Originally Posted by M Levac

Play and sex behavior is also controlled by hormones, i.e. dopamine and endorphins and testosterone/estrogen. So what's your point?

Originally Posted by Vlad416

Insulin is secreted everytime you eat a meal and in a pulse form every 5 minutes or so . Insulin is synthesized and released from pancreatic beta cells
in response to elevations in plasma glucose concentrations,
specific amino acids (e.g. arginine), potassium and parasympathetic nervous system tone. Insulin is too important to be "controlled" and is largely automatic and can be triggered by the mere thoughts .

Originally Posted by Vlad416

I have called insulin shock therapy as "criminal" , don't try to put your words into my mouth or go on some random moralizing

Originally Posted by Vlad416

it's not related to food intake or rather ventromedial nucleus is not involved in appetite, fat storage and energy homeostasis .

Originally Posted by Vlad416

it's not related to food intake or rather ventromedial nucleus is not involved in appetite, fat storage and energy homeostasis .

Originally Posted by M Levac

Vlad, the quote from the Google book is from a psychology book. Are you saying that obesity is a problem of behavior, i.e. we eat too much? Are you saying the solution is to eat less? Are you saying fat tissue is inert, i.e. a big fat garbage dump that has no say on what happens to its content?

It's very ironic that you would use hormones in an attempt to contradict anything Gary Taubes said. The biggest point Gary Taubes makes is that obesity is controlled by hormones, i.e. a physiological problem. It makes very little sense to attempt to show that obesity is a psychological problem (i.e. we eat too much) by quoting stuff that talk about hormones that control hunger. It's like you're trying to tell us that this car's mechanical problems is due to driver error by pointing out all the mechanical systems failures the car suffered.

Fat tissue is controlled by hormones. So is hunger. They are both physiological problems. In fact, our behavior is a physiological problem because the brain is made of flesh, just like the rest of our body. The brain is controlled by hormones. Muscles, organs, fat tissue, all tissues are controlled by hormones.

It's entirely possible that as we grow fatter, fat cells send a signal to the brain "eat more". That's probably how we learned about ghrelin and leptin. We probably noticed a correlation between mysterious hormones not yet identified and fat tissue mass. And wouldn't you know, there is a correlation between ghrelin, leptin and fat tissue mass. Very obese people need to be injected with massive doses of leptin compared to leaner counterparts: They are leptin resistant. Obese people probably have loads of ghrelin floating around as well since ghrelin induces hunger. But you probably know all this since you're the one quoting stuff about those hormones anyway.

I don't see how anything you wrote so far in this forum contradicts or refutes anything Gary Taubes said or wrote. If anything, your arguments about hormones support and confirm Taubes' argument that obesity is a physiological problem of excess fat accumulation.

Originally Posted by Vlad416

not so fast, hormones are just an end product of our brain and nerve system or rather the hypothalamic-pituatiour-adrenal axis Hormones don't get secreted randomly and there must be some sort of control, cooridination and interaction between them which is basically HPA axis . In that sense it's the most important to understand the overall picture of what they do singularly and as a group and how they start and stop and so on . Any single mistake basically leads to complete failure.

Originally Posted by M Levac

Again, that makes no sense at all. "Too important to be controlled"? What does that mean? Are you saying that since insulin is the primary regulator of fat tissue, something you agree with, that insulin is too important to even consider affecting its secretion by changing the amount of carbohydrates we eat? That's yet another moral judgment on your part that has no bearing on the nature of insulin, or our capacity to control it through various means.

Originally Posted by M Levac

How does any of that refute anything Taubes said? Your arguments are starting to go off tangents that don't immediately relate to the subject, i.e. non sequiturs. Maybe it's just me but I can't follow that kind of discussion. I'll be back when you're back to discussing the subject.

Originally Posted by Vlad416

The problem with GT is that he is misrepresenting and simplifying the picture while positioning himself as a false authority, producing many contradictions and a big confusion. He is easy to follow but not easy to understand so to speak . I understand that his motivation is purely financial and showbiz related and he got so far simply because he was one of those people promoted by the media, as in he has connections.

Originally Posted by M Levac

Actually, I could make the point that play and sex behavior is intimately linked to nutritional status. When we're hungry, we do not get easily turned on or enticed to have fun. In fact, there's probably an inhibitory mechanism from nutritional status on reproduction and pleasure.

Originally Posted by Vlad416

Things that are important for survival can't be controlled , you know like breathing, shivering when cold or removing hand when touching fire or raising temperature when sick and everything else that is acute threat to survival is automatically taken care of before you can think about it and thus can not be controlled. You can't force yourself conciously to breathe or touch a fire or raise temperature or for that matter "control insulin" .

Originally Posted by Vlad416

they are vaguely but not directly related , one can certainly have fun and even sex when hungry and forget about it . both probably suppress hunger

Originally Posted by M Levac

So says you. I disagree and between your opinion and mine, I take mine any day. You made a few contradicting statements of your own that you still haven't explained properly. Your own motivation is far from being clear. However your goal is very clear: You said you "will eventually have to expose him". You also present yourself as an authority on the matter yet fail to even convince me, some guy on the internet, of anything you say.

I thought of defending Taubes against your attacks on his character, but Taubes' own works are sufficiently strong to stand on their own merit. Anyway, the only thing that your attacks serve to do is to strengthen Taubes' argument.

Originally Posted by Vlad416

I mean I barely read half the book when I couldn't take it any longer due to repetition and non sense.