Eat less, exercise more. Weight loss is a simple equation, or is it? Recently at the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology conference I was intrigued to hear a number of speakers mention how the type of bacteria living in our digestive system can influence our weight.

Does that mean if I eat a whole lot of probiotic yogurt I will magically lose that extra padding around my stomach? It’s not quite that simple.

Our digestive system is teeming with microorganisms. In fact our body contains more bacteria than cells. We have around 10 trillion cells but around 100 trillion bacteria. In recent years scientists have discovered just how essential they are for health including:

• stimulating the immune system
• breaking down toxins and carcinogens in food
• fighting against bad bacteria such as e.coli, salmonella and clostridia
• fermenting food to release and absorb nutrients
• regulating inflammation
• regulating energy uptake from the gut

Childhood Obesity Awareness Month Blog Carnival

This article was written for inclusion in the blog carnival hosted by http://www.littlestomaks.com to promote awareness of childhood obesity as part of the National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Please read to the end of this article to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

Last week my cousin and his 10 year-old son popped over to say hi. It’s been eight months since I last saw them. My cousin looked pretty much the same but I hardly recognised his son.

“Have you lost weight?” I asked him in the understatement of the year. He grinned and said proudly, “I’ve lost 11 kilograms since Christmas!” Eleven kilos is a lot for anyone to lose but for a ten-year-old kid it’s like almost a quarter of his body weight!

The change was incredible – not just in his external appearance but within himself. He was more relaxed and confident. His dad confirmed it. “Recently we went rock-climbing and he raced to the top faster than anyone else. In the past he has always struggled. Each time he finds he can do something really well that in the past he struggled with, it boosts his confidence even more.”

Talk to most people over 40 and you’ll hear the same comments: “I just can’t eat, drink, run, stay up all night, read the fine print like I used to”. Youth is forgiving but after 40-something years of moving, breathing, digesting and gravity, our body starts to show signs of wear and tear. We’d expect it with any other machine. But most of us are still shocked when our body can’t keep up with what we think it should do. Some desperately grasp at supplements or surgery to retain their youth while, at the other extreme, some passively resign themselves that their bulging tummy and shrinking calves are just part of getting old. Aging happens. But how fast it happens is up to us.

Over the next few posts we’ll look at some common problems that hit the 40-something age group.

Middle age spread

Why it happens

Hormones, hereditary and lifestyle are the culprits in middle age spread. For women, the years leading up to menopause see a gradual drop in oestrogen levels. Oestrogen encourages fat to be stored around the hips and thighs but with less oestrogen fat tends to accumulate around the tummy. We transform from ‘pears’ to ‘apples’ – just like the men.

Stuff I’ve found digging around on the net … with my take on it ..c

Physical Education Key To Improving Health In Low-income Adolescents School-based physical education plays a key role in curbing obesity and improving fitness among adolescents from low-income communities, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and UC Berkeley.

It’s what we all know: physical activity is good for your body and your mind – and it’s much more fun than sitting in the classroom all day.

TV Bombards Children With Commercials For High-fat And High-sugar Foods Childhood obesity in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions. With more than one fourth of advertising on daytime and prime time television devoted to foods and beverages and continuing questions about the role television plays in obesity, a study in the November/December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior