptide YY) which is a short (36-amino acid) protein released by cells in the ileum and colon in response to feeding.that helps people feel "full" after eating can be delivered into the bloodstream orally.

Doyle's team is working on  incorporating B12-PYY in chewing gum or oral tablets in trials and hoping to deliver PYY without being degraded in the GI system to cause appetite suppression in obese individuals.

If they will be successful, PYY-laced gum would be a natural way to help people lose weight in the near future.

Robert Doyle's study was published online in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. He collaborated on the study with researchers from Murdoch University in Australia.

Further Reading and Sources:

Link 1
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Thank you for updating your medical knowledge at Online Health Expert's Top Medical News.

Sincerely,

Dr. Harish Malik

Online Health Expert Medical News Report! Inexpensive Diabetes Drug Metformin Shows Promise in Reducing Risk of Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer and Possibly Other Cancers.

Online Health Expert reports Cancer fighting properties of Metformin (Glucophage), a cheap and inexpensive drug used to treat type 2 Diabetes.

Previous epidemiological association of decreased Breast cancer in women on long term Metformin therapy for type 2 Diabetes Mellitus was experimentally shown to be true by researchers from Michigan State University and their colleagues from Seoul University.

Using culture dishes (Link 1), these researchers grew miniature human breast tumors, or mammospheres, that activated a certain stem cell gene (Oct4A). Then the mammospheres were exposed to natural estrogen - a known growth factor and potential breast tumor promoter - and man-made chemicals that are known to promote tumors or disrupt the endocrine system. 

They found that estrogen and the chemicals caused the mammospheres to increase in numbers and size. However, when metformin was added, the numbers and size of the mammospheres were dramatically reduced. While each of the chemicals enhanced growth by different means, metformin seemed to be able to inhibit their stimulated growth in all cases.

In another study done last year at the National Cancer Institute regarding metformin and Lung cancer prevention in mice (Link 2) when the researchers administered metformin to mice by injection, the drug levels were higher and the anticancer effects were even stronger—the drug reduced lung tumors by 72 percent compared with no treatment. Although this method of administration is not feasible for cancer prevention in humans, analogs of metformin that are more potent may well be more effective than the drug itself, Dr. Dennis noted. With any chemopreventive agent, however, minimal toxicity is critical, and metformin was well tolerated in the mice. In fact, the livers of the treated mice not only showed no signs of toxicity, but they actually appeared healthier than those of untreated mice.

Further research will be done to see if metformin can reduce the risk of Pancreatic and Liver cancers as well.

Further Reading and References:

Link 1

Link 2

Thank you for updating your medical knowledge at Online Health Expert's Top Medical News.

Sincerely,

Dr. Harish Malik

Online Health Expert Medical News Flash! What’s New in Chemotherapy? Johns Hopkins Professor Marc Ostermeier and His Team Has Devised Protein “Switches” That Could Turn Human Cancer Cells into Tiny Chemotherapy Factories Causing Them to Self-destruct While Sparing Healthy Tissue.

Online Health Expert explains how Chemotherapy delivery is about to be revolutionized!
This novel cancer-fighting strategy and promising early lab test results from Johns Hopkins Department of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering were reported in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Abstract).

Marc Ostermeier’s team made this novel weapon, cancer-fighting protein “switch”, by fusing together two different proteins and successfully tested it on human colon and breast cancer cells. One protein detects a marker that cancer cells produce. The other protein, derived from yeast, can turn an inactive prodrug (drug that is in its inactive form) into a cancer-cell killer (active chemotherapy drug). “When the first part of the switch detects cancer, it tells its partner to activate the chemotherapy drug, destroying the cell,” Ostermeier said.

Normal healthy cells will also receive the prodrug but would not be able to convert it to active chemotherapy drug and thus would be spared.

Animal testing is expected to start within a year.

Source and further reading:

Johns Hopkins University (2011, September 23). Protein 'switches' could turn cancer cells into tiny chemotherapy factories.

Wright, C., Wright, R., Eshleman, J., and Ostermeier, M. (2011) A protein therapeutic modality founded on molecular regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved on November 27, 2011 from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/09/12/1102803108.abstract

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1102803108/-/DCSupplemental.

Thank you for updating your medical knowledge at Online Health Expert's Top Medical News.

Sincerely,

Dr. Harish Malik

Online Health Expert launches Free Global Move Movement to bring Doctors Closer to their Patients and Promote Health awareness to Fight Disease.

I am Dr. Harish Malik and the Author of Online Health Expert. I am a Medical Doctor from India with over 10 years of Medicine, Medical Education, Teaching, Research and Public Speaking experience. Please Click here to view my complete profile. I have recently started a Global "Move Movement".

My Revolutionary Global "Move Movement" to help prevent/fight disease and promote positive health is a testimony to my dedication to improve Global Health and cut Global Medical and Health costs.

The addition of "Free Membership" to Online Health Expert provides a platform where Medical professionals as well as people can exchange ideas, knowledge and skills to improve their health and spread Health awareness and come together as a Global Family of Health Protectors and Promoters.

My launch of the "Top Medical News" section about the technologies and discoveries that are reshaping our Health care such as Nanotechnology, 3D Organ Printing for transplantation, use of Stem Cells in healing hearts, brains and many other organs.

Above all the creation of "Synthetic Life" has changed my definition of Life - Life forms are software (genes) driven dynamic organic machines (body) - and our ability to literally edit this software on a computer and to create "New Life forms" is amazing new promising technology that has already started revolutionizing our world at all levels.

My Free Links for "Clinical Skills Videos", "Allied Health care Clinical Skills Videos" and "Symptom Checkers" when properly utilized will make Medical and Health care Safer and More Cost Effective in the time of "Global Economic Crisis" and growing disconnect between Health care Providers and Patients due to our increasing reliance on technology in diagnosing and treating patients and the diminishing and declining utilization of Clinical Skills.

“To teach is to touch a life forever”. Keeping this in mind, I believe that every Medical Educator must be highly motivated, must be knowledgeable, skilled and a thorough professional who must strive for perfection.

Please Join Online Health Expert today for FREE! to Learn and to Teach and Improve Global Health and Medical Education through your contribution today. .

 "It's Never Too Late to improve and nobody is perfect and Health care needs Major Changes NOW!" Let’s Start This Change by Joining Online Health Expert and Sharing our Wealth of knowledge.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Dr. Harish Malik