Obesity

When patients come to Vanderbilt’s new Center for Medical Weight Loss, the first thing medical director John Cleek, M.D., wants them to understand is how their bodies use energy. Read More

The Community Research Partners Meeting, “Obesity Through the Lens of Public Health: Did Our Numbers Really Go Down?” will take place Friday, Oct. 5. It will be held at the downtown YMCA at 1000 Church Street in Nashville, 8:30-10 a.m. A light breakfast will be provided. RSVP to… Read More

A collaboration between Vanderbilt Pediatric researchers and the Metro Nashville Parks and Recreation Department to prevent obesity is kicking into high gear with the recruitment of 600 area familes. Read More

A California high school student helped accelerate an anti-obesity drug discovery program at Vanderbilt University this summer — and provided the proof-of-principle for a new technique that could save the lab an estimated $250,000 in the process. Read More

New findings point to brain circuitry that communicates about the body’s nutritional status and regulates how nutrients are mobilized. Read More

If municipalities want to combat workplace discrimination because of obesity, they should look to Madison, Wis., and Urbana, Ill., for good models. Read More

Heart disease is still the leading cause of death for men in Tennessee and cancer deaths continue to move further away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy People 2020 goal, according to the 2012 Tennessee Men’s Health Report Card. Read More

Vanderbilt research shows that children adjust their activity levels to match their peers'. Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have discovered that an unusual set of immune cells, called invariant natural killer T cells, can exacerbate obesity-related inflammation. Read More

(iStockphoto) Kids and Kites Day, co-sponsored by the Vanderbilt Institute for Obesity, is scheduled for 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at the Bicentennial Mall. The public is invited to bring a kite, family members, lawn chairs, a pair of comfortable shoes and lots of… Read More

A new study finds long-lasting reversal of diabetes is possible without insulin through transplantation of brown fat tissue. Read More

Vanderbilt psychologist David Schlundt weighs in on the issue of whether or not cutting calories is bound to lead to binge eating and explains why we need to "personalize" our diets. Read More

In addition to body mass index, genetic markers of obesity may provide value in predicting endometrial cancer risk. Read More

(iStock) Fatty liver, a reversible condition of fat accumulation in liver cells, can result from excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, type 2 diabetes, or metabolic disorders. Exercise can reverse this process, but the mechanisms underlying this effect are not clear. Because exercise is known to stimulate the action of glucagon (a… Read More

A new study indicates that patients with high-grade glioma brain tumors who have preexisting type 2 diabetes or obesity have poorer outcomes, and is the first to use the Vanderbilt Brain Tumor Center Clinical Database to report a novel clinical finding. Read More

New research into changes in the brains of obese patients and others with substance abuse issues indicate doctors should be more understanding when treating these patients. Read More

New research about the link between body weight and mortality among Asians, which has not been studied in the past, finds being severely underweight poses a serious threat for this population and that preventing obesity is the top priority moving forward. Read More

(Photo credit: iStock photo) In the battle of the bulge, one important battalion is a set of brain cells expressing the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R). Via signals from the fat-derived hormone leptin, these neurons regulate feeding behavior and fat metabolism in an attempt to regulate body weight. But how leptin influences… Read More

Bringing a new drug to market is an increasingly daunting – and expensive – task. Today it costs more than $1 billion and takes more than seven years, on average, to complete the human studies required for a drug to be approved for marketing. Only about one in five drugs… Read More

They come to this country – very often alone, with little education, and a lack of parenting skills. Doctors say Latino Americans are at a higher risk for obesity and diabetes and their children often have the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the nation. Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in… Read More