The Pound-Watchers, Fact Sheet Death March from Bataan to Manchuria: Raising a Survivor's Voice A Great lesson resource and inspiration. A FREE lesson your learners will always remember! A New DVD Film, Death March from Bataan to Manchuria: Raising a Survivor’s Voice The Pound-Watchers, FACT SHEET: Escape Concepts, Wedding Supplies   Back to: Main Pound-Watchers Lesson 1.  For the first time in history, scientists have discovered amazing medical proof about dieting and its relationship to the size of the human waist.    2.  Of the Pound-Watchers, John and Paris lost more pounds than the other members of their group.  John barely lost a half an inch in his waist.  Paris, a diabetic, lost only one quarter of an inch in her waistline.  The blood pressure of both John and Paris climbed instead of reducing.  The blood pressure of the group, except for John and Paris, improved.  The pulse rate of the group, except for John and Paris, greatly improved.  Of the groups' body mass index numbers Dr. Lawson measured, the index numbers for John and Paris proved alarming.   3.  Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  Oprah asked Dr. Oz: "Why did you write a weight-loss book."  Dr. Oz told Oprah that he and Dr. Roizen wrote a waist-loss book.  Dr. Oz told Oprah, "We wrote it for one healthful reason: waist size is more important than weight."   4. Because belly fat exists so close to vital organs, researchers tell us that the waist is more important than weight.   5.  Belly fat is the most dangerous of human fats.   6.  Multiple medical problems can be linked to belly fat.  Obesity remains one of the powerful predictors of health threats (heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases).    7.  Drs. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz focus on waist size, not weight.  Pounds only tell your heft.  Pounds tell us less about our health.   8.  By using the body mass index, or BMI, a height/weight measure that estimates body fat, we could prevent, in many cases, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.  Start by measuring your waist at the same time every day, at least, for the first 14 days.   9.  A study by the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, published in the Oct. 1, 2003 American Journal of Epidemiology discovered that walking for 30 minutes a day cut diabetes risks for overweight men and women including non-overweight men and women.  Walking 30 minutes daily cut risks in half for people of any weight.   10.  The results of a Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) showed that moderate diet changes and exercise could delay and prevent type 2 diabetes.  People at risk for type 2 diabetes, research demonstrated, could prevent or delay developing type 2 diabetes by losing weight.  A mere 5-to 7-percent weight loss, participants discovered in this federally funded study of 3,234 people at high risk for diabetes, reduced their risk for diabetes.  The results illustrated how people in a lifestyle change group reduced their risk of getting type 2 diabetes by 58 percent.  In the first year of the study the average weight loss was 15 pounds.  For those in the 60-yearl old range and older, lifestyle change proved still more effective; they reduced their risk by 71 percent.  Comparatively, the risk reduction showed 31 percent risk reduction for those receiving the drug metformin.   11.  Now doctors see a bulging stomach as the outward sign of a deeper problem: visceral fat.  Visceral fat is a kind of biological problem that, in excess, wreaks havoc on the body, raising the risk for heart disease, diabetes, possibly even dementia and some types of cancer.   12.  Visceral fat wraps around our livers and other major organs.  Visceral fat spews out bad hormones and overcomes the production of good hormones.  Visceral fat sets up the body for sickness as we age, and as additional fats accumulate.  "Visceral fat is very bad for you," says Richard N. Bergman, a professor at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.  "It seems to have a more negative outcome on health than overall fat."  The evidence now is so compelling that experts suggest it's time to forget about scales and weight loss and focus on waists and "inch loss."   13.  Visceral fat doesn't appear to be a particularly stubborn fat to lose.  Health experts have discovered that consistent, moderate exercise appears to help the body rid itself of vast amounts of deep abdominal fat, even when the scales show the pounds aren't dropping very fast.    14.  Losing belly fat could help save your life, or the life of someone you love.  Measure the waist circumference, instead of weighing daily.   15.  Recent studies on visceral fat help explain a well-established fact: a pear shape endures as the more healthful human shape.  Subcutaneous fat resting just under the skin causes the pear shape in humans.  Deep, visceral fat causes an apple shape.  Although both people types, apple and pear, might be overweight, the people with the apple shape carry more health risks.  Without realizing it, people with a normal weight might be at a higher health risk.   16.  Most people gain abdominal fat as they age.   17.  The tendency to put on weight around the middle may be inherited.  Evidence that particular genes appear to dictate how fat develops and where it's stored was published in a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   18.  Research published in November in the Lancet shows how doctors concluded that a person's waist measurement is a more accurate predictor of heart attack than the body mass index, or BMI, which is a weight-to-height ratio.   19.  Data from 27,000 people in 52 countries found that BMI measurements were only slightly higher among people who had had heart attacks compared with those who never had heart attacks.  Heart attack sufferers carried a much higher waist-to-hip ratio (a measurement that reflects abdominal fat) compared with those who showed a lower ratio, regardless of other cardiovascular risk factors.  This finding was true for men and women in every ethnic group.  "This was the first study that really documented this relationship across all ethnic groups," says Dr. Arya M. Sharma, a co-author of the study from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and director of the Canadian Obesity Network.   20.  Studies have linked visceral fat to metabolic syndrome: a grouping of risk factors, such as high cholesterol and dementia.  Wake Forest University researcher Barbara Nicklas published a study in 2004 showing that among overweight, post-menopausal women, those with the most abdominal fat were the most likely to have metabolic syndrome.  Excessive abdominal weight, a Kaiser Permanente study presented earlier this year, showed that people with the most abdominal fat were 145 percent more likely to develop dementia compared with people with the least amount of abdominal fat.   21.  Research has linked deep abdominal fat to the development of gallstones and breast cancer in women and overall risk of premature death in men.  In a study of 291 men published in the journal Obesity Research, doctors found that men with more abdominal fat died in greater numbers, independent of all other risk factors the scientists examined.  A man with 2.2 pounds of visceral fat has double the risk of death compared with a man with 1.1 pounds of fat.   22.  Experts are unsure why fat is able to exist with damaging results in one area of the body and yet without many or any damaging results in others areas of the body.  Yet experts have two robust theories.  One theory focuses on what visceral fats do to humans.  The other theory focuses on the location of human body fat.   23.  Fat cells were once thought of as inactive storage units containing a droplet of oil.  The fat expanded in a person who, it was thought, is gaining weight and shrinks with weight loss.  A clearer, more multifaceted picture, now researchers believe, is a picture with fat cells as mini-endocrine factories, producing a range of good and bad substances.  "Once we got beyond the bag-of-fat concept, we found there were a lot of things going on with those cells," says Philip A. Wood, director of genomics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of the book "How Fat Works."   24.  Researchers, in 1994, identified a hormone, leptin.  Leptin is made by fat cells to signal a feeling of fullness.  Researchers now think that leptin levels play a helpful role in regulating weight drop in people with excessive abdominal fat; low leptin levels lead people to eat more and gain weight.   25.  Visceral fat cells make another beneficial hormone, adiponectin.  Adiponectin helps insulin pull sugar from the bloodstream into cells to be stored or used for energy.  Adiponectin also declines as visceral fat levels go up.  Low levels of adiponectin can lead to insulin resistance, a condition in which cells no longer respond properly to insulin and which can lead to diabetes.   26.  Visceral fat also causes some harmful substances to surge in our bodies.  Two proteins called interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha are two such substances.  These substances are unhealthy to humans because they are thought to incite chronic, low-level inflammation in the body.  "Inflammation itself is not bad," says Nicklas, an associate professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest. "When our bodies are injured or sick we need that to heal.  But there is an underlying degree of chronic inflammation with excess abdominal fat."   27.  Chronic inflammation aggravates heart disease.  The ability to promote low-level inflammation in the body may in part explain why excessive visceral fat is linked to a higher risk of dementia, says Rachel Whitmer, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.  In a recent study, Whitmer examined data from more than 6,700 people who were measured for abdominal obesity at ages 40 to 45 and were followed for more than 20 years.  Those with the highest amounts of abdominal fat were much more likely to develop dementia.  "Being overweight is not only bad for your heart, it's bad for your brain," she says.  Whitmer's theory is that inflammatory substances released by visceral fat may enter the brain and damage nerve cells, contributing to cognitive decline.   28.  Visceral fat may be worse than fat in the hips or buttocks partially because of its location.  Visceral fat sits near the portal vein, a major vessel that carries blood from the abdominal organs.  Visceral fat deposits its products into the portal vein and heads right into the liver.   29.  By 2050, 12 percent of US citizens will have diabetes, a total of 48.3 million people, federal health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates--US Diabetes Prevalence to Double by 2050: A report, September 08, 2006, New York (Reuters Health).    30. "If incidence rates continue to rise, the impact on future numbers with diabetes, and consequent health care costs, will be much more devastating," Dr. K. M. Venkat Narayan and colleagues, from the CDC's Division for Diabetes Translation, write in the latest edition of Diabetes Care.   31. Mean waist circumference and waist-height ratio and the prevalence of abdominal obesity among US children and adolescents greatly increased between 1988–1994 and 1999–2004.   32.  Eat healthier to be healthier:   1)        Eat your last meal at least three hours before going to sleep for the night.  Eat only when you’re hungry.  Eat often.  You should never feel starved. 2)        Smaller plates make food portions look bigger.  Switch to dinner plates that measure smaller than the usual 11-or 13-inch size plate.  3)        Eat the recommended way every day to see better results:   a)         Nine handfuls, total, of fruits and vegetables b)        At least 1 ounce of nuts (a small handful) c)         High-fiber whole-grain bread or cereal, especially in the morning d)        Eat fish at least 3 times a week ideally salmon, mahi mahi, tilapia, catfish or flounder.   4)        Eat at least 10 tablespoons of cooked tomato products (ketchup, marinara sauce) a week to get your healthy dose of the antioxidant lycopene.  Lycopene can decrease the risk of prostate cancer and other cancers. 5)        Avoid the following foods to feel healthier:   a)         Trans fats and/or saturated fats b)        White bread, white rice, white pasta, creamy sauces; white foods tends to be highly processed, high fat, or both c)         Products that list simple sugars, including high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), in the first few ingredients; they make you crave high-calorie foods   6)        Drink 1 or 2 glasses of water before every meal to help fill you up. 7)        Take the following supplements daily:   a)         Vitamins and minerals that contain at least 800 micrograms of folate, 400 IU of vitamin D b)        1,200 milligrams of calcium, and 400 milligrams of magnesium 8)        *  If you don’t eat fish, an omega-3 supplement that contains 2 grams of the heart-healthy fatty acids, such as Flax Oil.   i)           Exercise.  Holding your body in a proper position is as important as the workout itself.  Exercising correctly will help you:   9)        Burn fat 10)  Reduce stress 11)  Improve health 12)  Decrease your waist size   13)  Exercise the appropriate way:   a.          Look out at eye level or above to relieve your neck and keep you from rolling your shoulders forward b.         Keep your face relaxed and tension free c.          Relax your shoulders and lift up your chest d.         Pretend the top of your head is being pulled up by a string to elongate your spine and keep you from rolling forward e.          Count the reps for each exercise out loud; counting helps you remember to breathe continuously f.           Keep your abs tight to support your lower back g.         Keep your knees slightly bent; try to keep them from locking h.         Try to keep your hands where you can see them when doing shoulder exercises i.            Keep moving in between exercises to keep your heart rate up, or move directly to the next exercise  j.            Do more repetitions.  It’s more important to follow perfect form and do fewer reps than to do a lot of repetitions with sloppy form.   Home Tree Media Brought to you by Home Tree Media and Professor William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce Authors of books: Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! William C. Bruce Associate Dean and Professor College of Education and Psychology Phone: (903) 566-7048 e-mail: wbruce@uttyler.edu http://www.hometreemedia.org Fax: (903) 566-7036 Would you like to know more about our main book authors, Dr. William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce? For instance: Dr. Bruce, and his wife Jean, first authored a discrepant event book entitled: Learning Social Studies Through Discrepant Event Inquiry. Go to the following URL addresses to learn more about William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce through their blogs,too: University of Texas at Tyler, EPP University of Texas at Tyler, CPDT http://www.uttyler.edu/c_i/bruce.htm Free discrepant event lesson, 9-11 Blog: Pay Teachers More Blog: Test Scores Did you miss these pages? 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