Natalie Keirns

Lifespan · Cardiovascular Institute

Introduction: Intuitive eating (IE) has emerged as a weight-neutral approach to health promotion for those with overweight/obesity. This weight-neutral paradigm has some support, although research thus far has often neglected to control for potential confounds (i.e. objective weight status and demographics) and foundational studies are lacking. Th...

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may be an early life factor associated with adult weight stigma via biological (e.g., stress response), cognitive (e.g., self-criticism/deprecation), and/or emotional (e.g., shame) mechanisms. This pilot study investigated relationships between ACEs and internalized and experienced weight stigma in adult women w...

PurposeFood susceptibility refers to an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations when highly palatable foods are available. Mindfulness, or the practice of paying attention, non-judgmentally, in the present moment, is a key element in acceptance-based programs, which have been shown to benefit those with high food susceptibility. This study...

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between internalized weight stigma (IWS) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT), an independent predictor of cardiometabolic disease risk, and how this relationship is moderated by gender. Methods: Participants (N=70, 81% white, 51% women, M age=30.4±7.8 years, M BMI=28.7±5.5 kg/m2, M BF%=32.4±8.9%) c...

Gut permeability may increase cardiovascular disease risk by allowing bacterial components (e.g., lipopolysaccharide or LPS) to enter the bloodstream, leading to low-grade inflammation. People with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) consistently display evidence of chronic inflammation, but the source of this inflammation, and whether gut permeab...

Background: Heart failure (HF) self-care is a robust predictor of prognosis in HF patients. Cognitive impairment is a common comorbidity in HF patients and constitutes a major challenge to HF self-care. Mindfulness training (MT) has been shown to improve cognitive function and interoception, two components essential to promoting effective HF self-...

Shifts in body-image ideals over the past 30 years towards leaner, muscular bodies have revealed new health behaviors that may be related to cognitive function. This study objective was to investigate prospective associations between a drive for muscularity and/or muscularity-oriented disordered behaviors (MODBs) with cognition. Data were drawn fro...

Objectives Gut permeability appears to increase cardiovascular disease risk by allowing bacterial components to enter the bloodstream, leading to low-grade inflammation. Emerging evidence suggests that psychosocial stress promotes gut permeability, but the effect of chronic stress induced by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the gut barrier r...

Objective: To investigate the role of internalization of body image ideals as a potential mediator between perceived body acceptance and intuitive eating among college students. Participants/method: 168 undergraduates completed the Body Acceptance By Others Scale (BAOS), Sociocultural Attitudes Toward Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3; Interna...

Objective Understanding how biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors are related to obesity and weight regulation is clearly needed to optimize obesity prevention and treatment. This objective of this investigation was to understand how baseline biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors are related to adiposity at the initiation...

High Conscientiousness (C) is linked to lower body mass index (BMI); however, the facets of C have not yet been analyzed in relation to BMI while adjusting for other personality domains or one another. The objectives of this study were to examine: 1) the BMI-C relationship within the broader context of the Five Factor Model (FFM) domains, 2) unique...

Objective Examine the indirect association between parents’ experience of stigma (i.e., associative stigma) and youth depressive symptoms through the serial effects of associative stigma on parent and youth illness intrusiveness in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Methods During routine clinic visits, 150 youth with well-controlled IBD (...

Objectives Intuitive eating (IE) is a pattern of adaptive eating behaviors that consists of four facets: Unconditional Permission to Eat (PERM), Eating for Physical Rather than Emotional Reasons (PHYS), Reliance on Hunger and Satiety Cues (REL), and Body-Food Choice Congruence (CON). The objective of this study was to observe differences in self-re...

Objectives Inhibitory control measured by the Go/No-Go Task measures automatic inhibition. Difficulty with inhibition can extend into eating behavior, leading to unhealthy patterns such as emotional eating. Individuals who eat emotionally may also be less likely to engage in adaptive patterns of eating, such as intuitive eating (IE). IE is based on...

Acceptance-based behavioral therapies for obesity (ABTs) may be superior to standard behavioral therapies but have not been adequately tested with American Indians (AIs). Neurocognitive function is also unexamined in relation to behavioral weight loss among AIs despite findings that neurocognition predicts outcomes in general samples, may help expl...

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and obesity are independently associated with brain/neurocognitive health. Despite a growing emphasis on the importance of early life adversity on health, the relationship between ACEs and neurocognition in adults with overweight/obesity is unclear. The objective was to examine associations between...

Objective: This study examined psychosocial distress and substance use in young adults with asthma (A), obesity (O), comorbid asthma and obesity (AO), or neither (controls). Participants: Eight hundred eighty-one young adults were included in the A, O, AO, or control group. Methods: ANCOVA and logistic regression analyses were performed to compare...

Background: Exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months is recommended; however, women with obesity have lower exclusive breastfeeding rates than their normal weight peers. The impact of the timing of maternal excess adiposity onset is unknown. Research Aim: We examined whether the timing of onset of excess weight was related to exclusive breastfeeding d...

Purpose of review: Recent evidence documents the negative impact of obesity, diabetes mellitus, and other metabolic dysregulation on neurocognitive function. This review highlights a key dietary factor in these relationships: refined carbohydrates. Recent findings: Chronic consumption of refined carbohydrates has been linked to relative neurocog...

Obesity is a global epidemic, yet successful interventions are rare. Up to 60% of people fail to achieve clinically meaningful, short-term weight loss (5-10% of start weight), whereas up to 72% are unsuccessful at achieving long-term weight loss (5-10% loss for ≥5years). Understanding how biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors work toge...