Obesity and Health
If obesity and health interests you, and you're open-minded to considering alternative (and no doubt controversial) viewpoints on health and weight then read on....
So I'm watching Al Gore's movie 'Inconvenient Truth' and I hear him say: "What gets us into trouble isn't what we don't know...it's what we know for sure that just isn't so!" And that really started an interesting train of thought relative to obesity and health for me.
Here's what we know for sure: when it comes to obesity and health - we know that obesity is to blame for just about every illness like heart attacks, diabetes, death etc... etc... we know all that for sure - right? And we also know without any doubt that the cure is to lose weight - right?
How do we know the cure for our obesity and health problems is to lose weight? Well most health indicators DO improve with weight loss. But hark there's something startling(more later) that happens when we regain even a small proportion of this weight back.
Now I know I'm treading on holy ground here but so long as we 'know' that obesity is THE absolute health ogre, we'll continue to ignore other things that might lead us to a slightly different conclusion, and may lead us to different treatment plans for our health. And besides I love a good debate!
So, as I said, if you're open-minded about obesity and health, read further... if you aren't, well you'll probably be wasting your time. I'm not saying our body likes being over fat - but then it also doesn't like being over-thin.
Obesity and Health:
DIABETES
So let's look at the whole obesity and diabetes debate. The reason we're seeing soaring rates of type 2 diabetes not just in adults but in children too is because of obesity. We hear that everywhere, we read it everywhere - so we 'know' it must be true. But are there other things that could be causing the health problems associated with diabetes much more than the actual fat itself?
Well it seems there are many things that cause diabetes, not just obesity. I mean, I even came across some research that links having short legs relative to the rest of you body with being diabetic... nothing to do with being fat.
And I've also read that a lack of sleep changes how our body processes sugar AND is the 'royal route to obesity.' So could it be that the fact that we're sleeping about 2 hours less a night now than we did a decade ago be causing more health problems than obesity itself?
Let's think about how diabetes develops - it has to do with the way our body processes sugar. Well, here's the thing to take into account: in the Western world we're consuming a lot more sugar than we used to....look at all the (calorie and sugar-laden) soda (about 10 teaspoons of sugar per 12 oz) that's consumed - what impact does that have on the rate of diabetes?
Apparently in the 1600's sugar intake per person was about 7lbs per year in the United Kingdeom. By 1850 in the USA it ws about 52 lbs per year and by 2003 USA today reported it's about 150 poundd per person per year. And no just that but the composition of sugar has changed with a bit of processing too.
And how does our consumption of sugar impact on our health? Well studies show that after eating sugar our white blood cell (our first line of defense against viruses or bacteria) count is suppressed which compromises our immune system. Now, is it becoming fat from eating too much sugar or the high levels of sugar themselves that cause the health problems?
Obesity and Health:
HEART ATTACKS
So in the obesity and health arena, experts say that heart attacks are caused by being overweight. I found it interesting to see that the state of your gums and teeth play a major role in heart-attacks too. Sugary drinks and sugary foods play havoc on our dental health. And almost all processed foods have sugar added and the average person in the USA is consuming about 55.5 teaspoons of sugar per day (over 5,5 times the recommended daily amount).
So again, if you look at how the Western diet has changed, could those heart attacks be more about how our diet affects our body in general than the actual weight itself?
Because here's what raises that question for me. In the Framington Heart Study, women who were told they were going to have heart attacks if they didn't lose weight were 4 times more likely to have heart attacks than women who fell into the same weight range who weren't told they would have heart attacks. So it seems that heart attacks had less to do with the actual amount of fat they carried than the nocebo affect (the belief that they would have a heart attack).
Obesity and Health:
STRESS
We know that stress upsets all our hormonal levels - many like leptin, ghrelin and cortisol that have to do with appetite regulation and weight gain. To live in an overweight body in the Western world is to live in a chronically stressed situation. Whether we're worrying about clothes, health, what people are saying....could it be that the stress about being fat is more dangerous than the fat itself?
Worldwide Western countries have seen an explosion in obesity - even amongst children. This co-incides with a number of things like:
.......more diet products. What to these do encourage fast weight loss. Look at their advertising, the vast majority is geared towards 'our diets is better than yours because it's faster.' Fast weight loss helps you lose water and muscle and regain fat and could it not be this changing body composition that is more dangerous to our health than merely being overweight but without the yo-yo'ing.
And whose to say that these products don't have side effects to their ingredients that are causing the very obesity and health concerns (like heart attacks and diabetes) that they are apparently helping you cure when you lose weight?
Just look at how many supposedly FDA approved products have been pulled from the shelves because initially they were approved because their trials showed they helped x, y or z.... and then we discovered that.. oh by they way... they also cause a,b and c which landed up being far more detrimental to your health than the original condition it was meant to alleviate.
There seems to be evidence for this... because although people's healthy indicators all improve when they lose weight - the really interesting thing is that they only have to regain a quarter of the weight they lost for their health indicators to return to what they were before they lost any weight.
........more low fat, no fat, low sugar, no sugar foods, foods. Well low fat and no fat options are normally pumped with sugar to improve the taste and low and no sugar items are enhanced with fat for the same reason. And how, I wonder, does our body process all these artificial things we do to food.
And who consumes the most of these 'diet foods'? Why... desperate dieters of course! So could it be that along with dieting ourselves fatter, there's something about diet foods themselves (not to mention how many of our foods are simply loaded with chemicals like pesticides, colorants and so on) that impact on our health much more so than fat itself?
Well... these are just some of the questions I'm asking myself about obesity and health when it comes to 'what we apparently KNOW for sure that might not just be so!' I'm just wanting to open up a few more possibilities, that's all!
But I'm also asking them because there is growing body of obesity research that paints a slightly different picture about obesity as well.
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