Counterintuitive: inactivity doesn’t lead to childhood obesity after all?
Most of us think we know a lot about what makes people fat. They eat too much and they’re inactive.
Newer evidence about the influence of gut flora indicates the iffiness of the first proposition, at least as a hard and fast rule. Certainly, eating less will cause weight loss. But the fat do not necessarily eat more than the thin, something I’ve noticed (and written about) before among my friends and acquaintances. There is no justice.
In recent years some studies have indicated that inactivity among children, something that was long thought to be responsible for increasing levels of childhood obesity, may not be that much of a factor either. Although the news came out four years ago, I don’t think it’s gotten widespread notice, perhaps because it goes so strongly against what seems to be common sense as well as PC thought. I think it highly likely that exercise is good for kids whether it leads to weight loss or not, but apparently it’s not the basic causative problem in obesity:
EarlyBird is based at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, and has been observing in detail a cohort of city school children for the past 11 years.
A review published in 2009 of all trials using physical activity to reduce childhood obesity showed weight loss amounting to just 90g (3oz) over three years, and the EarlyBird study wanted to know why the trials were so ineffective. So they challenged some popular paradigms.
It is well known that less active children are fatter, but that does not mean — as most people assume it does — that inactivity leads to fatness. It could equally well be the other way round: that obesity leads to inactivity.
And this is the question EarlyBird was uniquely placed to answer. With data collected annually over several years from a large cohort of children, it could ask the question — which comes first? Does the physical activity of the child precede changes in fatness over time, or does the fatness of the child precede changes in physical activity over time?
And the answer, published recently in Archives of Disease in Childhood, was clear. Physical activity had no impact on weight change, but weight clearly led to less activity.
What does cause childhood obesity, which has been increasing dramatically for decades in the entire western world? From reading up on it, I can only conclude that it works something like this: some people have the genes that foster it and always have, but previously it was held in check by the fact that food was neither very plentiful nor varied for the vast majority of the population (there also was more physical activity, but that doesn’t seem to have made as much difference). Now that tasty, abundant, and non-monotonous food has become readily available in the west to even most poor peoplet, everyone is eating pretty much to capacity. Therefore those with the genes for it are going to become fat.
Being fat used to be a sign that a person was prosperous and healthy. No more. In the west, it tends to mean a person is more likely to be poor than rich (Michael Moore excepted). Certain ethnic groups, blacks and Hispanics, are also more susceptible, and their increasing numbers in the population will also lead almost inexorably to higher percentages of obesity.
Want 10 more reasons for increasing rates of obesity that have nothing to do with overeating or inactivity? You’ve got em.
Despite our growing hedonism we’re still a moralistic and somewhat puritanical species. It’s just that the target of our concerns have shifted, and what used to be focused on sexual prohibitions seems to have shifted to health rules, particularly on overeating and exercise. But maybe we’re not such bad folk after all, it’s just our prosperity and our genes.
[NOTE: In an attempt to head off the “just go on a lowcarb/Paleo/Taubes diet” people who seem to come in proselytizing on every thread about weight loss or diet, I refer those interested to this thread (including comments) and this one.]
Mostly all the confusion is caused by common logical fallacies.
We know why you’ve got measles – we can see the little bugs.
We know why you got hurt falling – it’s the sudden stop at the end.
We don’t know why you have cancer/ALS/MS/blubber.
The fallacy is “measles has a single cause, looking like a bug on a windshield has a single cause therefore blubber must have a single cause”.
I think this fallacy has a name but I’m too lazy to look it up right now.
Fat may be caused by a combination of A and B, or a combination of C and D, or A and C and not E.
The possible number of permutations is way too large to possibly conduct clinical trials. So we’ll just have to accept the fact that the Internet is composed of 63% cats, 32% fat talk and the rest being trivia.
HFCS. High fructose corn syrup.
It’s part of the whole “wheat and corn diet produces imbalance” issue. Now if you have cows and chickens, that’s balanced against it, because the human diet wasn’t supposed to be run on merely crops.
By artificially concentrating something of that nature, it breaks the metabolism of several genotypes that can’t handle or modify it.
American health is based on an authoritarian and credential systems. The doctors, the Michelle Obamas, they decide the rules and the consumers are there to carry those orders out, whether they understand or like them or not.
Until it reverses to the point where the consumers most affected by this deconstruct what is going on in their bodies and personally adjusts it, for themselves by themselves, inefficient incompetence will not be decreased in the overall system.
Kids are, as noted, eating overly processed foods laced with sugars and starches; and they are not doing arduous chores, climbing trees, and running around playing red rover and hide and seek. Children need vigorous exercise and (excuse me for channeling MO) wholesome food.
I just recently read “FAT CHANCE” by Dr. Frank Lustig. He is an endocrinologist who has seen thousands of patients with weight problems. Like so many others he has zeroed in on high glycemic carbs – sugar, processed flour, HFCS, white rice, etc. He also has zeroed in on how many patients he sees that have become both insulin and leptin resistant – sometimes it is genetic, but is often caused by eating too many high glycemic carbs.
Those who are insulin and leptin resistant can eat next to nothing and still gain weight. The reason: The limbic brain is being signaled by the lack of leptin that there is no food available – that it’s starving times. So, the limbic brain slows the metabolism to preserve fat. The limbic brain does not know how much food is available, it gets its signals from hormones like leptin, gherlin, insulin, etc. When those signals get messed up, bad things happen.
Lustig points out that because of these relationships a calorie is not a calorie. Some calories are worse for us than others and once the hormonal relationship gets badly upset, then reducing calories may not help obesity.
Lustig’s advice is more protein (especially for breakfast), more fiber, and little in the way of high glycemic carbs. He avers that exercise will make you bodily systems run better and tone your muscles, but has little to do with losing weight. Lots of fiber, lots of protein, lots of fruits and vegies, and very little processed food is what he advises. In that way he is much more balanced than Taubes. I think they’re both on the right wave length, but I think Lustig has, IMO, defined the problem more precisely than Taubes – who wants us to eat like Cavemen. (The Paleo Diet.) Anyway, it’s another piece in the puzzle of obesity. (Lustig points out, by the way, that obesity and diabetes are becoming rampant in many countries worldwide as processed foods become more available.)
I agree with the comments above as well as the article on contributing factors. Other possible factors:
1) Endocrine imbalances of all sorts and not just insulin resistance, including imbalances of thyroid, adrenal and sex hormones.
2) Overuse of antibiotics, leading to disruption of healthy gut flora.
3) The increasing prevalence of snacking, often in lieu of family sit-down meals. Snacks tend to be disproportionately processed in comparison to cooked meals, and snacking can continue for hours whereas sit-down meals are usually of a more limited duration. The increase in snacking goes hand-in-hand with broad social changes in the modern era including more single-parent households, households where both parents work, and urbanization of the population.
reticent: ” Endocrine imbalances of all sorts and not just insulin resistance, including imbalances of thyroid, adrenal and sex hormones.”
That’s the biggest part of Lustig’s book – all the hormone imbalances. There are meds for thyroid problems. (Although low thyroid is probably under-diagnosed.) There are also medical treatments for adrenal and sex hormones problems. The only known treatment for insulin resistance and the imbalances that come with it, is eating more fiber, more protein, more fat, and less high glycemic index foods.
I don’t disagree with the idea that problems with GI tract flora may be a bigger factor than anyone thinks at this time.
Obesity doesn’t have a single cause/effect. If it did, diets would work much better than they do.
Lustig covers quite a lot about the reward hormones (endorphins) that come with eating sugary foods. And how the sugary foods screw up hormonal reactions. Sugar is in almost all processed foods. Thus, his advice to avoid processed foods as much as possible.
Hormone reactions can be controlled via biofeedback, hypnosis, and meditation.
Most people, however, focus little to no time on their subconscious abilities. They have little to no control of their own body, and spend few if any resources on restoring it, improving upon it, or listening for feedback.
As such, what remains is only controlling the food, the resource in, and medicating using strong external medicine with strong side effects.
Accumulated stress over years, however, will not disappear unless it is healed.
The human body is a more evolved product than people expect. They think their scientific authorities or political leaders can tell them what’s going on, because of knowledge. Humanity’s knowledge of itself is grossly inadequate. It’s been the case for some millenniums now.
Actually, if you think about it, the REAL reason it hasn’t gotten any publicity is that it goes against the nanny state agenda of dictating to people what they can and can’t eat. Like the media are going to push a point that destroys one of their massuhs arguments for control over the plebes?
I’ve noticed a pattern, after I read about how women who are over weight tend to have overweight children…and my doctors scolded me for gaining “too much” weight during pregnancy. (Their chart said I should gain ten; I gained the statistically normal 25, although I lost weight in the first trimester.)
Women who ignored the doctors saying that, because they are “over weight,” they should only gain ten to twenty pounds, usually have kids that are normal. The ones who tried to keep their weight gain down have kids who gain weight seemingly by breathing.
Got some support for this theory when I found out that women who suffer preeclampsia– which starves the baby– tend to have kids that are over weight.
Interesting hypothesis.
What the public needs is the raw data of the lab, not the lab conclusions.
Genetics is being constantly activated and de-activated during a person’s life. I would assume that includes pregnancy, when passing on immune and blood streams to the baby. If the genetic marker for starvation or lack of food is activated in the mother, it can be simultaneously passed along and activated in the child. Racial or genetic memories.
I recall reading somewhere that even lab rats fed the same diet over the decades have gotten heavier. This link was the first one I saw: http://news.discovery.com/animals/fat-pets-obesity-weight.htm
And here is another one: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/29373/title/Animals-are-getting-fatter–too/ .
While I truly believe the science is still out it makes for interesting ponderings.
What the public needs is the raw data of the lab, not the lab conclusions.
Amen.