Article on environmental chemicals as factor in metabolic synd

[foxl]

------ controversy alert! -------

Why Chemicals Called Obesogens May Make You Fat | Newsweek Health | Newsweek.com (http://www.newsweek.com/id/215179)

I found much about this article to be interesting and promising ... but it also contained a researcher's quote about an issue much-debated here ...

'In six months, the mice were 20 percent heavier and had 36 percent more body fat than unexposed mice. Strangely, these results seemed to contradict the first law of thermodynamics, which implies that weight gain equals calories consumed minus calories burned. "What was so odd was that the overweight mice were not eating more or moving less than the normal mice," Newbold says. "We measured that very carefully, and there was no statistical difference."'

... now, this pertains specifically to environment, not genes ... however there is reason to believe that genetic predisposition to the same metabolic alterations is also plausible ...

[fgummett]

"The evidence now emerging says that being overweight is not just the result of personal choices about what you eat, combined with inactivity," says Retha Newbold of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in North Carolina, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).My favourite quote from the article :)

While it is certainly good to see scientists acknowledging that fact, it leaves them now looking around for alternate and often complex rationales... environmental toxins may play a part, but I still maintain there is a simpler and more obvious culprit: I've suggested elsewhere (and repeatedly I know) that Type 2 D is on a continuum that starts as many as 20 years before diagnosis... as I see it, the primary trigger in susceptible individuals is the massively increased intake of refined/concentrated carbohydrates in our diet over the last few decades... particularly since the rise of the low-fat message in the 1970's. The BG management system is constantly overloaded and eventually starts to break down. Based off that 20 year "incubation" period, I think we are now tragically into a multi-generational scenario where pregnant women with already compromised BG management systems (although not yet far enough along to be diagnosed as D or even Pre-D) but still eating the standard Western diet, are having babies who are born with a "head-start", as it were.

Why look for a complex explanation when there is a simpler one which answers the questions?

[foxl]

Well the intro of the article explains that ... it is about the first months ex utero!

One thing they do not comment on is how many of the obese kids they were so worried about were born to obese moms ...

I DO think that environmental toxins theory bears investigation. And of course I agree, so does our "gustatory" envirnment!

[fgummett]

I DO think that environmental toxins theory bears investigation.Absobloominlutely! No question... we need to look at our environment as well. ;)