Sleep Deprived Teens Crave Carbohydrates

Daytime sleepiness is associated with an increased craving for carbohydrates among teens, according to new research.

The study of 262 high school seniors in New Jersey found that their desire for carbohydrates increased with the severity of daytime sleepiness. The likelihood of having a strong craving for carbs was 50 percent higher among those with excessive daytime sleepiness.

The researchers also found that students with strong cravings for carbs were more likely to have depression (34 percent) than those with little or no desire for carbohydrates (22 percent). Students with major depression were nearly three times more likely to have a strong craving for carbohydrates.

"This is one of the first studies in a high school population to show a linear relationship between carbohydrate craving and sleep deprivation," principal investigator Dr. Mahmood Siddique, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, said in an American Academy of Sleep Medicine news release.

Sleep plays a major role in regulating appetite and metabolism, Siddique noted in the news release.

"This study is important given the rising epidemic of obesity among teens as well as increasing metabolic syndrome and diabetes among young adult populations," Siddique said. "This study highlights the importance of diagnosing sleep deprivation as a risk factor for obesity among young adults. Those who are depressed and sleep-deprived may be at special risk for obesity."

The study was to be presented Tuesday at SLEEP 2011, an Associated Professional Sleep Societies meeting in Minneapolis.

Most teens require a bit more than 9 hours of sleep a night to feel alert and well-rested during the day, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Research presented at meetings is considered preliminary until it is published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Source: Health Day 6/16/11

New Carbohydrate Loading Drink Looks Promising

“Omega-3 Chia loading appears a viable option for enhancing performance for endurance events lasting more than 90 minutes and allows athletes to decrease their dietary intake of sugar while increasing their intake of omega-3 fatty acids but offered no performance advantages,” report researchers led by Travis Illian at the Human Performance Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology, of U of A.

Chia is the edible seed of the desert plant Salvia hispanica, a member of the mint family, which grows in Latin American countries including Mexico, Argentina and Peru. The seeds are said to be a significant source of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. They are also rich in fiber (over 5 percent soluble fiber), protein (over 20 percent), amino acids, and a range of nutrients, vitamins and minerals (including calcium, B vitamins, zinc, boron, potassium, copper and phosphorus). They are also said to be a stable source of antioxidants.

The new study suggests that chia may be an option for sports nutrition formulators, given its apparent equivalence to Gatorade for carbohydrate loading in performance athletes. Carbohydrate loading is practiced by athletes prior to competition in order to increase their stores of glycogen in the muscles.

Source: FoodNavigator-usa.com 1/21/2011

"Hitting the Wall"

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Marathon runners can train for months to condition for the big race, yet struggle to finish if they exhaust stores of carbohydrates too quickly, a phenomenon known as "hitting the wall."

A new formula by a marathon runner and student at Harvard and MIT gives elite runners and marathon enthusiasts a more exact way to calculate just how many carb calories they need to take to stay in the 26.2 mile race.

"About 40 percent of marathon runners hit the wall," said Benjamin Rapoport, a student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, whose study appears in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Computational Biology.

Essentially, that means the runner has burned up all of the carbohydrates stored in his liver and leg muscles, forcing him to slow down dramatically as the body starts to burn fat.

"You feel like you're not going anywhere," Rapoport said in a statement. "You can't will yourself to run any faster."

He said many runners believe hitting the wall is inevitable, that it is just part of a marathon.

"That is not true at all," Rapoport, who has run 18 marathons, including a personal best of 2 hours 55 minutes at this year's Boston Marathon, said in a telephone interview.

"What I came up with was essentially a set of formulas," he said.

"People need to know really three things: how much they weigh, what their target marathon time is and their maximum oxygen intake capacity," he said. "That is a measure of a person's aerobic fitness."

Aerobic capacity, also known as VO2max, is a measure of how much oxygen the body can transport to the muscles and consume during aerobic exercise.

Measuring exact VO2max requires a treadmill stress test at maximum effort, but an informal way to estimate aerobic capacity is to divide your maximum heart rate by your resting heart rate and multiply by 15, Rapoport said. To find your maximum heart rate, simply subtract your age in years from 220 beats per minute.

The result, he said, is a number that tells runners how many excess carb calories they need to take in before a race.

He said many runners also supplement their stored carbohydrates by taking gels and sports beverages as they are running, but a runner can carry much more fuel in their legs and liver, if they know the right amount.

Until now, runners have had to guess at what that was. The new calculator will make that easier, Rapoport said.

Rapoport has built an online calculator to help runners estimate their aerobic fitness pace and race goals which can be found at endurancecalculator.com/ .

"It's my gift to my fellow runners," he said.

Source:Reuters News Thu, Oct 21 2010. By Julie Steenhuysen

Noodle Promises No Carbs or Calories

What if you could eat pasta marinara and only count the tomato sauce? Or gobble a dish of mac and cheese and only worry about cheese calories?

A new brand of noodle, made with soluble fiber from a Japanese yam, promises to deliver exactly that using a no-calorie, no-carbohydrate, no-gluten, no-fat noodle called the NoOodle.

While it may sound like some sort of space-age franken-food, the shirataki yam (also called konyaku) noodle has been eaten by Asians for centuries. Still, it has taken America's growing concerns about gluten, carbohydrates, calories and diabetes to prompt a U.S. manufacturer to produce it here in a new line of heat-and-eat meals. Flavors include marinara and primavera, with chicken teriyaki and macaroni and cheese rolling out soon.

Composed mostly of water and glucomannan fiber from the yam, these noodles have been sold by Japanese companies for years to put in sukiyaki and hot pot. But American-produced Miracle Noodles and NoOodles, made from Asian-grown yams, are relatively new and aimed squarely at the Western market.

This month the NoOodle entrees have gone out to retailers across the country, along with the plain noodles that are making their way onto restaurant menus.

NoOodles creator, Terri Rogers, said she first heard about the noodles through a customer at her suburban Chicago restaurant, Lincolnshire Gourmet. She tried a packet and was so impressed that she started serving various preparations within months.

"I originally put them on the menu for my gluten-free customers," said Rogers who introduced them in May. "But then I sold about 300 in three days, mostly to women who wanted noodles with no calories or carbs."

Rogers' decision to manufacture and market them here as packaged meals, she says, brought together her passion for cooking and her experience in the wholesale grocery market.

Her prepared meals run from 30 calories for pasta primavera to 100 calories for a dish of pearl-like macaroni and cheese. But, Rogers says, "We're all about health, so we don't really see it specifically as a diet product."

Jonathan Carp, owner of California-based Miracle Noodle USA, says that he gets lots of mail from grateful "diabetics who have finally gotten their sugar under control with the noodle," but adds, "We really cater to the weight-loss market."

"Basically it's a filler that will expand in your stomach," says Carp, who plans to introduce packaged noodle entrees this fall. "So when you eat a dish that is mostly noodles they will make you feel like you've had a substantial meal. Satiety is a reflection of stress receptors in the stomach that respond to volume in the stomach."

Still, medical professionals remain somewhat skeptical. Although there have been some studies linking glucomannan to nominal weight loss, studies of the actual noodle are few and far between."The major benefit is that they take up space in your stomach," says Lawrence Cheskin, director of the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center in Baltimore. "But whether or not they are useful for weight loss remains to be proven. The studies are still mixed."

Hannah El-Amin, a registered dietitian and diabetes educator at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, says: "I would warn against building one's diet around the noodles because they provide minimal nutrition. … While these are fine as an occasional addition to an otherwise well-balanced diet, I would warn against considering them a dietary staple."

Kantha Shelke, a food scientist and consultant for the NoOodle, doesn't rule out daily consumption but agrees that the noodle should be eaten as part of a well-rounded diet.

"If you ate nothing but noodle every day, it would not be good," she said. "But if you ate it with a wide variety of other things, it would be helpful. If someone was watching caloric intake, fiber, or cholesterol and sugar, you could actually sneak 2 to 4 ounces into many meals."

While El-Amin acknowledges that the noodles "contain a good amount of fiber, which may help slow digestion and make you feel fuller as a result," she notes that "the benefits of fiber such as lowering cholesterol, lowering blood sugar and providing a sense of fullness are not unique to these noodles. This is also the case with other high-fiber foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains."

One final note: Although the noodles are essentially flavorless, they are not odorless right out of the package. Consumers have described their smell as earthy or squidlike, but say that the odor disappears under running water. Their calamari-like texture also becomes more al dente when dry-fried in a pan.


Source: Monica Eng, Chicago Tribune Newspapers,September 15, 2010