"Keep off the pounds or lose your mind more rapidly."

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006970.html

by cwan • 16 years ago

16 23 16 years ago

futurepundit.com

reasonattlm3• 16 years ago

A couple more along those lines:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/03/a-gentle-reminder...

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/grow-fat-and-lazy...

There's a lot of research to link accumulated visceral fat tissue to aspects of accelerated degenerative aging. Also, separately, a weight of research linking the body's responses to the overeating and lack of exercise needed for most people to build up that fat to aspects of accelerated degenerative aging.

megaduck• 16 years ago

From the article: "We need great weight loss drugs that adjust the metabolism to keep weight off without side effects."

Or we could encourage healthier lifestyles. A good start would be introducing requirements for pedestrian footpaths and bike lanes in new communities. Trying to walk or ride a bike in many recently built communities is either impossible or scary.

That's just one idea, there's a lot of others out there. The bottom line is that if we sit on our butts all day and eat high-caloric sugary foods, then we're going to get fat. That's simply the way our biology is wired. I have a hard time imagining that any new wonder-drug is going to change those fundamentals.

pyre3• 16 years ago

How about encouraging food producers to stop sticking sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup into EVERYTHING. I'm almost to the point that I feel I could go to the store and look at the ingredients for a container of salt and see sugar/HFCS in there instead of just 'salt.'

bootload3• 16 years ago

"... food producers to stop sticking sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup into EVERYTHING. ..."

That is a sign you are eating the wrong things. Just as I like my gasses simple [0] so I like my food simple. In fact a Scot would recognise my breakfast (Oats) and any Italian, Greek or Frenchman would recognise what I'm having for lunch (vegetables celery tomato cabbage spring onion spices olive oil soy sauce spices as the noodles & meat are gone) ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4383706461/ left over from last night.

As Jamie Oliver was quoted in TheAge, Good Weekend, p20: "There's a new type of poverty and it's f...ing knowledge poverty".

[0] Obscure Zodiac reference: "...The simpler the molecule, the better the drug. So the best drug is oxygen. Only two atoms. The second-best, nitrous oxide—a mere three atoms. The third-best, ethanol—nine. Past that, you’re talking lots of atoms ..." ~ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson#Zodiac_.281988....

rikthevik• 16 years ago

Yep, it's pretty frustrating when you're on the go and looking for something to eat that isn't going to spike your blood sugar and put you into a coma in the afternoon. Not too many options here in Canada.

petercooper• 16 years ago

A good start would be introducing requirements for pedestrian footpaths and bike lanes in new communities.

Having footpaths and cycle lanes almost everywhere hasn't helped the UK's obesity rate which is almost on a par with the US.

They built cycle crossings and a cycle lane outside my house a couple of years ago. I've seen two people using them in that time and perhaps 10-20 cyclists total.

Owning a car and driving is too easy. Building some cycle lanes isn't encouraging people to get onto bikes - it just makes life easier for those who've already made the decision (and so don't need convincing). You'd need to make cars less desirable to have the effect you want, but even that ain't easy.. I didn't see people flocking to bikes when oil was $150 a barrel.

gcheong• 16 years ago

http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/65A/1/57...

DarkShikari4• 16 years ago

"We need great weight loss drugs that adjust the metabolism to keep weight off without side effects."

Talk about missing the point. As discussed in Good Calories, Bad Calories (aka The Diet Delusion), there was a study done of mice in which a group of mice was bred with knockout genes in order to be much more obese than normal mice. However, they were given the exact same diet as a group of normal, healthy mice. The obese mice had no higher rates of any of the illnesses commonly associated with obesity (diabetes, heart attacks, etc).

But a group of mice that were fed with an unhealthy diet to become equally obese had all of those problems.

Obesity and other health issues have a common cause. Obesity does not cause (most) health issues it is commonly associated with. Solving obesity without solving the common cause will do little more than make us feel better about ourselves.

Being obese doesn't make you unhealthy--being unhealthy makes you obese.

reasonattlm3• 16 years ago

The above is misleading and wishful thinking. Compare with the papers and disease mechanisms referenced in these posts:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/03/lose-the-visceral...

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/01/how-excess-fat-ti...

It's the fat.

DarkShikari4• 16 years ago

It's "wishful thinking" to say that a "magical drug" won't solve all our problems? Seriously?

I'm pretty sure the people proclaiming that all we need is a miracle drug to eliminate fat are the ones involved in wishful thinking.

Read the facts: http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-ba.... Being fat may have some health costs, but the primary impact is caused by the diet that made you fat. If you believe that simply removing the fat caused by an unhealthy diet will make you healthy again, now that is wishful thinking.

If you don't eat healthy, you won't be healthy, no matter how many pills you swallow and how much you exercise.

Snark7• 16 years ago

The above articles are not at all convincing. They are also hosted at sites that have a vested interest in selling you weird shit to put in your body that will supposedly make you live longer.

I'm going to eat my vegetables, go to the gym, and pass on the weird shit.

lanerapp• 16 years ago

Growth Hormone is stimulated by exercise. The simplified story is that GH puts sugar into cells so that it can be used. Sure you can choose to buy that diet drink if you don't stimulate much GH (don't yell at the food companies for giving people what they buy) but if you ride your bike and take the stairs having that coke will only leave you with a smile.

Excess sugar, on the other hand,is toxic as we just ain't used to it (evolution). If too much sugar floats around the blood the immune system feels the need to respond and the sugar related molecules collect and glom into more antigenic moiety junk...blah,blah we then get chemical and physical reactions and clogging of capillaries and membrane pores and all that other complicated stuff. Bad for most systems in the body, it's only been recent that we figured the brain was just as susceptible as the tiny nerves and the tiny arterioles surrounding the nerves in the toe of a diabetic.

Bodies can make sugar out of other nutritive molecules. In general, eat less sugar and stimulate more Growth Hormone by exercise. GH is a true fountain of youth.

DavidSJ• 16 years ago

Correlation ≠ Causality

"Keep off the pounds or lose your mind more rapidly."

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