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Obese Third Grader Taken From Mom, Placed in Foster Care - Yahoo! News
Unbelievable. What next? Children taken for parents not buying them those new shoes? This is unconscionable.
Researchers are beginning to understand why lasting weight loss is so hard. They believe it has to do with damage to the part of the brain thats involved in weight control. If obese people stop overeating, switch to a healthful diet and start exercising, they lose weight. However, they may quickly gain it back again. The reason, say researchers, is not a lack of willpower but injury to brain cells, or neurons, in the hypothalamus - a structure deep in the brain that helps control a number of body functions including appetite and weight.
The notion that brain damage might play a role in body weight is not a new one, according to Michael Schwartz of the Diabetes and Obesity Center at the University of Washington in Seattle. Scientists have known for about five years that the hypothalamus of overweight animals - including humans - displays inflammation, a typical reaction to injury. But researchers, led by Schwartz, wanted to determine the role hypothalamus injury plays in obesity, and they had several questions they wanted to answer: Is it simply a consequence of becoming obese or does it occur before the obesity occurs?" says Schwartz. "And what could be driving that response? What is causing the inflammatory response and could that have something to do with the obesity itself?
Schwartzs team put laboratory mice and rats on a high-fat diet to make them gain weight. When they looked for evidence of inflammation in their brains, they made a startling discovery. We were frankly shocked to realize the inflammation became apparent within 24 hours of the switch in diet, says Schwartz. The researchers also saw evidence of a strong and rapid neuro-protective response, as cells were activated to repair the damaged neurons. But the animals were kept on the high-fat diet for nine months and the inflammation eventually returned.
The key message, according to Schwartz, is that its not the fault of people who try and fail repeatedly to lose weight through dieting. Our data would point to a more structural, biological basis for why it is difficult to keep weight off," he says. "It has to do with damage to the brain area that is responsible for controlling body weight. Schwartz says that also explains why drugs are not effective at helping people achieve lasting weight loss. The compounds currently available do not target what appears to be the underlying cause of obesity.
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Staying in school really can make you smarter. A new study from Norway finds that students who remain in school longer than their counterparts have higher IQ scores. In the mid-1950s, the Norwegian government began requiring students to attend school until they were 16 years old, rather than allowing them to drop out at 14. Communities had until 1972 to phase in the compulsory education reform, which meant that, for nearly 20 years, youngsters in some municipalities went to school for seven years and others attended classes for at least nine years.
That gave Taryn Ann Galloway a unique opportunity to see what impact the extra two years of education had on the intellectual development of students. Galloway, a researcher at the University of Oslo, explains that all young men in Norway are required to undergo a cognitive assessment, or IQ, test for the military draft at age 19. So, she and her colleagues were able to sift through data on 107,000 draft-age young men, correlating their years of education with their IQ scores obtained by the military. The young men who were forced to stay in school for two years longer actually did have higher IQs," Galloway says. "So, based on that, we were able to say that increasing compulsory schooling did actually have an effect on their cognitive abilities as measured at 19 years of age.
The average IQ score on the intelligence test is 100, with most of the population falling somewhere between 85 and 115 on the scale. According to Galloway, students who got a full two years of extra schooling showed an IQ gain of more than 7 points. Those with just one additional year of compulsory education during the phase in period gained approximately 3.7 IQ points. So, thats still quite large," she says. "Theyre going from about average to well above average if they were affected by reform.
For years, theres been vigorous debate among psychologists about whether a persons intelligence is the result of smart genes or a nurturing environment in infancy. Galloways results seem to support the nurturing side of the nature versus nurture argument. She suggests getting two extra years of academic practice during the middle teenage years may also help boost IQ scores. I think its because you do learn general thinking skills at school and you are able to practice them, and you have lots of opportunity to practice them. So this is a two year extension of compulsory schooling for two years, so they were able to simply improve their skills.
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The cause of obesity is genetics, not moral weakness. Not sure what that adds to the mix here, but thought I would toss it in.
