Posted on 08/20/2007 1:44:54 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A common virus caused human adult stem cells to turn into fat cells and could explain why some people become obese, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
The research builds on prior studies of adenovirus-36 -- a common cause of respiratory and eye infections -- and it may lead to an obesity vaccine, they said.
"We're not talking about preventing all types of obesity, but if it is caused by this virus in humans, we want a vaccine to prevent this," said Nikhil Dhurandhar, an associate professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University System.
The virus adenovirus-36 or Ad-36, caused animals to pack on the pounds in lab experiments. "These animals accumulated a lot of fat," Dhurandhar said in a telephone interview.
Dhurandhar also has shown that obese people were three times more likely to have been infected with Ad-36 than thin people in a large study of humans.
Now, researchers in Dhurandhar's lab have shown that exposure to the virus caused adult human stem cells to turn into fat-storing cells.
Dr. Magdalena Pasarica, who led the study, obtained adult stem cells from fat tissue of people who had undergone liposuction. Stem cells are a type of master cell that exist in an immature form and give rise to more specialized cells.
Half of the stem cells were exposed to the virus Ad-36. After a week, most of the infected stem cells developed into fat cells, while the uninfected cells were unchanged.
Pasarica presented her findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.
"The virus appears to change their commitment to a fat storing cell," Dhurandhar said, adding that Ad-36 is just one of 10 pathogens linked to obesity and that more may be out there.
He acknowledged that some people might find it hard to believe that a virus could be responsible for obesity.
"Certainly overeating has something to do with gaining weight. No doubt about that. But that is not the whole truth," Dhurandhar said. "There are multiple causes of obesity. They range from simple overeating to genes to metabolism and perhaps viruses and infections."
Long term, he said he hoped to develop a vaccine and perhaps treatments for the virus. But first, he and colleagues need to better understand the role of Ad-36 in human obesity, he said.
Globally, around 400 million people are obese, including 20 million children under age 5, according to the World Health Organization.
Not only do we eat too much meat, but I suspect things like bread and pasta would also not have been eaten until farming developed.
Who would want to go through the laborious process of preparing something like wheat, when easier foods to prepare could be had ready to eat raw right off the tree?
I also suspect that bread and pasta are bad for teeth; if so, that would be further proof we should not be eating such things.
Huh?
All this time I thought it was a “glandular problem!”
lol!
Folks, I have an announcement.
People are fat cause they like to EAT and don’t like to MOVE!
But what about the other two dimensions? A normal crust pizza is about as thick as a deck of cards, but unless it’s really tiny it’s probably more than a serving. There actually is mass associated with what a nutritional serving is, but for whatever reason when they were teaching us the food pyramid they just glossed over that.
I have a teenager in my house who is under 5 feet and weighs far more. I would LOVE IT if she was "only" 150 lbs. 150 lbs. may not be "optimal", but for your girl friend it may be normal. Also, at her height and bone structure, she may be still eating too much to lose weight.
The answer I might suggest to you is that perhaps your girlfriend would be far heavier if she ate what you feel she is being deprived. I know other women/men with thyroid issues. Yes, it does affect the processing of food in the body, but most obesity issues are not glandular issues or organ failures. For the vast majority of individuals who are obese, the issue is eating too much too often, and eating the wrong foods.
We are convinced that if we do not get to eat the things that others do that we are somehow deprived. Perhaps that more than anything might help to define the problem with obesity.
Maybe you wouldn’t disparage a overweight person, but this thread is with those that do. The discussion isn’t about the impact of weight on health. It is about understanding the various mechanisms that produce weight, and not all can be contributed to overeating. BTW, my Grandmothers were overweight in their 80s.
I see that suggested a lot here. Makes it pretty hard to prove when both products are made up of the same two ingredients in almost identical proportions.
It is amazing that as real sugar use decreased, obesity became epidemic.
More likely our daily per-capita consumption of calories went up and our time dedicated to exercise went down as we became a fatter society. Blaming a food or food ingredient is easy but is nothing more than blaming something other than the cause. Sugar use has decreased because Americans are forced to pay two to three times more for sugar than most of the rest of the world. HFCS has replaced sugar on a one-for-one basis over the past 40 years or so. This is all about the amount of calories in vs. what we burn. It's not about chemicals, food ingredients, food pyramids or complex carbs vs. simple carbs. Those are all nothing more than calorie distractions.
Actually there are a lot of explanations. Some of it is metabolic rate, some of it is just plain body type. Now there might be others but for the most part it actually pretty sensible.
As for the virus explanation. This one comes around every decade or so (Dennis Leary made fun of the virus explanation on his album that came out in 1997, not saying Leary know anything about weight loss, just saying this isn’t the first lap for the virus thing), so far nothing has actually come from it. You’d figure they’d at least find something to kill the virus.
LMAO ....Now that is CSIcing on the cake !
“It sure is. It is a real shame. Kindof defeats the notion of “compassionate conservative”, doesn’t it?”
More like it reinforces the idea of closed mindedness.
It amazes me the number of American’s who have dropped the Can Do attitude of their forefathers for the “It’s impossible” attitude of your average loser.
But it’s really depressing to see it among those who call themselves conservatives.
That’s right. It isn’t easy. But it is sad that there are sooo many nasty people on this thread that think it is all about overeating. Maybe they should consider people like my Mother who could eat anything, although she hated to eat, and not gain a pound. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that from her.
Man or rather what was to become man, ate a 90 to 100% meat diet. That came from the coprolites at palces like olduvai Gorge, the Swartcairns cave, etc.
Some 2.5 million years ago, what we call the Atkins diet was what we lived.
Well, breads were eaten commonly in biblical times, so I have to disagree with you there. As for pasta, I know nothing of the history of pasta; I know Indian cultures often ate ground corn items (e.g. tortilla type foods).
I think whole-grain breads are best and can be eaten daily.
I agree with you that there are alot of closed minded people posting.
While I also agree that Americans have lost their “can do” spirit, the issue here isn’t about that. There are still plenty of us who have the “can do” attitude, as demonstrated towards our trying to manage our weight. It’s depressing that there are so many who can’t believe that it can’t be anything other than overeating, and they call themselves conservatives.
BTW, thank you for your service!
That may be so but I’d like to know how you know that. Hunting is not that easy. Try it sometime and you’ll see what I mean. Also, their tools were primitive. And they didn’t live long either, so if they did eat that kind of diet, maybe that’s another reason they all kicked off so young.
Also, if this is true, I don’t really care what prehistoric man ate. I’d like to keep at least within the past few hundred years for sanity’s sake.
Thanks :)
and don’t listen to the know it alls. Most are too full of their own overinflated sense of self importance to even bother with.
Just chalk it up to another jackass who doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. They usually don’t.
If you're putting on a lot of muscle then there's a good chance you're burning a lot of fat. Muscle, of course, is much denser so you could actually be gaining weight while shrinking your waistline. As you say, there are lots of variables in that process. For someone who is not involved in a lot of lifting, there should be no plateau as long as you continue to burn more calories than you consume. Eventually though, once your body fat is low, you will need to balance your calorie consumption with the amount of exercise or you could do some serious damage to your body.
Okay, now I know of two people. I’ll start my list.
Seriously though, I know there are exceptions to everything. Skinny people eat enormous amounts of food and remain thin; chubs eat little and remain chubby; smokers don’t die of lung cancer. That is little reason to rejoice. Good common sense must prevail in all of these scenarios. I’m not going to become obese and say to myself, “well, oneamaricanvoice’s two grammies were just fine.” No, I’m going to listen to sound medical and scientific evidence but not get too ridiculous about it because I like to enjoy life too. Moderation in all things as St. Paul once said.
i am only an expert on my personal experience. I have lost weight twice in my life, dropping from 265 to 215lbs. Once on a very strict Atkins variant (50 grams of carbs per day) which also normalized my blood glucose. The other time by riding my bike 130 miles per week and running 15 miles per week. It took me a year to build up to that. 48 resting heart rate, 115/60 blood pressure. At 40 years old I could run six 7 minute miles or one 6’30” mile. I do not have a runners body type. My legs are short and my torso long.
In both cases, I stalled at 215lbs (5’10”) and did not lose more unless I kept myself VERY hungry. I never got below 210lbs.
I think there is more to it than eat less move more.
For someone doing eat less exercise more there should always be some lifting, it’s good to try to add a little muscle during your weight loss. For one thing it helps make sure you’re not burning muscle (one of the many bad side effects of going into starvation mode), also muscle burns calories in just being so adding a couple pounds of muscle helps the overall calorie balance. And of course even if you’re not lifting cardio builds muscles too.
Yeah the end portion is difficult. Optimally what a person wants to do is scale their diet to the point where without their “extra” exercise they’re neither gaining nor losing weight, it’s the extra calorie burn that burns the weight. So then when they hit their target weight they can just scroll back the exercise. It’s a hard balance to strike though, but it’s all hard, and in the end worth it.
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