Scientists discover 14 genes that cause obesity

[Klaralven]

Promising news in the effort to develop drugs to treat obesity: University of Virginia scientists have identified 14 genes that can cause and three that can prevent weight gain. The findings pave the way for treatments to combat a health problem that affects more than 40% of American adults.

"We know of hundreds of gene variants that are more likely to show up in individuals suffering obesity and other diseases. But 'more likely to show up' does not mean causing the disease. This uncertainty is a major barrier to exploit the power of population genomics to identify targets to treat or cure obesity. To overcome this barrier, we developed an automated pipeline to simultaneously test hundreds of genes for a causal role in obesity. Our first round of experiments uncovered more than a dozen genes that cause and three genes that prevent obesity," said Eyleen O'Rourke of UVA's College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Medicine's Department of Cell Biology and the Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center. "We anticipate that our approach and the new genes we uncovered will accelerate the development of treatments to reduce the burden of obesity."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211001100432.htm

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Interesting. And thank you for posting.

It seems to me that one problem underlying the obesity epidemic is that we evolved in conditions of scarcity, and so evolved to seek high calorie food, and to eat as much as possible when food is available. In the past, that was okay, as most of us never had enough access to food to get overweight, let alone obese.

Alas, in the modern world things are very different. Food is readily available. High calorie food is readily available. Our evolution pushes us to eat, and eat more. We put on weight that in the past would have been removed in a time of scarcity. Only there are no times of scarcity any more.

I spent much of my adult life overweight and at the somewhat lower levels of obesity. Last year I decided I really had to lose weight, and was able to do so. Oddly enough, I was greatly helped by a significant decrease in appetite. I'm 73 years old, which is probably an important fact. Keep in mind, I'm one who always had a tremendous appetite, and was famous in my childhood and teen years as someone who could readily eat second and third and even fourth helpings of food while remaining thin. Lucky me, the weight crept off. I was down some 25 pounds when I had a serious heart attack back in December. Excellent care, cardiac rehab, and I'm more than fine now. It's as if I never had that heart attack. Now I'm down another 20 or so pounds, and my BMI has gone from 32.5 to 22.9. Hooray!

I'm going to guess that those genes that cause obesity are helpful in situations where food isn't so readily available.

[CrackityJones75]

2. I have been questioning gene theory more and more

I have been questioning gene theory more and more lately. I don’t buy into the idea whole hog and think there is a lot more to it.

[DenaliDemocrat]

24. Why? Twin studies have shown how strong genetic influences

Are.

[CrackityJones75]

27. Yes and new studies show that

Yes and new studies show that the amount of focus we have put on genes has been misguided and that there is a lot more in play than just the gene.

A good documentary to watch is “a dangerous idea”.

[DenaliDemocrat]

29. Well, I'm a biochemist and I disagree

I also raise dogs and see firsthand through generations how strong genes are. In fact, I used to believe the old 25% genetic 75% environment, but the more studies I read and litters I raise, I believe it’s 75% genes and 25% environmental

[CrackityJones75]

30. Okay great!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/sep/09/gene-intelligence-genetic-testing


I am not just spouting off at the mouth here. And I am not saying genes have nothing to do with anything.

[DenaliDemocrat]

36. You sent me an article from a psychologist?

Seriously? Psychology where p-values are rarer than unicorns and double blinding a mythology.

[cinematicdiversions]

3. So are we now claiming our genetics changed over the last 40 years?

I'm afraid the reality is simply that it's up to the individual. Task is definitely easier for some than others. But people control what they eat. It's up to the individual person to control what they eat.

[meadowlander]

5. No, cheap and easy access to calorie-rich diets for the majority of the population did.

That doesn't mean there aren't also people who have the genetic "advantage" of converting calories into fat more easily and burning it more slowly. There's an obvious evolutionary advantage to having those genes in any society except the one we happen to be living in now.

And if a propensity for obesity is genetic, potentially that's something that can be treated or modified.

Since 99% of diets fail, that's got to be good news for everyone.

[Klaralven]

7. In the last 40 years supermarkets ballooned from 30,000 square feet to 50,000

New ones with 100,000 square feet now open up. There has been a huge expansion of boxed and bagged foods in the center aisles, more variety of microwaveable frozen foods, and especially an expansion in deli and prepared food sections.

All presented and packaged to make the consumer buy, buy, buy.

So if you have the genetic propensity to get fat, the opportunity has been increased.

[cinematicdiversions]

9. Your shopping cart is still the same.

I agree the opportunity to eat oneself oto death is greater than ever, But you still have to do it yourself. Heck, you have to spend your own money to do it.

It is like blaming Kirkland vodka for alcoholism.

[Klaralven]

10. Shopping carts are also larger

[Javaman]

20. also plate size in restaurants.

we have been told since kids to "clean our plate" and it becomes mentally ingrained.

increase in the portion size, increases in the belt size.

[hunter]

26. When I was a kid my parents never bought soda pop, candy, potato chips, or even deserts.

We had fast food maybe once or twice a year. We never had sweetened or brand-name cereals for breakfast.

Part of that was my parent's idea of "eating healthy."

A larger part was that they couldn't afford it.

The milk in our refrigerator was non-fat and reconstituted from powder because at the time that cost much less than fresh whole milk.

Most of the animal protein we ate was the powdered milk, fish my dad caught, and old dairy cows, none of these in any great abundance.

Bean stews and pea soups were dinner staples.

Unhealthy foods are a lot more common now. The prices as a fraction of the overall family budget have declined, and convenience has become a much larger part of the equation in single parent households or homes where both parents work.

It's easy to pick up dinner now at McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way home from work.

[vercetti2021]

4. I don't know

For myself I had an eating disorder. Really bad one on top of that. They say its hard to kick drugs, legit food binging was as well. I would eat so much in one sitting because I never felt satisfied until I felt sick. I felt having one sandwich was never ever enough, my brain would drive me insane with no, you need more and more on your plate. I do believe eating disorders are up there, you can get super unhealthy from eating junk. Heart issues, liver problems.

[Ziggysmom]

6. Food binging is often more difficult to overcome than drugs because food is legal and essential.

If someone is abusing alcohol or drugs, we can work to stop using them entirely. But we have to eat. It’s not unusual to crave carbs, sugar, and junk food when stressed or dealing with depression or anxiety. With the stress of Covid and dealing with the political future of our country, I am having a hard time with increasing anxiety and panic attacks. Sometimes that cookie makes me feel better, but it's only temporary and leads to a cycle of emotional eating

[vercetti2021]

8. I'm the same way

I hate myself so much somedays and eating an oreo or seven brings me some form of temporary happiness. I use to make lounge posts about daily struggles and would always eat oreos while replying to comments and such. Then I got shamed on here for eating a Nabisco product during them striking. Needless to say I stopped making them and ate more due to suppressed depression. I still am.

[Johnny2X2X]

11. Our food supply changed

A lot has been written about it, but added sugar changed the food supply in the late 70s or early 80s. Corporations determined they could sell more by adding sugar to nearly everything. So now bread, pasta, peanut butter, pasta sauce, canned fruits and vegetables etc etc has sugar added to it.

Scientists are IDing the genes that make us more prone to weight gain, that's good to know. But the gorilla in the room is the food supply, it's not the same.

My age group is old enough to remember the 70s, people weren't eating healthy in the 70s. In the 70s exercise wasn't some big thing either, heck in the 70s is when running first starting to become a thing. But I remember portions being much smaller in the 70s too. You can't even get the size of a small coke from the 70s at fast food chains anymore. And while kids played outside more back then, they weren't involved in as many school activities as kids are now that keep them active.

And if you look at our eating behaviors objectively, it's not rational, it's obvious we're dealing with addiction. It's the same destructive behavior alcoholics or drug addicts engage in when they pursue their addiction at all costs. And like other addictions, there are varying degrees of addiction, and genetic factors that can make people predisposed to that addiction.

Know that it took a huge fight in congress to even require food manufacturers to put grams of added sugar on their labels, they wanted to hide it along with everything else harmful in the food supply. If it were up to the food industry, the packages we buy would have no nutritional information on them. They know they're peddling poison.

[Hortensis]

12. Humanity used to spend most of its time working just to feed

itself each day -- plus the existential task in most regions of stockpiling enough food to survive winters, droughts, and other calamities.

Our current little moment is the first time in human history when lavish food supply without work to create it coincide.

Obesity epidemic.

It happened basically overnight in the past 200 years and is still happening. Catastrophically quick change smashed the cumulative wisdom and social structures of the 20,000 years of the agricultural age like an out of control express train. Even in the 1920s, though, about 80% of all households in the U.S. still routinely grew some of their own food, and most people still did a lot of walking. The explosion of processed foods in the 1950s was seen as yet another new blessing for humanity, not a fast track to the grave.

A way of saying that we should cut society a break. We've never been here before. People who often labored to exhaustion to stockpile enough "natural" food to survive never needed to work to build fitness or healthy eating regimens into their lives. Until yesterday, lack of a steady supply of salt killed, and quickly; sugar was precious and needed to preserve foods; and a low carb diet was a sure path to starvation.

This discovery sounds promising as one of the latest developments to, all together, help people sync modern realities to create health.

[Johnny2X2X]

16. There's some truth to this

But what about the time between the 1920s and the 1980s? From WWII to thru the 70s was a time of plenty for Americans. Food was readily available. Obesity in children increased 4 fold starting in about 1980 from 5% to 20% now. Since 1980 Obesity in adult men and women tripled and is now over 42%. Think about that, we went from 1 in 20 children being obese to 1 in 5, we went from 1 in 7 adults being obese to more than 2 in 5.

It doesn't take much research to show that in 1980 or so, food processors and manufacturers started adding sugar to everything and I mean everything. Bread, hotdogs, pasta, breakfast foods, just about everything has added sugar.

We've got a society addicted to sugar and they don't even know it. And their addiction is advertised and sold literally everywhere. If sugar is as addictive as cocaine, and studies show it is. Imagine being a cocaine addict and waking up in the morning to cocaine laced cereal, adding cocaine to your coffee, and then leaving for work where there's cocaine drive throughs on every corner, if you stop for gas they're selling cocaine inside the gas station. You get to work and they have cocaine vending machines everywhere. The cafeteria at work sells mostly cocaine laced products. If someone has a celebration at work, everyone gets together in a conference room for a big pile of cocaine. You leave work and pass those cocaine fast food joints, while looking at a bunch of billboards that advertise cocaine. You get home and the TV has ads for cocaine every 10 minutes. Your children sell cocaine to raise money for class trips or other fund raisers. It's literally everywhere, you're living inside a world that absolutely emerges you in the drug that you're addicted to.

And when you kick sugar, as I have done recently, it becomes more obvious than ever you were addicted to it. It becomes more obvious than every sugar caused you to eat until you were over full and ill. Without sugar, your body quickly starts telling you the correct amount of food that it needs to function properly.

It's a multi faceted problem, sugar is a huge part of the problem, but not the only part.

[Hortensis]

17. Old ways gone, new ways constantly trying to develop but

giving way to yet more new realities before being embedded. No need for people to save themselves from sugar before it was so plentiful they could fill their kids' sandboxes with it.

The RW is demonstrating extra dramatically that a large proportion of all people need a functional social structure of workable norms within which to model their behaviors -- and that overall we don't do well without it.

We keep having waves of new awareness, and articles on the latest info on healthy diet and exercise work fine for some. But what we're talking about takes much longer to to embed.

At least we've reached a point where the problem has grown so huge that finally everyone sees it and understands its main causes. That's very positive because we never solve problems before they're real and they get so big and scary that they force reluctant people to have to take action. And then they get bigger still before they're even partially solved.

That's where we are.

[Johnny2X2X]

18. At least we're starting to have the right conversations

Even here on DU, these conversations are difficult, because people will make cries of fat shaming. Obesity is a health crisis in America, it's time for frank and fact based conversations around it. But people will try to argue by special cases rather than the general rule. Yes, some obese people can be healthy, but that's a rarity and the general rule is obesity is unhealthy.

One thing I do not believe is that people have suddenly lost will power in this country. I was alive in the 70s, people didn't have anymore will power than they do now. And I tell you what else people didn't have in the 70s, they didn't have this big care about what they ate, they didn't have a ton of diet books. People just ate what was available, and there wasn't even a thought that fast food could be bad for you back then. There also weren't gyms on every corner, people didn't workout then like they do today.

Maybe people had more manual labor jobs back then, but it wasn't like people were health conscious back then, very few people even thought about healthy diets and proper exercise because it clearly wasn't very difficult to stay a relatively healthy weight back then.

And it's complex, so the solution will be many faceted too. From better food labeling, more healthy options, to personal choices that vary from person to person in effect. It's a long road back.

[Hortensis]

19. Yes. A comparison of the 1970s to now shows tremendous progression,

both of the problems and of the changes they're bringing about. Climate change has accelerated dietary changes too of course. I saw a figure that reported 12% of 30-49s were vegan or vegetarian in 2018, undoubtedly increased since. Not in the '70s.

The internet as a giant society-changing force for good. Seeing a young man with legs "rotting" from diabetes is another one, the frightening pervasiveness of the problem.

[Johnny2X2X]

22. We haven't peaked

The obesity rate has risen every year recently, and is up 3 points over the last 5 years. We could hit 50% of the entire adult US population as obese by the end of this decade.

And we're talking obese, not overweight. Right now 73% of the US population is overweight. 3 out of 4 people.

Vegan diets can help for sure. The internet can help or hurt the problem.

We aren't close to turning a corner on this, in fact it's getting worse and worse right now.

[Hortensis]

23. Pandemic obesity in more ways than one. Given that some

causes of obesity begin years before, it seems likely that trends will continue for a while even as countertrends grow. And of course the proportion of those over 65 will continue to grow, in spite of obesity.

[Johnny2X2X]

25. The costs to society are immense

The healthcare costs for the obese are sky high, while the other costs to society are huge too. Missed work, missed income, disability increasing. We need workers, and less people work because of obesity.

And the cost to the individual is immense too. Loss of self confidence, unnecessary shame, depression increase.

I've been working from home since March 2020 due to the pandemic, I gained some weight, a lot of people did.

There are a lot of barriers to progress. Heck, Republicans think mandating healthy lunches for school children is anti American. People freak out about labeling foods correctly. The sugar lobby is very powerful. And that's not even getting into people having hurt feelings for us even calling this obesity epidemic and epidemic.

This is something that could sink us as a world power. When you're getting close to 1 in 2 people being obese and a full 3 in 4 being overweight, you're going to have to pay a heavy price for that eventually.

[Hortensis]

31. The increase since 1990 is genuinely shocking,

but I think this will become yet another self limiting problem. It won't just continue to grow as it has. You have to be right about the enormous costs to this enormous societal dysfunction, of course.

The nihilistic turn over a third of our population has taken has been stunning. Trumpists really did create and have been participating in a holocaust that they believed would result in deaths mostly among the obese/chronically ill and Social Security recipients. A culling.

It's not a stretch to speculate that reaction to the growth of obesity (and others drawing benefits from the very expensive entitlement programs their leaders claim are ruining our nation) could be one of the underlying reasons their sociopathy, combined with a very opportunistic killer virus, took this direction.

[Johnny2X2X]

32. Or we could do some things to reverse this

A healthier and less obese society is happier and more productive. Their health and elder care costs less. They work more and pay more in taxes. They are better on the environment, they waste less. A healthier and less obese society consumes less, eats less, and bokes and walks more.

We're not just going to wait it out and have the obese die off, that's not what happens.

[Hortensis]

34. Well, that's what the OP's about. Lots of things are being done,

much attention given to this problem.

It's also, in an extremely different way, what my last post was about. The right's been schooled for a long time now in the virtues of libertarianism. Strong libertarians believe that requiring people to take care of themselves, and letting those who cannot fail, will result in a much healthier and more productive society. In this case, we're talking about a mostly passive "cleansing" of the ill.

A more moral and happier society they also imagine, romantic dears that they are.

[cinematicdiversions]

37. In all furnace we also smoked a lot more in the seventies

For better worse that really did help.

[The Revolution]

13. NOVA had a episode on fat last year

Like most of what they do, it was really well done. I found it to be quite eye-opening. It is available online:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-truth-about-fat/

Do we control our fat, or does it control us? For generations, overweight individuals have been stigmatized and cast as lazy. But scientists are coming to understand fat as a fascinating and dynamic organ—one whose size has more to do with biological processes than personal choices. Through real-life stories of hunter-gatherers, sumo wrestlers, and supermodels, NOVA explores the complex functions of fat and the role it plays in controlling hunger, hormones, and even reproduction. (Premiered April 8, 2020)

[GoCubsGo]

28. Yep, it was excellent!

There are biological processes involved that most people here don't even consider, like the composition of one's gut flora. So, it's not necessarily even the fat that's controlling us, but our bacteria--to an extent, anyway. It's certainly a lot more complicated than many of the commenters here think it is.

[Happy Hoosier]

14. 80% of the problem is insulin levels.

High insulin levels inhibit lipolysis and leptin uptake… meaning you don’t burn fat for energy and you don’t feel full.. a terrible combination.

We eat too many foods that spike insulin levels and we eat them too often. We never allow our insulin levels to get lower.

[FakeNoose]

15. Big Pharma is looking for ways to get rich off this

We can all be sure of that.

[Javaman]

21. also the nutritional amount in a serving of food has decreased.

as a result we feel the need to eat more.

there is so much at play with triggering the obesity genes.

[Johnny2X2X]

33. That's interesting

I am not sure about this, do you have any sources?

[Javaman]

35. here you go...

Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/

The great nutrient collapse

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511/

As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/06/19/616098095/as-carbon-dioxide-levels-rise-major-crops-are-losing-nutrients

[Johonny]

38. So if I don't wear pants, I'm going to be skinny?