The National Posture Institute (NPI) Has Become an Educational Partner with BackJoy(TM)

proudly announce their partnership to work toward their educational and customer-satisfying goals. Improving posture and preventing injury through education is NPI's long-term commitment.

(1888PressRelease) June 14, 2012 - The National Posture Institute has become an educational partner with personal wellness company BackJoy

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Why underweight babies become obese: Study says disrupted hypothalamus is to blame

ScienceDaily (May 2, 2012) — It seems improbable that a baby born underweight would be prone to obesity, but it is well documented that these children tend to put on weight in youth if they're allowed free access to calories. Now, researchers believe they understand why this happens.

See Also:Health & MedicineObesityDiet and Weight LossInfant's HealthFitnessDiseases and ConditionsPregnancy and ChildbirthReferenceAppetiteBirth weightInfantNutrition and pregnancy

A new animal model study at UCLA has found that in low-birth-weight babies whose growth was restricted in the womb, the level of appetite-producing neuropeptides in the brain's hypothalamus -- the central control of the appetite -- is higher, resulting in a natural tendency among these children to consume more calories.

"Other studies have shown that neuronal processes that signal the brain to eat were wired differently in the hypothalamus if a hormonal gene, such as leptin, was missing," said the study's lead author, Dr. Sherin Devaskar, professor of pediatrics and executive chair of the department of pediatrics at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA. "What we found is that appetite-producing genes in the hypothalamus are completely programmed toward eating more to make up for the relative decrease in nutrition while in the womb. So the natural tendency for a child born with low birth weight is to eat more and try to catch up in growth. But if this is not curbed, it can result in childhood obesity."

The findings appear in the June issue of the Journal of Neuroscience Research and are currently available online.

The study was undertaken in rodent models that mimicked small human babies. This was accomplished by reducing rodent mothers' intake of calories, which in turn led to the birth of small, low-birth-weight and growth-restricted babies. The rodent babies were then examined at an early age to see how much milk they consumed and to monitor their energy expenditure. In addition, the researchers examined the effect that being growth-restricted in the womb had on hypothalamic neuropeptides that control appetite when the babies were weaned.

The researchers observed that those neuropeptides that bring increased appetite with decreased energy expenditure were increased in the hypothalamus, while the neuropeptides that reduce appetite and increase energy expenditure were decreased. Therefore, the homeostatic balance of appetite-controlling neuropeptides was disrupted. The hypothalamus was poised to consume as many calories as were available, with no sense of satisfaction.

These findings expand on recent research published by Devaskar and colleagues in the June issue of the journal Diabetes, which found that if small babies are placed on a diet of moderately regulated calories during infancy, their propensity to become obese decreases. Because this was an early animal study, the UCLA researchers do not recommend that mothers of low-birth-weight infants start restricting their children's nutrition and suggest they consult with a pediatrician regarding any feeding questions.

About 10 percent of babies in the United States are born "small" -- defined as less than the 10th percentile by weight for a given gestation period. Some organizations define low birth weight as less than 2,500 grams -- or 5 pounds, 5 ounces -- at term.

Low birth weight can be caused by malnutrition due to a mother's homelessness or hunger or her desire not to gain too much weight during pregnancy. Additional causes include illness or infection, a reduction in placental blood, smoking, or use of alcohol or drugs during pregnancy.

Growth restriction before birth may cause lasting changes in genes in certain insulin-sensitive organs like the pancreas, liver and skeletal muscle. Before birth, these changes may help the malnourished fetus use all available nutrients. After birth, however, these changes may contribute to health problems such as obesity and diabetes.

Devaskar said the next phase of research will look at an intervention to reverse the hypothalamic neuropeptide changes that cause the central control of appetite to be set too high.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

In addition to Devaskar, the study was conducted by a team of UCLA researchers that included Bo-Chul Shin, Yun Dai, Manikkavasagar Thamotharan and L. Caroline Gibson.

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Become More Physically Well Rounded With CrossFit Training

the sport. Because there are a lot of misconceptions propagating throughout the internet, I’m going to back up and lay a bit of foundation for you. That foundation will help you understand CrossFit from a perspective that will allow you to make good decisions about trying it, training in it and finding a quality gym if it’s something you want to get into.

One thing this training does exceptionally well is add an intensity component to workouts. The high intensity

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When Does Boxing-Related Head Trauma Become Too Much?

HealthDay – 29 mins ago WEDNESDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) -- Professional fighters may hit a threshold -- a specific number of fights and years in the ring -- where they can no longer take blows to the head without brain damage, a new study suggests.

But, once they cross that threshold, years might pass before symptoms show.

"The brain can tolerate or absorb a certain amount of trauma and repair itself," explained study author Dr. Charles Bernick. The findings raise the question of whether -- and when -- fighters should be medically screened, so changes could be caught earlier and available treatment offered, he said.

It's already well documented that "the more exposure you have to head trauma, the higher your risk of developing long-term complications. Primarily, this condition is chronic traumatic encephalopathy," said Bernick, associate director of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Also known as Boxer's Syndrome, chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease that causes the same kinds of thinking difficulties and personality changes seen with Alzheimer's disease.

As part of an ongoing study on brain health, the researchers divided 109 licensed boxers and mixed martial artists into three groups: those who had fought for less than six years, six to 12 years or more than 12 years. Their average age was about 29.

Participants underwent MRI scans to measure their brain volume and tests of their thinking and memory.

"In those that fought less than six years, we didn't find any changes," Bernick said. For that group, he said, "the more you fought didn't seem to make any differences in the size of brain structure or their performance on some of the tests like reaction time."

But for the other two groups of boxers and combat athletes, "the greater number of fights, the sizes of certain volumes of the brain were decreasing," he said. "But, it was only in those that fought more than 12 years that we could detect the changes in performance in reaction time and processing speed."

Women made up about 10 percent of the fighters in the study, too small a number to make any comparisons for now, Bernick said.

The study, released April 18, will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in New Orleans, held from April 21 to 28.

"This is a cross-sectional study -- just one point in time in all these fighters' lives," Bernick said. "It needs to be substantiated and confirmed, but it's biologically plausible and it makes sense, and we're going to be following up on that."

With repetitive head trauma, Dr. Howard Derman, medical director at the Methodist Concussion Center in Houston, said "boxing is clearly more dangerous than football, because the number of the hits to the head is greater," and no headgear is used at the professional level.

"The initial presentations may begin with things like deterioration in attention, concentration, memory, disorientation, confusion and then they get much bigger issues with dementia, and then it even progresses to parkinsonian features," Derman said. Parkinsonian features include rigidity and tremor.

Derman isn't convinced that a time lag always exists between early head injuries from sports and measurable brain changes.

"Most of us believe that there is the period of quiescence, which is why you're seeing a lot of these

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