Control Obesity to Prevent Metabolic Syndrome and Related Diseases

Author(s): Shaw Watanabe

In Asia Pacific region, increasing obesity and diabetes become serious problem in addition to the aging society. Number of diabetes is over 100 mil in China, 60 mil in India, 10 mil in Japan, etc. It is difficult to keep HbA1c below 6.0% in aged people, because many of them have several diseases simultaneously. In addition to diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hyperuric acid, and renal insufficiency are all related to obesity in metabolic syndrome. So, if we succeed to control obesity, we can decrease the incidence of all above diseases. The author would like to introduce our successful intervention study (SCOP) by integrated approach including psychological intervention. More than half decreased 10% body weight after one year. We started to find more simple intervention method, based upon 6000 participants in Genki study. Among the participants, obese people showed higher OR to have diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and other diseases. On the contrary, brown rice eaters showed low or and they felt healthy and vivid. It has been clarified in recent studies, that brown rice contains substances that have various effects on physiological functions in addition to the function as ordinary nutrients. Functional components like γ-oryzanol of brown rice could control diabetes, and GABA may keep mental health. The rice bran contains rich vitamins, minerals, long-chain fatty acids, ferulic acid and inositol, etc. In that sense, the influence of brown rice on health is extremely large and could be called medical rice. Rice is the staple food of 70% of the world’s people. The annual production is about 600 million tons. More than 90% of rice is now made in Asian countries. There are a lot of developing countries which are the sources of protein and fat. In response to the enormous increase of medical costs in many countries, encouragement of healthy longevity by changing dietary habits is mandatory.

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