By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – A common weight loss surgery is associated with long-term gastrointestinal problems and food intolerance, a recent study suggests. Researchers examined data on 249 extremely obese patients who had what’s known as laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, which reduces the stomach to a small pouch about the size of an egg. “It was already known from previous studies that the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass might aggravate gastrointestinal symptoms after surgery,” said lead study author Dr. Thomas Boerlage of MC Slotervaart in Amsterdam.

Title: Does Santa’s Diet, Lifestyle Earn Him a Stocking Full of Coal?
Category: Health News
Created: 12/25/2016 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 12/27/2016 12:00:00 AM

By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) – People receiving a graft of their own knee cartilage cells may be better off returning to full weight bearing after six weeks instead of the standard eight, a small study suggests. Knee surgery patients put on a six-week recovery track were able to get back to work and other activities like sports more quickly, and even reported slightly better results at 24 months than those who had followed an eight-week recovery plan after surgery, researchers report in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. People with damaged cartilage in their knees can undergo so-called matrix-induced autologous chondrocyte implantation, or MACI, surgery to fix the defects that cause pain and swelling.

Researchers find that Americans gain around 0.6 kilograms over Christmas, and up to half of this excess weight is likely to remain for the summer months.

By Lisa Rapaport Children are more likely to become overweight or obese during summer vacation than during the school year, a U.S. study suggests. The national study of more than 18,000 school children found that from the autumn start of kindergarten to the spring semester of second grade, the prevalence of obesity increased from 8.9 to 11.5 percent. “The structured nature of the school day, with its scheduled exercise periods and limited opportunities to eat, helps students maintain a healthy BMI,” said study co-author Paul von Hippel, a health policy researcher at the University of Texas, Austin.

By Lisa Rapaport Eating meals as a family is a proven way to get kids to follow healthier diets, but there are other tricks parents can try when there’s no way to get everyone around the same table, a recent study suggests. In homes where family meals were rare, children ate more fruits and vegetables when these items were readily available and they routinely saw parents consume them too, the survey of about 2,500 teens in Minnesota found. “Interestingly, we found that in the absence of regular family meals these other parenting practices had a positive association with teen fruit and vegetable consumption, that their independent effect appeared to be greater than family meals alone, and that the combination of regular family meals and healthful parenting practices had the largest positive associations with teen fruit and vegetable intake,” said lead study author Allison Watts of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis.