How dietary restraint could significantly reduce effects of genetic risk of obesity

Obesity risk genes make people feel hungrier and lose control over their eating, but practicing dietary restraint could counteract this.

2023-07-06

(Press-News.org) Obesity risk genes make people feel hungrier and lose control over their eating, but practicing dietary restraint could counteract this.

New research by University of Exeter, Exeter Clinical Research Facility, and University of Bristol – funded by the Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership and published in the International Journal of Epidemiology - found that those with higher genetic risk of obesity can reduce the effects that are transmitted via hunger and uncontrolled eating by up to half through dietary restraint.

Psychology PhD student, Shahina Begum, from the University of Exeter is lead author and said: “At a time when high calorie foods are aggressively marketed to us, it’s more important than ever to understand how genes influence BMI. We already know that these genes impact traits and behaviours such as hunger and emotional eating, but what makes this study different is that we tested the influence of two types of dietary restraint – rigid and flexible - on the effect of these behaviours. What we discovered for the first time was that increasing both types of restraint could potentially improve BMI in people genetically at risk; meaning that restraint-based interventions could be useful to target the problem.”

Genes linked to obesity increase BMI, with up to a quarter of this effect explained by increases in hunger and uncontrolled (including emotional) eating. There are over 900 genes that have so far been identified by researchers as being associated with BMI and several studies suggest these risk genes influence feelings of hunger and loss of control towards food.

This study examined 3,780 adults aged between 22 and 92 years old from two UK cohorts: the Genetics of Appetite Study, and Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Their weight and height were measured, and they provided a DNA sample via their blood to calculate an overall score for their genetic risk of obesity. They then completed questionnaires to measure 13 different eating behaviours, including disinhibition (a tendency to engage in binge or emotional eating) and over-eating due to hunger.

As expected, researchers found that a higher genetic risk score was associated with a higher BMI, partly due to increased disinhibition and hunger. However, results also found that those who had high levels of dietary restraint reduced those effects by almost half for disinhibition and a third for hunger – suggesting that restraint may counteract some of the effects of genetic risk.

There are different types of dietary restraint, including flexible strategies – such as being conscious about what you eat and deliberately taking small servings – to rigid strategies, like calorie counting. The study tested the influence of both types of restraint for the first time and found both could potentially improve BMI in people genetically at risk.

Interventions to facilitate dietary restraint could include changing the food environment (reducing the calorie content or portion size of food) or supporting individuals - and members of the research team have developed a Food Trainer app (https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/foodt/) to help achieve that. The app works as a game that trains people to repeatedly stop to high calorie food and research suggests this training may be particularly beneficial for those with a higher BMI.

The paper is entitled “Mediation and moderation of genetic risk to obesity through eating behaviours in two UK cohorts” and is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

ENDS

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Webb Telescope detects most distant active supermassive black hole

2023-07-06

Researchers have discovered the most distant active supermassive black hole to date with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed about 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe. In addition to the black hole in CEERS 1019, the researchers identified two more black holes that are on the smaller side and existed 1 billion and 1.1 billion years after the big bang. JWST also identified eleven galaxies that existed when the universe was 470 million to 675 million years old. The evidence was provided ...

Unveiling the secret of viruses-bacteria interactions in man-made environments

2023-07-06

Viruses in man-made environments cause public health concerns, but they are generally less studied than bacteria. A recent study led by environmental scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) provided the first evidence of frequent interactions between viruses and bacteria in man-made environments. It found that viruses can potentially help host bacteria adapt and survive in nutrient-depleted man-made environments through a unique gene insertion. By understanding these virus–bacteria interactions and identifying the possible spread of antibiotic ...

ASBMB weighs in on changes to NIH fellowship review

2023-07-06

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology sent feedback in June to the National Institutes of Health about its proposed changes to the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award fellowship application and review process. The proposed changes indicate that the NIH adopted nearly all of the ASBMB’s earlier recommendations (here and here) to reduce institutional and investigator bias and refocus the evaluation on an applicant’s potential and the impact of the ...

Wastewater monitoring could act as pandemic early warning system

2023-07-06

Wastewater monitoring could act as an early warning system to help countries better prepare for future pandemics, according to a new study. An international collaboration involving Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, Mathematica and the United Kingdom’s Health Security Agency has shed light on how different countries monitor wastewater during infectious diseases outbreaks and where improvements could be made. For the study, samples from treatment plants, rivers, wetlands and open drains were reported ...

T cells require healthy “power plants”

2023-07-06

All cells have their own power plants, called mitochondria. There are often more than 100 mitochondria per cell and each possesses their own genome, which in turn contains genes responsible for energy production. If errors creep into these genes, this can cause problems in the cell and result in diseases. Scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) and the Max Delbrück Center have now discovered that the T cells of the immune system are especially sensitive to genetic disturbances within their mitochondrial power plants. They have published their findings ...

Sweat it out: Novel wearable biosensor for monitoring sweat electrolytes for use in healthcare and sports

2023-07-06

The remarkable level of miniaturization possible in modern electronics has paved the way for realizing healthcare devices previously confined to the realm of science fiction. Wearable sensors are a prominent example of this. As the name suggests, these devices are worn on the body, usually directly on the skin. They can monitor important bodily parameters, including heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle activity. Some wearable sensors can also detect chemicals in bodily fluids. For instance, sweat biosensors ...

New teaching method can even out children's reading skills

2023-07-06

How well do children know letters and their corresponding sounds? In Norway, the gender difference on these tasks when children start school is significant. The girls have a clear head start. “We see these differences in all categories – for upper case and lower case letters, for the names of the letters and for their corresponding sounds,” says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Psychology. Girls’ letter-sound knowledge is clearly better than that of boys,’ and girls remain far better readers than boys at age 15. Since reading is key for so many ...

Scientists synthesize isotopic atropisomers based on carbon isotope discrimination

2023-07-06

In chemistry, a molecule or ion is said to be chiral if it cannot be superposed on to its mirror image by any combination of rotations, translations, or conformational changes. A chiral molecule or ion exists in two forms, called enantiomers, that are mirror images of each other; they are often distinguished as either ‘right-handed’ or ‘left-handed’ by their absolute configuration. Enantiomers exhibit similar physical and chemical properties, except when interacting with polarized light and reacting with other chiral compounds, ...

New study shows robust pandemic preparedness strongly linked to lower COVID-19 mortality rates

2023-07-06

New Study Shows Robust Pandemic Preparedness Strongly Linked to Lower COVID-19 Mortality Rates Preparedness matters: Accounting for age and national capabilities to diagnose COVID-19 deaths reveals that pre-pandemic investments in capacity saved lives—though U.S. remains an outlier. The vast majority of countries that entered the COVID-19 pandemic with strong capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to disease threats achieved lower pandemic mortality rates than less prepared nations, ...

Species lump for the Western Flycatcher; species status for the goshawk of North America; and species splits in several Caribbean birds among 2023 Check-list changes

2023-07-06

The 64th Supplement to the American Ornithological Society’s (AOS) Check-list of North American Birds, published today in Ornithology, includes numerous updates to the classification of North American bird species. A few highlights from this year’s supplement, detailed below, include a species lump for the Western Flycatcher, species status for the goshawk of North America, and species splits in several Caribbean birds leading to five additional species. The Check-list, published since 1886, is updated annually by the AOS’s North American Classification Committee (NACC), the official authority on the names and classification of the ...