Lots of Weight Means Lots of Diseases. But Why?

According to 2007 numbers, 1.8 billion people on earth are obese. That’s the equivalent of the entire population of the United States, plus 780,000 more. Obesity is such a big problem (pardon the pun) in the world, in fact, that it’s more of a health issue than malnutrition is.

Health professionals have said over and over that as obesity levels rise, the risk of developing just about every disease also rises. This we know. What isn’t well known is why, exactly; why is it that weight is a direct contributor to so many   diseases? Researchers think they may now know why, and it all goes back to a dangerous compound that’s activated when people eat too much.

In the journal Cell, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison say that when people eat too much, a chemical that sounds like a fraternity more than a compound – IKKbeta/NK-kappaB – is activated. This activation causes inflammation. While inflammation is a good thing when it's activated in moderate amounts, protecting the body from disease, inflammation is not a good thing when there’s no need for it. In other words, this chemical compound causes the immune system to essentially attack itself, leading to a host of diseases associated with inflammation and obesity, from atherosclerosis to diabetes.

And apparently, this compound is only activated when we eat in excess. Researchers discovered this after feeding a group of rats a high-fat diet and found that the fraternity-sounding compound was particularly active in the hypothalamus, which is part of the brain, and a part of the brain that regulates hunger. The activation of this compound rendered the release of the hormone leptin – the hormone that tells the body when it feels full – ultimately meaningless. In short, the researchers found, when the compound was active, the mice ate more; when it was suppressed, the mice ate less.

Researchers of this study believe the compound to be the “master switch” in the regulation of hunger and could very well be successfully manipulated in people through gene therapy or the genesis of a pharmaceutical drug that could keep the compound in an inactive state. The formation of that kind of drug is still a ways away from reality, though.

I’m no fan of drugs, as you know, but findings like these are helpful because they’re an “inside baseball” look at obesity and what chemical factors contribute to it and the host of diseases people tend to get as a result. Granted, this finding is not likely to solve the world’s obesity epidemic any time soon, but it’s a legitimate finding that can help the more scientifically-minded understand why the body reacts to certain behaviors and perhaps change those behaviors as a result of that understanding.