DailyDirt: Big Bones Are A Myth, But Obesity Has Legit Causes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Feb 27th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Some people are naturally skinny and able to eat almost anything they want without gaining weight. Obviously, there are also plenty of folks who need to watch their diets very carefully and exercise regularly to prevent unhealthy weight gain. The causes for obesity are not well understood, and while many observers like to say it's obvious that people need to expend more calories than they consume, the challenge of doing so isn't as simple as it sounds for many. There aren't any miracle diets or drugs, but as we study obesity and understand it more, there could be more palatable treatments someday.

Mitochondrial genetics could explain metabolic changes with age and with different environmental conditions. Large scale studies of mitochondrial changes in city populations are just beginning, and researchers will try to make sense of how cell genetics influence health. [url]
A rare chromosomal abnormality can cause Prader-Willi syndrome -- a condition that can be fatal and cruel because its victims can literally eat to death. People with this condition have no sensation of satiety, so they can eat until their stomachs rupture. [url]
There's evidence to support the idea that intestinal microbes correlate with obesity. A fecal transplant from an overweight daughter to a mother suffering from an intestinal infection resulted in the infection going away -- but also a weight gain problem for the mother that previously didn't exist. [url]

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Filed Under: diet, fecal transplant, flora, genetics, gut, health, microbes, mitochondria, obesity, overweight, prader-willi syndrome, satiety, weight

18 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2015 @ 5:42pm

It's interesting that Orientals tend to be much thinner than American Indians, despite supposedly being closely related.
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- orbitalinsertion (profile), 27 Feb 2015 @ 11:15pm
  
  Re:
  what is this i don't even
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2015 @ 6:04pm

Causes for obesity are not well understood
That is most accurate you can say about it. Every person is different or at least there are different groups of persons. For example I can eat anything and how much I want and do not gain any weight. Fast food 30 days a month, 12 months a year? No problem! But one burger too much and a friend gains weight. We both do the same amount of sport and have the same job which means we sit around most of the day. Yet he has to watch what he is eating and I just get as many french fries as I want.
I blame or thank depending of your point of view some of my organs for using the calories. But I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not.
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2015 @ 7:17pm
  
  Re: Causes for obesity are not well understood
  No, your friend just has a different version of "whatever I want to eat" than you. A person who is bedridden will still starve to death if they don't eat enough, and a person who eats nothing but salads will still become obese if they eat too many of them.
  
  Many metabolic issues in your body exist, and in most people they do not outweigh the simple energy from food and energy expended for activity equation. It is understood and it is simple for all but those with rare conditions- and those people present with symptom lists that involve more than "I don't monitor my dietary intake or activity level, but I'm convinced my weight concern isn't caused by either because I exercise/eat salad ."
  
  It's however an excellent bit of psych medication: an excuse to not self improve.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2015 @ 7:19pm
    
    Re: Re: Causes for obesity are not well understood
    exercise/eat salad \arbitrary amount of no medical relevance.\
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 5:18am
  
  Re: Causes for obesity are not well understood
  "I blame or thank depending of your point of view some of my organs for using the calories."
  
  There's no such thing as calories which is evident in your comparison between you and your friend's metabolisms... So if you eat something that's marked as 200 calories, you might only take in 10% of it while your friend, might store 90% of it in his fat. In other words your body is ejecting most of the food you take in and not actually 'burning the calories.'
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  - Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 11:04am
    
    Re: Re: Causes for obesity are not well understood
    If his body is doing that, he has a problem with his small intestine that he needs to see a doctor about. Perhaps he has worms.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 4:11am

I'm so sorry...
I'm very sorry, but I have to do this..

Newsman: On a sadder note, Pizza the Hutt was found dead earlier today in the back seat of his stretched limo. Evidently, the notorious gangster became locked in his car and ate himself to death.

[From Spaceballs, the most epic of epic space operas.]
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 5:05am

Hard gainers
"Some people are naturally skinny and able to eat almost anything they want without gaining weight."

I'm one of those people with a blast furnace for a stomach. What's odd though is that the more I eat the less I gain while the less I eat the more I gain?

My body is weird...
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Robert, 28 Feb 2015 @ 6:07am

Obesity, Carbs
There were no mystery reasons in the 80's, 90's, until recently. Japan has an obesity rate of below 5% compared to America's 34%. There are no mystery illnesses, simply a matter of carbs being shoved into foods in the form of fructose, sucrose and yea sugar. People lack the personal responsibility to stop the carbs, simple.
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 11:09am
  
  Re: Obesity, Carbs
  Carbs don't cause obesity any more than fats.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 2:30pm
    
    Re: Re: Obesity, Carbs
    "Carbs don't cause obesity any more than fats."
    
    If carbohydrates were the prime factor of obesity, then the heavy rice-eaters of the world, chiefly Asian, should be among the fattest people on the planet, but the opposite tends to be true.
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jim, 28 Feb 2015 @ 6:44am

anyone thought of
Genetics? It also as sides from blue eyes, brown or even green eye determines how your body utilizes foods. And the size of your bones, and how many hairs you have.
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got_runs? (profile), 28 Feb 2015 @ 1:34pm

The human body evolved eating natural plant life. All the artificial crap is killing everybody.

The root cause is still overpopulation.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2015 @ 2:24pm

"The human body evolved eating natural plant life."

In pre-historic times, yes. But more modern humans also evolved the ability to digest lactose and gluten.
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toyotabedzrock (profile), 1 Mar 2015 @ 3:21pm

I was actually told by a doctor that my wrist bone is larger than normal and that is why a motocross race medic thought it was broken.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2015 @ 11:48pm

>the challenge of doing so isn't as simple as it sounds for many

Bullshit. It IS simple. Eat less, move more. It's just *HARD*. It's HARD to not eat when you're hungry. It's HARD to change a lifetimes worth of eating habits. It's HARD to actually get off your butt and be more active every day. But dammit, it's as simple as can be.

It only gets complex when you try to do an end run around personal responsibility.
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- Anonymous Coward, 2 Mar 2015 @ 5:48pm
  
  Re:
  It's funny to see people claim it's "hard" when the reality of it is that if you gain less that 52 lbs a year, weight gain can be stopped and even reversed by reducing your average diet's Calorie value by less than a pop and two handfuls of chips a day.
  
  It's not hard, people just assume it is and give up before even investigating what it would take.
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