Monday, November 5, 2007

Australian researchers find hunger switch in mice

link
I can see the use of this knowledge for helping people with cancer keep their appetites, but using it to turn off appetite in fat people for weight loss? How is that any different than WLS, which restricts the amount you can eat/absorb?
If restricting calories by WLD/WLS quits working after a period of time (that plateau thing), and you start to regain, why would this MIC-1 be any different? Just because you shut off appetite doesn't mean you have sped up metabolism (and restricting calories slows down metabolism). So are they also looking for another switch that will speed up one's metabolism in conjunction with the one that kills appetite? I would think that if you don't have both of those, weight loss still isn't going to be a permanent solution to TEH FAT. And why does there have to be an eradication of fat? Why does everyone have to be thin? I can tell you, that as far as I am concerned, I want my fat, just in case. I may need those reserves if I ever have a serious illness (or if the world goes to hell in a hand basket, I'll be able to survive off my fat for a while longer than a thin person who has no body fat).
Just because you can do something doesn't mean it should be done. I would want to know what the long-term effects of turning off appetite are before I would ever even consider it, but I have a feeling that if they can figure out how to do this in humans, they won't give a rat's ass about side effects (just like they don't give a rat's ass about all the people who die from WLS or have horrible outcomes). They will say it's the risk you should be willing to take to become healthy (meaning thin, nothing more nothing less). Sorry, I risked death once, I won't be stupid or gullible or brainwashed enough to risk it a second time for a transitory "health" (thinness). I already have pretty good health at my current weight.
I also want to know how much research they are going to do to find out what is an optimal number of calories for each individual to take in in order to maintain this weight loss and still live a meaningful life. Because we all know that the number of calories it takes for me to be able to do what I want to do is not the same as what it would take for my husband, or my son, or my daughter-in-law, or any other person to be able to do what they want, since none of us will be doing exactly the same things with the exact same amount of effort or the exact same metabolism. There is just too much variation from person to person for this to be the magic bullet the medical community is looking for to eradicate TEH FATZ.

4 comments:

  1. Yet another new way for the diet industry to make gobs of money off a disease that doesn't exist. Yet another way to make people feel shameful for being normal and wanting to actually consume food when they are hungry.

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  2. I am in Australia so I saw a few TV news reports, and one of them said "And we can also use this to cure another deadly disease: obeeeeesity!" - which just made me roll my eyes in disgust. Why do we have to cure a body type?? I know they're suggesting this for cancer patients suffering appetite loss as a side effect of chemo (of course we couldn't encourage anyone to take marijuana for medical purposes seeing how it's low-cost or free and doesn't make pharmaceutical companies a big fat profit), but why aren't they suggesting it as a cure for thin people? Everyone has at least one skinny friend who can never put on weight, surely we have to save them from themselves and make everyone in the world the exact same body weight and size! Gah.

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  3. Wasn't that in Rethinking Thin? There was a whole section on mice and making them hungry or not and the abbreviations made my head spin, LOL!

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  4. I read about some genetically obese mice that were starved to death by researchers. When they dissected them they found the starved mice had 5 times the amount of fat as the ones they had fed. The mice had used their muscles and organs to make more fat. What makes anyone think that controlling appetite is the answer?

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