Hello everyone!!
I have read the obesity/diabetes articles and I want to share some ideas from the articles that I found interesting (but you don't have to).
In the articles "Obesity and the Flu", "Visceral Fat Pronounced Guilty of Systemic Inflammation" and "In Diabetes, a Complex of Causes", visceral fat/skeleton was labled as an endocrine organ. I recently heard that fat had a metabolic function, but I did not know that it was therefore classified as an organ. This is a relatively recent discovery in the scientific world, and will provide new hypotheses for years to come.
In our last class, on Monday, September 8th, we discussed a short article titled, "The Inflammation Age" from Better Nutrition. At the end of this article, it suggested that a simple blood plasma test that investigated levels of CRP (C-reactive protein) was the best tool to understand your risks of inflammation. However, Zoe pointed out to the class that the method may be skewed. Why do many of the articles given to us about obesity/diabetes and the relationship with diabetes suggests that levels of CRP can be an efficient way of detecting inflammation? After further investigation, I gathered that abnormal CRP levels can be the consequence of different things, such as viral infections and liver failure. Therefore, this test proves to not be very specific. As Zoe mentioned, this test may not accurately detect what we are looking for.
In addition to the above, I would like to pose a question for the future. What do you think is the most efficient way to treat obesity and diabetes? There have been multiple medications that have been tested and used. Exercise and diet have been tried countless times. Different surgical methods have been discovered and performed. I think that since all of the treatments have various routes, diverse side effects and risks, and distinct goals, it is very hard to compare them. Maybe each patient has a "best" treatment for themselves and their condition.
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7 comments:
I thought it was interesting too how visceral fat was repeated referred to as an endocrine organ with its hormones affecting how insulin is used within the body.
In response to your question in how to treat obesity - I still truly feel that diet and exercise is the best route to go. Even though a lot of people fail in this attempt it is still the best way to achieve an overall healthy lifestyle in my book. Many people fail in the diet attempts because too many try 'tend' or 'crash' diets which ultimately don't work because at some point you come off of them. I think starting young and teaching children about healthy eating, moderation, and portion control is probably the best way to go about preventing obesity in the future and hopefully limiting the amount of children/teenagers that are being diagnosed with Type II diabetes. I don't think surgery is always necessarily the answer - there are so many health risks and lifestyle modifications that you have to commit to!
I agree with madelinew495. I also feel that diet and excersie is the best route. My older sister had problems with obesity growing up and she finally decided to change her diet and start exercising more with the help of WeightWatchers. Over the course of a couple years she lost over 85 pounds! Now she's one of the healthiest people I know and she's told me how it has drastically improved her quality of life. She never seems to get sick anymore and hardly ever needs to see a doctor. Had she not undergone this change, I have no doubt she would have developed some serious health problems relating to obesity, possibly even type 2 diabetes.
I totally agree with both of you that diet and exercise are the best ways to loose weight and decrease your risk for diabetes, but I never even knew that losing weight any way could lessen the strength of diabetes or even cause it to recede any amount. I think that losing weight any healthy way is good for a person whether surgery or diet and exercise is beneficial especially if it makes you healthier overall.
Also I know I've learned that fat does give off hormones to the body, but I had never heard of it referred to as an organ, but it does make sense.
I would have to agree with Erin. I agree that diet and exercise is the best way to lose weight, but in some few cases, I think surgery is beneficial. Yes, it does seem like a quick fix- a lazy approach, but hopefully the surgical panel tries to stay away from the cases where someone is going to keep eating cheetos. However, I would have to say that I think a healthy lifestyle is the only way to maintain a healthy weight.
I totally agree with the general consensus that we must diet and exercise to avoid becoming pre/diabetic, but I also think that exercise may not reduce stress enough to change people's mind sets about what they eat and how they treat their bodies, I wonder what else could help lower people's appetites and stress levels, perhaps meditation? other types of stress reduction? any ideas?
I think that in the future, in order to treat obesity and diabetes, we need to better educate society. The main focus being on rural populations. People living in poor conditions don't know what kind of foods are bad, or even that they are risk for diabetes. We need to find ways to educate everyone on better ways to eat, better ways to cook, and overall more efficient and better ways to take care of themselves.
Diet and exercise will not automatically solve the problem of obesity, we need to show society that there are alternative ways and also I can't emphasize enough that we need to educate people and not just assume they know the risks.
I am pleased that most everyone is on the same page: diet and exercise is the best way to decrease body fat and holistically manage/prevent diabetes. I was especially pleased with Lindsay's comment about how change has to come through education.
As the 'American diet' globalizes, the incidence of non-communicable diseases are increasing exponentially -- placing a double burden on developing countries, where diseases like malaria and TB are endemic. So, equally important to halting/decreasing the intake of saturated/hydrogenated fats and gargantuan amounts of sugar is preventing it from happening...
Why does it happen? Well, duh - it tastes good, but also, IT'S CHEAP. An overwhelming proportion of the obese population are low-income families (and let's face it, who doesn't put on a little weight as a poor undergraduate/graduate student).
I think the initiative needs to start early - and fortunately, there are FINALLY some non-profit programs out there doing this... Operation Frontline is a fantastic program that has a chapter here in Denver (and is always looking for volunteers!!) that works with youth AND underserved/low-income populations to make smarter nutritional (and cost-effective) choices at the grocery store...
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