Fat Loss: The Obesity Epidemic Goes Global
It is easy to think of obesity as a problem affecting only the wealthiest of nations, but recent research shows that even developing countries are plagued by expanding waistlines.
The featured analysis discovered that more than half of the world’s obese people congregate in 10 countries: the United States, China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
And this is no different in the United States, Nevada or even Las Vegas. Americans are notorious for eating a primarily processed diet, so it’s not surprising that we have the highest obesity rate in the world. What’s worse, the rate of “extreme obesity” in the US (defined here as people with a BMI above 40) has risen by 350 percent over the past few years alone!
It’s also worth noting that it’s the poorest Americans who have the highest obesity rate, another indication that there’s something in cheap processed foods that promote weight gain. Sadly, lower food prices apply primarily to packaged processed foods.
And if you base your diet on these foods, you are virtually guaranteed to experience weight gain, as they are loaded with sugar, seed oils, and grains, all of which will pack on unnecessary pounds and make it more difficult to get excess weight off.
Numbers Don't Lie: Key Factors Responsible for the Obesity Epidemic
- 45% of kids are obese or overweight
- 35% of kids are prediabetic
- 74% of adults are obese or overweight
- 60% of adults are diabetic or prediabetic
- 93% of Americans are insulin resistant (IR)
- 80% of Americans die from chronic metabolic disease due to IR
- More than 70% of calories now consumed by Americans is ultra-processed food - these Frankenfoods are loaded with sugar, grains, and dangerous seed oils
There were 4 key factors responsible for the obesity epidemic:
1. The advent of agriculture.
As humans moved from Southern Africa into Europe in search of new land, we transformed from hunter-gatherers into pastoralists with the domestication of animals and learning how to grow crops. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution about 12,000 years ago, there were less than 10 million people on the planet. Today more than 10 million are born each month. This Revolution, as I will show, is primarily responsible for breaking the 2 billion year relationship between our microbiome and mitochondria. Humans got so good at refining the agricultural process that refined factory-processed food is the result today.2. The second blow occurred with the passing in 1977 of the U.S. Dietary Goals for Americans (USDA)based on a high-carb low-fat diet.
Unchallenged, it was to become the dietary blueprint (the food pyramid) for much of the developed world. Ancel Keys in 1977 erroneously claimed that fats (cholesterol) were behind the risk of heart attack. We know today that this was false, but the damage of this HCLF (High Carb, Low Fat) diet was to drastically change the health of not only Americans but most developed nations in the world.3. The third factor is the unprecedented use of toxic chemicals
—herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and more recently seed oils, GMO foods, and microplastics, which, together with insulin resistance, has resulted in the cellular dysfunction and pandemic of metabolic disease we see today.4. The fourth factor that contributes to skyrocketing obesity is misleading health information.
Consider these myths:- Eating fat makes you fat.
- A calorie is a calorie.
- Eating breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
- Exercise is the most important way to lose weight.
- Choose diet foods (Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet) to lose weight.
- Eat six small meals a day to lose weight.
- Avoid saturated fat and cholesterol foods that harm your heart.
- You need carbohydrates for energy.
- The AHA and ADA provide excellent recommendations.
A more recent study in Nature, 8th Feb 2024, provides a very interesting hypothesis. This study titled “A break in mitochondrial endosymbiosis” as a basis for inflammatory diseases, published by Prof. Michael Murphy from the University of Cambridge. The abstract says it all.
“Mitochondria retain bacterial traits due to their endosymbiotic origin, but host cells do not recognize them as foreign because the organelles are sequestered. However, the regulated release of mitochondrial factors into the cytosol can trigger cell death, innate immunity, and inflammation. This selective breakdown in the 2-billion-year-old endosymbiotic relationship enables mitochondria to act as intracellular signaling hubs. Mitochondrial signals include proteins, nucleic acids, phospholipids, metabolites, and reactive oxygen species, which have many modes of release from mitochondria, and of decoding the cytosol and nucleus. Because these mitochondrial signals probably contribute to the homeostatic role of inflammation, dysregulation of these processes may lead to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
A potential reason for the increased incidence of these diseases may be changes in mitochondrial function and signaling in response to such recent phenomena as obesity, dietary changes, and other environmental factors. Focusing on the mixed heritage of mitochondria therefore leads to predictions for future insights, research paths, and therapeutic opportunities.”
Thus, whereas mitochondria can be considered “the enemy within” the cell, evolution has used this strained relationship in intriguing ways, with increasing evidence pointing to the recent failure of endosymbiosis being critical for the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases.
This paper clearly demonstrates how the Microbiome and Inflammation (Immune System) are linked by the Mitochondria. And that this originates from Nutrient Sensing – these 4 Hallmarks I believe are the primary cause of most of our chronic diseases of civilization that need to be prevented by reimagining what we humans should eat and drink.
Inflammation
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Mitochondrial Dysfunction
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Microbiome Dysfunction
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Nutrient Sensing
Human Metabolism over a Lifetime
Every human is born with the exact same metabolism and this is hardwired to operate in only 4 patterns over a lifetime – It is your excess body fat that slows your metabolism (see diagram). Your metabolism is a system that controls every single function in your body – it is the basis for your life itself.
If you have excess body fat, it can completely alter this normal pattern of metabolism. This is shown in the depressed curve (hatched line). As adipose tissue builds, fat distorts the human metabolism curve by suppressing its normal healthy level. Not coincidentally, a depressed metabolism can contribute to and worsen chronic disease. Fat growth is a primary driver of chronic diseases. Let’s take a closer look at how this happens.
Fat Damages Metabolism
The damage to your metabolism and health caused by accumulating excess fat has a name: “metabolic syndrome.” This is a serious health condition in which the body’s sensitivity to the hormone insulin decreases. Your blood glucose is no longer easily absorbed by your cells, so your blood sugar level rises along with your blood pressure. Your state of being reflects a wobbly, unstable metabolism that is not processing energy properly. Think of it as metabolic drunk driving.
Over time, this imbalance will cause you to develop type 2 diabetes, which is when your cells become less and less responsive to insulin.
Urgent News
- For the first time in the USA, our median lifespan fell from a high of 78.9 years in 2019 to 76.6 years in 2020 (this was before COVID-19).
- Rates of 17 of 34 cancer types related to obesity are rising faster in adults aged 25-49 than in older generations.
Eternity Medicine believes that changes in our diet, especially over the past 50 years, have resulted in more than 74% of people (in the USA) being overweight (most are obese) and ‘insulin resistant’.
What Are The Health Risks Of Being Overweight or Obese?
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Stroke
- Type 2 diabetes
- Abnormal blood fats
- Metabolic syndrome
- Back pain
- Fatty liver disease
- Cancer
- Shorter healthspan and lifespan
- Osteoarthritis
- Sleep apnea
- Gallstones
- Infertility
- Dermatological problems
- Gout
- Autoimmune disease
- Neurocognitive disease (Alzheimer's / Parkinson's)
- Hypogonadism
- Insulin Resistance – This is perhaps the single biggest threat as it is responsible for most of the chronic diseases we see today.
The first step is to find out how Insulin Resistant you are?
How Do We Cure Obesity?
To cure obesity, we will need to turn off the fat switch and stimulate and repair the growth of mitochondria.
To date, almost all treatments for obesity are aimed at reducing fat and weight, but not at getting at the basis of what is causing the underlying problem. If the underlying problem is not fixed, it will be very difficult to maintain weight loss. As we have shown, to become obese one needs to activate a “program” in which certain foods such as fructose, grains and purines cause changes in the mitochondria that result in the shunting of energy to fat. When this happens, the individual loses control of their appetite (due to leptin resistance), develops the metabolic syndrome characterized by insulin resistance and increased fat stores, and reduces their overall energy from reduced ATP production. It is as if we are preparing for hibernation, but we do not stop and keep getting bigger and fatter. This all occurs at the expense of continued oxidative stress to our mitochondria. Eventually, the mitochondria decrease in number, and we become “locked in” to our new weight, and in some people, our islets give out and we become diabetic. It all sounds bleak, and this is why obesity has been so hard to cure. Is there anything we can do?
The great news is that there is a lot of hope, and it is just around the corner. We believe that the approach in the future will be to focus on the mitochondria, with some drugs aimed at preventing the mitochondrial injury that triggers the fat switch, and the other aimed at stimulating the repair and regrowth of mitochondria that have been injured or lost. The combination of blocking injury and stimulating repair will allow the mitochondria to return to their baseline state and will allow the individual to return to complete health once more.
Blocking the Fat Switch is Critical for Curing Obesity
We predict there will be five major approaches to blocking the switch. We will briefly discuss each approach and the current status of their development and testing, and explain how our Las Vegas fat loss program is changing the tide.