Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes: Weekend Roundup
As not everyone may have a chance during the week to read every post, here’s a roundup of last week’s posts in order of popularity: Why in Obesity Treatment Averages Are Not Good Enough Why Complex is Not Just Complicated When Sweet Spots Turn Sour Do You Have Weight Bias?” No Post Today Have a great Sunday! (or what’s left of it) AMS Edmonton, Alberta You can now also follow me and post your comments on Facebook
No Post Today
Well aware that for many readers, my daily blog has become a bit of a routine, this is just a brief note to let you know that there will be no post today – at least not on obesity. The simple reason being that I am in a location where internet reeception is so poor that writing an actual post would be so tedious, that it would simply not be fun! So no worries, I’ll be back with more posts next week. AMS Kicking Horse, BC
Striking a Path for Canada-India Collaborations
Yesterday, I spoke at the clinical pre-conference of the Canada-India Networking Initiative on Cardiovascular Health: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaboration Between Canada and India. The four-day conference, hosted by Simon Fraser University and Fraser Health, is being held at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. The conference was opened by the Hon. Moira Stilwell, BC’s Minister of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development, who emphasized the importance of fostering these type of international collaborations to improve the health of citizens of both nations. I am certainly most grateful to Arun Chockalingam (former member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Obesity Network) and Arun Garg, co-organisers of this meeting, for the opportunity to participate in this event. Also on the program of this conference are the results of INTERSTROKE, a massive international collaboration of Canada-based researchers (led by McMaster University’s Salim Yusuf) with colleagues from around the world, including India, published online yesterday in The Lancet. Regular readers of these pages may recall the results of the INTERHEART study, which demonstrated the importance of abdominal obesity (among other factors) for heart disease. The just published INTERSTROKE study is a case-control study in 22 countries worldwide between comparing patients with acute first stroke (n=3000) to age and sex-matched controls with no history of stroke (n=3000). The researchers identified 10 risk factors that together account for almost 90% of the risk for ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke). Abdominal obesity, expressed as the highest tertile of waist-to-hip ratio, was associated with a 1.65-fold increase for stroke. The other significant risk factors included history of hypertension (OR 2·64), current smoking (2·09), diet risk score (1·35), regular physical activity (0·69), diabetes mellitus (1·36), more than 30 drinks per month or binge drinking (1·51), psychosocial stress (1·30) and depression (1·35), cardiac causes (2·38), and ratio of apolipoproteins B to A1 (1·89). Collectively, these risk factors accounted for 88·1% of the population attributable risk for all stroke. These risk factors were all significant for ischaemic stroke, whereas hypertension, smoking, waist-to-hip ratio, diet, and alcohol intake were significant risk factors for intracerebral haemorrhagic stroke. Within food groups, intake of fish and fruits—components of a Mediterranean diet – was associated with the greatest risk reduction. AMS Surrey, British Columbia p.s. You can now also follow me and post your comments on Facebook
Follow Dr. Sharma On Facebook
Regular readers will know that most of my posts deal with serious issues relevant to obesity prevention and management – most often my posts are on new research findings that catch my attention. But everyday there are more stories than I could ever blog about – not everything is serious, there are many quirky news items, videos, blog postings, and other stuff that may be of interest to my readers – but here is not the place for them. To liven things up and to give my readers a much broader chance to engage in my postings and discuss some of the many issues relevant to weight management, I have created a “Fan Page” on Facebook. Every day, many readers send me links to articles and news items that they feel I could blog about – here is your chance to directly share these links with my readers by posting them on my Facebook page. I invite anyone with a Facebook account to visit and sign up to my “Fan Page” by clicking here (and if you like what you see – please do invite your friends!). Looking forward to seeing you on Facebook! AMS Edmonton, Alberta
Saxony Partners with University of Alberta
Last November, I blogged about my visit to the University of Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, where I visited my good friend Matthias Blüher, who made a name for himself with his prolific research on adipose tissue biology. The university of Leipzig is the likely recipient of a major multi-million Euro grant for an obesity research and treatment centre and has kindly invited me to sit on their International Scientific Advisory Committee. So imagine my delight when yesterday, the University of Alberta signed a partnership agreement with Saxony on scientific collaboration and exchange. At the reception for this event, I personally conveyed my appreciation to the Honorable Stanislaw Tillich, Minister President of the Free State of Saxony, regarding the fact that the University of Leipzig was going to take such a major place in obesity research and management in Germany. Indeed, given the tremendous expertise here at the University of Alberta in obesity and related disorders, I very much hope that the new agreement will provide a solid framework for faculty and student exchanges as well as extensive collaborative research initiatives with the University of Leipzig. I very much look forward to the future interactions with my German colleagues on this important area of research and patient care. AMS Edmonton, Alberta Hat Tip to Arnim Joop for the photograph
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