You just caught something...

NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/magazine/13obesity.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&en=47be43828c1b109e&ex=1155614400&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1155564270-vRNbpL2sBD9Zt7DxT5VeWQ)

Another excuse. The key point to me of that is that IF there is any truth to this, it is still a matter of doing the right things, you just have to be more vigilant in doing them.

If you don't want to register on the website to read (like you normally do for NYT articles), www.bugmenot.com is your friend.

Thanks for the bugmenot link :tu:

If you don't want to register on the website to read (like you normally do for NYT articles), www.bugmenot.com is your friend.

Thanks for the bugmenot link :tu:

I use it all the time and try to spread the word.

You just caught something...

NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/magazine/13obesity.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&en=47be43828c1b109e&ex=1155614400&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1155564270-vRNbpL2sBD9Zt7DxT5VeWQ)


I wholeheartedly agree, the reason I got fat wasn't because I always had the 2nd wedge of cake, ate chocolate bars from the vending machine at work, ate fatty sandwiches from the local burger van or because I always favoured the car and failed to walk anywhere, it was because my hormones were inbalanced.

We are in the sue/blame-anyone-else-but-yourself society.

I'm going to sue Mars for allowing me to buy chocolate whilst I was carrying excess hormonally challenged obesity genes(tm).
It's completely unrelated that my fat level is falling after I stopped eating crap and started exercising.

That is absolutely right.

I will do the same and also sue the couch manufacturers. They never warned me that my a** would get real fat if I did nothing but sit on the couch all day, while watching t.v. and eating fries at the same time.:mad:


I wholeheartedly agree, the reason I got fat wasn't because I always had the 2nd wedge of cake, ate chocolate bars from the vending machine at work, ate fatty sandwiches from the local burger van or because I always favoured the car and failed to walk anywhere, it was because my hormones were inbalanced.

We are in the sue/blame-anyone-else-but-yourself society.

I'm going to sue Mars for allowing me to buy chocolate whilst I was carrying excess hormonally challenged obesity genes(tm).
It's completely unrelated that my fat level is falling after I stopped eating crap and started exercising.

Another excuse. The key point to me of that is that IF there is any truth to this, it is still a matter of doing the right things, you just have to be more vigilant in doing them.

The key point is that they know a lot more about obesity than before. I don't know how much this virus stuff plays into it, but the idea that it is as simple as "don't eat so much and exercise self control" is dead, and has been dead for a long time. If that approach was a drug, it would never be approved because it wouldn't get through any clinical trial for efficacy. The known side effect - of later weight gain and exposure to diseases in most people who try it - would keep it off the market.

It's well known (and has been for about ten years) that there are 50 different important genes in obesity. A lot of cancers only need 5 or 6 genes to get messed up. So in that rough sense, obesity is ten times as complex as cancer.

Science is not about excuses. But it has found, and it has been known for a long time, that people don't just overeat because they feel like it and don't care.

You want an example of a behavior that is under some voluntary control but not complete voluntary control? Breathing. Yeah, go ahead. Hold your breath for five minutes. It won't kill you. But I bet you can't. Why? Because your body can override your voluntary control.

There are a lot of behavior patterns which are difficult to control. Some are incredibly bizarre. You might not have heard of it, but factitious anemia is a dangerous psychological disorder that can result in death. People who have this, bleed themselves until they are anemic, and then require blood transfusions. It usually takes a while before the physicians figure out the cause of the anemia, and during this time the people get a lot of attention. It is thought that they are addicted to the medical attention. One of the dangers with this is that the patients who bleed themselves always do it alone (to conceal it) and there is the risk of fainting from the bloodletting and death from not stopping it (because they have fainted) - this has been reported. Why do I mention this? Because it's extremely hard to stop these patients from doing it, and it's rare enough that probably nobody reading this is doing it.

It's pretty easy to think of that behavior and say "well just exercise some self control and stop bleeding yourself." Sure, why not? We all are able to avoid bleeding ourselves white by exercising self control - it's easy. The point is, for people who have this problem, it's NOT easy. Simply telling them to stop is completely inadequate to actually get them to stop. These patients usually have a very long history of hospitalizations, and may have been discovered by other doctors previously.

So is it OK to treat such a person as diseased? Sure is. I'm absolutely certain such a person is ill. They do not have the self control to stop. Telling them to use this thing they do not have is useless. It's like telling someone with liver cancer to use some self control on their cell division - whatever morality you attach to it (there are preventable behavioral causes of liver cancer, and there are other causes which are not) it doesn't work.

Now I do have most of the self control to control my weight; I am not looking for excuses. But the fact of the matter is, I DID have gastric irritation for a while, and was told about stress and relaxation, but eventually it became known that there was a bacterium (Heliobacter Pylori) that I was antibody positive for, and after a course of antibiotics, I have never had that problem again. So I wouldn't be so quick to discount either an infectious agent as part of the problem, and I have little or no interest in whether something useful is an excuse or not.

I'm not discounting the science. However, the differences between the people's metabolic rates aren't great enough it doesn't seem like to make it something uncontrollable based on the intestinal fauna.

Is it harder for some? Much harder? Sure. Is it impossible for 99% of the people to control their body composition to a reasonable degree? I think not.

I have a similar philosophy on alcoholism. My family has a history of it, but I never drink so don't risk getting sucked into that. It has also been shown to have some genetic causes or links.

My point wasn't to say this is worthless science, but I know it will be used as many as a reason to give up even trying, or never even start, when there is a very high likelihood they could control their bodies better than they have in the past.

I'm not discounting the science. However, the differences between the people's metabolic rates aren't great enough it doesn't seem like to make it something uncontrollable based on the intestinal fauna.

That's way underestimating the power of an infectious disease. Your intestinal fauna can kill you in a couple days if you have the wrong sort, such as E. Coli O157.

It's not exactly new that infections can make you gain weight - Chlamydia Pneumoniae is known to increase the risk of coronary disease, and they don't actually know all the details of how, but they do know that increase in body weight seems to be the underlying mechanism that starts the process. They also think that Chlamydia Pneumoniae also causes insulin resistance. (See here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=12075572&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_docsum))

So although the New York Times printed an article about these virus guys this week, it is actually pretty well known that infections CAN have these effects. As usual, I'm a little curious as to why the Times considers this "news" but on the other hand they put it in the magazine section so maybe they are not saying it's really news.

The real questions are whether these Chlamydia or virus infections are a big target - that they cause a lot of obesity - or are they a curious sideshow - and that most people have some other cause. There isn't much question that the bugs have access to the chemistry to cause all sorts of stuff.

Hormones and genetics my ass.....North Americans are a nation of overeaters and "quick-fixers".

Go to some of the other countries in the world where they are active all day, don't have access to fast foods,soda dispensers etc. (Parts of the far east and tribal South America and some Indonesian places come to mind)...and speaking of "mind". eating is mostly a mind-set and result of habit (beyond what it takes to to sustain a person).

Strangely,little is reported on genetic obesityfrom these places in general, which is not tosay that there are no overweight people in the more urbanized areas. And it seems that urbanization plays a big role in people getting way too fat.

(No I'm not going to use the politically correct "cellulite"....I'm going with good ol' FAT).


Science is the perfect tool for the "buck-passer"....you can blame all your troubles on everything external with science and current research.

You don't need to eat Big Macs,potato chips,pop, ice-cream, Nachos, pizza, hotdogs,corn-dogs candies, chocolate, slurpees,cakes,cremefilled cookies,Smitty's pancakes, or any other similar crap ad-infinitum.....you only eat it because it feels good and offers you a small addict's "high" in the form of food. A liitle comfort in this effed-up world...right??
Actually,it might not be the world that's effed up...it could instead be your own attitude and personality that's effed up....and this should be looked into first before trying to keep the weight off, because weight-gain is a result of what's going on in your mind.

I'm not referring to any particular poster here BTW.

Hormones and genetics my ass.....North Americans are a nation of overeaters and "quick-fixers".

Go to some of the other countries in the world where they are active all day, don't have access to fast foods,soda dispensers etc. (Parts of the far east and tribal South America and some Indonesian places come to mind)...

Try going somewhere that people don't have to be active all day, and see how many of them are active all day.

Like Polynesia. Anyone who thinks North Americans have responded badly to the modern options for diet and activity should go there.

Science is the perfect tool for the "buck-passer"....you can blame all your troubles on everything external with science and current research.
It has become that "perfect tool". But it doesn't just apply to overeating, there is an endless list of things that are a matter of choice. Any addiction and nearly all mental disorders are due to choice of actions. We are often given physical handicaps, it often become a matter of choice in how we deal with them.

Our state held a health conference that I was invited to attend. I listened to the main speaker that spoke to obesity, he was from the Harvard school of medicine. He set forth the theory that humans in industrialized nations are like a polar bear in the desert.

We just weren't build for all this idle time and wealth of food. In nearly all of our large towns and cities, we can get most anything we want, 24/7. And most can drive there to get it. His answer was get active and cut the calories. That requires choices on our parts.

I do want to say this, I grew up in the 50s. I ate everything that was fried and full of sugar, I was an only child, while my parents ate green vegetables and all those good things. They might cook me a couple of hamburgers covered in cheese and mayo with the buns toasted in the grease and some fries. I would wash it down with a coke or the sweetest ice tea anyone has ever had. Of course, I had been eating chocolate chip cookies by the dozens, all afternoon, washed down with a quart or more of whole milk, I never tasted low fat milk till I was over 50.

Many days, I would get on my bike go to the grocery store and buy a 45 cent chocolate 2 layer cake about 7" across. And go home and eat it with another qt of milk. At high school, we had a drive-in right across the street. Ice cream, cokes, hamburgers, mike shakes, you name it. Get the idea. It ain't big macs, sweets or what have you.

I didn't break the 30" waist point till, I was in my 30s. My wife except during pregnancies stayed below 115lbs til over 40 (we married at 19, in my last semester of college, I skipped a couple of years). There was at least two obese people in my graduating class of 250 in high school, none of them had babies, I can't remember anyone quiting school. I could go on and on. I think we were active, no computers, video games, nearly all one car families if they had one. TVs were few and far between. In our town of 25,000 we did have 7 movies downtown and two drive-in movies. We danced a lot, parties at houses, no booze or drugs. Some big ones put on by the 5 high school fraternities and sororities with big names in our day- Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley and etc. We stayed active! We didn't get fat.

Do you think we were all breast fed? Or that we lifted weights or cardio. Cardio was unheard of except tied to wind sprints or laps in school sports. There were only a few weight sets around, none at school. I had one, 140lb set, I build a bench.

I don't have the answer, I know activity is important. Diet becomes important when you let yourself go. Activity is always important. Making the right choices has become more important in this world today, there are a lot of bad ones being made.