I spent a few hours this weekend reading more on metabolism, BPA, and the science of how chemicals of all kinds effect the molecular pathways that signal our bodies to store excess fat or to burn/oxidize the fat in our bodies. Sounds complicated. The truth is that it is complicated.
Today I only want to outline a framework for some discussion...maybe a few questions that will fly right over my head but at least it might give me a few more avenues to study as I learn more about how to lose weight and yet stay active and healthy.
WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
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How Efficient Are We at Maintaining Our Current Weight?
I saw a figure this weekend that indicated that of the billions and billions of calories Americans eat each year, we are reasonably efficient at oxidizing what we consume. The percentage given was 99.6%. Let me repeat that thought. Of every 1,000 calories we consume, Americans on average burn 996 of them. Looks great, right?
If that is the case then why are we over 3 billion pounds overweight as a nation. That figure is from 2004 and the scales are getting heavier each and every day.
Overweight people have always been here. Corpulence was often seen as a sign of wealth in our nation's history. But over the last century, this paradigm has been turned upside down. We know that today, obesity effects the poor much more than the rich. Processed calories today in the US are cheap. Our government has made it happen.
How Evolution Effects Weight Gain.
More and more studies are being done on the evolution of tribes, islands in the Pacific, and native Indians from South America to see how the rapid change from traditional eating to a more Westernized diet has caused a ballooning of their waistlines and a rapid slide in their health and the symptoms that we know as Syndrome X.
From these studies, we are able to conclude that people who rapidly change their diets from cultural and evolutionarily normal to an American processed/canned food diet have little chance of success. Those cultures that have held onto the tradition "hunter/gather diet" the longest are the most susceptible to rapid rise in cancer, heart problems, and diabetes.
How even low doses of BPA are causing weight gain.
Let's go back to my first statement that we are 99.6% efficient at burning our consumed calories. Even if we have environmental products like BPA, PCB's, or other endocrine disruptors in our systems, the change over decades is fairly small. But what a difference it makes.
Let's drop the efficiency down just .1% to 99.5%. That means the average American who consumes 2500 calories a day now has an extra quarter pound of weight to carry around. We know from research that over 92% of us can have our urine samples taken, and we will have excess levels of BPA in our blood test. We have known since the late 1930"s that BPA was an artificial estrogen in our blood. Scientist at this time were looking for very potent estrogen chemicals for studies that the Nazi's and others were doing on humans. At that time BPA was not judged to be potent enough. They selected DES for further drug tests and finally bringing it to the market. DES was finally pulled from the market within 25 years as the offspring of these women expose to DES were having offspring that quickly developed cancer of all types.
We are now learning more and more on how BPA alters our systems. In our fat deposits, the cells have what are called receptors that receive the excess fat from the .04% excess that the average American doesn't burn each year. We have now identified a group of genes in this fat that have these PPAR gamma receptors. Studies now show that as we consume BPA in ever higher levels, the estrogen acting drug links to these PPAR gamma receptors and distorts the normal evolutionarily signaling of how to allocate this excess fat. It is not being shuttled off to the muscles to be burned as is normal. It is being invited in with an ever growing body of fat cells in our bodies.
Scientist have identified 3 major PPAR receptors. Only the gamma ones are involved in storage of fat. While studies are being done to understand the complexity of how this gamma receptor is being altered by BPA and other artificial estrogen products in chemicals, foods, and drinks, they are also looking at the opposite side of the equation.
There are PPAR delta receptors in our muscles that oxidize the sugars and fats. Scientists now are developing a drug for human consumption that "may" be safe and cause more lean muscle to develop more mitochondrial centers within the cells to burn fats and sugars more efficiently and quickly.
Most of the regular readers of WHEE know that I am almost obsessed with metabolism and what effects it. Exercise thus far has been the key for me. That's the reason I enjoy writing diaries on muscles, maintaining muscles, exercising for fat loss. But as I get closer to my goal weight, I want to know that I can maintain this loss of close to 75 lbs and not have it come climbing back as it does to over 90% of the people who lose more than 10% of their body weight. That's right. Over 90% of the people actually regain that weight plus more within 2 years of reaching an end to their "diet". Please note that I called it a "diet" and not a complete lifestyle change as it needs to be if we are to maintain the lower weight.
Finally, I want to close with a link to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's interactive website on obesity. This link is for a series of 4 lectures by Dr Jeffrey M Friedman and Dr Ronald M Evans. These lectures were given to a group of very talented high school students. I don't know if they were all from the same school or if they were chosen from a wide variety of schools within a district. Regardless, you can tell from the interaction in the questions that these guys are very, very bright. If you watch the lectures, pay close attention to the diversity of kids involved.
If you are really time limited in what you can take in today, I would encourage you to "bookmark" these lectures and listen to them at a later time. The third lecture by Dr Evans on "Balancing the Fat Equation" was especially interesting to me.
As we learn more about the science involved in weight loss or gain, we are constantly faced with the current political discussion around health care and the increasing costs of obesity. We face it in childhood obesity as Michelle Obama is now confronting. We are also facing it because of the rising costs for Medicare and Medicaid as more and more Americans have developed heart conditions, stroke recovery, high blood pressure, and diabetes just as the over 65 population explodes on our financial agenda.