Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to an extent that it may have a negative effect on health. People are generally considered obese when their body mass index (BMI), a measurement obtained by dividing a person's weight by the square of the person's height, is over 30 kg/m2; the range 25–30 kg/m2 is defined as overweight. Some East Asian countries use lower values. Obesity increases the likelihood of various diseases and conditions, particularly cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, certain types of cancer, osteoarthritis, and depression.
The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate fad diet devised by Robert Atkins. The diet is marketed with questionable claims that carbohydrate restriction is critical to weight loss. There is no good evidence of the diet's effectiveness in achieving durable weight loss and it may increase the risk of heart disease.
Human adenovirus 36 (HAdV-36) or Ad-36 or Adv36 is one of 52 types of adenoviruses known to infect humans. AD-36, first isolated in 1978 from the feces of a girl suffering from diabetes and enteritis, has long been recognized as a cause of respiratory and eye infections in humans. It was first shown to be associated with obesity in chickens by Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar.
Adenoviruses are medium-sized, nonenveloped viruses with an icosahedral nucleocapsid containing a double stranded DNA genome. Their name derives from their initial isolation from human adenoids in 1953.
Calorie restriction is a dietary regimen that reduces food intake without incurring malnutrition. "Reduce" can be defined relative to the subject's previous intake before intentionally restricting food or beverage consumption, or relative to an average person of similar body type.
Specific dynamic action (SDA), also known as thermic effect of food (TEF) or dietary induced thermogenesis (DIT), is the amount of energy expenditure above the basal metabolic rate due to the cost of processing food for use and storage. Heat production by brown adipose tissue which is activated after consumption of a meal is an additional component of dietary induced thermogenesis. The thermic effect of food is one of the components of metabolism along with resting metabolic rate and the exercise component. A commonly used estimate of the thermic effect of food is about 10% of one's caloric intake, though the effect varies substantially for different food components. For example, dietary fat is very easy to process and has very little thermic effect, while protein is hard to process and has a much larger thermic effect.
Adenovirus infections most commonly cause illness of the respiratory system; however, depending on the infecting serotype, they may also cause various other illnesses and presentations.
The term "infectobesity" refers to the hypothesis that obesity could have an infectious origin and the emerging field of medical research that studies the relationship between pathogens and weight gain. The term was coined in 2001 by Dr. Nikhil V. Dhurandhar, at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is a health science-focused research center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is part of the Louisiana State University System and conducts clinical, basic, and population science research. It is the largest academically-based nutrition research center in the world, with the greatest number of obesity researchers on faculty. The center's over 500 employees occupy several buildings on the 222-acre (0.90 km2) campus. The center was designed by the Baton Rouge architect John Desmond.
Texas Tech University College of Human Sciences is a college at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. It was founded in 1925 as the College of Home Economics, one of the four original colleges of Texas Tech.
Leptin receptor, also known as LEP-R or OB-R, is a type I cytokine receptor, a protein that in humans is encoded by the LEPR gene. LEP-R functions as a receptor for the fat cell-specific hormone leptin. LEP-R has also been designated as CD295. Its location is the cell membrane, and it has extracellular, trans-membrane and intracellular sections.
The diet-induced obesity model is an animal model used to study obesity using animals that have obesity caused by being fed high-fat or high-density diets. It is intended to mimic the most common cause of obesity in humans. Typically mice, rats, dogs, or non-human primates are used in these models. These animals can then be used to study in vivo obesity, obesity's comorbidities, and other related diseases. Users of such models must take into account the duration and type of diet as well as the environmental conditions and age of the animals, as each may promote different bodyweights, fat percentages, or behaviors.
Eric Ravussin is a professor in Human Physiology and the Director of the Nutritional Obesity Research Center at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is also the Douglas L. Gordon Chair in Diabetes and Metabolism at the Center. Since 2012 he has also been a Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University.
Bon'App, Inc. is a social enterprise in Cambridge, Massachusetts founded by Laurent Adamowicz, a 2011 Senior Fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. Bon'App is an open platform that includes applications for Apple mobile devices, Android phones, and a website. The Bon'App application is type- and voice-powered, instantly telling users what is in their food with a simple language of calories, sugar, salt, and "bad fat". With the official lifting of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's ban on general solicitation on Sept. 23, 2013, Bon'App has officially begun raising capital by offering securities to accredited investors on crowd-funding platform Fundable. In 2014, Bon' App launched a Campus Ambassador Program across the nation to get college students involved with enacting significant food changes on campuses.
White hat bias (WHB) is a phrase coined by public health researchers David Allison and Mark Cope (2010) to describe a purported "bias leading to the distortion of information in the service of what may be perceived to be righteous ends", which consist of both cherry picking the evidence and publication bias. Allison and Cope explained the motivation behind this bias in terms of "righteous zeal, indignation toward certain aspects of industry", and other factors.
Rudolph Leibel is the Christopher J. Murphy Professor of Diabetes Research, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, and Director of the Division of Molecular Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics. He is also Co-Director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center and Executive Director of the Russell and Angelica Berrie Program in Cellular Therapy, Co-Director of the New York Obesity Research Center and the Columbia University Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center.
The Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), located in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of six human nutrition research centers in the United States supported by the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. The goal of the HNRCA, which is managed by Tufts University, is to explore the relationship between nutrition, physical activity, and healthy and active aging.
George A. Bray is an American obesity researcher. As of 2016, he is a University Professor emeritus and formerly the chief of the division of clinical obesity and metabolism at Louisiana State University's Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) in Baton Rouge. He is also a Boyd Professor emeritus at PBRC, and a professor of medicine emeritus at the Louisiana State University Medical Center.
MyBioSource, Inc. is a biotechnological products distribution company formed to create a large portfolio of laboratory research reagents, both hard to find and common items, with worldwide distributions. Backed by an elite network of laboratories and manufacturers, the company was launched in 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Headquarters and operations were relocated to San Diego, United States.
Claude Bouchard is Professor and the John W. Barton, Sr. Endowed Chair in Genetics and Nutrition at Louisiana State University's Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC), where he is also the Director of the Human Genomics Laboratory. He is known for his research on the role of genetics in obesity and in the process of adaptation to regular physical activity. He was president of the Obesity Society in 1991–92.
