from the just-another-reason-to-not-be-obese dept.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Obesity leads to the release of cytokines into the bloodstream which impact the metabolism of breast cancer cells, making them more aggressive as a result. Scientists from Helmholtz Zentrum München, Technical University of Munich (TUM), and Heidelberg University Hospital report on this in 'Cell Metabolism'. The team has already been able to halt this mechanism with an antibody treatment.
The number of people with obesity is increasing rapidly worldwide. The German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) recently reported that according to the WHO the number of children and adolescents with obesity increased tenfold between 1975 and 2016. Severe overweight can lead to various health impairments. Besides inducing cardiovascular diseases, obesity for example also promotes the development of cancer and metastases.
The current study elucidates an as yet unknown mechanism making breast cancer more aggressive. The enzyme ACC1* plays a central role in this process," said Dr. Mauricio Berriel Diaz, deputy director of the Institute for Diabetes and Cancer (IDC) at Helmholtz Zentrum München. He led the study together with Stephan Herzig, director of the IDC and professor for Molecular Metabolic Control at TUM and Heidelberg University Hospital. "ACC1 is a key component of fatty acid synthesis," said Berriel Diaz. "However, its function is impaired by the cytokines leptin and TGF-β." The levels of these cytokines are increased particularly in the blood of severely overweight subjects.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:18PM (46 children)
The only problem is that healthy people are increasingly being forced to fund the deformed existence of obese people.
You want people to slim down? Well, start charging fat people a lot more money for their health care (e.g., for their insurance). That's the way it used to be, and that's the way it should be.
As it is now, there's no signal to tell people that they're fucking up not only their own lives, but also the rest of society. The problem has accelerated now that the cultural marxists are trying to obliterate anything that even remotely smells like "body shaming". Fat people should be ashamed of themselves; as Bill Burr said: If they ate their way into this mess, then they can damn well walk their way out of it.
Treat the people who have actual chemical imbalances. The rest can take care of themselves, or die trying.
Suck a cock, SoylentNews, you pile of perly poo!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:31PM (8 children)
[Citation needed]
S/N is guaranteed non-fattening. Lotsa fiber around, the moral type of it.
Some of this fiber is twisted, although there are different opinions floating around on which of it is twisted and which other is straight.
Speaking of poo, rumors have it that is the poo producing flora in your guts that contributes significantly to obesity - switch your diet to include more fiber (be it the moral type or not).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:38PM (7 children)
Before the costs of health care were hidden by the ever-creeping collusion between Big Government regulators and Big Business health insurance companies, people who were fat had to deal with their health issues out of pocket to a much more devastating degree than their slimmer, healthier compatriots.
They also had to deal with fat shaming—staring, comments, jokes, etc. The pool of fat people was smaller, too, so that meant less romantic opportunity, which is a humongous factor in most people's lives.
It's amazing to see pictures of fat people back in the day; they would be considered mildly overweight next to today's sentient blimps.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:25PM (6 children)
Seems a reasonable assumption... but you'll have to admit it is not a citation.
Even if adopting your reductionist point of view (the only thing that matters is the heath care cost): while they may "consume" more health care per year, if they die earlier the total cost of their health care may be actually lesser than for a normal person. (I reckon it happens for smokers already).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:51PM (5 children)
The reason longer-lived people would cost more in the end is not because they're healthy, but rather because they're old and sick at the end of life.
If you spend $200,000 trying to keep an 95 year old, bed-ridden father alive, you're wasting society's resources. It's the same issue as obese people.
An individual or his family should pay to extend life, unnaturally, at that point.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:11PM (4 children)
Yes, right... how could I be so naive?
It isn't that life is the goal and the money a mean, it's the other way around: money are the ultimate end, life is only a mean to achieve it.
Once no longer productive, the end dictates the best course of action for people is Soylent Green. It is long due an entrepreneur to actually create this societal function already - the family will pay for the cost of the procedure (and save the cost of care) and the enterprise will sell the product for profit; this is how you achieve the ultimate goal with capitalistic efficiency - socialize cost, privatize profits - whoever doesn't agree will be soylented-green earlier as a preventative measure against higher costs later.
(if it's not already evident, here's the explicit marker: </sarcasm>)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:19PM (3 children)
It doesn't matter how much you don't like it; that's the way this Universe is. Work with it, or forever be dismayed.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:32PM (2 children)
For now, neither, thank you.
I'm quite relaxed, doing something I like and I'm paid for it.
But... by all means, go ahead, if this is the idea that you like and keeps you alive...
Just take care to stay out of my personal space, please.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:21AM (1 child)
Now I have to rethink everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:30PM
Yes, you should. Your narrow minded view if the universe is very damaging to your psyche. It won't overly affect others unless you go full psycho, try applying your worldview and see how quickly you're smacked down. You can blame human psychology as being totally wrong, but how can that be if it is a universal law?
Oh why am I trying, you're wrong get over it.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:42PM (14 children)
"You want people to slim down? Well, start charging fat people a lot more money for their health care (e.g., for their insurance). "
That'll just make fat people not get health insurance and they'll end up clogging the ERs. Current law makes hospitals treat those that come into the ER (to a stable condition).
So unless you want to allow hospitals to turn away people and have them dying in the streets, that idea will only make things worse.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:53PM (12 children)
That's just another example of government pushing the problem of obesity onto healthy people.
Those obese people should be given a bill. Heart attack when morbidly obese? The ER should be able to sue the patient for "damages", or the government should garnish wages for [ab]using the ER; refuse to work to pay off your debt? Well, off to the old-fashioned debtor's prison with you; you'll be given 3 small, nutritious square meals each day, and thereby lose your weight. Maybe you'll rethink your life choices, and do a better job on the second try.
Lick my ass, SoylentNews, you utter rubbish.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:56PM (6 children)
You're a terrible human being, will that be cured along with obesity or will you still be a hateful shit?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:57PM (5 children)
A terrible human being is the one who pushes the responsibility for life's choices onto other human beings!
Who the fuck do you people think you are!
Get your grubby, greasy, fat fingers out of my pockets!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:17PM (4 children)
Stupid individualists, we should exile you all, take all your shit and move it into the middle of nowhere. You can create your own ancap paradise, we promise we'll keep our filthy culture away from you as long as you stick to yourselves. Step a toe on to our nation without a visa and enjoy nuclear armageddon. Yes a nuclear blast would likely hurt our surrounding areas, but still it is preferable to letting you idiots back in. You will have to pay extra fees based on your travel habits across public spaces. You will also be charged 10x the cheap universal healthcare rate to better match your ancap expectations, and any amount of time you interact with public servants will be billed to you at 5x the minimum wage. Can't let any ancappers benefit from public services the rest of us pay for!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:24PM (3 children)
What my comment does imply is that you should have enough respect to seek my voluntary agreement to work with you.
Just because you run up to my car and start "washing" its windshield with your filthy sponge and dirty water doesn't mean that you're entitled to compensation for your "services"; it doesn't mean that I'm now somehow on the hook to pay my "fair share".
If anything, the worlds could use fewer of you entitled jerks.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:38PM (2 children)
Haha, you realize you're the massively entitled one right? You want all the benefits of public services without any of the personal costs. Moron.
I guess you've just spent too much of your life focused on the problems in society and have developed your personality around them. Lots of people suffer from the same thing, but it helps to remind yourself that 90% of people are generally decent and good. If you don't believe that statistic then you have strayed WAY too far into cynicism and should just be ignored.
Communities don't survive on individualism for a wide range of reasons. Maybe one day we'll be technologically advanced enough where anyone can fly off and mine some asteroids or build their own colony somewhere. That day is not now, and unless you enjoy being China / Russia's little bitch country then we're stuck in non-voluntary nations.
Oh right, you don't propose total individualism, you want society restructured into "contracts". You're like someone who responds on Yahoo! Answers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:46PM (1 child)
There's no basis for your comment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:00PM
Nice projection from the AC who can't muster up actual arguments to obvious problems.
If you're trolling then you're doing a pretty damn good job at remaining serious and sticking to your script!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:13AM (4 children)
Welcome to the down side of using ToR. Form keys are tied to your hashed ip address. When it changes, you have to get another.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:32AM (1 child)
It's trash.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:45AM
We eagerly await your pull requests.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:33PM (1 child)
So why would it happen on across multiple devices NOT using TOR?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:41PM
Only reason I can think of off hand is they're also temporary. I'm not sure without looking (looking up formkey and reskey settings is a huge pain) how long they last but I know it's not meant to be hours.
If you can reliably reproduce it, please do so and tell us how.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:58PM
> fat people (...) and they'll end up clogging the ERs
I see what you did there.
The obvious solution is smaller ER doors, or a weight limit on gurneys and access ramps.
It might be too hard to make it illegal to sell or procure food to anyone above 40 lbs/ft, but I'd rather have cops focused on that than pot busts.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:53PM (3 children)
Haha another AC troll getting the invalid form key, it spreads!!
PS: anyone who uses the term "cultural marxism" is a propaganda filled little troll, and as usual the cause of the symptoms (obesity) are a much more complicated affair that actually do wander into actual chemical imbalances / addiction. Don't let the book hit you in the head on your way out.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:20AM (2 children)
Sometimes. Most of the time you're just a fatass who needs to do more of the hard, physical work the human body has evolved to do. It's going to be a long damn time before desk jobs and sitting on your ass watching television are sufficient for a healthy body.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:58AM (1 child)
From what I've seen personally, it may not even require a lot of hard, physical work. Energy in, energy out. If you can't change one, change the other.
Nine years ago I was fairly active in one of the local martial arts clubs. I'd been there for several years at that point. One day, a stranger I'd never seen showed up for the class. Most of the other regulars who'd been there longer than I recognized him as someone who used to be a regular and had disappeared for a long while. The instructor greeted everyone as they showed up, before the lessons started. I'll never forget the exchange I overheard (paraphrasing here, it was years ago and I don't recall the exact wording):
"Phil! Jesus, you're half the man you used to be. How the hell did you lose all that weight? You've never looked this good!"
"Honestly? I just started eating less."
"...that's it? You weighed three hundred and fifty pounds dude. Seriously, what happened?"
"Once I accepted that I'd feel hungry whenever I was awake, things got a lot easier."
That may not have been all there was to it, but it's stuck with me. As I approach middle age, whenever I notice my weight climbing, I spend a few weeks (sometimes months) re-learning to enjoy the feeling of being hungry, and things drop back in to place. It's not that you can't eat, just don't eat as much as you want. Don't eat until you feel full.
I'm still fairly active too, though. YMMV.
...milage. Heh, I'm hilarious.
- D
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 25 2017, @10:24AM
Yup, I'm in need of reteaching myself that lesson too lately. The Roomie getting a riding mower has done me no favors this mowing season.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:27PM (14 children)
I completely disagree with your ideas for a remedy. Some other responders have already written more detailed answers why your ideas are bad, but no one has proposed better remedies, so I will.
The answer is better medicine. There's been more research in very recent years into the role of guy bacteria on overall health and metabolism. Basically, you can take two identical twins, give one "good bacteria" and the other "bad bacteria", and one will be relatively fit and other other fat.
We need our medical institutions to do more research on obesity and the factors that influence it, not all of which are completely controllable by personal discipline, and come up with medical cures for it. I personally suspect that aggressive treatments with gut bacteria could alleviate many peoples' problems with obesity. Treatments of this type should be made cheap and readdily available, even publicly funded if necessary, as the dividends in both public health, and the overall economy, would be huge: healthier (non-obese) people would cost us much, much less in healthcare, and they'd be more productive economically, which results in a higher GDP which benefits all of us.
In short, blaming individuals for these problems is self-defeating and unproductive. We should be treating this more like we do with communicable diseases, where we came up with vaccines and pushed everyone to get cheaply vaccinated, resulting in a huge improvement in public health, life expectancy, and economic productivity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:45PM (7 children)
The OP acknowledged real medical solutions:
Guess what, though? People aren't even going to considered being treated when the responsibility for being fat is foisted onto those who are healthy. So, it doesn't matter if you have the medical solution.
Now, you've got 2 choices:
Authoritarian: Force obese people to undergo treatment, just like you want to force people to vaccinate themselves or their children.
Libertarian: Send people signals about the costs to society that they represent (e.g., charge them more); if people don't mind paying for their own obese lifestyle, then fine! That's their own personal choice. Otherwise, hopefully, they'll be persuaded that they need to make changes in their lives (e.g., seek treatment), and will do so voluntarily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:57PM (2 children)
Rational encompasses all the methods of governance and applies them *hopefully* where they are best suited. PS: charging people more is not very libertarian, it is a small step down from authoritarian where the choice is 100% removed. Many people were up in arms about the bag tax, but really they were paying for the bags all the time as hidden costs of their groceries. People are not generally capable of running a full fledged society all by themselves, there is a reason why we need each other. The sum is totally greater than the parts, otherwise we'd still be building houses out of branches and leaves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:02PM (1 child)
I wear a seatbelt because I don't want to die, not because some bureaucrat mandates it.
Because of the mandates, seatbelts have remained pretty stupid in design.
You're implying that without mandates, no safety mechanism would have ever been adopted. What tosh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:08PM
Go have sex with your strawman, it seems to get you off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:16PM (3 children)
Well, I kind of feel like pulling your chain, so let me suggest a (check all that apply)
[x] Authoritarian
[ ] Libertarian
[ ] Technological
[ ] Spiritual
solution. (Anybody other than me miss those form posts?)
I say we take everybody diagnosed with obesity and force them to smoke weed once per day. Some really dank stuff, too.
The thing is, even though I would never do that... it might actually work. I'm not sure how to help people who have an allergy to it, though, such as my roommate.
I'm so tempted to agree with you on anarcho-capitalism that I keep posting about how men aren't angels (and thus require a violently imposed monopoly on contract enforcement). Libertarianism is the best way to let people discover things and find out what works for them, personally. For me, it's weed. As long as I have weed, my performance at work remains better than ever, and my weight maintains itself at a very healthy number with little effort on my part.
If anybody out there is reading this and really needs to lose weight but is frustrated by failure, have a talk with Mary Jane. She'll help you out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:25PM (2 children)
It's a terrible idea to give men monopoly over anything.
That's why even contract enforcement should be considered just another service in the market, where anybody can compete; such competition is how members of society cooperate to find the best implementation of any service, and it's the only robust check and balance against dangerous power structures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:34AM (1 child)
Well, let me ask you this. Your conjecture is that warlords will not evolve from a tragedy-of-the-commons situation out of a free market of contract enforcement services. My conjecture is that they will. I'd argue I have a few millennia of evidence of the behavior of man, the tribal animal he is, but I'm also fairly disgusted with the existing government.
I realize that I must try to draw a distinction between a government and a monopoly on contract enforcement. Both are indeed violently imposed monopolies. Governments violently impose a wide array of services from infrastructure to welfare to the efficacy of workers collectively bargaining, in addition to contract enforcement and defense of its borders. I see a contract enforcement monopoly as a shell of a government. Its sole function is to allow contracts to be enforced with violence.
I feel that violence may be a strong word, but I get the impression from our past exchanges we may see eye to eye on its meaning. Violence need not be physical. It need only be the threat of violence. There is no government on the face of the Earth that does not ultimately derive its authority from violence. For example, in the United States, we're told a creation myth as children that the US Government derives authority from the people, because of the threat of violence against the government by the people. Even the Christian god, Yahweh, uses the threat of violence to enforce compliance (though one could argue this is merely a confidence game on the part of his priests). Violence is the ultimate authority from which all other authority derives. Does that sound right to you?
So anyway, that was long and rambling. Here's my actual question. How do we deal with warlords (and priests)? The obvious but incomplete answer is that, as I just observed, they may be checked by the threat of violence against them from non-followers. However, once the warlord has amassed a large enough and capable enough army, I believe he will murder or place in a cage all (other) contract enforcers. How may we prevent a warlord with an army of 51% of the population from being capable of violently imposing on the other 49% of the population?
Man lies, cheats, and steals. Man is violent and tribal, and no contract will stop his violent tribalism. Those who are not part of a violent tribe will find themselves killed by a violent tribe.
I can't find a better answer than waiting at least 100,000 years for man to evolve into a more angelic species, should that be his destiny.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:02AM
The "Tragedy of the Commons" results from a lack of control over a resource.
This outcome implies the need for some means by which to limit usage of said resource, and thus implies some kind of ownership over said resource, of which there are 2 kinds: Authoritarian (government) and Libertarian (property rights). History has led civilization naturally from the simplest, dumbest authoritarianism towards libertarianism; right now, the most productive societies are a hybrid, with the vestiges of ancient authoritarianism hacked to provide the psychological impression that there is something dependable forming the foundation of individual property rights. The truth is that authoritarianism is in utter contradiction to individual property rights, as seen by any number of obvious examples, such as the prohibition of beer in the "Land of the Free".
The American Revolution was a retaliation against the tyranny of a government that had overstepped its delegated mandate; the American Revolution set out to re-establish a proper government that was not a radical brand new one, but rather an improved continuation of the old one.
That is to say that the authority of the various governments of the several States and their federation came not from the threat of violence of The People against the government, but rather from the fact that The People were delegating various authorities to the government (tyrannical overreach of which might well justify retaliation once again).
The thing is, no Person ever had the right to walk into His neighbor's pub and, in the name of Temperance, begin breaking all of the bottles of beer; no Person could have ever delegated such an authority to any government. Ever. It doesn't matter what the "Constitution" says. Clearly, the Prohibition of Beer was an overreach of delegated authority, and the Brits must have been laughing their drunk asses off at the antics going on in the so-called "Land of the Free"!
More explicitly: No. It is not the case that violence is the ultimate authority from which all other authority derives; that's why the "Declaration of Independence" sets as its foundation not violence but rather inalienable rights endowed by the Creator; it's why the "Constitution" speaks of unenumerated rights (there are many more which haven't been mentioned explicitly). A government's supposed authority comes from the delegation of the authorities that are implied by existing rights, and a dispute over such delegation is something to be left to public discussion (e.g., legislation), to adjudication, and—from time to time, as noted by Jefferson—to the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Your question is a very good one, but you must note that your "government" idea does NOT supply an answer. Your government, founded in liberty, outlawed beer for fuck's sake.
Now, the American government was and still is better than many other forms of government, including warlords (which are a form of government). The reason is that the American government introduced as a fundamental principle the notion of checks and balances—competing structures of power; of course, we know these as the branches of the government. Well, take that principle to its most generic: Competition of power structures is what matters; that's why it's a good thing that there is not (and never has been) One World Government; competition, even among self-serving warlords who care not a bit about principles, keeps governments in check.
A monopoly that arises out of Free Market activity, solely by virtue of "do-as-we-agreed" voluntary exchange, is going to be a much different shape than a monopoly that arises from "do-as-I-say" coercion.
Insist that power structures be grown through voluntary exchange; fight tooth-and-nail anybody who would seek to grow a power structure any other way, and work to dismantle existing power structures that have already been grown in that despicable involuntary fashion (ideally, you'd convince people to abandon them in favor of better, liberty-grown organizations; this could be known as "privatization", but that term has been soiled by cronyism that ultimately rests not on voluntary exchange, but on the same old governmental mandate that should be escaped).
When you think of a finished skyscraper, it seems impossible that it was ever constructed—so many parts depend on each other that it must have sprung out of the ether already complete! Well, as we know, there were many intermediate stages during the construction of that massive, intricate structure; there were supports and scaffolding, which were employed to good effect, and then dismantled and forgotten thereafter.
The same will be so for man and his civilization: In 100,000 years, he will live under libertarianism; however, this miracle will result not from him being more angelic, but rather from civilization's libertarian power structures being more fully developed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:47PM (4 children)
It is like the old adage about seeing assholes everywhere, except kind of reversed.
If you see one obese person that might be due to bad life choices. If you see millions of obese people then something bigger is going on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:00PM (1 child)
The difference is cultural.
People look to Government to take care of them from cradle to grave, and to protect them even from mean words like "fatty".
We know that high-fructose corn syrup is in everything now, and then dairy and cheese is in everything now. Why? Well, the U.S. government subsidizes corn, makes it expensive to import normal sugar, pushed for a surplus of cheese and helped market that surplus to American consumers, etc. Now, the government wants to solve the issue by forcing everyone to pay for the fatties, etc.
Your "something bigger" is right there: Big Government, cradle-to-grave, centralized planning and manipulation of society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:03PM
You're too crazy to take seriously anymore.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:17AM (1 child)
I see what you did there.
Maybe it was aliens. And subliminal messages. Probably fluoridation too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:42PM
No
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Thursday October 26 2017, @08:38PM
The more I dig into this issue the more complicated it gets. For some, gut bacteria are part of the puzzle, for others sun exposure and B vitamins help bring the metabolism back to a healthy norm. And then there's exercise, etc., etc.
A huge piece of the puzzle is the high level of sugar in the modern diet. There's been some fascinating research done over the last ten years about how the body metabolizes fructose (spoiler alert: it's a toxin). For some, simply eliminating added sugar from the diet results in significant weight loss. Unfortunately 80% of processed food contains added sugar, so it ain't easy getting it out of your diet. When you become a sugar nazi it's depressing how many foods you can't eat anymore.
I'm not buying the "eat less, move more" personal responsibility line anymore. It's not that simple. The food manufacturers know what's going on, but adding sugar gets people to eat more product and increases the sacred profits (peace be upon them). Part of the solution may have to be dragging these people into the streets and hanging them with the guts of Wall Street banksters.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:31AM (2 children)
And what, pray tell, "chemical imbalances" can make a person get fat without eating?
Health issues can work only the other way: make you lose weight (even to the point of death) despite eating. The opposite is physically impossible: have energy intake lower than expenditures, and your weight will decrease. All that hormones and "chemical imbalances" can do is affect the effectiveness of metabolism, or how aggressively your body tries to conserve energy. This does change what the amount you need for your weight to stay level is, but in such case: just eat less than that.
I'm not claiming that self-control is a trivial thing: overeating is an addiction that works very similarly to nicotine, and smoking cessation is not exactly easy. But claims that an illness can make you get fat are exactly as bunk as saying an illness can force you to smoke.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:40AM
Some hormonal problem might result in a feeling of extreme hunger even when the body doesn't need the food.
Or, maybe, such a problem results in energy being stored in fat despite the fact that the rest of the body needs the energy for normal metabolism, thereby requiring unusually high food intake just to live, etc.
The human body is a very complex system. It wouldn't be surprising in the slightest for there to be some problem that results in weight gain.
Let's see... YUP. A number of medications for one problem end up causing weight gain. So, there you go. That's at least proof that a "chemical imbalance" could result in obesity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:00AM
I'd say it's not quite as acute as nicotine withdrawal, but it's much more persistent, if that makes sense.
To compound that, an unhealthy body is in constantly calorie conservation mode. Cortisol does that I believe. Cannabis can counteract that.
However, a new diet does take some getting used to. I say diet, but I don't mean fad diets. I mean diet, as in what food habits can I reprogram to serve me well for the rest of my life? I hit a wall when I was losing weight recently. I started a food journal and meticulously noted how many calories what I ate had. Then I reduced the maximum number of calories I could eat in a day: ice cream, candy, or more healthy options like rice or steak, it was totally up to me how I wanted to allocate my calorie budget. I started losing weight again.
In fact, the odd thing is that now that I'm around my ideal weight, I've had some trouble raising my calorie budget. That's how used to only having 800 kcal per day to allocate I was. I just never, ever want to be fat again. Therefore, I'm finding food habits that will serve me well for the rest of my life.
I was feeling depressed today, so I had a small box of sour gummy worms. Heh, it didn't make me feel any better, but I had unallocated calories in my budget, so I feel no guilt about it. Tomorrow I'll get a new budget, and today's indulgences needn't affect tomorrow's budget.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Snotnose on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:33PM (5 children)
If I've learned anything from decades of Civilization, the more food that is available the faster your colony will grow. Fat people tend to have bigger boobs (I pity the fat chick with no titties), hence the breast cancer cells can feast and grow fat faster.
/ This is probably the most politically incorrect post I've made in 30 years
// harking back to the days of alt.tasteless
/// squicking jokes were the thing back then
Recent research has shown that 1 out of 3 Trump supporters is as stupid as the other 2.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:43AM (3 children)
I never ever expected this to be rated insightful.....
Recent research has shown that 1 out of 3 Trump supporters is as stupid as the other 2.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:24AM
Don't worry, I down-voted it.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:24AM (1 child)
Nor informative. It was a tasteless joke FFS, WTF is with you moderators.
Recent research has shown that 1 out of 3 Trump supporters is as stupid as the other 2.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:27AM
To be clear, I expect a +3 funny on my post. +5 would be great. But insightful? Informative? It's bullshit. Comparing a computer game to breast cancer is about as stupid as stupid gets.
Recent research has shown that 1 out of 3 Trump supporters is as stupid as the other 2.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:20PM
Adipocytes are not a substantial contributer to the breast tumor microenvironment. While there are some cases of cancer cells "eating" (entosis) other cancer cells, adipocytes do not play a role in this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entosis [wikipedia.org]