8 replies to this topic

[stocks]

AUSTRALIANS are living longer than ever as death rates from the big killers of heart disease and cancer fall and smoking continues to wane in popularity.

The Australia's Health 2008 report, released yesterday, shows Australians can now expect to live for 81.4 years - and that we have leap-frogged Sweden and Iceland to claim the No2 spot on the world's life expectancy tables, second only to Japan.

http://www.theaustra...26-2702,00.html

Japanese and Australian diets are completely different.
The Japanese smoke a lot, but are cutting back.
The Australians are the 'fattest people on earth.'

As one Australian reader wrote about the cognitive disconnect pervading media and public health messages, with incessant warnings that everyone is going to die any minute because they’re too fat, while they’re the second-longest-lived on earth! “Can everyone please tone down the hype and scaremongering now? Our kids - and we - need support and good medicine.”

http://junkfoodscien...is-defused.html

[calmcookie]

I lived in Australia for 5 years and worked as a Diabetes Clinical Nurse Specialist. Rest assured that there are many obese diabetics who suffer amputations, blindness, kidney failure, infections and other dreadful complications that are DIRECTLY associated with obesity. Any suggestion that obesity is somehow "healthy" is absurd. Of course Americans also suffer from the consequences of obesity, which is compounded by added stress ... at least Australians aren't so overly focussed and totally bent out of shape about money, as most Americans are. By the way, I do love Australia ... it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. Long life to all, C.C.

Edited by calmcookie, 28 June 2008 - 02:34 PM.

[stocks]

Any suggestion that obesity is somehow "healthy" is absurd.

Long life to all,

C.C.

The notion that obesity is an 'epidemic' is a lie and is pushed by self-serving special interests.

http://www.traders-t...?...&hl=obesity

http://www.traders-t...?...&hl=obesity

[stocks]

I lived in Australia for 5 years and worked as a Diabetes Clinical Nurse Specialist. Rest assured that there are many obese diabetics who suffer amputations, blindness, kidney failure, infections and other dreadful complications that are DIRECTLY associated with obesity. Any suggestion that obesity is somehow "healthy" is absurd.

Statistical truth is extraordinarily difficult for untrained minds to grasp. I know what I am talking about, for I was once a teacher of statistics.


I use a different thought experiment to illustrate this sad truth. Imagine you are addressing a room full of people. We can let them be quite well-educated people, so long as they are not trained statisticians. A room full of students from some university Humanities department will do nicely. Now say the following thing to the room: “Men are, on average, taller than women.” I can almost guarantee—it is nearly a dead certainty—that someone in the room will stand up and say something like: “What about Sally? She’s taller than any of us. Taller than you, for sure—Ha ha ha ha!” The room will then consider your thesis to have been decisively exploded. Men taller than women? Nonsense! Look at Sally!

That, I am afraid, is how the untrained human mind works. For the past few years I have been writing pop-math books for a living, and let me tell you, it’s darn hard work. Mathematical and scientific thinking is deeply unnatural. Statistical thinking about our fellow human beings is doubly or trebly so. It goes against all the grain of human nature, against all the social habits programmed into our brains. Anyone can see Sally, but without special training, no-one can see a group average, let alone a standard deviation. We are all interested in other people, but very few of us are interested in multivariate distributions or correlation coefficients. People magazine has a far, far larger circulation figure than the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, and I am willing to hazard a speculation that this will always be so.

John Derbyshire

[Rogerdodger]

Radio Dr. Dean Edell not too long ago asserted that much of our life expectancy is determined by heredity and he opined that if you exercised and ate a strict diet, etc., you might live 6 months longer.
At least that's how I remember his comments.

I figure one exception is the control of diabetes.

See also: Your Dietary Needs are Largely Determined by Heredity.

See also: Muscle Size 65% determined by Heredity

I find that so many of the twins studies have blown away my preconceptions concerning "Nature over Nurture."

Edited by Rogerdodger, 09 July 2008 - 06:11 PM.

[maineman]

Denial is bliss. But for those who try to make good choices in life it is worth noting facts. Obesity = gluttony. This is bad. Obesity leads to hypertension, hypertension shortens life and drastically increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, blindness. Obesity leads to glucose intolerance/diabetes which leads to hypertension, peripheral vascular disease, kidney problems, blindness. Obesity leads to injured joints and decreased quality of life with more hip replacements, busted knees, ankles and lumbar disk and joint disease. Obesity is selfish; eating more than you need in a world where there isn't enough to go around is immoral. Relying on "heredity" is foolish. Nothing, when it comes to life and death, is that reliable. The only thing to do is make good choices. And these are very simple: don't smoke. Eat moderately, keep your weight in line. Exercise some. Get a check up annually and act on simple problems like hypertension, diabetes and lipids before they do their damage. Unfortunately for many people, these concepts are so simple they are blown off and disregarded. Some think they are just foolish, others think it "must" be more complicated (hence the supplement/vitamin/over-exercise crowds). There are a lot of easy things you can do to push the odds in your favor. Just do it. And keep it simple. mm

[OEXCHAOS]

Obesity is selfish; eating more than you need in a world where there isn't enough to go around is immoral.

Whoa, there, pardner!

You can starve yourself to death and you're not going too feed even one more hungry person. The problem is that they're mostly thousands of miles away and largely suffering at the hands of their governments.

The fat fellow next door has NOTHING to do with hunger in the world. To claim such is improper and unfair.

Obesity (whatever THAT is--don't get me started on the manipulation of that label), may or may not be inconsistent with one's rationally held values. If it's the latter, then it's immoral. It probably is, but not necessarily. In any case, one should only maintain one's weight at a healthy level for selfish reasons.

Selfish is GOOD not bad. In my view, your attitude toward the obese makes it more likely that they tune out and remain fat not less.

M

Addendum: I've known several really fit athletes who might be categorized as "obese". One was a cholesterol specialist, in fact. He ate low fat, high fiber foods. Lots of fresh vegetables. He played squash several days a week. I'd play a round robin with him and another fellow for 3 hours on the weekends. I can tell you, he was "obese" based upon heredity, NOT lifestyle. Some folks are going to be skinny and healthy and others are going to be heavier and healthy. That's not to say that there's not an absolute TON of folks heavy because they're eating a ton of crap and not getting exercise. I say, if you're eating right and exercising and are still a little heavy, relax if you're feeling good.

[Rogerdodger]

You can starve yourself to death and you're not going too feed even one more hungry person.

My mother always said "Clean your plate, there are people starving in China!"

Now look at what happened!

[stocks]

One post wasn't enough; to repeat:

OBESITY may be hard-wired into the brain from birth, according to a new animal study that appears to bolster the notion that some people are more prone to pile on the pounds than others.
The study showed that obese rats had faulty brain wiring that impaired their response to the hunger-suppressing hormone leptin.

In obesity-prone rats, "it seems that appetite and obesity are built into the brain," said Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

"The neurodevelopmental differences in these animals can be seen as early as the first week.

The findings also fly in the face of the one-size-fits-all approach that characterises much of the discussion about weight management and weight loss in the media, said Mr Simerly, who is director of the neuroscience program at the Saban Research Institute at the University of Southern California.

"The message in the media that weight regulation is all a matter of nutrition or lifestyle choices does a disservice to people whose biology predisposes them to obesity," he said.

http://www.news.com....5003402,00.html


A study of more than 5,000 pairs of twins has found that a child's risk of becoming overweight is mostly down to nature, not nurture. The research into children aged between eight and 11 showed that the variation in a child's body mass index and waist circumference was 77% attributable to genes and 23% to the environment in which they grow up.

Overweight children are more likely to become overweight or obese adults, a condition that can contribute to ill health and increased cancer risk in later life. The results are published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"This study shows that it is wrong to place all the blame for a child's excessive weight gain on the parents; it is more likely to be due to the child's genetic susceptibility," said Jane Wardle of University College London.

http://www.guardian....research.health