Mrs. Weer’d sends me this interesting story on Obesity and mice:
A novel animal model showed that the longer mice remained overweight, the more “irreversible” obesity became, according to the new study that appeared online ahead of print Oct.24 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Over time, the static, obese state of the mice reset the “normal,” body weight set point to become permanently elevated, despite dieting that initially worked to shed pounds, authors say.
“Our model demonstrates that obesity is in part a self-perpetuating disorder and the results further emphasize the importance of early intervention in childhood to try to prevent the condition whose effects can last a lifetime,” says senior author Malcolm J. Low, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular and integrative physiology and internal medicine.
Very interesting. This obesity rabbit hole really amazes me. I’ve always been of the “Eat less, exercise more” school, which still DOES have results, but more obese subjects tend to have worse results.
Of course understanding how this process works means that therapy the counteract the process could help many people!
I hope that this spurs a study to see if the new normal can be set backwards to a slimmer setting.
Or to a lean setting that may have never existed before.
Certainly something that might take some of the “stubborn” out of “stubborn pounds”.
From a first blush conservation of mass and energy “Eat less, exercise more” would have to work.
The rate of results and kind of results is, of course, always up to question.
And that assumes people keep to those two tenants, which is hard, especially if a habit is not formed. There’s also that to have stability in a new weight/physical condition a given diet and exercise regime has to become permanant.
Though of course knowing the overall view means that a lot can be done to improve things by such questons as: eat less what and exercise more in what way?