 What Do The Experts Really Say? Some of America's leading researchers into fatness are finally being heard. For decades, acknowledged experts in the field, such as Reuben Andres and Jules Hirsch have been questioning the rabid anti-obesity assumptions that fat people are greedy and have high health risks.
"People should be very, very careful when talking about obesity and health," suggests Dr. Rudolph Leibel, the director of the division of molecular genetics at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr. Leibel has spent years studying fat people and this first-hand knowledge and expertise has convinced him that many of his subjects had none of the common risk factors that went along with the condition - high blood sugar levels, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.
He purposely recruits people who are fat but have no other health problems. That way, he reduces the likelihood that his data will be confounded by other disorders. Of course, the common belief is that all fat people must have some unhealthy aspect in their lives, they must be diabetic or dyslipidemic…but Dr Leibel strongly stated they are not.
It's not only humans who display an apparent healthiness in the face of fatness. There are mouse strains famous for this effect. When scientists gave mice an obesity gene, the animals grew fat but never developed diabetes. |
However, another mouse strain with the catchy name of C57BLKS/J was given the same gene and not only grew fat but died of diabetes in five months. Mice are not known for their longevity at any size, no doubt because they only eat what the lab technician provides (and we all know lab techs love fast food!) and no one can find leotards small enough to fit them. Each mouse strain develops insulin resistance, a prediabetes state that afflicts many fatter people but some mice have pancreases that produce more insulin. The poor little C57BLKS/J mice try to make enough insulin to protect themselves, but fail. No one yet knows why. Many fatter people too lack this insulin resistance according to Dr. Ethan Sims, professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and an expert in obesity research. He recently published a paper in the journal Metabolism and described a study at the university's medical school of 43 sedentary, postmenopausal, bigger women. They were not recruited because of their insulin sensitivity or resistance but 17 of them turned out to have completely normal insulin responses. This wouldn't surprise the legions of larger people out there who have been saying for years that their fatness is not a disease or even a disadvantage to health but it's great to hear it from the experts at last. Dr. Reubin Andres, the chief of the metabolism section of the intramural section at the National Institute on Aging is a man who has spent decades crying in the wilderness, trying to make the point that not all fat people have huge health risks. He says there are crucial questions about fat people that everyone should address: What happens over a long period of time? Do bigger people eventually develop diseases, like diabetes or heart disease, that are more common among bigger folk? What is their mortality rate? Much of his research indicates that bigger people are, in some cases, healthier than thinner ones. Although there is a widespread belief that weight loss will improve health, a number of large studies have raised questions about whether that is true.
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