Slashdot Mirror
Obesity Contagious?
An anonymous reader writes "University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found that certain human viruses may cause obesity, and by extension make being severely overweight a contagious condition. 'It makes people feel more comfortable to think that obesity stems from lack of control,' the lead researcher says. 'It's a big mental leap to think you can catch obesity.' But other diseases once chalked up to environmental factors, like stomach ulcers, are now known to stem from infectious agents."
"Lois, everyone has their sanctuary. The Catholics have churches, fat people have Wisconsin, and I have the Pawtucket Brewery."
... or maybe they do but you're not supposed to consume them by the metric tonne? Having never tried said tomfoolery, I'm not sure how it works.
... remember, it's not that you're inactive or eat a lot. Thanks to technology, there are pills to cure obesity--3 AM TV told me so.
- Peter in Wasted Talent
Beer and cheese must not fall under the Atkins diet
Looks like those 'sconnies found an excuse
My work here is dung.
Funny how this virus is so widespread in the United States.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the availability of junk food and the national automobile culture.
...it's called "intaking more calories than you output."
.this is not a sig
Sure, some people have higher appetites, or lower metabolisms, but a virus isn't going to manufacture mass out of the celestial aether. If you eat less than your body requires, you lose weight, and vice-versa.
m
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does anybody have pointers to numbers for the other two viruses?
Viruses aren't the only medical condition that can cause obesity, by the way. Various hormonal problems (thyroid comes to mind) can cause obesity as well. Even so, I'm expecting that they'll still find tha more than half of North American obesity is not environment related (other than an environment with an abundance of food).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
There are, as with all things, multiple factors:
;).
1. Genetics
2. Environment
3. Disease
Someone who is prone to ulcers (genetics) and works as a stock trader on the floor of Wall Street and doesn't eat well/doesn't exercise (environment) and catches the right germ (disease) is more likely to come down with an ulcer than the sheep herder in Wyoming who's only worry is someone using the word "brokeback" to them.
The same thing could be here. I know people who have struggled with their weight - they exercise, they try to eat well, and yet the pounds don't come off. Perhaps, like ulcers, there can be a simple protein check before dieting and exercise of "OK - looks like you have the virus. Let's clear that up while we change your eating and exercise habits", which will give many people hope before they have to resort to surgery.
Hopefully it won't just be an excuse for the lazy, like the Wall Street trader who'd rather take a pill for the ulcer rather than taking time out to go relax with their family and loved ones.
Now, with that said, I'm heading out and getting a whopper
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The cure to obesity is to eat and live healthier, but it is clear that lifestyle is not the only cause. Many overweight people eat less and exercise more than other people with more ideal weights.
English is easier said than done.
Now can nailing fat girls can give you a venerial disease, amd also make you fat? I gotta stop drinking.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
The two most common causes of obesity are compulsive overeating (which is an actual addition and can often only be effectively treated as such), and gratuitous overeating (where the person is just a slob). The latter is rarer than you might think, as being a slob is not much of a survival trait. Addictions, however, are often derived from survival traits. Severely deranged ones, but survival traits nonetheless.
Now, addictive behaviours can appear to be contageous, as extreme dysfunctions tend to create extreme stress in others, which can in turn cause those others to become dysfunctional themselves. (We're talking fairly extreme cases, here.) As such, any research that theorises pathogens must first eliminate acutely dysfunctional groups. Otherwise, you're going to end up chasing shadows.
Eliminating acutely dysfunctional researchers who are paid by corporate sponsors to achieve pre-defined results would also be a good idea, but that would eliminate 95% of all researchers, which could cause problems down the road.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Any new angle on the issue is helpful. If there's a virus hindering people in their efforts to lose weight, then by all means identify and fight it.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Yes, we will have hordes of overweight people going "See, told you so! I'm sick!"
What they will conveniently forget is convervation of energy: The only way someone can gain weight is by eating too much, compared to how much energy their bodies spend on moving and keeping you alive. End of discussion.
No matter which disease one may have, you will not catch 25 pounds from taking a stroll through the mall or, say, through breathing thin air. If a disease lowers the energy requirements of the body, the cure is to eat proportionally less.
TFA isn't clear on this, but I wonder precisely what is suggested being the cause of obesity in 'infected' individuals. Are they saying people simply become unable to control the urge to eat uncontrolled amounts of unhealthy foods?
So how do you catch 'soccer moms', no bikes as kids, McD dinners and no exercise in school?
Also strange is the fact that ulcers were commonplace all over the world, due to often being an infectious disease. Yet I wonder why the Europeans haven't 'caught' obesity on the US level yet? It is not like we haven't been mingling with them for, say, a few hundred years.
What is to say that some viruses might also be affecting this?
If some treatment can just help a person who has struggled against weight their whole life have a slightly easier struggle without harming their body in a more severe way then more power to them.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
It might not be genetic, but it could be passed down from parents to children. How? Children see how their parents live. Children are taught their lifestyle and what expectations they have. If they learn that it is acceptable and normal to drive the car everywhere, even for what amounts to a piddly-little 10-20 minute walk, that's what they'll probably do for the rest of their lives. If their parents spend their spare time watching TV rather than out doing something healthy, that will set their mindsets in a way that can be hard break. Then you wonder why they grow up fat and unhealthy.
Also, we used to run after our food and throw spears at it before we could eat. Or even walk a long ways to find enough berries to nibble on. Now, we just hop in our cars and drive to the grocery store. Gobs of food, AND little or no physical exertion to get it. That's not what our bodies were designed for.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
There's another part of this that someone mentioned recently to me. Not only are our food sources far more secure than they were one to ten thousand years ago, we have seriously changed the composition of our foods in the last 50-ish years.
These days, there are a *lot* more refined sugars and simple carbohydrates. The body is very good at converting these to fat. It's almost safe to say that as a society, we are all ingesting foods that should make us fat. It might be interesting to ask why so many people *aren't* becoming obese.
While I definitely believe that in humans, the power of suggestion and the placebo effect are quite powerful.
That's why, though, that we do double-blind studies, and tests on animals.
I doubt the animals in the study were susceptible to suggestion - yet the ones with one of the virii did indeed become more obese.
When I was in my 20's, I was lean as a rail and I probably kept 3 grocery stores in business single-stomached. Now, I'm 20 years older, 80 pounds heavier, and I eat a tiny fraction of what I did then.
I don't run 3-4 miles a day, but I'm not a couch potato either. I take regular walks in the good weather, and use the stairs instead of the elevator, but it doesn't seem to help.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The problem is that I don't have the time to put out the energy (of all kinds) that weight loss requires. I work two jobs (one for God, and one for currency) and at the end of the day I'm /tired/, and I simply don't have the energy to ask myself how many calories my dinner has. I just want to eat something and collapse on the account.
The real bottom line of this article, along with related research into Syndrome X, etc. is that me and people like me are placed at an enormous disadvantage because, due to genetics or a virus or whatever, we are handicapped when it comes to weight loss. It's not that we are physiologically impossible to reduce eating, but that everything in our culture works against it and it just becomes too much damned hassle.
Our society makes allowances for people with other sorts of handicaps -- e.g. wheelchair ramps. Should we also make allowances for people with lousy metabolisms? For example ... why shouldn't restaraunt chains be required to provide calorie counts on a meal, printed on the menu? All the fast food places already do this, but you have to ask for it, and it's much harder to get this information "on the fly" for non fast-food restaraunts. This information would would be especially helpful if it included the Glycemic Index.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Most people could gain or lose a couple dozen pounds through changes in diet and excercise, this is true. However, there are *also* factors not in the individual's control which may be much larger. More and more the evidence suggests that (for those with no lack of basic protein) excercise causes one to lose weight not because of "burning fat", but because it signals the body to store less fat.
Ultimately, body chemistry determines what percentage of calories are stored as fat, and what percentage are eliminated. There are cases of obese people starving themselves to death while remaining obese. Sometimes the body just malfunctions.
It seems like you feel a strong need to force your values on others.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Okay, so there are lots and lots of comments here that boil down to "put the cheeseburger down!", but in a stunning reversal, I actually RTFA. True, people should try to eat well, and on the whole I agree that most people should spend a little more time walking (or biking, or jogging, or whatever) and a little less time in front of the television. That being said, the article raises some interesting possibilities. If viral activity could be a cause of weight-gain, I'd rather know about it than simply insist that the guy who's oozing out of the sides of his seat down the aisle from me has no self-control.
There was a time when illness was "obviously" the result of evil spirits playing havoc on people who were not devout enough. I'll bet at some point there were people standing around the village square commenting on how "if that fool had just spent a little more time praying than [insert sinful activity here], he obviously wouldn't be lying on the ground hacking up a lung and burning up from fever". Just because this line of research goes against what we believe to be common-knowledge isn't really a reason to jump all over it, we can be wrong.
So, no, it's clearly not an excuse to give up eating well or exercising, but I'm not going to just say there's nothing to this until there's been a bit more study.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
These days, there are a *lot* more refined sugars and simple carbohydrates.
Also, this contributes to diabetes, IIRC. Basically, big sugar highs and lows screw up the natural insulin-based sugar regulation system until it finally just stays broken no matter what you do.
Please don't forget one other major factor -
Food used to be fairly simple. Thousands of years of grains/meats/herbs combined with moderately low heat on an individual basis. Modern food processing (for those of us that eat in such countries) involves food processes, chemicals, and techniques that we certainly did not evolve for. High fructose corn syrup in almost everything (hamburger buns? WTF?), foods created by superheating and injecting gases, and foods assembled in a laboratory are definately a curve ball.
I doubt anyone would drink soda if they actually had to form it from its core components. I can handle cooking steak, pastries, etc. I know how to grow/hunt the ingredients for most foods. Where does one hunt the wild aspartame? How do you go about making msg? If you had to do it in your kitchen, would you even bother?
Also, my pet theory is that humans are designed to be social eaters (sharing the kill, the harvest, etc). Company makes foods better. Ever smell a McDonald's burger that smells as good as a backyard barbecue one? Now, however, a lot of people wolf down their food by themselves in the car, or while working. They don't stop to pay attention to it, and they also frequently ingest several hundred calories of soda while eating.
Just my two bits.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Eating less can actually worsen the problem. When you eat less, your metabolism slows down, and prevents you from burning as many calories. Your body assumes food is unavailable, and tries to conserve the resources it has. Exercising while on an extreme low-calorie diet will simply make you exhausted, without burning as many calories as it would otherwise.
When trying to lose weight, eating better is much more important than eating less.
Here are a few tips that have helped me:
Okay, motivational rant is over. Now turn off Slashdot and get out there!
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
The other point is that the known solutions to obesity are a response to the known causes. Nobody would think to prescribe antiviral drugs to someone who suddenly starts gaining weight without a recognizable cause (like change in diet/activity) if we didn't suspect viruses as a possible cauese of obesity (even if it is a relatively rare cause, at lest doctors might now know what special symptoms to look for).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
While it may be an unpleasant thing to consider, the concentration camps of WWII demonstrated quite clearly that it's all about calories. There were no inmates whose metabolism prevented them from becoming walking skeletons. While it's sad that people can't regulate their food intake and exercise level, and remain obese, like a previous post suggested, there are people with real problems. I could easily be obese, but I deny myself the pleasures of over-eating pretty much daily in order to remain thin.
It's funny, whenever a discussion on obesity arises (whether on Slashdot or IRL), people seem to settle into 2 camps:
1. Eat less, exercise more! Guaranteed you'll lose weight!
2. Do you think fat people REALLY want to be fat? It's not their fault! It's their metabolisms (or a virus, perhaps)!
Call me crazy, but I think there's a bit of truth in BOTH statements.
Fact is, ON AVERAGE, the more you eat, the more weight you will gain. ON AVERAGE, the more exercise you get, the more weight you will lose. I can't see anyone disputing this, for the AVERAGE case. Hell, it really applies to everyone, but to differing degrees. Personally, I've been in both camps.
Some people burn as many calories as they intake, no matter what. I used to be one of them. 4000, 5000 calories a day, combined with sitting around watching TV, and I stayed incredibly slim. As I finally emerged from what seemed like 10 years of puberty, this changed, and changed a lot. Lately I can put a pound or two on per day, if I'm not careful. I have to be very careful in what I eat or I'll balloon up in a month - well, for someone of my weight it IS ballooning, anyway. However, I can still have weeks where I eat a ton of food, so long as I exercise myself silly. In my case, it's hiking 20kms up the side of a mountain. After that I can eat damn near everything in sight for a week. In the winter when I slow down, I have to eat a LOT less or the pounds pile on.
I think it's safe to say that most people are in a range from hummingbird to tortise when it comes to metabolism. The key is figuring out where you lie on that scale, and adjusting your habits accordingly. I know of people who will just put on fat forever. They need to eat very nutritious, low calorie foods, and get plenty of exercise in order to stay reasonably thin. Does it suck? Yup. Is it "unfair" that some people can eat whatever they want, whenever they want? Sure - but you're not going to get very far whining about it. There are some extreme cases of people who simply cannot do anything but gain weight - their bodies are totally out of whack. Seems to me that these people are in a very small minority though - or else obesity wouldn't be such a recent thing. You don't often see 400 lb people in poorer countries, for instance, and you sure didn't see many of them 100 years ago.
Some days I wish I was still 16, and could eat all the time. Then again, in those days I couldn't put on muscle to save my life, no matter what or how much I ate, or how much I exercised.
Long story short? Live with the cards you've been dealt, and know that it's actually OK to feel hungry sometimes. Far too many people insist on feeling very full after every meal - hell, after every hour for the extreme snackers out there.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
"Still fat, yet starved of required nutrients."
Right, like vitamins and minerals, which last time I checked, don't have any calories.
"You can't even make the case that the pleasures of eating and relaxation (or avoiding the discomfort of working out and going hungry) are more important to them than their health and appearance. There are people who are suicidal over their weight, and willing to endure painful, dangerous, ill-advised medical procedures to correct it."
Is it so difficult for you to understand that the same mechanism that makes their eating behavior maladapted can also make their coping mechanisms maladapted?
Why do you assume the two are mutually exclusive?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I'm an atheist, so I don't understand your statment on many fronts. You mention you have this other 'job' to work 'for God'. Aren't you commiting a sin by taking such poor care of the one body you have. What stupid kind of God you think prefers that you work for him before taking care of yourself?
I'm not saying its easy. I fight a tendency to not excercise and eat too much of the wrong stuff every mom emnt; yet I do it. I have a full time job, volunteer at many organizations and raise 2 kids. Excuses to not do it are a dime a dozen. As I grow older and my metabolism tends to slow I'm much more aware that I want to live forever (or as long as I can) and to do so in a state of relative health: for my kids, but also for myself and for the work I do, so even though I hate every minute of it I try to work out a few times a week... guess what? I have more energy and require less sleep!
The other thing that bothers me greatly about your post, is the usual socialist statement to make government protect you by using force to make someone else responsible: in your case restaurants and caloric counts, guess what? it doesn't work either: you can still pig out on a triple hamburger and triple fries at 2000 calories a meal if you know how much it's in there... and do you really need some little statement on the menu at Claim Jumper to tell you that the 5 pounds of meat and 10 layer chocolate cake are a bit fattening? Why don't you simply *not* go to restaurants that don't give you that information and let them know you want it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to calculate this stuff to the accuracy, consistency and level that most laws would have you? Do you reprint all your menus every time you switch from Brand A (10 calories/serving) to Brand B (11 calories/serving).
"Yes, and the solution to kick heroin is to stop shooting up, but even if you TYPE IT IN ALL CAPS, a junkie is still going to need more help then you shouting at them."
Quitting cold turkey is just as effective as any other method, so even though you tried, your attempt at a witty analogy fails.
And why is it that you're equating obesity with dependence, except when it comes to cause?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Our society makes allowances for people with other sorts of handicaps -- e.g. wheelchair ramps.
Except that you can lose weight, someone in a wheelchair cannot grow legs/nerves/bones (or whatever else is preventing them from being able to walk). You said yourself it wouldn't be easy to lose weight, but it is possible. For better or worse, your weight is your responsibility. It is inappropriate for you to expect society to conform to your needs. It's different when someone cannot change their condition, which is why we (try to) make things easier for the lame, the blind, the deaf, and, of course, Pamela Anderson.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
You do have time! You just haven't put yourself first - you're proritising other commitments which should be secondary to your own personal health. I don't want to upset you here, but seriously, if you don't make time to sort that problem out, you're only increasing your chances of running out of time altogether!
Put yourself first and good luck!
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
Comment removed based on user account deletion
See, jokes are funny. That's why they call them "jokes".
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
And, oh yeah, for the love of GOD, DON'T investigate other causes of the problem, because it's very important for us to think that it's purely a choice to be fat.
Right.
"Take a moment to train yourself..." Please. You've got to be kidding me.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I don't know about you, but if I could take a pill to get rid of my need to sleep with minimal side effects, I wouldn't think twice.
I don't hunt for my food. I don't make my own clothes. I use birth control. I have central heating. I shower every day. I take allergy medicine. I get flu shots and vaccines. I take pain killers when I hurt. I brush my teeth and go to the dentist. If my teeth fell out, I would get fake ones. If my arm was cut off, I would get a prosthetic. If I stepped on a rusty nail, I would get a tetanus shot. If my wife was to get pregnant, I would merrily take her to the doctors to have the kid delivered. I am more then happy to live 80+ years while my tribal ancestors were damn lucky to live even half of that.
There are "natural" thing I have absolutely no desire to do. Why not throw another one onto the list? Yeah, I know it is fun to play new-age hippie and decry modern life all the while being snug in your central heated or cooled apartment eating fruits and vegitables from the far corners of the earth. If natural is what you want, you have already failed. So why the hell not just run with it?
If I could get away with eating like crap without taking years off my life, I would be as enthusiastic about it as I am getting vaccines. I eat healthy because I have to, not because I get off on eating a pile of veggies and ignoring the perfectly good pizza shop next door. If popping a pill then slamming down a whole double cheese pizza and a liter of cola doesn't appeal to you, you have my utmost sympathy.
At your obesity levels, you don't need to count calories at all. It's always preferable to do so, but it's not needed whatsoever. With your current diet, are you gaining weight? Then, eat 3/4 of what you're eating now. Still gaining weight? Cut down to 3/5. And so on, until you're losing weight. You won't be wasting your time, quite the opposite, you'll have some more.
And everyone should have at least 30 minutes a day for themselves. Even 20 minutes of light exercise would do the trick. Are you tired? Take in a sugarless Red Bull (if you have no cardiovascular problems), that will turn you on.
I have a full time job, I'm working on my Ph. D., I attend to English classes and still I have time to workout at least 5 days a week. And I do watch my diet. I do it to be healthier, fitter, stronger, and to know that if I have to run to save my life, I won't have a heart attack after just 20 meters. And yes, I do it for the looks, too, I would be an hypocrite if I denied it. Call me shallow, if you want, but improved looks gives you a self-confidence boost that can be helpful in many situations of your life.
Some people tell me that I'm obsessed with diet and exercise. Obsessed? A week has 168 hours, and I workout for a measly five hours a week. And yes, I eat healthy foods, but I don't usually count calories and occasionally I even eat some junk food. Those 5 hours a week plus the diet watching have as a result a (much) better version of myself.
and an icy cold Coca-Cola
I'm surprised that after reading all the comments nobody has said anything about soda. Calories from soda are huge. A 2L bottle of soda runs about 2000 calories. If you have your main liquid consumption from soda you're probably drinking about 2 of these a week.
Switch over to water (0 calories), and you'll drop 4000 calories/week out of your diet instantly. That's almost 600 calories a day. It will make a difference. Get a Brita if you can't stand the taste of tap water, buy bottled water if you must spend money on your beverages.
But don't complain to me about being fat and then go grab the Big Gulp of Coke. You won't get any sympathy here.
---------
get your war on
Lack of self-control has essentially nothing to do with it. With near-superhuman self-control an obese person might substitute external feedback (i.e. from a scale) for the internal signals and control his weight that way. But that means ignoring continuous gnawing hunger - forever.
You know, its funny. There are people like this - honestly like this - they have things like Pradr Willis syndrome and are incredibly rare. They're also unfortunate and tend to die at very young ages.
There are also people like you and me. Heck, I was a chubby kid; I was a fat adult. I was obese, and then some. I enjoyed food and took comfort in the fact that while I was "a bit overweight" at 240+ lbs (I'm 6' tall) I wasn't really any fatter than many of the people around me. Then one day I looked in the mirror and saw that my 38" pants were getting tight, and said, basically, "Hey, I'm fat."
I started to exercise, watched what I ate (a bit), and I've lost almost 80 lbs. I never thought I was obese, but anyone who can lose 80 lbs (without getting down to a "washboard abs" level of body fat, mind you, just a moderately healthy weight) is, by definition, obese. Or was, in my case.
For me, and for many, many other people I've met, its purely about self-control and body image. And its something that they, as I, can do something about. Yes, there are some people with severe medical issues that cause their obesity but if you're reading this and you're fat, chances are really really high that its because you're inactive and like eating, not that you've got some rare disorder. Sorry, but that's the truth.
Pity those who have uncontrollable ilnesses. Don't be an enabler for the vast majority who don't.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!