Obesity ‘may be largely genetic’

Via the Beeb:

Their American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study found that differences in body mass index and waist size were 77% governed by genes.

It strikes me that a more accurate interpretation is that 77% of obesity can be explained by genetic incompatibility with a modern western diet. Genetics dictates the potential for obesity. Everything else is environmental. Send those people off to the savanna with a sharp stick then get back to me.

It’s not a genetic disease like Tay-Sachs, where the mere presence of the genes equals the disease.
– Comment by Mark in What to Eat

If this were not the case, the growing epidemic of obesity would imply that obese people are reproducing more, and are hence “genetically fitter,” than those of normal weight. That may be so but seems unlikely. It also means they are poping out babies like crazy over the past 20 years.

Well if it is true, I would like to report that over the Chinese New Year, I’ve mutated slightly and, due to my genetic make-up, I am larger by 1 pound

Study: Lowering blood sugar increased risk of death

Back to the drawing boards:

For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.

More: New York Times

On Brainsuckers and Googlers

I read this article some time ago but there is something about it that keeps bugging me:

When the Patient Is a Googler

A woman walks into a doctor’s office with a knee problem. She is looking for a specialist to help sort it out. She dominates the conversation, she is distrustful and she has clearly done a lot of research on the topic. She’s also Googled him personally. The whole while she’s in the doctor’s office, her 4 year old son makes a huge mess and acts up providing an unpleasant backdrop to what he finds an already stressful scenario.

The doctor refers to her as a “brainsucker” and “queen of Googlers.” He feels a bit invaded by her Googling his personal life. He is clearly offended by the distrust he senses from her because, after all, he’s there to help. He also has little time for anything but the obvious medical diagnosis and cure which involves one to two surgeries and many months of recovery. The thought of going through this with her is more than he can bear.

So he lets her carry on for a while until he finds the right moment to get a word in then recommends another doctor. Bye Bye Mrs. Smarty-Pants.

 

It’s absolutely right that people should, when they have the option, choose to avoid people they know will cause them stress. She’s part of the 20% of the world that will cause him 80% of his work. She’s intense and he’s looking for an easier doctor-patient relationship. He wants someone who will let him get on with the job. And off course, he wants someone who will defer to his expertise.

But I can also empathise with this woman’s distrust. Perhaps she has suffered doctors who, as a first option, want to get their patients under the knife for some quality billable hours instead of exploring non-invasive and less expensive options. Maybe being the “brainsucker” that she is, she’s found that some physicians don’t keep up with the latest developments and technology and are unaware of some new alternative treatments. How would the likes of Jimmy Moore and co have fared only following the gospel of the experts?

About a year back I saw a great video by one such “brainsucker” by the name of Jerry Brunetti who had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Jerry did his homework then went to see the specialist. The specialist said the only route to health was an expensive course of chemo therapy which would have lots of debilitating side effects and only a 60% chance of surviving 2 years. Jerry tried to discuss his research but was told in no uncertain terms that he was foolish to question the established truth with its appointed guardians.

Jerry walked out on the experts and proceeded to cure himself using his own application of the info he had gathered.

OK an anecdote is not statistical proof. But I guess when a doctor finds the distrustful brainsuckers walking into his office, he could do better than to write them off as a new-age pain in the ass.

Because if he does, then perhaps the distrust isn’t misplaced after all. Perhaps the very refusal to listen is what ultimately causes the divide.

Roundup

Tidbits over the last month worth a mention…

Shake it Baby
In a bizarre experiment, mice were “vibrated” for 15 minutes a day resulting in fat loss and corresponding bone density increases. Can we vibrate those pounds away? Well we had one of those crazy machines in the basement for years and it did nothing for mother…

Vestigial What?
Just last month I had a doctor telling me I should “chop off my appendix” given my history of IBS and “it’s useless anyway.” I was sceptical that mother nature was that inefficient and opted to keep it to the rolling eyes of the specialist. Well ha, ha! HA! Appendix not useless afterall. Seems like it’s a little factory and warehouse of good bacteria. Pwned!

Type 3
Discovery supports theory of Alzheimer’s disease as a form of diabetes. All that sugar is going to your head. Levels of brain insulin and its related receptors are lower in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.

Finish that Avocado
Monounsaturated Fat Improves Insulin Sensitivity. Eating a diet rich in monounsaturated fat reverses insulin resistance compared to diets rich in carbohydrates or saturated fat.

Big Where it Counts
Big hips mean big brains. Curvy women birthed children with superior cognitive abilities.

Obesity Not Your Fault?

The BBC reports on a study which concludes that obesity is not the fault of the individual but the inevitable result of:

a society in which energy-dense, cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife.

For those who have evolved a superior ability to survive on less calories, the age of abundance is, weight-wise, more of a curse than a blessing. A classic example is the Pima Indians who report high levels of obesity on a modern diet.

Rant: If your genes make it easier for you to get fat, then your genes simply mean you have to make more effort to stay fit.  It’s not easy when we are surrounded by foods we are not well adapted but those are just the cards we’re dealt. It sucks but waiting around for the government to legislate away all the factors that make me fat is tantatmount to waiting for death.

Job Strain May Lead to Obesity

Research indicates stress in the workplace significantly increases the risk of obesity. And the more stress, the more likely you are to become obese. The study indicated that for 3 or more reports of stressful work situations, the increased risk was 75%.

More Via  Diet Blog

Quick-burning carbs may cause fatty liver

City Mouse and Country Mouse

Here’s an interesting one: two sets of mice were fed identical diets of corn starch with equal calories… but the corn starch had a high glycemic index (“GI”) for one group and a low GI for the other. The result: six months later the mice weighed the same!

BUT (the big but), their body compositions differed singificantly: the high GI group had twice the normal amount of fat in their bodies, blood and livers. The low GI diet mice had normal fat levels.

Besides being a good promo for a low GI diet, the results also show that measuring your health by the scales alone is a big mistake.

Full Article. Via Modern Forager.

You Can’t Burn it Off

Despite some recent reports that strength training can reduce body fat, there is a growing consensus that exercise has no impact on weight loss.

New York magazine reports on science’s growing realisation that there was never a scientific basis to the belief that exercise can promote weight loss.

The problem, as he and his contemporaries saw it, is that light exercise burns an insignificant number of calories, amounts that are undone by comparatively effortless changes in diet. In 1942, Louis Newburgh of the University of Michigan calculated that a 250-pound man expends only three calories climbing a flight of stairs—the equivalent of depriving himself of a quarter-teaspoon of sugar or a hundredth of an ounce of butter. “He will have to climb twenty flights of stairs to rid himself of the energy contained in one slice of bread!” Newburgh observed. So why not skip the stairs, skip the bread, and call it a day?

When we exercise our bodies compensate by making us hungrier. We eat more and weight tends to remain stable. Worse still, when we stop exercising, our appetites are slow to respond causing a tendancy to gain weight.

This does not mean there are no reasons for exercising. There are plenty: improvements in fitness, potential longevity and reduction in cardiovascular disease. But to enjoy these benefit exercise should be a life-long pursiut and should not be relied upon as the basis of a weight-loss programme.

The improvements in muscle mass and body composition caused by exercise may help you cope with dieting better, but the bottom line is that if you want to lose weight, you need to EAT LESS than you burn. Period. Furthermore, if you are genetically predisposed to a higher body mass index, you should be prepared for the reality that to maintain the “new slim you”, you may have to be constantly be in a state of slight calorie deprivation and thus hungry.

Exercise Pill on the Way?

By giving ordinary adult mice a drug – a synthetic designed to mimic fat – Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

The Salk Institute scientist who earlier discovered that enhancing the function of a single protein produced a mouse with an innate resistance to weight gain and the ability to run a mile without stopping, has found new evidence that this protein and a related protein play central roles in the body’s complex journey to obesity and offer a new and specific metabolic approach to the treatment of obesity related disease such as Syndrome X (insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia and atherosclerosis).

Via | Marathon Mouse Keeps on Running