To counter the cheesecake photo in my post from yesterday, here’s one of someone who apparently ate the cheesecake. Because she has a virus, of course.
There is a lot of good advice to help us avoid becoming obese, such as “Eat less,” and “Exercise.” But here’s a new and surprising piece of advice based on a promising area of obesity research: “Wash your hands.”
There is accumulating evidence that certain viruses may cause obesity, in essence making obesity contagious, according to Leah D. Whigham, the lead researcher in a new study.
The notion that viruses can cause obesity has been a contentious one among scientists, Whigham said. And yet, there is evidence that factors other than poor diet or lack of exercise may be at work in the obesity epidemic. “The prevalence of obesity has doubled in adults in the United States in the last 30 years and has tripled in children,” the study noted. “With the exception of infectious diseases, no other chronic disease in history has spread so rapidly, and the etiological factors producing this epidemic have not been clearly identified.”
“It makes people feel more comfortable to think that obesity stems from lack of control,” Whigham said. “It’s a big mental leap to think you can catch obesity.” However, other diseases once thought to be the product of environmental factors are now known to stem from infectious agents. For example, ulcers were once thought to be the result of stress, but researchers eventually implicated bacteria, H. pylori, as a cause.
I hope they can bake the cure into a chocolate cake.
As someone who left the military, ballooned from 206lbs to 360lbs in 12 months, and took 7 years to get my act together and lose 120 of it; I have to say that it would be nice to blame it on a virus.
Our society wants to blame all our faults and problems on external sources, from McDonalds to WMD’s, rather than treating the problem of being pathetic overconsumers. Of course being fat is a virus, hanging out with fat people is what fat people do, and they act like a support group enabling people to keep on the weight.
Christopher Meisenzahl has it dead on that the cure for this virus is lower calories and more exercise.
Nice try…
But as usual, it will most likely come back down to eating less fatty and sugary things, and expending more energy in some way. Some folks seem to have relatively little difficulty doing this, while some others (like the balloon with the cake above) must face a life of self-denial and exertion on the order of a serious, dedicated athlete. Some years ago I watched a tall guy with a pregnant pot-belly go jogging sweatily around the mountain roads in my neighborhood every day. After four years of this he was still quite round in the middle… after all that effort, I felt kind of sorry for him. He should’ve just moved to Saudi Arabia instead.
Why do fat and sugar have to taste so good? The answer is quite simple: The human species spent a very very long time enduring regular periods of scarce food resources (cold winters, droughts etc.), and when one came upon high calorie things to eat, one would bulk up on them just to survive (no 24/7 supermarkets!). This might explain, too, why in places like the Middle East, South Pacific and others, overweight people are considered successful and often admired for it.
Now, in just the last hundred years or so we have become required to resist abundance, a tall order of self-discipline for an affluent culture like ours if there ever was one. And just watch… as other cultures become more extravagantly wealthy , they too shall expaaaaand (it’s already happening!!). If a magic pill ever does get invented, whoever does so will make Bill Gates look like a pauper.
Just wash your hands?? Oh come on… another weight loss fantasy! Have a slice of pie instead. Pace yourself if you can, but don’t get caught up in the Great American Fat Cell Neurosis. It’s a fool’s game.
(btw I just saw the jogging guy again down at the Post Office… he now looks like a sad Auschwitz survivor).
“We are put here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. ” – Kurt Vonnegut
I would certainly be willing to make an association with an individual’s level of personal hygiene with the other factors that contribute to obesity. People who are unkept slobs obviously place little emphasis in their own self image, which I would speculate leads towards a tendency to having poor eating and exercise habits. But to make the leap and say a virus might be causing it? Seems far fetched, but who knows? Stranger things have been shown to be true.
Steve, compulsion is an emotional problem, not a pathological one.
There are so many factors that contribute to obesity… but as a general rule in healthy people, if you burn more calories than you consume, you cannot gain weight from fat. So it does boil down to what you eat, and your level of physical activity.
I’m no longer amazed at the intolerance and arrogance of humans. There are no simple solutions to difficult problems, and only the simple minded would offer one up.
“There are no simple solutions to difficult problems, and only the simple minded would offer one up.”
That’s quite a statement. By difficult, do you mean complex or politically/emotionally difficult? You should try to be more clear.
I agree with Steve that there is probably something. Today it may seem quite complex and incomprehensible, but once it is understood it will all so simple. The same as once stomach ulcers were thought to have some complex relationship to stress, they are now realized as just a simple bacteria.
In the mean time, SUPERSIZE ME.
A long time ago I ran and ran through parks and woods, rode a bicycle to work and back every other day (nine miles from home). Careful dieting too, along with no drinking, as was prescribed to me by finger pointing doctors, girlfriends and smug co-workers and various “tummy patters”, along with some other people who ran on hamster wheels and rode bicycles that didn’t go anywhere They said you’ll feel so high and good about yourself after doing that sort of exertion… but all I felt was tired and in need of a shower. And what did I ‘lose’ after all that? About 5 or 6 pounds maybe.
Then one day I got mad about it all, took the bathroom scale and threw it in the trash. I walked away, brushing off my hands.
To this day, I feel that it was one of the most intelligent things I ever did.
euhhh.
In the 70’s fat people blamed “glands” In the 80’s it was “metabolism” in the 90’s it was “genetics” now it’s a virus.
Strange that this “virus” seems to be very rare in asian countries and just about non existent in Africa, but San Antonio and Chicago are seething hotspots.
c’mon im 10 years old and im 267 kilos well i was born on the fat side of the hospital bed so yah is this what where talking about i count see proply cuz of my fat half covering the laptop screen