Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Prologue: This is the fourth in a series of essays that will discuss ongoing scientific controversies, a specific type of which are often referred to in the science press and elsewhere as “Wars” – for instance, The Salt Wars. This essay covers the Obesity Epidemic, aka The Obesity Wars. The purpose of the series is to illuminate the similarities and differences involved in each of these wars. Warning: This is not a short essay. Dig in when you have time to read a longer piece.
Trigger Warning: This essay is about obesity – the condition of being fat or overweight. It is about being overweight, body size, fatness; it is about all the problems that accompany that condition. If reading about these topics will cause you any emotional distress or make you feel unsafe or threatened in any way – stop reading here.
Stephen Hawking is a very smart guy, a very very smart guy. But like some smart guys in other fields, he can make very foolish statements based on ideas that are commonly believed but almost entirely inaccurate.
In a video produced by Gen-Pep, a Swedish non-profit organization “that works to spread knowledge and get people involved in promoting the health of children and young people”, Hawking made the following statements:
[Important Note: Stephen Hawking, as you probably know, is and has been severely physically handicapped, suffering from ALS, and has been wheelchair bound since the late 1960s. His experiences with diet and exercise are not, by necessity, the same as for you and me. Neither human physiology nor human medicine are his fields of study. I do not know why he was called upon to make this promotional video for Gen-Pep.]
Hawking starts off by saying: “At the moment, humanity faces a major challenge and millions of lives are in danger…”
“As a cosmologist I see the world as a whole and I’m here to address one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century.”
“Today, too many people die from complications related to overweight and obesity.”
“We eat too much and move too little.”
“Fortunately, the solution is simple.”
“More physical activity and change in diet.”
When Hawking says these things he is simply repeating the official opinions of almost every major medical and health organization in the world:
The US Surgeon General:
“… the fundamental reason that our children are overweight is this: Too many children are eating too much and moving too little.
In some cases, solving the problem is as easy as turning off the television and keeping the lid on the cookie jar.”
The UK’s National Health Service:
“Obesity is generally caused by eating too much and moving too little.”
The UN’s World Health Organization:
“The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended. Globally, there has been:
an increased intake of energy-dense foods that are high in fat;
and
an increase in physical inactivity due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation, and increasing urbanization.”
The National Institutes of Health tell us:
“What Causes Overweight and Obesity?
Lack of Energy Balance
Overweight and obesity happen over time when you take in more calories than you use.
An Inactive Lifestyle
People who are inactive are more likely to gain weight because they don’t burn the calories that they take in from food and drinks.”
Of course, the NIH goes on to list the following as “other causes…”:
“Environment, Genes and Family History, Health Conditions, Medicines, Emotional Factors, Smoking, Age, Pregnancy and Lack of Sleep”
Everyone knows that the causes of obesity are eating too much and not exercising enough. All the major federal agencies, the United Nations, and the learned societies agree.
So how is this a Modern Scientific Controversy?
Simple: They are all wrong. Just how wrong are they on this issue? Just how wrong is Stephen Hawking on this issue?
Almost entirely wrong.
Bruce Y. Lee, associated with the Global Obesity Prevention Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was so concerned by Hawking’s message that he was prompted to write an article for Forbes magazine titled “Stephen Hawking Is Right But Also Wrong About Obesity”.
Let me be perfectly clear: The obesity epidemic is a major challenge for medical science and public health because, quite simply, we have almost no idea whatever as to the true cause(s) of the phenomena, or, in another sense, we have too many ideas about the cause(s) of obesity.
In fact, Gina Kolata, in the Health section of the NY Times, says that Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of nutrition at Harvard,
“…likes to challenge his audience when he gives lectures on obesity.
“If you want to make a great discovery,” he tells them, figure out this: Why do some people lose 50 pounds on a diet while others on the same diet gain a few pounds?
Then he shows them data from a study he did that found exactly that effect.
Dr. Sacks’s challenge is a question at the center of obesity research today. Two people can have the same amount of excess weight, they can be the same age, the same socioeconomic class, the same race, the same gender. And yet a treatment that works for one will do nothing for the other.”
Dr. Lee Kaplan, director of the obesity, metabolism and nutrition institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, is quoted by Kolata as saying:
“It makes as much sense to insist there is one way to prevent all types of obesity — get rid of sugary sodas, clear the stores of junk foods, shun carbohydrates, eat breakfast, get more sleep — as it does to say you can avoid lung cancer by staying out of the sun, a strategy specific to skin cancer.”
But wait, what about our beloved Stephen Hawking’s “Fortunately, the solution is simple. More physical activity and change in diet.”? Well, frankly, that is not just wrong, that’s utter nonsense.
Dr. Kaplan and his associates have identified, so far, fifty-nine (59) different types of obesity.
Dr. Stephen O’Rahilly, head of the department of clinical biochemistry and medicine at Cambridge University, and his group, have identified 25 genes “with such powerful effects that if one is mutated, a person is pretty much guaranteed to become obese.”
Many of these genetic disorders are on the rare side, but Ruth Loos and her team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have other evidence – that any one of 300 different genes may be involved in the tendency to overweight, and that each gene can add to the effect of the others—add to the genetic propensity for overweight and obesity. “It is more likely that people inherit a collection of genes, each of which predispose them to a small weight gain in the right environment….each may contribute just a few pounds but the effects add up in those who inherit a collection of them.”
There are more than three dozen available therapies (Dr. Kaplan claims to have 40 at his disposal) for overweight and obesity, and 15 different drugs. Using them is guided by experience and plain old-fashioned trial-and-error.
Bariatric surgery, in which the size of the stomach is physically altered by various means, is a drastic last resort for the profoundly obese.
Only the last mentioned treatment, bariatric surgery, is universally successful at bringing about a major and permanent reduction in the body weight of the obese.
In June of 2013, the American Medical Association announced that it had classified obesity as a disease. This event was covered by the NY Times – in the business–not science—section:
“The American Medical Association has officially recognized obesity as a disease, a move that could induce physicians to pay more attention to the condition and spur more insurers to pay for treatments.
In making the decision, delegates at the association’s annual meeting in Chicago overrode a recommendation against doing so by a committee that had studied the matter.
“Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans,” Dr. Patrice Harris, a member of the association’s board, said in a statement. She suggested the new definition would help in the fight against Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which are linked to obesity.”
“The vote of the A.M.A. House of Delegates went against the conclusions of the association’s Council on Science and Public Health, which had studied the issue over the last year. The council said that obesity should not be considered a disease mainly because the measure usually used to define obesity, the body mass index, is simplistic and flawed.”
The move by the AMA was hugely controversial within the medical community. In fact, it prompted an editorial from the editors of the journal of the Australian Medical Association, Lee Stoner and Jon Cornwall, titled “Did the American Medical Association make the correct decision classifying obesity as a disease?”
“The American Medical Association (AMA) recently classified obesity a disease, defining obesity as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) measure above 30. This decision went against the advice of its own Public Health and Science Committee, and has sparked widespread discontent and discussion amongst medical and healthcare communities. The fact that this classification has been made has potential ramifications for health care around the world, and many factors need to be considered in deciding whether the decision to make obesity a disease is in fact appropriate.”
“Are we classifying obesity correctly?
“Before considering whether obesity should be considered a disease, we must question the suitability of BMI as a rubric. The assumption is that the ratio between height and weight provides an index of body fatness. However, there is an imperfect association between BMI and body fatness, and BMI does not and cannot distinguish adipose type and distribution. While total body fat is important, studies have shown that central adiposity (e.g., visceral fat) poses a higher risk for developing disorders associated with obesity than overall body fatness. There are superior anthropometric indices of central adiposity, including waist-to-hip ratio, yet BMI continues to be the criterion owing to previous widespread and historical use despite its obvious shortcomings. Using the BMI tool, incorrect clinical categorisation of “overweight” or “obese” is common. Therefore, this editorial accepts that the AMA has selected an imperfect tool for classifying obesity, and will hereafter focus on the theoretical notion of obesity.”
“Undeniably, obesity is a risk factor associated with a clustering of complications, including hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and type 2 diabetes, each of which independently and additively increase cardiovascular disease risk. However, obesity is exactly that—a risk factor. Being obese does not necessarily equate to poor health, despite the hormonal alterations that are associated with high body fat. Strong evidence has emerged suggesting that an adult may be “fat but fit”, and that being fat and fit is actually better than being lean and unfit.”
The Australian Medical Association’s editorial wraps up with this:
“Conclusion
Obesity has reached pandemic proportions, is strongly associated with myriad co-morbid complications, and is leading to a progressive economic and social burden. However, being obese does not necessarily equate to poor health, and evidence suggests individuals may be fat but fit. Perhaps most importantly, labelling obesity a disease may absolve personal responsibility and encourage a hands-off approach to health behaviour. This knowledge raises the question of morality, as individuals must now choose whether they will invest effort into maintaining a healthy lifestyle in order to free society of the healthcare burden associated with obesity. Given the myriad issues surrounding the decision to classify obesity in this way, perhaps a new question should be posed in order for society to continue this discussion: who benefits most from labelling obesity a disease?”
And what about a cure? Is it possible, short of radical invasive surgery, to help an obese person permanently lose enough weight to become a normal weighted person?
If the learned societies, and Stephen Hawking, are correct in stating that obesity is as simple as eating too much and exercising too little, then the obvious cure is to take obese people, feed them less and exercise them more.
Let’s go back and look at the results from Dr. Frank Sacks, professor of nutrition at Harvard, and his study “Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates”.
Results
At 6 months, participants assigned to each diet had lost an average of 6 kg [13 lbs], which represented 7% of their initial weight; they began to regain weight after 12 months. By 2 years, weight loss remained similar in those who were assigned to …[the four diets, ranging from 6 to 9 lbs]…Among the 80% of participants who completed the trial, the average weight loss was 4 kg [ 9 lbs]; 14 to 15% of the participants had a reduction of at least 10% of their initial body weight. Satiety, hunger, satisfaction with the diet, and attendance at group sessions were similar for all diets; attendance was strongly associated with weight loss (0.2 kg per session attended). The diets improved lipid-related risk factors and fasting insulin levels.
Digging in a little more, we find that:
“At 2 years, 31 to 37% of the participants had lost at least 5% of their initial body weight, 14 to 15% of the participants in each diet group had lost at least 10% of their initial weight, and 2 to 4% had lost 20 kg [45 lbs] or more (P>0.20 for the comparisons between diets).”
These are serious weight loss diets, closely supervised, with group and individual reinforcement sessions, for 2 years. Only 2 to 4% of the participants lost truly substantial amounts of weight that would reclassify them as normal weight persons. The rest of the participants lost those easy first 10-15 pounds in the first six months, but after a year, they began to regain their lost weight, despite staying on the diet and receiving group counseling, to end up with average loss, for 80% of the participants, of 9 pounds [4 kg], after two years of supervised dieting.
Let’s see what these results mean for those suffering from obesity:
I’ve added three colored dumbbells, showing just what a permanent 10% reduction in body weight means for three sample obese patients. Two have managed to move from Morbidly Obese to Obese, and one is still Obese. We have not considered the more extreme cases, which are not rare – persons weighing > 286 lbs. You can picture for yourself what the loss of 9 lbs would represent for you or someone you know who is far too heavy.
The real finding is that under a strict diet, most people can generally (but not always) lose 10-15 pounds if they are supported by counseling (professional or family). With care, these people can keep most of those extra pounds off. This benefits those whom who (h/t jsuther2013) are classified Overweight, but not generally those that are truly Obese, who remain obese after this weight loss. Nonetheless, medical bio-markers do improve even with these fairly small weight loses. Whether this improvement in bio-markers adds up to improved health and longevity is not known.
It is important to note that the above chart is based on the metric BMI which is under serious doubt within the obesity research community.
25 genes guaranteed to make you obese; 300 genes that add to each other to pack on pounds; 56 different types of obesity; 15 drugs; 40 therapies; three or four surgical approaches…definitely not simple, Mr. Hawking.
But that’s not all.
Erin Fothergill’s “Biggest Loser” study found:
“In conclusion, we found that “The Biggest Loser” participants regained a substantial amount of their lost weight in the 6 years since the competition but overall were quite successful at long-term weight loss compared with other lifestyle interventions. Despite substantial weight regain, a large persistent metabolic adaptation was detected. Contrary to expectations, the degree of metabolic adaptation at the end of the competition was not associated with weight regain, but those with greater long-term weight loss also had greater ongoing metabolic slowing. Therefore, long-term weight loss requires vigilant combat against persistent metabolic adaptation that acts to proportionally counter ongoing efforts to reduce body weight.”
What this means is that a person’s body fights back against weight loss and adapts its base metabolic rate to burn fewer calories while resting in an apparent attempt to regain weight lost by dieting and thus maintain a set weight point under conditions of lower caloric intake. This study was such big news that it is featured in the New York Times’ “Medical and Health News That Stuck With Us in 2016”.
Eleonora Ponterio and Lucio Gnessi, in their study “Adenovirus 36 and Obesity: An Overview” report that:
“…the data indicating a possible link between viral infection and obesity with a particular emphasis to the Adv36 will be reviewed.”
Thus, the Obesity Epidemic might be just that, an infectious epidemic.
In a study titled “Trim28 Haploinsufficiency Triggers Bi-stable Epigenetic Obesity”, Andrew Pospisilik and team found that there are titillating hints that epigentics may play a role in determining who is fat and who is lean, even when they generally share the same genes (closely related individuals) , or in the case of identical twins, exactly the same genes.
No, the obesity epidemic is far from Hawking’s, “Fortunately, the solution is simple.” And the solution to obesity is orders of magnitude more complicated than “More physical activity and change in diet.” In fact, universally reliable solutions to the problem of obesity do not yet exist.
There is nothing clearer from obesity research than that the simplistic policies of the federal health agencies and the learned societies – all of which were summarized by Stephen Hawking — “Eat Less & Exercise More” are totally inadequate to address the problem and are not based on scientific evidence. The “Eat Less & Exercise More” policies include the war on sugar and the war on soda – they cannot and will not make a clinically important difference in public health.
Summary:
- The kernel of truth in obesity studies is that consuming more calories (food energy) than one expends can lead to weight gain–energy stored as fat.
- Reversing this does not lead to a remedy for obesity – eating less and exercising more is not a cure for obesity.
- The reality of the problem of obesity is vastly more complex and only vaguely understood at this time.
- Current public policy on obesity is almost universally based on #1 above, ignoring #2 and #3. Thus, this public policy – no matter how strenuously enforced through education, indoctrination, regulation of the food industry, punitive taxation, etc will not resolve the Obesity Epidemic.
- On a positive note, the recommendation that people “eat less and exercise more” will not hurt anyone [with the rare exception of the profoundly underweight, the anorexic, etc] but, in general, will actually improve most people’s health even though it may have no effect whatever on their weight status.
- The Obesity Wars share the common feature seen in other modern scientific controversies — public government agencies and scientific [and medical] associations forming a consensus behind a single solution, one known to be ineffective, to a complex problem – uniting in a broad effort to enforce the ineffective solution on the general public through regulations, laws, and mis-education.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
I have utilized only a tiny fraction of the information I have collected on this topic in the writing of this essay. Readers familiar with the literature on the topic will notice this immediately. This is not due to ignorance or laziness on my part – I have been constrained by the necessity of keeping the essay to a readable length, without unduly stretching the patience of you, my readers.
I realize that many readers here will want to move on immediately to discuss the Climate Wars – one of the distinctive science wars of our day. I ask that you please try to restrain yourselves
The last essay in the series will be an attempt to lay out a coherent pattern of modern science wars and maybe suggest ways that the different science fields themselves can break these patterns and return their specific area of science back to the standards and practices that should exist in all scientific endeavors.
# # # # #
Please don’t confuse body composition with weight.
Initial “weight” loss efforts through diet and exercise = mostly water = positive feedback to dieter.
More exercise and diet = more skeletal muscle building perhaps also burning adipose fat (if aerobic exercise) = weight gains as muscle tissue is denser and therefore heavier than fat.
Even if caloric intake is held as constant as possible (just by calories), body composition changes can gain weight.
Throw away the bathroom scale.
Very true. Simple experiment: a chunk of beef fat floats, a chunk of lean beef sinks. The difference in density is ~1:4. That is why the BMI is a very poor metric. In his playing prime, MJ was obese by the BMI. It is also why overweight people who start to exercise more to lose weight actually gain it. Which is perhaps why overweight comedian Robert Benchly said, “Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.” Funny, but a bad idea.
I believe the governments of the world have the nutrition pyramid upside down…..the carbs should be at the top and fat and protein at the bottom.I can recommend Prof. Lutz book Leben one Brot ..Life without bread….he runs a very successful clinic in Austria…curing obesity and many chronic diseases simply by reducing carbs…..the book is on Amazon I believe
The book’s title lacked the letter “h”. It should be, Leben ohne Brot. (Life without bread.)
Very interesting. Thanks Kip.
Anxiously awaiting a “universal” cure; el Gordo ( ; – >)
The simple statement that most people are fat because they eat too much and do not exercise enough is probably true.
You are correct that there are many other factors, but that does not make the simple statement wrong. Leaving aside medical influences to concentrate on solutions within our control, here are some comments.
Food manufacturers and slimming aid companies get rich by making people obese and keeping them that way. Foods are either full of fat or full of sugar or both, for the simple reason that we love the taste. People cut down on sweets then eat prepared meals with huge sugar contents. Healthy food like a small yoghurt can have 20g of sugar. A simple roll with cheese and ham can have the same. If you want to cut down on sugar, read the small print. Exactly the same goes for fat.
There is a growing awareness that we evolved as meat and fat eaters. Then we were persuaded to give up dairy products and fats. Pasta was the healthy option. Bread, pasta and many vegetables like potatoes are full of carbohydrates, readily broken down to the sugars from which they are composed.
The diabetes problem suggests that we are rendering our pancreas ineffective and that suggests that we are consuming too much sugar either directly or indirectly. Just consider the calories in a glass of beer or wine.
Returning to the complex reasons for obesity, there is no doubt that metabolism to different foods plays a part. I would suggest that ignorance about what we are consuming is a major part. That, together with cheating on our diets because we are basically greedy.
Schrodinger’s Cat ==> Most of your expressed views are in line with the learned societies and government agencies — the people and industry must do as we say.
Unfortunately, the evidence in the obesity literature does not support those views, even though the “facts” are correct — there are added sugars in our food, complex carbs are readily converted to sugar by the body, and on and on. The Sacks study shows that altering those elements in a diet does not change weight substantially — and all the variations have the same results — other studies show that fat and thin people eat essentially the same diet — starving and working people will take off weight but the body will fight to put it back on again.
That’s why the Obesity Epidemic is a controversy — some insist on the simple facts and simple solutions even when they have been found not to work in practice. Kinda like Climate Science…
I went on a very strict diet, 600 calories per day for 8 weeks. I started on 13 stones and went down to 11, improved my blood pressure and reduced my blood sugar to pre-diabetes level. Today, my weight has crept back up and normal dieting just reaches a plateau very quickly.
I think that we enjoy eating so much that we eat more than we need. As we get older, we reduce the energy output so really our consumption has to go down even further. A light breakfast, light lunch and normal main meal become more than we need but psychologically it it represents barrier that we don’t really want to breach. I should really have no lunch and that may be my next step.
Schrodinger’s Cat ==> Since you have a condition (diabetes) related to the body’s handling of its basic fuel — sugar — what applies to you may not apply to the general public.
I’m glad to hear that you have things under control.
There are multiple lines of evidence that obesity has increased in the US since the 1970s (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303846443_Trends_in_Obesity_Among_Adults_in_the_United_States_2005_to_2014). Any alteration to the gene pool which would have allowed genetics to become the predominant factor since that time would have required a selection pressure that is unimaginable. Epigenetic factors are possible- much of the world is still recovering from the starvation conditions imposed by the Industrial Revolution. However, sometimes the obvious is simply correct. We eat more and do astonishingly less. The increase in sedentary behaviour is well documented (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18303006). I liked the previous scientific controversies articles but this one needs a heavy slice from Ockham’s razor.
BCBill ==> Arguments of associations do not trump actual clinical results. No one has suggested an evolutionary change over the last 40 years. It is not a question of whether people eat more and exercise less, it is a question of will Eating Less and Exercising More cure obesity?. The clinical evidence is that it does not for most people.
Reply to Kip Hanson comment on 12/17/16 at 12:41pm
YOU WROTE:
“Unfortunately, the evidence in the obesity literature does not support those views, …”
MY COMMENT:
You are ONLY talking about the subset of obesity literature that YOU choose to read and believe.
You write a lot of articles on a large number of topics.
No one is an expert in so many topics.
You are not an expert in nutrition and obesity.
I read the other articles in this series before making the following comment:
You have an anti-establishment bias.
Sometimes the establishment is right.
And they are on obesity.
This article is your Waterloo !
Another angle here, and this has nothing to do per se with the mechanics of weight loss or gain, is the fact that the ‘obesity epidemic’ is now big business, with a vested core of interested parties: overweight people, academics, drug companies, dieticians, doctors, and, last but not least, a meddlesome government driven by meddlesome do-gooders. Not a one of these players has any reason to come out and say the problem either doesn’t exist or is being exaggerated. OTOH, I agree the weight gain process is complicated, but I’m with Killer Marmot on the physics and fundamentals.
It may be big business, but unlike AGW, in my opinion justified because a big medical problem. On current trends, CDC says the direct medical costs of obesity (really the associated complications) will be ~1.5x greater than the medical costs of treating cancer by 2020 despite an aging population with concommitant increase in cancer incidence. And Obamacare expressly forbade insurance rate discrimination on obesity grounds, compounding the problem. I am a former college athlete who has exercised my whole life, eats healthy, am not overweight, and really resent paying via my medical insurance bills for overweight and obese people who didn’t.
“…and really resent paying via my medical insurance bills for overweight and obese people who didn’t”
With government provided health care (e.g., one payer) that attitude could lead to another big area of government over regulation. Hell, we might eventually wind up like Cuba with the government providing (or at least specifying) what everyone will eat for their one meal a day. You might want to be a bit careful about complaining, my grandfather lived to be 92 and said the only exercise he ever got was being pallbearer at this athletic friends funerals. He might not have enjoyed paying for your medical costs.
I don’t disagree with Killer, although Killer may think I do. I’m just pointing out that one has to consider the biological organism – which already has lots of stored calories to use and at least three different metabolic pathways to use them – and is not a straight physics problem. Not unlike climate science. Wicked.
Agree 100%. I think most of the comments here are absolutely loony and demonstrate how turned around we can get.
As I have been training and changed my diet (permanently) for the past 2 years and 7 months, I think one of the biggest problems is what we all eat, most ‘normal’ (as in processed) foods contain way too much sugar. I do not believe that all calories are equal, and if people stuck mainly to unprocessed whole foods, it would make quite a difference, even if they did negligible training.
The first things I cut out completely were bread and sugar, and what a difference that made! Over 90kg in May 2014 down to 72kg in December that same year (But I was/am also weight training..)
People really need to read the labels, it a product states that it is low in fat, the chances are they have added the sugar, which I think is worse, to compensate for the flavour.
“As a cosmologist I see the world as a whole…”
That sent the needle of my horseplop detector so far to the right, it wrapped itself around the stop post.
I have a digital BS detector and that statement made the damn thing just explode. Nearly set the den on fire.
Absolutely! As a cosmologist I look out from the world and am only interested and knowledgeable in every other part of the universe, which, by the way, looks pretty fat from here!
Had simular thoughts. Hawkins missed that part himself, when he recently presented his view regarding the climate …
Check out the sugar and fat content for yourself. Look at the small print on the prepared food in your food cupboard and fridge. You will be surprised. An obvious example is orange juice. I used to drink it by the pint, believing that it was healthy. The 30 grams of sugar per pint probably contributed to my diabetes.
Being diabetic made me read the small print on other products. Just look at the sugar content of sausages or a can of baked beans. Trying to get below a few percent is almost impossible when around 10% is common.
I don’t think that the scientific medical community really has enough understanding about diabetes to be able to claim that people become diabetic because they ate too much sugar. I think the medicos know less about diabetes than they do about obesity.
AR, as someone concerned about health care costs, have looked into this in some technical medical detail. It is complicated, but not too much so. The pancreas’ islets of langerhorn beta cells produce insulin to enzymatically enable all body cells to metabolize simple blood sugars. Too much sugar too often, two things happen. In the first stage of type two diabetes, body cells lose ability to effectively use available insulin. Called insulin insensitivity. In the later stage, pancreas islet cells over produce in response to first stage insensitivity, ‘wear out’, then give up and die. Proof is that insulin dependant type 2 diabetics are indistinguishable from type ones where an immune response destroyed the pancreatic islet betas (usually in childhood). Oversimplified, but generally correct facts.
I spent 4 years as the senior business guy of a startup that thought we had a solution to this. Whether we did remains unknown, as the startup turned out also to be a medical development screwup that did not have drug analogs in the pipeline, and did not do dosing alternatives. We had a bolus dose of one peptide, with no alternative dosing or peptide analogs in preclinical,development. Yet we still met some (but not all) clinical,endpoints in a phase 2b efficacy trial. A long list of not to do things learned the very hard way.
What medical study was done, that demonstrates what an ideal weight is? And, as part of that study, what demographics would have to be included? A crude measurement, such as BMI, is simply a lazy way of computing a number which has no basis in reality, it is an irrational number. I would suggest that we cannot talk about an obesity epidemic, when we don’t even know what an ideal weight is, as it is not defined clearly enough.
Janice The American Elder ==> Like fine art, it may not have a definition but I know it (obesity) when I see it. A >300 lb man or woman standing 5’5″ is obese by any standard.
BMI is not a valid measure — rubric — for discussing the problem of obesity and its related health considerations. You are absolutely right about that.
The conclusion of the Australian Medical Association editorial included the concept that it is far more important to be fit than any specific weight.
Just like an ideal weight, there is no real-world definition of “being fit”. Dr. Hawking is perhaps fit, considering the group (demographic) he belongs to. There is no obesity, or fitness, problem, unless you can clearly define those terms. We need clear definitions of ideal weight, obesity, fitness and non-fitness, before we can even discuss whether there is a problem. On top of that, there is a massive amount of money being raked in by companies who are convincing people that they are not an ideal weight, or they are not fit. Therefore, any attempt to clearly define these terms could interfere with those companies being able to sell their products. Follow the money, and find obfuscations of terms.
Janice, as an entrepreneur who started a health care company in a related space but who has dealt with this up close and personal for now 16 years, I am going to push back rather hard.
I fully support the right of alcoholics and drug addicts to poison themselves to death slowly. Just not on my nickel. In a similar vein, the obese can overeat and the couch potatoes can nosh on Doritos all they want– again just not on my nickel. BMI is nonsense except for the unfit.
But there are general rules of thumb that can define overweight and fitness adequately for general health and medical cost purposes. 15% bodyfat in males, 20% in females (adult). Caliper or immersion tests. Resting to exercise heartrate in some time period given defined treadmill pace and incline (a standard ECG cardio exam). At a Colorado senior exec training session some 20 years ago (way above near sea level where I lived at the time) I was the only one of the ~40 class that passed the simple weight rep/treadmill heartrate tests for minimum fitness. Administered by a US Olympic team trainer. The other 39 were an unacceptable health cost risk in my opinion.
No problem with people doing whatever they chose. Just not on mynhealth care nickel. No different than auto insurance. Good driver discounts, bad driver surcharges. And the medical profession knows how to determine the actuarial cost of the average ‘driver’.
ristvan, I have a lot of respect for anyone who can get a company started, and have it be successful. You obviously have much more experience than I will ever have. However, I am not questioning your business abilities. I am questioning where your general rules-of-thumb are coming from. The percent bodyfat, and resting and exercise heartrate are interesting, and may indicate some amount of health. However, who set the numbers? How were they arrived at? Where are the multiple studies that make these numbers relevant to actual health?
The problem I really have, with your comment, is what you say at the end. That somehow people should be punished (charged more), if they don’t meet these quite random parameters. At what point do we try and control other people? If someone is a skier, should they be charged extra, because of the chance of injury through their voluntary choice to do skiing? Or, if someone rides a bicycle to work, or played football in college, or goes surfing at the beach? Should the healthcare premiums reflect those types of healthcare risks?
Because of those questions, I believe that insurance should go back to being catastrophic healthcare insurance, with anything else simply paid out-of-pocket. The push to try and force people to be a healthy weight, when we don’t even know what that is, is truly ridiculous. We cannot enforce health, because there are too many variables.
@Janice: I totally agree with your comments.
I would only add that, even though it’s a fool’s errand to try to let the government dictate everyone’s diet and weight, they don’t care about how useless it is because they will have so much fun trying to do it. It’s really just “Big Brother” surveillance on steroids!
This was a fun article.
1. Trigger warning – LOL
2. Researchers have discovered a genetic component to obesity. Well DUH! We evolved as hunter gatherers. Until we invented farming (and even then) we were trapped in the cycle of feast or famine. Everyone thrived during feast, during famine the skinny people died.
3. The myth that weight loss is a combination of exercise and calorie intake continues. Exercise is a vital component of over all health, which in turn will affect weight. But the next time you are on an exercise bike with a computer, take careful note of how long you have to pedal to burn just 100 calories. Congrats, you just mitigated one slice of dry bread. Want to lose just one pound of fat? You’ll have to pedal 35 TIMES that amount!
On the other hand, Hoffer-san, as long as the exercise bike isn’t located in the kitchen, that will be 700 minutes spent without eating.
Yes, of course there is a huge genetic component to obesity.
One only has to observe genetic selection in meat producing animals over the last 50 years or so. Especially pigs and chickens.
Constant selection for a lean, fast growing, feed efficient animal has resulted in huge phenotypic changes.
The overall growth rates and meat producing capacity of individual animals have increased every single year, and the rate of improvement shows no sign of slowing.
And yet, any large population of such animals, tested for all the paramaters of such improvement, will still reveal a wide normal-distribution curve for those parameters, The population mean has shifted, but there is still considerable genetic and phenotypic variation. Two animals of apparently similar genetics, fed exactly the same diet, can have very different fat levels.
And all that is probably compounded by the effects of epigenitics (people/animals raised in a certain environment do pass some effects of that onto their offspring.
And then there is the huge role of the biome, the details of which we are only now discovering.
You do nice summaries Kip. In this case the history and research do suffer from too much focus on cardio studies and blood pressure. A few years ago I was blind sided with a diagnosis of cirrhosis and being an engineer I had to study that. Amazingly, since there are virtually no treatments for fibrosis medicine looks mostly at treating consequences in other organs. An interesting factoid that might enter your calculation is that fatty liver disease has increased about 20 times in the past two generations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20460905
Fatty liver leading to liver disease is expected to be the leading cause of liver transplants by 2020.
This tracks well with the increasing obesity of our population so it seems clear to me that we do have a generalized problem with the society getting fat. When you dig into the bio-chemistry you find that the liver is the controlling element in the fat equation so it does come down to what feedstocks you are delivering and in what quantities.
There are certainly genetic differences but generally people who diet ultimately fail because they don’t permanently change the foods they eat so any losses will tend to be temporary. Your analysis that the current state of play is flawed is correct in my mind but a notion that lifestyle changes, in the nature of what you eat, aren’t substantive is a bridge too far. If your diet changes such that you are no longer driving your liver into storing fat inappropriately you will lose body fat as a normal consequence.
Your criticism of the research of past 50 years is valid and the political nature of the debate should annoy us all. Much of the early effort was focused on the wrong problem but more recent research is gradually leading us to a better understanding.
Wayne ==> Thank you, It is an interesting puzzle.
I am afraid though that research does not support part of your statement that : “There are certainly genetic differences but generally people who diet ultimately fail because they don’t permanently change the foods they eat so any losses will tend to be temporary.“. What you say is true for the seasonal “gotta lose these extra ten pounds before bikini season” crowd….they are not seriously overweight to begin with, and are not serious about losing weight. However, lots of very good research has been done on this and this is not what they find for serious weight loss programs.
Well that is a bit overly broad, as you say. However, I think the research does show that the while the reduce calorie mantra ultimately has problems, when you design a diet richer in fats than is fashionable and stop “binge” eating you can lose weight effectively and keep it off. The critical pathway is the feedback loop between the liver cells processing triglycerides and the abdominal “brown” fat which is its key depot. The fat engine turns on that process and it is fundamentally driven by what you eat and our modern diet isn’t particularly kind to that chemistry.
A: I see too many very young (babies, tots, pre-teens) that are fat. In my neighborhood while growing up, this was not the case. (One young person had a genetic issue and was fat.) Perhaps our lack of obesity had something to do with being poor and not having televisions. Our only screen kept flies out.
B: A warning – Rapid weight-loss can cause weakness of the abdomen and may lead to hernia. You could do this with a severe diet or something such as Giardia.
John F. Hultquist ==> My father was a leading pediatrician in the Los Angeles area for almost 40 years — I literally grew up exposed to thousands of babies — babies are supposed to be fat — a thin baby is not a thriving baby.
By age two or so, they should be beginning to change that, stretching up, thinning down, but will still look like children — not like thin Hollywood models.
That said, no school-aged child should look like a blimp either.
Do an Images web search for “fat children” — and weep.
Type 2 diabetes used to be called adult onset. No longer. Direct 1:1 increase with childhood obesity. The long term medical complication implications are staggering.
About ten years ago, when I was about 60, my doctor diagnosed me with high cholesterol, and I could either control it with statins or by diet. I told him I’d try diet. He told me mainly to limit my fat intake to FDA guidelines, especially the saturated fats. And to watch the sugars. Being someone that follows doctors’ orders, I went to the supermarket and looked at the fat content of foods, and began a diet of low-fat foods that would limit fats to the amount of grams recommended. Well, I am kind of hyperactive, and I am a runner (still am). My cholesterol dropped like a rock. Unfortunately, my weight also dropped like a rock. My friends told me I looked like I was sick, and my wife was about ready to kill me — she said I no longer had a butt. The medical people found that I had less than 10% body fat. I felt great, except I was cold all the time. So they sent me to a nutritionist, who told me I needed to increase my fruit and vegetable intake (yeah, right). So I switched over to taking statins, and eating more fat, and my body is maintaining a better weight.
littlepeaks ==> You got the standard Public Health recommendation — instead of the advice you needed for YOU.
Glad you go it sorted out.
I’ve spent time looking at this issue too. My conclusions so far:
* The impact of (moderate) dietary fat on obesity is overstated.
* The impact of sugars (esp. refined sugars) is significantly (possibly dramatically) understated.
Mike Smith ==> They have finally come around to your first point, but have not managed to turn up any real evidence for the second — and boy have they tried! Time and more research will tell.
In temperate parts of the world we evolved without central heating. I tend to put on weight in the winter with the central heating on and lose weight in the spring/summer when the central heating is off. When I was young and we didn’t have central heating, weight was never a problem The body is similar to the planet except relatively more heat is produced internally, sourced by food and drink and cooled by perspiration, radiation and with energy content reduced by chemical and physical work. I accept all the myriad genetic, dietary and exercise issues are relevant but for the individual to lose weight ultimately energy output has to be greater than energy input with lots of influencing dimensions, some significant and some minor.
son of mulder == What you say is primarily true, but only for those easy to gain easy to lose “extra” ten or fifteen pounds. It does not touch on the real problems involved in the Obesity Epidemic.
Part of the public health problem with obesity is a failure to recognize and acknowledge this well-proven point — they rather stick to the odd “if this trend continues” idea that those extra pounds will continue to add up until we all weight 400 pounds.
As we lose weight so we have less bodymass to keep warm and our surface area reduces so we reduce perspiration and radiative heat loss so need even less food to sustain weight loss or more work has to be done to burn calories. This is the key issue why some sort of constant dietary/ exercise formula won’t work.
The cause of the obesity ‘epidemic’ is the use of synthetic fat which the body can store but not recover easily.
charles nelson ==> eGads! Let’s see the study — I think you are in line for a Nobel Prize for discovering the real cause of the Obesity Epidemic. /sarc
Seriously, where did you get such an idea? I’d like to see whatever evidence that opinion is based on.
Seriously?
From your tone I’m guessing you’re a bit of a fatty…am I right?
But to answer your question…I got the idea from several sources. There have been scientific studies
indicates that trans fat may increase weight gain and abdominal fat, despite a similar caloric intake.[89] A 6-year experiment revealed that monkeys fed a trans fat diet gained 7.2% of their body weight, as compared to 1.8% for monkeys on a mono-unsaturated fat diet.[90][91] “under controlled feeding conditions, long-term TFA consumption was an independent factor in weight gain. TFAs enhanced intra-abdominal deposition of fat, even in the absence of caloric excess, and were associated with insulin resistance, with evidence that there is impaired post-insulin receptor binding signal transduction.”[91]
But more significantly there is simple observation and deductive thinking.
Sugar and carbohydrates have been freely available and plentiful in the western diet for the last 100 years (war time etc naturally excluded) so back in the 1960s and 70s when I was young people could eat as much sugar and carbs as they liked…yet morbid obesity was so rare that it was commented on.
What changed? Well…the introduction of synthetic fats into the food chain, hydrogenated vegetable oils, based cooking media, margarine and shortening all replaced the commonly used Lard.
Now gross obesity is ubiquitous…as is sarcasm.
charles ==> That’s your evidence? I’ll have to tell the Nobel committee to hold off for a bit on that prize.
We should be able to eat enough each day and each meal to feel satisfied.
This is a basic principle that should not be broken because whatever you do, you are going to feel compelled to move toward this basic fact of human nature and, indeed, ALL of nature. We are going to move towards eating enough food to feel satisfied.
And that amount is basically 1.5 kgs to 2.0 kgs of food. Like a really large plate filled to the brim till it is falling off. That is what our DNA designed us to eat in a day.
To lose weight, you have to keep the calories of the large-filled-to-the-brim-plate under your basal metabolic rate. To find out yours, go here.
https://www.verywell.com/how-many-calories-do-i-burn-every-day-3495464
Generally, just being alive burns the most calories. No matter how active you are, you are going to burn something up to 1500 calories by just being a normal alive person. Exercise adds a little (but not very much actually. Exercise is not really the answer because it takes a lot of exercise in a day to offset that hamburger). Calories burned goes up based on your basic weight to start with (the bigger you are, the more you burn). The taller you are, if you are a man or a woman, as you get older, you burn less.
I am at 2710 calories.
All I need to do to lose weight is make sure the food I eat is 2710 calories in those 2,000 grams of food I like to eat in a day to feel satisfied.
(I always default to basic math because it never lies and it tells you basic “truths” that are correct on their face).
Food to lose weight: 1.2 calories per 1.0 gram for me.
It doesn’t matter if it is carbs or soup or booze or steak. I need to stick really close to the 1 calories per 1 gram or 28 calories per 1 ounce (for the non-metric folks)
And you know, lots of food in that category tastes great. I medium baked potato with fixings on it is 200 calories and 200 grams. I could actually eat about 10 medium-sized baked potatoes in a day (2 for breakfast, 3 for lunch and 5 for supper) and still lose a lot of weight. And actually I would be very full on that diet and even bloated. But I would lose weight while still being more than full.
Let’s try pasta. Let’s make that 2000 grams of Penne pasta. 7,368 calories and now I am gaining one pound a day until I reach something like 800 pounds and then it would level off.
The worst foods are pasta, rice, pizza, hamburgers, lasagna and most breads as well. Most of the things labeled “lite” are actually NOT.
It’s all on the nutrition label. Keep the math at 1 calorie per 1 gram. and you will lose weight and reach an nice equilibrium weight. Here is a good one. 100 grams and only 32 calories.
http://strawberryplants.org/wp-content/files/strawberry%20nutrition%20facts%20-%20100grams.jpg
What you are missing on the exercise score is that it boosts metabolism. The gains go way beyond what you actually burn during the exercise itself. Also, if you are building muscle, particularly during say, weight-lifting, then that muscle will by itself raise your metabolism, even while at rest.
How much exercise do you need to do to offset a hamburger and fries at lunch instead of soup and a sandwich.
You would have to do weight training for at least two hours.
How about a soup and sandwich for lunch and then do weight training for one hour. Now you are dropping pounds and gaining muscle.
That is the point.
Lets start with salt. Now over the years we have added iodine to our salt as a supplement because it was an easy way to get it to those who did not eat enough of it in their food supply. Take away the salt and now you have iodine deficiency which acts very much like a slow thyroid but does not show up in test. I used to crave salt, ate it by handfuls.. a little iodine supplement and that crave goes away as well the weird lump on the side of my neck and about 30 pounds. Perhaps we should be looking at the quality and nutrient value of the food we are eating and not just quantity vs activity.. just sayin.
In today’s world, being fat is a negative. Appearance and higher health risks are the most obvious reasons. However, this is only a recent dynamic. We are basing it on the overabundance of food TODAY, available anywhere at anytime. This contributes to an over-consumption of calories of course but it negates the benefits of being fat/having a slow metabolism that were endowed to people in the past.
Humans have been around for thousands of years. During most of the time, food was not always plentiful and at times, there were severe famines that lasted for years.
Crop failures and such, along with less ability to store food for long periods as we can today were serious issues, often causing numerous deaths from malnutrition and starvation. This still takes place in the undeveloped countries and other places but we will assume that most reading this, do not have to deal with such an environment as was very common not that long ago in human history.
I am 61 years old and can eat all day but not gain weight or get fat. My wife is the opposite and considers me to be the lucky one. Probably so here in 2016 but in the past, when there was a severe famine, guys like me would probably be the first ones to die of starvation. We certainly would be the first to suffer tremendous loss of energy because our bodies are not as efficient at extracting every calorie out of what we eat as is the case for people like my wife.
I guess people like me sheet out more calories and maybe some nutrients vs a fat person, with a slow metabolism that holds on to every scrap until the last calorie has been extracted.
What a great time it is to be a human being in this age of science, technology and comforts………….and overabundance of food!
I’ll eat to that (-:
So being fat and having a slow metabolism was a genetic advantage in most of our past………when there were often life threatening food shortages.
lbs, feet & inches.
I look forward to the day United States of America will start using international standard units.
“the international system of measurement now officially adopted by all but three nations in the world: Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Liberia — and the United States.”
America, Liberia, Myanmar: The Anti-Metric System Holdouts
Honestly, the system is really simple. All other people in the world have learned it.
Seriously – inches! there are 12 of them´s in a foot! There are 3.28 feet in a meter!
And we have a Base-10 decimal system – come on!
See how neat the SI system of units is:
Velocity: m/s
Acceleration: m/s^2
Force: kg*m/s^2
Work: kg*m^2/s^2
Effect: kg*m^2/s^3
Does it really matter? Yes it does:
“The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor ’98 Orbiter) was a 338-kilogram (745 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor ’98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound (force)-seconds (lbf·s) instead of the SI units of newton-seconds (N·s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate.” Wikipedia Mars Climate Orbiter
We are waiting for United States of America – please stop fooling around.
When I got my technical educationen in the first half of the 1980’s, we were told that USA had started to adapt to IS units. The military did, but the rest? Still waiting …
Many things in the US use the SI system. Wine has been bottled as such since 1979, I think. Tools and many other things are sold via both systems.
However, the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) used for much of the US is based on the chain, 66 feet (80 ch to 1 mile), to indicate land distances and in particular in surveying land for legal and commercial purposes. The “chain” was a physical thing that was carried about.
Use Google Earth and go to Pocahontas, Iowa. Zoom out just a little and look at the squares on the landscape. These are roads, set on the boundaries laid out at 1 mile intervals. Much follows from this. From the simple: miles to the next town; to the complex: property boundaries based on a marker far away.
To convert all of this based on 1.609344 kilometers is not going to happen.
I found pocahontas – which part was I supposed to zoom in on?
Joke aside – that was an truly amazing landscape – Pochahontas, Iowa I mean.
What has already been made don´t have to be remade. You just have to start using SI units – eventually you will love it – or die trying.
Sweden decided in the seventies that they would stop driving on the left hand side of the road and start driving on the right side of the road – it can be done.
Obviously, it will take a while – probably 50 years to get rid of US customary units – but it will be worth it.
At work (metal machining), sometimes we get technical drawings from USA, some old (renovation work), some new. Always extra work with those, due to the conversion to IS units. That’s ok with the old ones, but the new ones … Especially when the product will end up somewhere in Europe.
We do have one US costumer that uses IS units, but those products are conststructed in the Swedish office and sold in Europe.
B I N G O!
Fly over Illinois sometime. That checkerboard down there consists of square miles. Your house if you live in the United States is built on 16 inch centers and 8 foot ceilings. But, in my humble opinion, manufactured goods could and should be made to conform to the rest of the world.
My farm was originally laid out in eighth square mile sections using chains. Things got more complicated since.
People managed to do it in Australia, and many other places.
The international standard units are coming to the United States and support them every inch of the way.
I am very sorry to hear that you can’t cope with having more than one measurement system.
I can cope with more than one measurement system – I just waste time on dealing with US customary units – and it represents a risk – also for yourselves.
I’m just way too lazy to stick to a diet…
..so I never gained weight in the first place
The goal should be physical fitness. Weight loss, if needed, should only be secondary to that. Physical fitness is a combination of both proper diet, as well as exercise. Exercise needs to be both aeorobic and muscle-building. Muscles are the shangri-la of fitness, and boost our metabolism, both at rest, and active.
Follow the money! Advertising encourages everyone to eat processed foods and drinks. And obesity scientists need the disease tag to get funding. And the disease tag gives a lot of, not all, people an excuse. Eat less and exercise more will solve most, not all, of the obesity problem. And stop eating while you think you are still hungry and wait 20 minutes – you’ll find that most of the time the hunger has vanished after 20 minutes. For me and friends who joined me in our own boot camp weight loss campaigns, losing weight is as simple as switching back to unprocessed food (vegetables, salads, lean meats) and water, and doing more exercise. I hear people saying they are on this or that diet but then I see them cheating by sneaking something sweet or having a 2nd glass of wine or skipping the 1 hour power walk.
I get the feeling obesity scientists may be heading the way of climate scientists talking up a problem for their own sake, not humanity’s, and not being able to see the forest for the trees.
Kip, I have no doubt that genes play an individual role but I just don’t buy the line that we have been struck down by fat disease.
4 Eyes ==> I can only report the best evidence to date and point out that the field is still only vaguely understood.
“Kip, I have no doubt that genes play an individual role but I just don’t buy the line that we have been struck down by fat disease.” The hypothesis that Adenovirus 36 infection may [of one of many] cause human obesity is just that, an interesting hypothesis which is getting some attention and research. The gene research is very solid and very well supported.
Kip. Lay off the pies man.
Stop searching for excuses beyond your own actions!
charles ==> Now you’re trolling…last warning.
In today’s world, we see political slants inserted often. We see people claim gun control will stop homicides. Have we tried blaming silverware? We see obesity and sure enough they use silverware. Paraphernalia.
My daughter went to college with a goal of gaining 7 pounds. She failed. She couldn’t get half of “The Freshmen 15″ (Heptathathlete Big 12) She ate a lot. She also studied all night many nights. Architectural Engineering. She is skiing today on 10” fresh goreflakes. I am sure she has calculations for calorie burns when she runs ultramarathons now.
I think building muscle mass offsets fat increase due to aging. She runs 400 miles a month and i ride a mountain bike 400 miles a month. I rode my bike 8 miles this week to see Doc for annual physical. They drew blood and my CO2 level was low. How could it be low? Lot of this science doesn’t make sense.
“My daughter went to college with a goal of gaining 7 pounds.”
Is that the same as losing 7 pounds or was she anorexic ?
” They drew blood and my CO2 level was low. ” Low compared to what. FFS.
I get so tired of quacks telling me that my blood pressure is ‘too low’. Compared to what ?! A population statistic based on a fat, obese norm, who smoke and have a history of heart and arterial disease, dying from brain haemorrhages.
Hey, I’m glad to be “abnormal”.
If you do a lot of cycling, your blood oxygenation is probably above “normal” and you have ‘abnormally’ low CO2.
I would not lose sleep about that.
Henry ==> You have experienced some of the complexity of the field. Despite the very simple basic truth of “Eat Less Exercise More” — it does not translate into generally applicable workable advice for free-living humans.
There is an excellent YouTube video on a lecture by Dr. Ray Peat on the biological importance of CO2. The ingestion of a teaspoon of baking soda in water reversed the stroke damage of a hemiplegic woman within 15 minutes. Most fascinating. Dr. Peat also talked a lot about low thyroid function, and the dangers of polyunsaturated vegetable oils. He also subscribes to the findings of Dr. Gilbert Ling that the protein in the cells is responsible for the storage of potassium and that the protein structures the water. So no sodium-potassium pumps needed. The structured water on hydrophilic surface was further investigated by Prof. Gerald Pollack. This is extremely interesting stuff. This also explains the cell membrane potential.
And while we are at discussing interesting stuff about health, here is another one: the Zeta Potential and its key role for cardiovascular health. Read online the book by Thomas M. Riddick about colloidal stability and the Zeta Potential. And see Dr. T. C. McDaniel’s website on his Zeta Aid, he is 102 years old, he must be doing something right. I am taking it daily and my heart arrhythmia is gone. Furthermore, dental health is of upmost importance for cardiovascular health. Root canals are harboring anaeoribic bacteria that can easily get into the blood stream, forming biofilms on heart valves (partially damaged the heart valve of a friend of mine) or inside the blood vessels (my mom had stents set and two months later she had dental surgery because of an infected tooth, the infection spread to her jawbone!). When the Zeta Potential is strengthened then these bio films dissolve, it also dissolves kidney stones.
Gum disease and/or root canals can also cause arthritis. My mom’s care taker had swollen finger knuckles when I came to visit her in Germany in 2012. I offered her my ‘MMS’ (sodium chlorite activated by citric acid to form chlorine dioxide) she mixed 4 drops of the sodium chlorite solution with one drop of 50% citric acid, the proper stoiciometric ratio, and let it sit for 1/2 minute, then she added water and swished it around her mouth, then swallowed it. After the fifth day she no longer had arthritis! But such results can only be achieved with early onset of arthritis. So it can be ‘all in your head’ or mouth, so to speak. In Germany, I found the MMS with 9% hydrochloric acid. Here the proper stoichiometric ratio is a 1:1 drop ratio. I also studied the MDS sheet on sodium chlorite and chlorine dioxide. At these small amounts it isvery safe to the best of myknowledge. It is less harmful then the RDA of table salt when comparing the LD50s. I think this is some of the most important health info that I ever came across.
http://raypeat.com
http://gilbertling.org
http://tcmcdaniel.com
‘MSDS’ not ‘MDS’