Obesity and Health

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 apparently 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?

Well put it this way, you'd have to have been living under a rock not to think that the health risks associated with obesity are anything other than dire.

The other thing we KNOW for absolutely sure, apparently is that the cure for our obesity and health problems is to lose weight- right? Well most health indicators DO improve with weight loss. But hark there's something startling that happens when we regain even a small proportion of this weight back.

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. So it's not the amount of weight per se, but seems to be something about the KIND of weight we're gaining.

Now I know I'm treading on hallowed ground (it's not the first and it won't be the last time) here but so long as we 'know' that obesity is THE 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. And hark...before I'm sliced, diced and popped into a blender, I'm not saying our body likes being over fat - but then it also doesn't like being emaciated.

So let's look at the whole obesity and health debate when it comes to diabetes. The reason we're seeing soaring rates of type 2 diabetes not just in adults but in children too is supposedly 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 from the University of Bristol that links having short legs relative to the rest of you body with being diabetic (who would ever have thought (!)). The authors felt it had something to do with women not getting enough to eat during the first three months of their pregnancy giving birth to babies with short legs.

And I've also seen research that claims 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 Kingdom. By 1850 in the USA it was about 52 lbs per year and by 2003 USA today reported it's about 150 pound 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 our obeisty and 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?

So in the obesity and health arena, experts say that heart attacks are caused by being overweight. I found it interesting, that although it's seldom really spoken about, research claims that the state of your gums and teeth play a major role in heart-attacks too.

Now... let's think about that. 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).

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 and the neuropeptides that produces are 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, especially those that encourage fast weight loss. Look at their advertising, the vast majority is geared towards the 'our diets is better than yours because it's faster' approach. Fast weight loss helps you lose water and muscle and when the diet fails you (as it inevitably will) you regain fat in the place of muslce and it's this changing body composition that is way 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? There is an ever growing group of research showing that the biggest cause of death is conventional medicine!

Just look at how many supposedly FDA approved products -like Ephedra, for example - have been pulled from the shelves. And yet 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.

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!' You don't have to agree with me - but I do at least want to open up a few more possibilities!

But I'm also asking them because there is growing body of obesity research that paints a slightly different picture about obesity as well.

I also talk a lot more about alternative ways of looking at things in The Joy-Filled Body and Childhood Obesity Prevention.

Share your Thoughts and Ideas?

Everyone has an opinion- and yours matters: What do you like/dislike/agree with/disagree with about what you've read? What other information would you like to see more of? What would you like us to know?

---

---

If you find the ditch-diets-live-light website useful, please recommend it to your friends.

Best Weight Products	Your opinion for a free e.course		Your Story/Poem & Feedback	Our community & newsletter

Custom Search

Love this page - please help by using the buttons below to Stumble or Buzz it up! And please let me know you buzzed it up by mailing me here and I'll send you my complimentary THANK YOU e.course. You'll love it!

Return from Obesity and Health to Wellness Articles

© Copyright ditch-diets-live-light.com 2008: Photos of Cari by Di Loria
Disclaimer: Your unique health situation may not allow you to stop dieting.
ALWAYS CONSULT WITH YOUR INDIVIDUAL HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL.
Neither Cari Corbet-Owen nor ditch-diets-live-light.com dispense medical advice.

SBI!