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Different Diets for Different Body Types

Source(s):
David Ludwig, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics at
Harvard Medical School and Director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program and associate program director of the General Clinical Research Center at Children's Hospital, Boston. His latest book is Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World (Houghton Mifflin).


Different Diets for Different Body Types
If weight loss is among your goals for the New Year,
results of a recent study may help you pick an eating
plan that stacks the odds in your favor. David Ludwig, MD,
PhD, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, as well
as director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program, was part of a team of researchers who found that depending on your body chemistry, which weight loss strategy you choose can make a big difference in your success.

HIGHS AND LOWS
In a recent study, Dr. Ludwig and his research team
randomly assigned 73 obese young adults to either a
conventional low-fat diet (55% carbohydrate, 20% fat) or
a low-glycemic load diet (40% carbohydrate, 35% fat).
Protein was the same in both diets. The low-glycemic load
group was counseled to eat foods low in sugar and refined
grains, avoiding white bread, pasta, bagels and some cereals, while those on the conventional low-fat diet were given the usual advice about making low-fat choices. Neither group had to restrict calories since one goal of the research was to identify a dietary program that reduces appetite naturally, without having to track calories -- and advocates of both diet strategies have argued that they naturally do this, Dr. Ludwig told me.

What makes this study much more interesting than just a straightforward comparison of two eating plans is the fact
that researchers first gave each participant a glucose
tolerance test in order to ascertain insulin secretion,
measuring insulin at 30 minutes into an oral glucose
tolerance test, following consumption of a 75 gram dose
of oral glucose, or sugar. All dieters in the study, regardless of whether they had been assigned to the low-fat or low-glycemic load diet, were then determined to be either a high insulin secretor or a low insulin secretor based on their individual test results.

As Daily Health News readers know, insulin is a hormone
secreted in response to blood glucose, and one of its effects is to enable cells to use glucose as energy. Insulin is also believed to contribute to the cravings for carbohydrates that often derail even the best-meaning dieters. Dr. Ludwig suspected that high insulin secretors might have a harder time losing weight on a traditional low-fat (high-carb) diet.

THE WINNERS ARE...
Participants reported their food intake to researchers at
interviews scheduled periodically throughout the study.
Overall, the weight loss in the low-glycemic load and the
low-fat group were statistically similar... they lost an
average of .9 pounds each month. But, as Dr. Ludwig
suspected, there were marked differences in how the two
groups of insulin secretors responded to the different diets. While low secretors achieved the same results regardless of which dietary program they followed, high secretors did substantially better on the low-glycemic load diet -- losing an average of 2.2 pounds per month for the first six months of the study. At 18 months (when the final follow-up was done), the difference was even more striking. High secretors on the low-glycemic load diet had lost nearly five times more weight than high secretors on the standard low-fat diet (12.8 pounds versus 2.6 pounds).

"This explains why many people have done poorly on
conventional diets," Dr. Ludwig told me, noting "this is not simply a consequence of poor motivation or compliance."
Clearly high secretors of insulin would be much better off
following a low-glycemic diet than a conventional low-fat
one for weight loss. The difference is less dramatic for low secretors... though, Dr. Ludwig says he believes "everybody is better off following a low-glycemic diet, overweight or not." It's also worth mentioning that the low-glycemic load diet produced positive changes in HDL "good cholesterol" (raising it) and triglycerides (lowering them), and this happened for both high and low secretors of insulin.

To determine whether or not you are a high secretor,
look in the mirror. Your best cue is where you store your fat. People who are apple-shaped, meaning they store their fat around the middle, tend to be high secretors of insulin and should therefore choose a low-glycemic load diet to lose weight and keep it off. "Pears" who carry their excess weight in their hips and thighs have a bit more leeway to choose from a wider variety of dietary approaches.

Source(s):
David Ludwig, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics at
Harvard Medical School and Director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program and associate program director of the General Clinical Research Center at Children's Hospital, Boston. His latest book is Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World (Houghton Mifflin).

Below article courtesy of Nutrition Research Center, click on this link to learn more.

What Happens To Your Body Within An Hour Of Drinking A Coke

October 24th, 2007 Nutrition Researchers Posted in Children's Health, Food Science Research |


Don't drink cola if you want to be healthy. Consuming soft drinks is bad for so many reasons that science cannot even state all the consequences. But one thing we know for sure is that drinking Coke, as a representative of soft drinks, wreaks havoc on the human organism. What happens? Writer Wade Meredith has shown the quick progression of Coke's assault.

The main problem is sugar. It's an evil that the processed food industry and sugar growers don't want people to know about. Even dietitians, financially supported by sugar growers and sugary product manufacturers, are loathe to tell us the truth.

When somebody drinks a Coke watch what happens…

* In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don't immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
* 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There's plenty of that at this particular moment)
* 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
* 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
* >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
* >60 Minutes: The caffeine's diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you'll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
* >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you'll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You've also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

So there you have it, an avalanche of destruction in a single can. Imagine drinking this day after day, week after week. Stick to water, real juice from fresh squeezed fruit, and tea without sweetener.
Primary Source: by Wade Meredith