Obesity must be treated as disease -expert

[doreen T]

Obesity must be treated as disease -expert

By Patricia Reaney, Reuters Health

Wednesday, June 1, 2005


Obesity, which already affects more than 300 million people and an alarming number of children, must be recognized and treated as a disease with deadly complications, a leading expert said on Wednesday.

Up to 8 percent of total healthcare costs in some Western countries are attributable to obesity and related problems. It is a leading cause of preventable death -- so shedding excess weight is not just about looking good.

"Obesity is not an aesthetic problem. It is a very complex problem tightly connected to diabetes, atherosclerosis (blocked arteries) and other major health problems and causes of death," Professor Constantine Tsigos, chairman of the 14th European Congress on Obesity, told Reuters ahead of the meeting.

"It has to be treated and confronted seriously."

The four-day congress with 2,000 experts from 80 countries will focus on all aspects of obesity. But much of it will be devoted to its consequences, which include cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems, diabetes, depression and some cancers.

"The emphasis has been put on the complications to increase the awareness of obesity as a disease and a serious condition with many risks associated with it," said Tsigos.


MULTI-BILLION POUND DIET INDUSTRY

Despite a better understanding of the causes of obesity, a multi-billion dollar diet industry and countless weight-loss programs and gadgets, the number of overweight and obese people is rising at an astounding rate.

In European countries, rates have soared by 10-50 percent in the last decade. In Japan, it has doubled since 1982 and in the United States the percentage of young overweight people has tripled in 25 years.

Tsigos stressed that prevention efforts must be geared to the young because excess weight in children is linked to early markers for metabolic syndrome -- a collection of health risks that increase the odds of developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

The symptoms include a large waistline or "beer belly," high blood pressure, raised insulin levels, excess body weight and abnormal cholesterol levels. If someone has three or more symptoms they have the syndrome.

"We should target childhood and adolescents for prevention and treatment as early and as aggressive as we can," he said.

Awareness of the problem has increased but he said some doctors still consider obesity as more of an aesthetic problem.

Two anti-obesity drugs, Roche Holding AG's Xenical and Meridia, made by Abbott Laboratories, are already available and more treatments are in the pipeline.

Sanofi-Aventis has submitted its anti-obesity drug Acomplia for marketing approval with U.S. and European health authorities. It could be launched early next year.

A vaccine to help people shed excess pounds, made by Switzerland's Cytos Biotechnology, is in early trials.

Tsigos said treatments are not only aimed at improving weight loss but achieving benefits such as reduced blood pressure, better insulin sensitivity and improved well being.

"This will make therapy for obesity more widely acceptable and probably even justified by insurances -- if we can prove the benefits are not simple weight loss," he added.


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=594&e=1&u=/nm/20050601/hl_nm/health_obesity_dc


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[doreen T]

Two anti-obesity drugs, Roche Holding AG's Xenical and Meridia, made by Abbott Laboratories, are already available and more treatments are in the pipeline.

Sanofi-Aventis has submitted its anti-obesity drug Acomplia for marketing approval with U.S. and European health authorities. It could be launched early next year.

A vaccine to help people shed excess pounds, made by Switzerland's Cytos Biotechnology, is in early trials.

etc, etc, bla bla bla ..
How about developing a drug that will reduce GREED in the sugar and grain refining industries??

:thdown:


Doreen

[Samuel]

Awareness of the problem has increased but he said some doctors still consider obesity as more of an aesthetic problem.

I'm one of the people who believe that obesity is a very serious disease which is not given the attention it should be given.

One problem which I have concerning this subject is how they define obesity. They define it as being overweight, I like to define it as the inability of the body to regulate its weight. I believe that a healthy individual must be able to eat any type of food he wants at any quantity he wants and still maintain a stable body weight.

Therefore, I consider the typical advice an obese person gets from his doctor which is "eat less", "count calories" or "practice portion control" to be nonsense.

[Dodger]

I wonder how much money Professor Constantine Tsigos has received from the drug companies.

[Bat Spit]

The number of highly trained professionals who persist in believing that obesity causes insulin resistance rather than the other way around is simply mind boggling.

Flat earth, anyone?

[Frogbreath]

I've noticed that unlike 20 years ago most doctors aren't so quick to sneer at us and tell us to exercise a little will power. It could be that the average doctor is a lot heavier now too.

The whole idea of taking a pill for it is scary to say the least. The side effects of phen/fen still linger in my memory. The only reason I didn't take it is that I didn't have access at the time. I'm not sure how I feel about obesity being called a disease. Diseases need "cures" in the form of medicine.

This disease is inflicted on us by a Western Civ. lifestyle, free enterprise (no matter how unhealty the product), along with all the other baggage of modern life. It seems more along the lines of combining polluted air with cigarettes to create lung cancer. It would be great if there were a pill to prevent lung cancer - but it would be even better to clean up the air and put out the cigarettes. We seem to be a society on a swift decline. First we are sold the junk that makes us sick/addicted and then we are sold chemicals to treat the symptoms.

[Nancy LC]

If you read Adiposity 101 (http://www.omen.com/adipos.html) you'll begin to believe that obesity is pretty much an uncurable disease.

[Lessara]

Nancy, I read that... what is all about that?!

[Nancy LC]

That article has been around for a long, long time. It looks like he keeps updating it. I haven't reread the entire thing again but I think the basic premise is that once you've been fat, you've collected too many fat cells. Those fat cells are still there but depleted and their goal is to get filled up again. So they send out all kinds of hormonal signals that drive you to getting fat again.

There's more to it than that, but in essence he is saying that until we really do start treating obesity as a disease that needs to be cured, medically, that most of us formerly (or currently) fat people are doomed to starvation and bucking our basic chemistry in trying to maintain a normal weight.

He says that only 1% of the formerly obese manage to keep their weight off.

He also says that the current mind-set of people, corporations, doctors, etc is such that the real problem will never be solved unless everyone stops seeing this as an issue of "just eating too much and not exercising enough" and treats it as a disease. Of course, if we actually could treat and cure obesity then it would stop being such a huge multi-billion dollar industry preying upon everyone's most desperate desire, and we can't have that!

[SadLady]

Well, I don't know, but I define obesity as the body's inhability to metabolize carbs correctly. Whatever causes this, being excess insulin or what, I think if someone could come up with a pill that fixes the problem, it would be great!

[Christal]

Regardless of the bio-mechanics of obesity, I believe that as a society in general, the issue is still viewed as primarily a "will power" problem and a "beauty" problem. Certainly there are some doctors who see it differently and focus on the health aspect of it, but we have a long way to go before the "slim and supposedly healthy" look at an obese person with sympathetic, compassionate and non-judgmental eyes instead of disgust, embarrassment and thinly veiled contempt. Sad but true.

[acohn]

I thought I read somewhere that after a long period of being depleted, the body will reabsorb fat cells. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

[Nancy LC]

That might be true, Acohn, I looked around on the web yesterday and saw that.

[tortoise]

One problem which I have concerning this subject is how they define obesity. They define it as being overweight, I like to define it as the inability of the body to regulate its weight. I believe that a healthy individual must be able to eat any type of food he wants at any quantity he wants and still maintain a stable body weight.



I think this is a brilliant reframing of the issue. May I quote you?

[Angeline]

I believe that a healthy individual must be able to eat any type of food he wants at any quantity he wants and still maintain a stable body weight.

You are talking about a person who cannot gain weight no matter what he/she eats.

That's also considered unhealthy and could be downright fatal in environements where food is scarce.

[AntiM]

You are talking about a person who cannot gain weight no matter what he/she eats.

That's also considered unhealthy and could be downright fatal in environements where food is scarce.

We're all decendents of survivors: The people with metabolisms that could pack on a bit of extra fat in order to survive famines. Prehistoric Goddess figures were often very, very fat ... representing the ideal (among other things).

I think those folks who can't gain weight are genetic throwbacks - the exception, not the norm.

[Samuel]

You are talking about a person who cannot gain weight no matter what he/she eats.

That's also considered unhealthy and could be downright fatal in environements where food is scarce.

No. I'm not talking about a person who is incapable of using his body fat for energy when food is scarce. A healthy body must regulate its weight keeping enough fat for this purpose only.

Since the probability of facing famines nowadays is very small, we need to keep a small amount of body fat. This amount should bring our weight to what we call "the perfect weight".

A healthy body should regulate its weight so that it stays at its perfect weight constantly.

[mio1996]

A healthy body should regulate its weight so that it stays at its perfect weight constantly.If this is true then most people are healthy when they eat real food that does not trigger the hormones used in the fattening season , not some technological monstrosity masquerading as food (anything that requires technology to be in existence, digestible and/or non-poisonous). This is the essence of any successful and responsible lc plan, especially the paleolithic diet.

One certainly cannot expect the body to maintain healthiness while consuming unnatural and or/poisonous garbage.

I would agree with the poster who said it is an unhealthy individual who cannot gain weight no matter what they eat--they would never have survived in times prior to technology.

Obesity is a resonse to the ingestion of foods that lead the body to think that we are in the fattening season and times of winter famine may be coming. High sugar souces such as bread, rice, potatoes, milk, beer, and refined sugars have replaced fruit and vegetables as the fattening trigger and magnified its effects.

As long as one eats the foods (or foods that mimic the metabolic effects of those foods) that fattened our paleolithic ancestors, one should fatten. If not, one is missing out on the evolutionary advantage which when abused is now for most people a sign of ill health. For those who do not manifest their sorry dietary habits in the form of obesity, a worse fate than obesity may await them, for at least most of the obese can easily know they are sick and can fix it if they really want to while the thin carb-eaters often would never know they are sick. Rest assured that someone who lives on cake and cookies is very unhealthy and has a festering, devastating illness on the horizon whether they know it or not. Plenty of thin people have heart disease, yet they can easily think they are healthy since in our society thin=healthy.

Maybe I got a little off point but this is how I see it.

Obesity is not a disease. Modern dietary practice is the disease and obesity--merely the symptom, my friends. No magic concotion will fix it--only eating the right foods will.

[ItsTheWooo]

Most cases of obesity are not a cause of disease, they are a symptom of metabolic disease related to carbohydrate sensitivity. The diseases closely linked to obesity are not caused by obesity, and losing weight may or may not get those conditions under control. If the methods to control obesity also control sugar metabolism problems than yes they will help the other diseases; if not, they won't.
To lose weight patients are typically advised to reduce calories. Reducing calories also usually reduces glycemic load, so that's the reason it helps. You can actually maintain obesity eating lots of low carb food and STILL see the same or BETTER sort of improvements in "obesity diseases" that people get on low fat starvation diets (which reduce glycemic load only by the virtue of their energy sparsity).

I had acne my entire life and terrible PCOS symptoms. I was told by endocrinologists to lose weight, the weight was the problem. Imagine my surprise when I started atkins later and within days my acne was almost entirely gone, my amenorrhea was corrected the following month.

[ItsTheWooo]

That article has been around for a long, long time. It looks like he keeps updating it. I haven't reread the entire thing again but I think the basic premise is that once you've been fat, you've collected too many fat cells. Those fat cells are still there but depleted and their goal is to get filled up again. So they send out all kinds of hormonal signals that drive you to getting fat again.

There's more to it than that, but in essence he is saying that until we really do start treating obesity as a disease that needs to be cured, medically, that most of us formerly (or currently) fat people are doomed to starvation and bucking our basic chemistry in trying to maintain a normal weight.

He says that only 1% of the formerly obese manage to keep their weight off.

He also says that the current mind-set of people, corporations, doctors, etc is such that the real problem will never be solved unless everyone stops seeing this as an issue of "just eating too much and not exercising enough" and treats it as a disease. Of course, if we actually could treat and cure obesity then it would stop being such a huge multi-billion dollar industry preying upon everyone's most desperate desire, and we can't have that!

Yes
What I find most scary about adiposity is that it makes so much sense and can explain things so well...
For example, it explains beautifuly why people who were only moderately overweight, with sugar metabolism issues, can completely reverse/correct the situation (because they do not have an excess amount of fat cells). They often don't understand why morbidly obese people often find that to "make it to goal" we need to start counting cals and watching portion sizes even though we are no longer driven by impulses to over eat a lot. It makes sense why in the TDC, plateauting at partial obesity (and either maintaining or using energy manipulation to make goal) is more the norm than becoming thin effortlessly.

Getting obese is a lot like catching a virus that stays with you... you have to control it once you've had it.

[Samuel]

If this is true then most people are healthy when they eat real food that does not trigger the hormones used in the fattening season

First of all let us not forget our history. The high rate of obesity we see now is new. As I mentioned once before it has started 3-4 decades ago in the US, 15 years ago in Europe and 0-10 years ago in the rest of the world. Before that the majority of people have been regulating their weights properly and most people have been at or near their perfect weights.

What has caused the new high rate of obesity remains a mystery. I know for sure that people have been consuming plenty of carbs for a long time before the new obesity rate rise.

Obesity is a resonse to the ingestion of foods that lead the body to think that we are in the fattening season and times of winter famine may be coming.

I agree that our ancestors have been consuming their body fat during the winter and restoring the fat they lost during the summer, but I dont agree that they have been letting their weights balloon to infinity! Restoring their energy reserve has been one necessity and keeping themselves light so they could run fast when chased by a beast has been another.

I think that our bodies analyse all the factors involved including the duration of the expected food shortage season, the scarcity of food during that season together with the factors which requires us to maintain light weight and come up with the "set point" where our weight should be. The set point calculated by a healthy body for our current environment is what we call "the perfect weight".

[DebPenny]

Most cases of obesity are not a cause of disease, they are a symptom of metabolic disease related to carbohydrate sensitivity. The diseases closely linked to obesity are not caused by obesity, and losing weight may or may not get those conditions under control. If the methods to control obesity also control sugar metabolism problems than yes they will help the other diseases; if not, they won't.

To lose weight patients are typically advised to reduce calories. Reducing calories also usually reduces glycemic load, so that's the reason it helps. You can actually maintain obesity eating lots of low carb food and STILL see the same or BETTER sort of improvements in "obesity diseases" that people get on low fat starvation diets (which reduce glycemic load only by the virtue of their energy sparsity).

I had acne my entire life and terrible PCOS symptoms. I was told by endocrinologists to lose weight, the weight was the problem. Imagine my surprise when I started atkins later and within days my acne was almost entirely gone, my amenorrhea was corrected the following month.
Woo, I agree with you. I've been low-carbing now for about 3 1/2 years, and haven't been able to get my weight to stay below 200 even with counting calories. But, my health indices are all excellent. My energy level is high. And my prior conditions of PCOS and pre-diabetes are gone. And like you, no amount of losing weight helped my PCOS, only going low-carb did.

[Groggy60]

This overweight this is new. They need to focus on the things that have changed in our collective diet, because that is the problem. Continuing to eat the same way and adding in new skinny pills is a recipe for disaster.

Some obvious things new in the last 40 years include: the government food pyramids that condemn fat and promote carbohydrates, an ingrained dogma against fat, HFCS replacing sugar, trans-fat in everything, fast food outlets everywhere, super size junk food, big portions at restaurants (in the USA), and artifical sweetners. Low-carbing does not just lower your carbs, it stops you from doing almost all of these things.

[Wyvrn]

Not to mention the ubiquitous soy products with their phytoestrogens.

Wyv

[VALEWIS]

A metaphor. My grandfather used to tell a story about how, when he was doing spring plowing on the farm, the robins would arrive and would gorge themselves on the upturned worms. They had no internal mechanism to tell them to stop, as normally there wouldn't be a smorgasbord of zillions of worms in nature and so they ate and ate of the unlimited food until they killed themselves.

Val

[VALEWIS]

Hmm....further thoughts. No-one has come up with the Seasonal Diet yet. That is, eats lots of healthy LC food during summer and do a borderline fast for most of winter. And exercise a lot the way our ancestors did. Perhaps then we would really be in tune with the Paleolithic WOL that are bodies are probably attuned to. Instead, we eat like its summer year round and the body can only store all that excess fuel for us. I wonder if this is why people on LC often drop some weight and then plateau. I have noticed that as I age my body becomes more conservative about hanging on to the stored fuel.

Val

[Christal]

You know, I've had thoughts about how the seasons make a difference in weight loss too. Mainly because I like the warmer weather and feel better, so I think I'm naturally more active then, and subsequently eat less. The cold weather, with it's inconvenient snows and early darkness makes me want to eat MORE! Just the opposite of what Valewis is writing about! If only I could turn it around......:)

[Dodger]

Historically, I gained weight every winter and would lose most of it during the summer. During the summer months, I was more active outdoors and becasue of the heat didn't have as much of an appetite. During the winter I sat around watching TV and snacking.

What surprized me about low-carb was not that I lost weight during the summer, but that I continued losing during the winter. I thought that, at best, I would keep my weight steady during winter and start losing again the next summer.