LONDON: Britain unveiled plans to tackle an "obesity time bomb" on Monday (Jul 27), banning TV and online adverts for junk food before 9pm, ending "buy one get one free" deals on such foods and putting calories on menus.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has lost weight since he was in intensive care with COVID-19, wants to tackle obesity after research showed those who are obese or overweight are at increased risk of death or severe illness from the coronavirus.
Last month, he said Britain was fatter than most European countries apart from Malta and his government described "tackling the obesity time bomb" as a priority.
Ditching his earlier stance as a non-believer of "nannying" politics, his government is announcing a new drive to help people to "take control of their own future by losing weight, getting active and adopting a healthier lifestyle".
Alongside the ban on adverts before 9pm, on food deals and plans for the calorific content of meals to be displayed on menus, the government will also launch a consultation on displaying calories on alcohol.
"Losing weight is hard but with some small changes we can all feel fitter and healthier," Johnson said in a statement.
With more than 60 per cent of adults in Britain considered overweight or obese, according to Public Health England, the coronavirus crisis has put the obesity issue at the forefront of the government's thinking, with a "Better Health" campaign being launched alongside the new measures.
Weight management services will be expanded in the NHS, and Public Health England will call on people to embrace a healthier lifestyle and to lose weight if they need to, supported by a range of evidence-based tools and apps.
"Everyone knows how hard losing weight can be so we are taking bold action to help everyone who needs it," health minister Matt Hancock said.
"To help support people we need to reduce unhelpful influences like promotions and adverts that affect what you buy and what you eat. Taken together, supported by an inspiring campaign and new smart tools, will get the country eating healthily and losing the pounds."
New guidelines say exercise may help cancer patients live longer, or help you avoid getting cancer in the first place.
(Photo: Unsplash/Scott Webb)
Even a little exercise may help people avoid and survive many types of cancer, according to new exercise guidelines released today (Oct 16) that focus on how exercise affects cancer outcomes.
The guidelines, issued jointly by the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Cancer Society and 15 other international organisations, update almost decade-old recommendations with new science and specific advice about how much and what types of exercise may be the most needed, helpful and tolerable for anyone facing a cancer diagnosis.
Cancer is, of course, one of the world’s most common major diseases, with more than 18 million people globally diagnosed with some form of the condition in 2018. It also is often treatable and today, millions of people are cancer survivors.
But there are high fiscal and physical costs related to cancer. Treatments, while frequently effective, can leave people feeling ill, anxious, exhausted and frail, and may cause collateral damage to the heart or other parts of the body.
Whether aerobic or resistance, exercise is known to build strength, fight fatigue and lift gloom.
So, physicians, therapists and scientists, working with cancer patients, continue to look for accessible, inexpensive ways to improve the lives of cancer patients and also, more fundamentally, reduce the risk that someone will develop cancer in the first place.
Exercise was an obvious candidate. Whether aerobic or resistance, exercise is known to build strength, fight fatigue and lift gloom. But many researchers, clinicians, patients and their families have worried that it might be unsafe for people with cancer; that it might, somehow, make people’s condition worse.
In 2008, a large group of researchers convened to comb through the available science about exercise and cancer and decide if there was enough evidence to tell patients that they could and even should work out. In 2010, the group published its recommendations, which amounted to saying that exercise appeared to be safe for most people with cancer and they should try, in general, to be active.
Since then, however, there has been “exponential growth” in research related to exercise and cancer, says Kathryn Schmitz, a professor of public health and cancer control at Penn State University and the immediate past president of the American College of Sports Medicine.
So, last year, she and almost 40 other researchers from 17 international health groups gathered to determine whether there was sufficient evidence now to refine the recommendations about cancer and exercise. The group wound up gathering hundreds of studies involving animals and people that examined the impacts of exercise on dozens of aspects of cancer risk and cancer recovery.
(Photo: Unsplash/Rohit Reddy)
And they concluded that there was more than enough evidence to start suggesting that exercise should be a part of standard treatment for most people with cancer. They also found that exercise should be considered a means to substantially drop the risk of developing cancer in the first place.
Physically active people have as much as 69 per cent less risk of being diagnosed with certain cancers than sedentary people.
Specifically, the scientists, in separate reviews being published today in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise and CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, report that physically active people have as much as 69 per cent less risk of being diagnosed with certain cancers than sedentary people. Exercise seems to be especially potent at lessening the likelihood of developing seven common malignancies, the new recommendations add: Colon, breast, endometrial, kidney, bladder, esophageal and stomach cancers.
The recommendations also point out that, in multiple recent studies, exercise changed the trajectory of cancer once it began. In animal experiments cited in the new reviews, exercise altered the molecular environment around some tumors, stalling or even halting their growth. And in people, exercising during and after cancer treatment was associated with longer subsequent life spans, the reviews found.
Exercise also seems to lessen cancer patients’ feelings of anxiety or depression and their sometimes debilitating fatigue, the new recommendations report.
And while there had been some concern that exercise might increase the risks for or severity of upper-body lymphedema, the swelling and fluid retention that is common among women recovering from breast cancer, exercise was not associated with an increased risk.
(Photo: Unsplash/Tyler Nix)
Based on these findings, the authors of the new recommendations conclude that people with cancer should aim to exercise at least three times per week at a moderate intensity, such as by brisk walking, for at least 30 minutes, and also try to lift weights twice a week, if possible.
The authors of the new recommendations conclude that people with cancer should aim to exercise at least three times per week at a moderate intensity.
These recommendations are a bit lighter than the standard, governmental guidelines for the general public, which call for moderate aerobic exercise five times per week, plus several sessions of weight training.
Schmitz says the available science indicates that working out three times a week is the most likely to be feasible and safe for almost everyone with cancer. “The evidence is clear that going from nothing” – from being totally sedentary – “to something is helpful” for people completing or recovering from cancer treatment, she says. Check with your doctor before starting an exercise regimen, but for those who are able to, she adds, “more is better.”
She and her colleagues hope that future studies will help to pin down more precise, granular doses of exercise that doctors can prescribe to aid in cancer treatment and prevention in general and against specific types of cancer in particular. They also hope to determine whether or not there is any upper limit on the amount of healthy exercise for people with cancer.
But for now, Schmitz says, the primary recommendation she and her colleagues would offer to anyone dealing with or hoping to avoid cancer is: “Get up. Move. It’s so simple and so essential. Get up and move.”
Fat can be breathed out as well as burned off as you lose weight, biochemists who have studied metabolism at a microscopic level say.
But they warn that people still need to huff and puff with exercise to keep slim - hyperventilating on its own will not do the trick.
The Australian team traced the route of fat out of the body as atoms.
Their findings are published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal.
When fat is broken down to its constituent parts, a couple of things happen.
Chemical bonds are broken, a process which releases heat and fuel to power muscles.
But the atoms - the stuff fat is made of - remain, and much of these leave the body via the lungs as carbon dioxide, say the scientists.
Fat storage and metabolism
Image copyrightSCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionFat cells are used by the body as an energy store
Fat from food is stored in the body in cells called adipocytes. It is stored as a compound called triglyceride.
Triglyceride consists of three kinds of atoms; carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and this means that when it is broken down around a fifth of it forms water (H2O) and four-fifths becomes carbon dioxide (CO2).
The water formed may be excreted in the urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears, or other bodily fluids and is readily replenished by drinking water.
But the exhaled carbon (in CO2) can only be replaced by eating food or consuming beverages such as fruit juice.
Eat less, move more
The study authors, Ruben Meerman and Andrew Brown from The University of New South Wales, said: "None of this biochemistry is new, but for unknown reasons it seems nobody has thought of performing these calculations before.
Image copyrightMIKKEL JUUL JENSEN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionCarbon dioxide is the main 'atomic' waste product when fat is metabolised
"These results show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss."
They estimate that an average person loses at least 200g of carbon every day and roughly a third of that occurs as we sleep.
Replacing one hour of rest with moderate intensity exercise, such as jogging, removes an additional 40g of carbon from the body, raising the total by about a fifth to 240g.
So to keep weight off you need to balance what you eat against what you burn off and exhale.
"Losing weight requires unlocking the carbon stored in fat cells, thus reinforcing that often-heard refrain of 'eat less, move more,'" say the researchers.
Duane Mellor of the British Dietetics Association likened fat metabolism to burning petrol in a car - it makes heat and drives movement, but also creates and releases waste.
"The atoms left after breaking down fat for energy are like the exhaust fumes," he said.
Dr Tom Barber, associate professor of endocrinology at Warwick University and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire, said the work was interesting and novel, and busted the misperception that fat is simply burned off as energy - something that even many doctors think.
"But it does not change the health message that we need to do exercise to keep fat off," he said.
