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Led by the University of Sydney s Charles Perkins Centre, the study looked at medical data from nearly half a million people and found having overweight or obesity considerably amplified the harmful effects of alcohol on liver disease and mortality. People in the overweight or obese range who drank were found to be at greater risk of liver diseases compared with participants within a healthy weight range who consumed alcohol at the same level, said senior author and research program director Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis from the Charles Perkins Centre and the Faculty of Medicine and Health. Even for people who drank within alcohol guidelines, participants classified as obese were at over 50 percent greater risk of liver disease.
Last modified on Thu 6 May 2021 20.23 EDT
What happens when an Australian medical research institute “throw[s] a creative writer into the mix”?
Emily Maguire’s latest novel emerged out of a $100,000 fellowship from the University of Sydney Charles Perkins Centre. The centre focuses on lifestyle diseases: the “things we give ourselves”, as Maguire put it, during a thought-provoking discussion of her new book, Love Objects, at Guardian Australia’s monthly Zoom book club on Friday.
The fellowship offered Maguire the opportunity to explore a character that had been “haunting” her for over a decade. The protagonist of Love Objects, Nic, has so much stuff in her house it almost literally kills her.
Back in the early 1980s, when fitness became a thing, the only way to exercise for a healthy heart was to do 20 to 30 minutes of non-stop aerobic activity, like running – or so exercise science thought. “Now we know that fitting frequent short bursts of movement, even as brief as one or two minutes, into the day can benefit heart health and have positive effects on blood glucose levels and insulin sensitivity,” says Professor David Dunstan, head of the Physical Activity Laboratory at Melbourne’s Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. A 30-minute jog is still good – but clocking up multiple exercise “snacks” during the day helps too, and breaks up the prolonged sitting that ups the risk of rising levels of blood sugar and sluggish blood flow.