Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness News From Medical News Today Latest Health News and Medical News posted throughout the day, every day.  Metabolic Side Effects Such As Obesity And Diabetes Caused By Antipsychotic Medications In 2008, roughly 14.3 million Americans were taking antipsychotics - typically prescribed for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a number of other behavioral disorders - making them among the most prescribed drugs in the U.S...  Assessing The Value Of BMI Screening And Surveillance In Schools The value of routine body mass index (BMI) screening in schools has been a topic of ongoing controversy. An expert Roundtable Discussion in the current issue of Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc...  Key Factors In Student Weight - Impoverished Schools, Parent Education Attending a financially poor school may have more of an effect on unhealthy adolescent weight than family poverty, according to Penn State sociologists. Poor schools even influence how parental education protects kids from becoming overweight...  People-Pleasers Feel Pressure To Eat When They Believe It Will Help Another Person Feel More Comfortable If you are a people-pleaser who strives to keep your social relationships smooth and comfortable, you might find yourself overeating in certain social situations like Super Bowl watch parties. A new study from Case Western Reserve University found that, hungry or not, some people eat in an attempt to keep others comfortable...  Potatoes Lower Blood Pressure In Those With Obesity And Hypertension Without Increasing Weight The first study to check the effects of eating potatoes on blood pressure in humans has concluded that two small helpings of purple potatoes (Purple Majesty) a day decreases blood pressure by about 4 percent without causing weight gain...  Public Health Burden Could Be Eased By Societal Control Of Sugar Sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health, according to a team of UCSF researchers, who maintain in a new report that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer...  Our Dining Partners Influence Our Eating Behavior Share a meal with someone and you are both likely to mimic each other's behavior and take bites at the same time rather than eating at your own pace, says a study published in the Feb. 2 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE. This behavior was found to be more prominent at the beginning of an interaction than at the end...  Obesity-Related Diseases In Adolescents Improves With Bariatric Surgery Within First Two Years Today, about one in five children in the United States are obese. That means that in just one generation alone the number of obese kids in this country has quadrupled...  Potential Link Between Daily Consumption Of Diet Soft Drinks And Risk Of Vascular Events Individuals who drink diet soft drinks on a daily basis may be at increased risk of suffering vascular events such as stroke, heart attack, and vascular death. This is according to a new study by Hannah Gardener and her colleagues from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and at Columbia University Medical Center...  Shedding Light On Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Gene Mutation Linked To Accumulation Of Fat, Other Lipids In Liver A team of scientists from the University of Utah and the University of California at San Francisco has discovered that the mutation of a gene encoding a ketone body transporter triggers accumulation of fat and other lipids in the livers of zebrafish. This discovery, published in the Feb...