FINALLY! A Cure for Obesity!

Okay, okay, don’t get too excited, now. You may not like what I have to say in the end. But there IS some verrrry interesting and surprising research out there on obesity, which I think you will be interested in. Here’s how I found out about it.

Okay, so I’m driving around, running errands, and I’m bored of listening to the radio, so I plug in my iPod and select the CBC Radio One Quirks & Quarks podcast. (It happened to be the February 17 episode, but hey, I’m a little behind on my podcasts, okay?)

First, we all know the traditional weight gain/loss formula, right?

eat more calories + exercise less = gain weight
eat fewer calories + exercise more = lose weight

Okay, keep that one in mind throughout the rest of this post.

Now, here’s a brief synopsis of what I found most interesting from this episode:

Obesity is a WORLDWIDE Epidemic
It’s generally accepted that obesity has reached epidemic proportions, but it’s often believed to be a disease of affluence – you know, too much (bad) food, too little exercise. Some researchers, though, assert that our lifestyles haven’t changed enough to fully explain the epidemic. In addition, obesity rates have increased significantly in developing nations as well, among populations who don’t have the same lifestyle factors we do.

Dr. Richard Atkinson, clinical professor of pathology at Virginia Commonwealth University, has studied patients who are morbidly obese and yet consume very little food (without losing weight). And (just to make us all sick) he has studied people who eat amazing amounts of calories, without gaining significant amounts of weight (the calorie count was in the 6,000-7,000 range, if you can believe it!). Clearly, some people’s bodies are more efficient harvesters of calories than others. In other words, my body may be able to garner 100 calories from a specific food (say 2 slices of bread), where another person’s body may only be able to squeeze 80 calories out of the exact same food. Here is one case where I’d wager most of us would rather be inefficient!

Dr. Atkinson firmly believes that there are more complicated factors contributing to obesity than the simple formula we’ve all relied on to date (i.e. eat more + exercise less = gain weight). In fact, there are some amazing and surprising candidates out there in the mosaic of potential causes of obesity, ranging from the age of your mother when you’re born (older mom, more likely to be obese) to furnaces & air conditioners (our bodies don’t have to burn calories cooling down/warming up). To me, the most interesting of these factors is a virus, called adenovirus-36.

Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar from Louisiana State University discovered a virus – adenovirus-36 – which infects chickens, causing them to gain weight. Amazingly, he’s also found it in obese humans, which suggests that it may be infecting us and having similar effects. Here’s what I think is most interesting about Ad-36; it seems to have made the leap from chickens to humans around 1980 – the same time as worldwide obesity rates started rising.

Now, before you get too excited and start looking for drugs that will tread Ad-36 (like I did) there are none. And even if there were a way to get rid of the virus (if you’ve got it), it’s not going to instantly get rid of the weight you’ve already gained. You’ll still have to do that the old-fashioned way (and remember, there is presently no known way to get rid of the virus, either). There is a test for Ad-36, but as Dr. Atkinson (who markets the test) points out, the best application of the test is preventative…if you know you’ve been infected with Ad-36 before you become obese, you can modify your diet and lifestyle in time to prevent the initial weight loss. Kind of like tests for high cholesterol levels, it will alert people to a risk factor in time (hopefully) to prevent the disease from progressing. Another promising vein of research related to Ad-36 would be the search for a vaccine. Again, this won’t help those of us who might be infected and have weight issues already.

In the end, though, despite exciting advances in the field of obesity research, we do have to go back to the old formula…to lose weight, you have to eat less and exercise more. Somehow, though, I find it comforting to know that I don’t necessarily have to chalk up my weight problem to 100% bad choices and laziness on my part. It’s nice to know that those skinny people who eat chips and junk are NOT necessarily so much more virtuous than I am – maybe they’re just less efficient at absorbing calories and/or are not infected by Ad-36. It also makes me question my own particular prejudice about childhood obesity…obviously there is MUCH more to the equation than just what overweight kids are being fed.

I’m not saying that I can give up accountability for my weight problem – I can’t. In order to become and remain slim, I will have to eat a lower amount of calories every day and exercise more than someone else might have to. But it’s still somewhat freeing to find out that there are a whole realm of factors (check out the summary of this podcast for more info and resources) that have contributed to my problem, and that it’s not 100% my fault I got where I was, even though it’ll be 100% my responsibility to claw my way back.