YOUR HEALTH

New obesity (and asthma) solution

New obesity (and asthma) solution

The ongoing war on obesity is reaching new levels. A new Canadian study shows 1 in 4  infants by age 18 months are now overweight or obese (National Post, Sept. 28, 2016, http://news.nationalpost.com/health/trend-in-childhood-obesity-extends-down-as-one-in-four-canadian-toddlers-too-fat-study). Fears that these children and ensuing generations will be  burdened with early onset type 2 diabetes and early heart attacks is grabbing headlines and creating paranoiac fear.

And, of course, sugar and fast food diets are being blamed. 

But since when are infants ever on such diets?  Breast milk or formula are not being 'sweetened' nor are traditional baby foods by Gerber and others. The standard and normal pattern of introducing vegetables and fruit and dairy, etc. in pureed and then small bit sizes and in limited quantities is not 'hazardous'.  (See baby diet info at http://www.babycenter.com/0_age-by-age-guide-to-feeding-your-baby_1400680.bc)

As I have argued before, the population of America (and Canada) is no longer monolithic European but people with African and Latino genetics are now large parts of the population - close to 35 % in the USA or 1 in 3. 

And larger, huskier body shapes are more often their ancestral norm.

Furthermore, recent research on the bacteria that inhabit our intestines and other body parts show that they play a major role is keeping us healthy -- though they can on rare occasions go amok.

Stomach ulcers are now quickly and cheaply cured by antibiotics as their cause is no long misdiagnosed as 'stress and anxiety' but rather stomach bacteria gone overboard (i.e., Helicobacter pylori). This discovery won the Nobel Prize in 2005. (Messy by Tim Harford, 2016, , p. 207)

Also, the horrible bacterial infection commonly called 'flesh eating disease' -- that usually requires surgery and even limb amputation - is the result of standard body bacteria gone astray - usually strep bacteria that are normally harmless in our throat or at most cause strep throat. (See https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/hw140405 and https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/hw140405.)

However, to remove or eradicate Helicobacter pylori from the human body, it turns out, would result in mass asthma AND  mass obesity.

According to studies at the New York University of Medicine people (and experimental mice) with reduced levels of H. pylori have higher incidence of asthma and H. pylori is also found to regulate the stomach enzyme ghrelin - involved in absorption of food energy and its storage as body fat. (Messy, p. 208).

What new research is saying, is that the simplistic association of ingested sugar and calories with body weight and body fat is not so simple, and metabolism and gut bacteria are probably more important factors.

If the newest and most effective treatment for that scourge of nursing homes for the aged - C. difficile, which attacks intestines with weakened normal bacteria and immune systems, is quickly cured by introducing 'transplanted' healthy bacteria from a donor via an enema, (Messy, 209-10) then maybe soon there will be on the market a similar or ingested version of H. pylori -- or some other bacteria -- as a treatment for real obesity.