The number of people being killed by obesity-related illnesses has increased in England during the last decade.

Latest figures based on the analysis of death certificates by a team at the University of Oxford, and published in the European Journal of Public Health, revealed an annual rise in fat-linked deaths between 2000 and 2006.

Make the change to your lifestyle by simply following 5 SIMPLE tips to lead a positive, healthy lifestyle and you’ll enjoy the rest of the year with a glow of health.

Fresh research has revealed that the majority of people are ignorant when it comes to the health risks posed by having additional fat around the waistline.

Almost as many as 9 in 10 people are unaware that having fat around the waist is a symptom of a build-up of so-called “visceral fat” which forms around your internal organs and is linked to type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Many of us have experienced snoring at some time in our lives, whether you snore personally or someone close to you does. It’s easy to dismiss snoring as a laughable occurrence but when you consider the loss of sleep and the far more serious associated risks like an increased likelihood of heart disease and strokes, it’s clear we need to do something about our or our partner’s snoring – for our sanity, health and well-being.

Overweight or obese women have slimmer chances of successful In vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment and an increased risk of premature birth and stillbirth. The research indicated that the most obese mothers had 35% less chances of falling pregnant and twice as likely to give birth to a premature baby.

Every day we devote about one third of our time on sleep and many of us understand sleep mainly as a time of doing nothing, kind of like being switched off. However while we are asleep our brain is working hard to build new pathways which are vital for learning, memory and new ideas. Furthermore [...]

Many chant the same phrase year after year: “I’m going to join a gym and eat healthy”. These are the famous New Year’s resolutions that traditionally topped the list of New Year’s resolutions, but 2009 saw sorting debt top the pile. And around 60% have quit by Valentine’s Day.

With the approaching Christmas and New Year celebrations, many will have to see to the various gatherings, family, eating and other “busyness” than most of us can handle. Unfortunately one of the most common victims of all of our holiday stress is our own health and well-being. Undoubtedly, this time of the year our waistlines will expand. It is hard to turn away good food and sadly we find little time to work it off. So it may seem to be going downhill and people tend to feel 5 to 10 pounds heavier after the holidays.

You’ve blamed your metabolism for your weight your whole life, right? Well, as you get older, your metabolism really does make it difficult to burn calories as efficiently as you did when you were younger.

Metabolism is the amount of calories you burn at rest, or the amount of energy your body uses to function. The average 30-year-old woman burns 1,150 to 1,250 calories daily, while the average 30-year-old man uses 1,600 calories. After age 30, your metabolism slows down. The drop is slight – only half a percent a year – but it adds up. Continue to eat the way you did in your 20’s, and you’ll be consuming more calories than your body can use. Those extra calories become fat.

The ability of the brain for processes which in include perception, thinking, memory, learning and attention are understood as cognition (Bhatnagar and Taneja, 2001). Nutritional research today suggests diet and specific nutrients may play a role in the development of the brain during pregnancy (Williamson, 2006) and in infancy (Bellisle, 2004) and also may influence the degeneration of the brain function because some diseases such as Alzheimer’s have been shown to be less common in people with diets high in fish and whole grains (Capurso et al., 2004)

Recently I discovered a great article by the medical historian Ann F. La Berge summing up the development of the low fat ideology throughout the 20th Century and although the dispute is still ongoing I like to share some of the main ideas and arguments of this article as I believe it will help to understand why the judgement whether a low fat diet can help your health and lead to weight loss is still very difficult and may depend on the individual.

Her article looks at the historically predisposed assumption that the low fat diet could not just help with chronic heart disease but also with weight loss and potentially prevent cancer in the general public. She describes how the first low fat diet suggestions were only supportive for heart disease and even here the suggestions by former scientist were pretty careful. Yet over time this diet suggestion became somewhat of a good tone in scientific circles. This process resulted in an ideology supported by doctors, health care professional, the American federal government, the food industry and most importantly the popular media.