"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. "
Posted on 12/30/2010 1:40:20 PM PST by decimon
Addiction researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a risk for alcoholism also may put individuals at risk for obesity.
The researchers noted that the association between a family history of alcoholism and obesity risk has become more pronounced in recent years. Both men and women with such a family history were more likely to be obese in 2002 than members of that same high-risk group had been in 1992.
“In addiction research, we often look at what we call cross-heritability, which addresses the question of whether the predisposition to one condition also might contribute to other conditions,” says first author Richard A. Grucza, PhD. “For example, alcoholism and drug abuse are cross-heritable. This new study demonstrates a cross-heritability between alcoholism and obesity, but it also says — and this is very important — that some of the risks must be a function of the environment. The environment is what changed between the 1990s and the 2000s. It wasn’t people’s genes.”
Obesity in the United States has doubled in recent decades from 15 percent of the population in the late 1970s to 33 percent in 2004. Obese people – those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more – have an elevated risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain cancers.
Reporting in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Grucza and his team say individuals with a family history of alcoholism, particularly women, have an elevated obesity risk. In addition, that risk seems to be growing. He speculates that may result from changes in the food we eat and the availability of more foods that interact with the same brain areas as addictive drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.wustl.edu ...
Sotted, not sated ping.
Maybe the link is alcohol’s loaded with oodles of empty calories.
Saw that with my dad. Not good...
I have told my children, now in their early 20s, that when I was young, overweight people were rare. They find it hard to believe. There seems to be an incredible number of fat, heavy, young guys with shaved heads that wear shorts and t-shirts running around these days.
"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. "
And don't think a million crunches a day on that new ab rocket from Santa are the solution.;-)
Been there, saw it with my Grandpa, hung on to the bottle till the very end...looked like a skeleton
My sister took the cure for drink and told me that half of the women there had had gastric bypass surgery.
I blame the microwave oven.
Are they saying that people who tend to ingest too much, tend to ingest too much? Hmmmm.
The key is moderation.. Setting the stage for new Prohibition???
From the American Council on Science and Heath:
Needless to say, any comparison of food and cigarettes is absurd and ludicrous. For starters, food is essential, food supports life. Cigarettes are an optional and deadly habit.
Why are anti-food-company advocates so intent on claiming that foods are addictive? The answer is simple: if specific foods are classified as physiologically addictive, then the obese person becomes a victim, as in, "Oh, it is not my fault I am fat -- my obesity is the result of the treacherous marketing techniques of food companies, which have caused me to lose control over what I eat -- just as my inability to quit smoking is the fault of the cigarette industry selling products with nicotine." And of course, this line of "reasoning" sets up ,b>the perfect scenario for the plaintiff lawyers who want to sue food companies for damages.
The word "addiction" is used very loosely today -- as when people claim they are "addicted" to exercise, chocolate, or the Internet. But addiction is a medical term referring to compulsive, habitual use of a substance that has physiological effects but is not necessary for survival. Addictive substances produce tolerance (meaning that it takes an increasing amount of the substance to produce the desired effect) and physical dependence -- and unpleasant symptoms of withdrawal if use is discontinued. The nicotine in cigarettes fits all these criteria. Food does not.
There have been claims that eating high-fat or high-sugar foods over activates drug-like substances in the brain called endogenous opioid peptides, leading to food cravings, overeating, and obesity. Food, it is argued, causes an increase in neurotransmitter levels just as addicting drugs do. Some animal experiments may support this idea, but other animal data and human observations do not. If overeating were induced through an opioid-like mechanism, one might expect that opioid-antagonists would be useful in treating overeating, but they are not.
High-fat/sugar foods may taste good, but they are not addictive. Obesity is a serious public health problem in the United States -- and we should indeed wage a war against it. But winning a war requires first identifying the real enemy. In this case, the enemy is our habit of eating more calories than we burn -- and the remedies are commitment, willpower, and self-control."
From the BEST movie EVER!!
“The Negroes stole our dates!”
Way back in 1977 a coworker’s graduate thesis explored the link between alcohol, diabetes, and the craving for sugar. So it isn’t a virgin field that’s never been plowed.
And then there’s Marijuana, which of course is famous for causing ‘munchies’.
Perhaps the craving for sweets or food has more to do with the effects of alcohol and marijuana on certain areas of the brain. That hardly qualifies either as being addictive and the cause of obesity.
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