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MORE ON OBESITY

© Juan C. Mendible

In 1999 wrote three articles about the basic Biochemistry facts of how the body uses the energy that we eat in under the form of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. I discussed why overeating leads to obesity and I also talked a little bit about diets.

The reasons for those articles was that at that moment near 50% of the adult population of the US was considered obese. The problem had all the characteristics of an epidemic and was it was worse it was reaching the kids.

As you know the problem has gotten worse. It has reached world proportions to the point that it is problem even in China.

Obesity has several serious consequences to your health. Perhaps the worse are cardiovascular diseases, the main cause of death worldwide. Thus, that problem is also reaching epidemic proportions.

Today wegenomic the genomic age, scientists are looking for the gene variants that are responsible for every conceivable disease. The main objective is not only to understand the molecular causes of the disease but also to find its cure. In many cases the cure is called a magic bullet. A pill that eliminate all the unwanted effects of a particular excess (drinking, drug use, eating, etc.).

The concept of magic bullet within the context of Medicine is, to say the least misleading, since it makes you believe that you can, in this case, eat all what you want that the magic bullet, under the form of a pill, will do away with the unwanted consequences of overeating.

Within the relatively recent results of such investigation there are two that are very interesting. On one side we have those carried oJoslinmice in the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and reported in the journal Science that indicate that by tinkering with a particular gene they created a mice that can eat all that it wants without getting fat.

One particular note is that the reporter of the news release starts with the following statement: "A mouse experiment raises the tantalizing prospect of fulfilling every glutton's dream -- eating all you want without gaining weight and being healthier to boot." You make your own conclusions.

The other experiment was carrelegans in the worm, C. elegans. This worm has less than 1000 cells and about 19,000 genes. The researchers, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, found that about 400 of those genes are involved in fat storage and regulation. That is, about 3% of its genes are devoted to such functions.

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