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Born with Couch Potato Genes?
An anonymous reader writes "Science Daily is reporting on an experiment that suggests that an individual's activity level shows a genetic basis. From the article: 'Research conducted by scientists at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University reveals that a person's level of activity is likely an intrinsic property of that individual. [...] Overall, these findings suggest that it is likely to take a significant conscious effort to change one's level of physical activity and override one's intrinsic inclination to be active or inactive. To state it more plainly, if you're a couch potato, suddenly becoming active may be harder than you think,'"
How soon before we can blame everything we do on genetics?
Oh, great. Things like these always give people a scapegoat; "I'm not lazy, it's my genes." I'm not saying that it not true, but people like "solid" excuses to be even more lazy.
The article summary looks wrong. I don't see anything in TFA itself which indicates that laziness is a result of some genetic factor. All they say is that it's intrinsic to the individual - being a rhesus monkey in this case - that a given individual displays similar activity levels in both a stimulating and a non-stimulating environment.
Research like this often does more harm than good, in my opinion. Not only does it give people an excuse for their situation, it knocks off part of the drive they might have had to go ahead and change things. Though we admittedly do share many characteristics with the animals studied here, we also have the ability to override many of those with conscious decisionmaking.
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Plus, it appears the experiment itself was pretty meaningless, and the conclusions therefrom unsupported. Basically, they observed that some monkeys were active and others weren't, and that the level of activity didn't depend on the amount of space a particular monkey had to be active in. Wow.
The only attempt to change an independent variable appears to be as follows:From this, the scientist concludes:I don't think so. How do we know any particular monkey made an "conscious effort," much less a "significant conscious effort," to change its level of physical activity? Perhaps more fundamentally, there is not evidence the scientists even provided any incentive for the monkeys to do so. Simply putting a monkey in a bigger cage may not have given it any incentive or reason to be more active.
There seems to be an assumption that because they gave a sedentary monkey more space, it should have wanted to be more active, and because it wasn't, in fact, more active, this must be because its inactivity was "an intrinsic property of that individual." The scientist's argument assumes his conclusion. What if the money+ simply did not want to, and indeed had no reason to, move?
Put a banana at the other end of cage, and watch Mr. Sedentary Monkey take off like a rocket.
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Nice theory, but I think cheap gasoline and fast food in supersize portions had more to do with it.
This crap has come up before. I'm thinking of The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray. They claimed then that a whole raft of things were inherited which have since been debunked. These things included intelligence, financial ability, criminal inclination and etcetera...
Unless they have the evidence, I shall reserve my judgement. This isn't news, just a guess. No matter how educated, this is not news, just a glorified blog report. Flame me if you want, this is a serious criticism.
America's fatness has nothing to do with genes. It's all about TV, Corn Syrup, and McDonalds.
The best summary I ever heard of the whole, "Genetics make me fat," argument, is this one:
We have the same genes, by and large, that we had 50 years ago.
This rapid rise in obesity is very, very recent. Yes, change can be difficult, but its not that difficult - this coming from someone who lost 80lbs and went from a couch potato to a long distance runner the "easy" way, by eating less and doing more. No pills/shakes/meetings, just good ol' fashioned exercise. Heck, I don't even eat terribly healthily - just less than I did before. Try it, it works.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Americans are disgustingly obese (as a group). This isn't true of all the others who live in rich modern societies. E.g. Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria. I don't think Americans are the fattest: rich Africans and Arabs tend to be terribly fat.
Some suspect America has more "fat genes" because the people who left for the New World starved through more famines than the more prosperous folks who stayed in the Old World.
We weren't fat in the '50s. Not like we are today. Have we all experienced some massive genetic mutation in the last 50 years? Or could it be a lifestyle change instead? Hmm?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Actually, the last million years or so the major limiting factor on population size has been food. The human body has adjusted to that by getting fat easier and holding on to fat longer. That's the reason that when dieting you will lose muscle mass very easily if you don't excercise. And being lazy limits your energy consumption, therefore it's an advantageous trait.
Sounds like kind of a baited, made-by-TV reaction you had, but...
About 18 months ago she decided she was going to take responsibility for her own weight.
The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) M.O. of bowing to "a higher power" has always seemed suspicious to me because of the basic premise you're talking about here. AA as an institution has a strong religious side that would cloud any attempt to take responsibility for oneself. You're supposed to give up a big measure of your self-control to God, basically.
I pick my son up from viola lessons sometimes at the church around the corner, and they hold AA meetings there. The two most apparent traits of those meetings are a) the fact that they're dating grounds on a par with college social events; and b) the strong religious overtones.
If the "spiritual" side becomes nothing more than an outside force to which you're ceding control, it's never been clear to me how that'd be any different than shrugging and saying it was in your genes. If anything they encourage you to admit to yourself that you can't change anything without outside help. Then I suppose God is on your side in your attempt to quit -- though the theology of that doesn't make any more sense than saying your genes have changed their minds and want you to be thin and active now...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I have found this to be very true, and when I find myself getting lazy, I recall these words, and force myself into action.
I'm skeptical whenever someone guesses at bodyfat percentages. I can't eyeball my own or anyone else's. I doubt that anyone but a person who regularly checks other people's bodyfat percentages can do it accurately (since they've seen a wide range of body types and know the associate percentage). So I didn't put much stock in the number the GP threw out.
Back to the BMI, I think it's worthless for an individual. It's useful if you're trying to get data over a large population. But the BMI is just a ratio of height and weight - you can do this mentally by just looking in the mirror, which also has more information than a simple ratio.