Obesity should be classed as a disease to remove the stigma it is 'self-inflicted'
 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...self-inflicted/

I tend to agree with Dr. Pile on this. The obesity problem is more of a social problem in that social pressure has pushed people into eating foods that lead to obesity. Labeling obesity as a disease will not fix the carb addiction problem.

Genetics are not the driver we think it is. Environment plays a FAR bigger role. In cattle and horse breeding, the genes are credited with AT MOST a factor of .35 and that is HIGH. This means that .65 is attributed to ENVIRONMENT.

We turn on and off our genes by what we eat!!!

Again, this article is a failure to point the finger at the poor quality foods that abound and have become the staples of the diet.

WHen I read DANDR the first time. It was a revelation on many levels. For the first time I could stop blaming myself ( and failure just drove me to eat more, you all get it) and found peace with my " lack of control". It wasn't my lack of effort, it was I was told the wrong way to eat.

DANDR is a corrective diet for the human body that has been corrupted by the poor Western diet. Forntuately LC is also becoming the diet for a normal healthy life BEFORE metabolic disease ramp up.

Providers are still behind the curve and always will be.

I got fat because I, with no assistance from anyone or any outside forces, shoved way too much food in my mouth, and often 'carb' foods like chips, french fries, ice cream and beer.

You can not get fat unless you consume more calories than your body needs, over an extended period.

It is not a disease (just as I think that calling drug addiction a 'disease' is wrong...personal opinion). It is self-inflicted, although that is obviously a gross oversimplification of why folks become overweight/ obese.

( I am extremely cynical of the push to classify everything a disease, because it is usually pushed by folks who will benefit from that classification (and I am not talking about those folks suffering from a given condition))

I agree that obesity is not a disease. Until the truth is confronted, these distortions will continue. Given the rapid rise of obesity over the past 50 years, it would be logical to examine what has changed to isolate the root cause. Obesity is a result of changed behaviors and the currently available nutritional environment. The good news is that we are able to regain control over these conditions once the root cause is understood.

I tried taking up smoking. Didn't take--probably because asthma etc. made it too immediately unpleasant to become habit forming. Probably would have wound up addicted otherwise. I was old enough to know better--but young enough to lack the wisdom to avoid getting into trouble. Just got lucky.

I sort of think we have a lot of unnecessary baggage when it comes to "responsibility." "Who's responsible?" is often a question of accusation, synonymous with "who's to blame?" I'm certain that there are people on this board who ate/behaved more responsibly when they were younger than I did when it comes to food, but who had worse consequences. We don't live in a fair world, we all respond to the environment differently. Self control matters, some of us are given a harder task than others. And some of us take decades to figure out how to best control ourselves. If somebody's dog is misbehaving, do we put it down to a lack of discipline--or to poor discipline? Because part of discipline is figuring out what works. It's not insisting that the dog not jump up on the table and eat your dinner--it's figuring out how to teach the dog not to do that. Discipline isn't a moral virtue, it's a skill.

Is it a disease? I think we should have all the compassion that we'd afford somebody who did have a disease, if they're suffering.

Except for the beer, that's my story. I started overeating when I quit smoking - I'm still not sure which is worse!

I would call obesity a symptom, not a disease in itself. After years in OA I finally figured out that it's not particular foods I'm addicted to, but certain behaviors. One of those behaviors is denial, which is why even on low carb I couldn't lose weight or control my diabetes - I overate protein. Now that I'm finally limiting my protein as well as the carbs, I'm doing a lot better. But it is hard - I'm hungry. Not starving tho, so it's uncomfortable rather than painful. I'm hoping that at some point I'll get used to it & won't be hungry so much of the time. (And yes - I'm getting plenty of wonderful fats! :yum: )

Well doesnt that apply to a "disease" .

Im not fat because I couldnt control my eating, Im fat because the sugars and carbs drove me to eat more. When I abstain from carbs/sugars the cravings STOP. WHile Im not allergic to carbs, they DO have far more addictive impact than cocaine per a study. Helped me feel it wasnt MY fault that I ate too much. Im a carbaholic. It was that my body's systems were malfuctioning. THAT is "disease".

I refuse to be shamed because my body is malfunctioning.

Obesity needs to be moved from an emotional, lack of self control condition to a biological malfunction. Otherwise we will NEVER get to a cure!!!

Is cancer a disease????? Lots of new research is pointing out that it is a metabolic disease, and food choices influence the growth or decline of some types of cancer. Yet how much money is poured into cancer research with some progress for some types but overall very little progress via chemo and radiation.

OBesity is a metabolic disease; cancer appears to be a metabolic disease.

“How much obesity has to be created in a single decade for people to realize that diet has to be responsible for it?”
Robert Atkins

Dr. Atkins did not believe in blaming people for being fat. He looked for solutions for his patients. He recognized that some of us cannot process carbs without gaining weight and having disordered metabolisms and blood sugar swings as a result. He recognized the role of insulin long before Dr. Fung.

I think compassion is called for, towards ourselves and others, whether obesity is categorized as a disease or not.

Since there are no hard and fast criteria as to what constitutes a disease and what doesn't classifying something as a disease is often tied to political and financial considerations rather than to questions related to cause. Whether or not to classify obesity as a disease is more politics than science.

What Jean said. In my view, discussing how to "classify" obesity is like discussing how to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

To make a real difference, we need people to be applying solutions, not semantics.

I agree, and high carb is not the only path to this symptom: stress and hormone imbalances make things worse, too. It can come from water retention or injury or any number of reasons.

But it's not okay. Fat Acceptance is a good concept, but their attitude that "it doesn't affect my health" is wrong, and like vegans, anyone who loses weight gets thrown out of the movement.

My thoughts as well.


Yes, this is exactly how I describe it. I wouldn't compare obesity with cancer due to obesity being a symptom and an indicator of an unhealthy lifestyle. While cancer can be a metabolic disease, it is very complex where it can also be a disease of exposure to certain carcinogenic chemicals, sun, etc. with the presence of varying genetic sensitivities.

No fat shaming here. Obesity is also not simply a condition of too many calories; rather, it's more of an indicator of the types of calories one is eating and how one responds to those types.

I think it does. Consider all those cases of T2 diabetes that are entirely in remission from cutting back carbs. People have regained control once the root cause was understood.

I think obesity is definitely a medical condition. I don't like the idea of classifying obesity as a disease, because, from my understanding of what I have read, it is a symptom, not the disease itself. The issue is what it is a symptom of: It's been considered a symptom of gluttony and laziness, when it's really a symptom of excess carbohydrates, diabetes, metabolic disorder, and not eating the way evolution intended us to eat. There is also a genetic component to it. But carrying one or copies of the FTO gene or a variation in the Panx1 gene or other variations we don't know about yet will significantly increase your tendency towards obesity. But obesity is still a symptom of those genetic variations.

If you engage in a lot of high risk sports and you injure yourself a lot, those injuries are not a disease. Those injuries are medical conditions that need to be treated (broken bones, etc.). We have a very clear understanding of the cause and effect: If you go skateboarding and play rugby every day, you're going to get hurt. But far too many people (including the medical community) don't have a clear understanding of the cause and effect of the food we eat and the medical conditions that might result.