Lack of sleep can eliminate the hormone that regulates appetite. As a result, the desire to eat high-fat and carbohydrates will increase.

What I mean here are two kinds of hormones in our bodies, namely leptin and ghrelin, both of which affect our appetite. Michael Breus, PhD, a faculty member of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine and director of The Sleep Disorders Centers of Southeastern Lung Care in Atlanta explained that Leptin and ghrelin work in a kind of "checks and balances" system to control our feelings of hunger and satiety.

Scientists have uncovered an inverse relationship between the hours of sleep and blood plasma concentrations of ghrelin; as the hours of sleep increase, ghrelin concentrations were considerably lower, thereby potentially reducing appetite and avoiding potential obesity.

Not enough sleep for 2 nights can trigger excessive hunger. This condition occurs because the hormone ghrelin stimulates appetite enhancer and reduces leptin as an appetite suppressant. When leptin levels down, you will not feel satisfied after you eat. Even you will feel you need more food because of the hormone ghrelin increases.

What Is The Minimum Sleep Required By A Person?
Although this can vary from one person to another, ideally you should get a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep every night, while getting 8 or even 9 hours continuous sleep is much preferable.

But in reality most of us sleep less as we get older. Perhaps this is one of the factors that led many elderly people become overweight easily.

Other methods popular methods of losing weight is acupuncture. These days more and more evidence is found of the benefits of acupuncture. Although the existence of acupuncture itself is still remains controversial among conventional medical researchers and clinicians.

Acupuncture is the practice of inserting thin needles into specific body points to improve health or for therapeutic purposes. In China, the practice of acupuncture can perhaps be traced as far back as the Stone Age, with the Bian shi, or sharpened stones and has been a major part of primary healthcare in China for the last 5000 years.

Acupuncture has been known since a long time and because it could survive the test of time, so I think acupuncture would have great benefits for health. When done correctly of course. I mean, conducted by the experts/ the acupuncture specialist and using a sterile needle.

Now we come to the main issue, what exactly the benefits of acupuncture in terms of lose weight.
Acupuncture needles can easily help you shrink your belly. How? Just stab your belly with acupuncture needles, then your belly will shrink like a leaky balloon.
That’s it, easy right? Oops, just kidding. DON’T DO IT!

Now I am going to tell you the real answer. Basically acupuncture techniques aimed at blood circulation, stimulate metabolism and calming our nervous system. The acupuncture specialist began working with a variety of questions asking about the behavioral and psychological conditions that may cause the patient to be obese. We can't change our appearance without changing the emotional and habits first that caused us to gain weight.

When they're done to examination and the root causes are found, the acupuncture specialist will then insert needles into different spots of the body in order to help improve the body's functioning in a way that will promote weight loss.

The acupuncture specialist will probably use a multi-targeted approach. They may attempt to lower the body's weight by increasing the output of the pituitary gland. Or they may attempt to lower the body's weight by increasing the output of the hormone endorphin if they conclude that the condition of obesity caused by stress. They will try to treat the patients and solving the root causes.

In a study conducted by the University of Adelaide in Australia in 1998, 95 percent of the participants receiving electro-stimulation on acupuncture points reported appetite suppression. The results showed that the participants receiving acupuncture was more likely to experience a reduced appetite and to lose weight than the control group.

The advantage of acupuncture compared with other methods are acupuncture does not cause side effects that are harmful to our bodies. But we have to repeat this treatment regularly in order to maintain the effects.

Finally, for the long term and permanent weight loss, healthy diet and physically active is still needed. The success may be greater when combined with acupuncture.

What is Choline?
Choline is a water-soluble essential nutrient and usually grouped within the Vitamin B complex (Wikipedia). Although has never been officially listed as part of the B-vitamin group, but most nutritionists lump it in the group because it has similar chemical properties to that group.

Choline is an essential amino acid synthesized in the body as well as consumed in the diet. The body can produce some of its own choline, but it really needs to get supplements from food sources.

Benefits of Choline
What exactly is the benefit of Choline for our bodies? Choline serves various functions in our bodies.
Choline may help prevent memory loss associated with aging. Research suggests that choline positively affects the areas of the brain responsible for memory function and life-long learning ability, especially in developing fetuses and newborn infants, making it an important nutrient for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Choline may also help with brain and memory function in adults and is being studied for its potential role in preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Doctors often use choline for cases of Alzheimer's, presenile dementia and bipolar disorder.

Choline plays a role in managing levels of homocysteine. Research suggests that getting enough choline can lower concentrations of homocysteine, an amino acid in the blood, in the body while choline deficiency can result in increased levels of homocysteine. An increased level of homocysteine is a marker of tissue damage and a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. This may help to explain why 30 years of research have shown that healthy adults can consume choline-rich eggs without increasing their risk of heart disease.

Recommended Choline Intakes
The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine recommends that Americans get the following amount of dietary choline each day

Population	Age	Adequate Intake(Daily)
Infants	0-6 mos	125 mg
Infants	7-12 mos	150 mg
Children	1-3 years	200 mg
Children	4-8 years	250 mg
Boys	9-13 years	375 mg
Boys	14-18 years	550 mg
Girls	9-13 years	375 mg
Girls	14-18 years	440 mg
Men	≥ 19 years	550 mg
Women	≥ 19 years	425 mg
Women	Pregnant	450 mg
Women	Lactating	550 mg

What is the signs that You Need More Choline?
Research shows that only 1 in every 10 Americans gets the recommended amount of choline each day. If you have a choline deficiency, you may experience insomnia and the resulting fatigue, or develop nerve-muscle problems.

Studies have shown that liver dysfunction and fatty liver damage is linked to diets deficient in choline. Low-choline intake can also lead to memory loss and even high blood cholesterol.

If you have any concerns about your choline levels, please discuss your diet with your doctor.

The grapefruit is a subtropical citrus tree, which many people think of it as sour. But it is not. Actually it is sweet and delicious. The Grapefruit Diet, has been around a long time and surprisingly has survived the test of time.

Grapefruit is a very nutritious low-calorie fruit (66-84 calories per serving), loaded with vitamin C and fiber, it is not a magical fat burner. The low glycemic index, high fiber, and low calorie nature of the fruit may reduce insulin levels and help dieters feel full and eat fewer calories.

Researchers from the University of Western Ontario found that the flavonoid naringenin, which occurs naturally in grapefruit, might perform a role similar to the sugar-regulating hormone insulin. The laboratory experiment found that naringenin appeared to stop the liver from secreting very low-density lipoproteins, thereby lowering the levels of certain triglycerides in the blood.

In theory, this means that naringenin might be able to compensate for the effects of insulin resistance, a characteristic of both metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes. Naringenin can also corrected the elevations in triglyceride and cholesterol, prevented the development of insulin resistance and completely normalized glucose metabolism.

As I said earlier, that many people think grapefruit has a bitter or sour taste. Maybe this is a problem that causes us not want to eat it. But if you peel the grapefruit as you would an orange, the problem will be solved. Grapefruit usually peels quite easily. Take off a slice as you would an orange and enjoy.

It would be good in starting a new year, we reorganized our entire lifestyle. New year with a new look. Starting a new diet is easy in the first week but can you keep it until the end of the year or forever? This is the biggest challenge of weight management.

The fat person is no longer a symbol that their lives prosperous. Overweight or obese even invite the various diseases that can eventually shorten the life. Because obese people generally die of cardiovascular disease, such as stroke or heart attack.

Many of us are obsessed with a slim and beautiful body but chose an unhealthy way to make it happen, such as the consumption of excessive slimming pills. Even the data from the latest survey conducted by Self magazine in cooperation with the research team from the University of North Carolina, United States showed surprising results.

75 percent of women have symptoms of abnormal eating habits;
67 percent of women trying to lose weight.
53 percent of women who diet and are in normal weight and healthy, still trying to lose weight.
39 percent of women believe that weight loss is also affecting happiness.
37 percent frequently missed meal to lose weight.
27 percent of women will be very sad when his weight up 2 pounds.
16 percent consume a diet with 1000 calories or less per day.
13 percent smoke to lose weight.
12 percent eat even if they are not hungry; 49 percent sometimes do.

The results of this survey showed many unhealthy things have been done in an attempt to lose weight.

Our bodies are not sufficient by 1000 calories each day. As a guide to minimum calorie intake, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1500 calories per day for men. Even these calorie levels are considered by most fitness, nutritional and exercise professionals to be quite low. Smoking to lose weight is also very dangerous.

The results of this survey can be used as a reference in our diet plan for this year. Do not do things that are not healthy even if it was done by many people. Adopted and believed by many people is not necessarily true.

Do sugary drinks really fuel weight gain?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Studies reporting a link between sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain have garnered a lot of attention but actually research on the issue has yielded mixed results, researchers note in a new report.

"The purported link between soft drinks and other beverages and obesity risk is unclear and complicated, especially in youth," Dr. Mark A. Pereira, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and an author on the report, told Reuters Health.

In a study Pereira and colleagues conducted, they found no link between weight gain over 5 years and teens' drinking of sugar-sweetened beverages.

According to report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Pereira's team assessed diet, lifestyle, and weight in 2,294 ethnically-diverse boys and girls in the Minneapolis/St. Paul school system.

Initially, when the teens were about 15 years old, 1,289 reported drinking 7 or more servings of white milk weekly, while 1,456 said they drank sugar-sweetened punch and 1,325 said they drank sugary soft drinks up to 6 times a week. Additionally, about 1,300 of these teens said they drank up to 6 servings of apple juice or orange juice weekly.
The investigators saw no overall association between consumption of sweetened beverages and the teens' weight gain over 5 years after allowing for other behaviors tied to beverage drinking habits and weight status.

However, Pereira and colleagues found drinking little or no white milk tied to greater gains in body mass index (BMI); while drinking white milk nearly every day or more often seemed tied to lesser BMI gains. BMI -- calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared -- is a standard way to determine how fat or thin a person is.
Their findings also showed an association between diet soft drink intake and greater weight gain, but this finding "appeared to be explained by overall dieting practices," rather than diet soda drinking, Pereira noted.

The link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity risk in youth may be "weaker than we have been led to believe by individual high-profile studies," Pereira said. For clarity on this topic, his group suggests further large-scale, well-conducted investigations.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 2009