Understanding the Risk Factors and Causes of Obesity: Information about causes of Obesity Exposed

Understanding the Risk Factors and Causes of Obesity. It is not all about overeating but other factors like genetics are also major causes of obesity

Winning the fight against overweight and obesity is a must do thing. We have written about the prevalence of obesity in the past years and we are not about to stop. We made a commitment to win this fight for the sake of the good health of the society. Over the past decades doctor Akoury has been posting articles targeting members of the public who are ignorant of the power they have over obesity and overweight. In most of those articles a lot has been discussed to help people have a change of the mind set about their feeding habits and general change of lifestyle. Experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury are impacting positively on peoples’ lives across the globe through this informative health information. We want to continue doing that in this article while focusing on the risk factors and causes of obesity in the present generation. We must therefore get to the understanding the risk factors and causes of obesity known to us and for the purpose of this article; we want to zero in the genetic factors as a cause of obesity.

Understanding the Risk Factors and Causes of Obesity: Genetic Factors

It is regrettably that in most peoples’ minds people who are struggling with obesity or overweight are either eating too much or are just lazy and are not being responsible for their body weight. I say that it is regrettable because this is not really the true position 100 percent. There are so many reasons why one can become obese or overweight and genetics in one of them. Experts have conducted several studies in the past and the findings revealed that the perception of the public may not be accurate. People who are obese or overweight are having more complicated biologically factors working against them (these biological factors are commonly called bad genes). Let us look at some evidence supporting the genetics as a cause of obesity:

• The finding of some studies done some decades ago in the 80s is amazing. In that study it was established that a good population of obese people who followed to the letter a good exercise program had to decrease significantly their food intake to at least 25 percent in relation to the levels of their lean counterparts in order to lose weight. The reasons for this marked difference in metabolism are thought to be predominantly genetic.
• Yet in another study, adults who were adopted as children were found to have weights closer to their biological parents than to their adoptive parents. The understanding of this is that the person’s genetic makeup had more influence on the development of obesity than the environment in the adoptive family home.
• Researchers fed identical twins 1,000 calories more than usual. This was done six days a week for 100 days. Even though everyone was overeating, some eaters gained more weight than others. However, for each set of twins, the amounts gained were similar.
• Another study looked at identical twins who were raised apart. Researchers found that both twins gained similar amounts of weight regardless of their eating and exercise habits further confirming the genetics aspect as a cause of influence.
• Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and African- Americans seem to store fat more easily than other ethnic groups. It is suggested that members of these groups may possess a “frugal gene” that encourages efficient energy storage during times of plenty to tide them over in times of famine.

Scientists speculate that a few different fat genes may have survived from past generations of people who struggled against starvation during times of food scarcity. Such genes allowed them to eat and store calories when food was plentiful. Then, when food was scarce, the genes helped the people burn fewer calories so that they could live off their fat as long as needed, thus helping them to survive, researchers theorize.

Unfortunately, these genes are carried over to the modern world when such scarcity does not exist and making the carriers of them predisposed to obesity. A similar phenomenon works on our stress response. Our reaction to stressful events comes from the response of our ancestors during the ancient cave days with “fight” or “flight” response.

Understanding the Risk Factors and Causes of Obesity: The hereditary causes

The hereditary causes contributing to the predisposition to obesity include:

Low serotonin levels – This, in turn, leads to a deficiency in tryptophan, an amino acid that is a precursor of serotonin. Low tryptophan leads to hunger and craving for carbohydrates.

Insulin resistance or insensitivity – If your body lacks the ability to clear insulin from the bloodstream quickly, you may feel hungry even when you have eaten enough. This condition is aggravated by lack of physical exercise, by taking diets high in sugar, refined carbohydrates, and saturated fat. This leads to an increase in hunger, higher set point, and decreased thermogenesis (the energy used to produce heat).

Impaired sympathetic nervous system activity – This leads to decreased in thermogenesis.

High Lipoprotein lipase (LPL) enzyme level – Lipoprotein lipase (LPL) is an enzyme produced by the body. Its function is to transport fat from the blood into storage in fat cells. The higher the LPL level, the more predisposed you are to store fat. Your inherent LPL level is partly determined by your heredity. So, if your parents are obese, you may have higher LPL levels than the children of thin parents, thus predisposing you to store more fat. If you have high LPL levels, dieting will worsen this situation because a low-calorie diet makes LPL more efficient at storing fat.

Lower percentage of brown fat – This leads to an increase of 25 percent higher efficiency in producing energy and heat leaving a net savings of more calories go into fat storage.

Deficiency of Coenzyme Q10 – This was found to be present in up to 50 percent of obese subjects.

Understanding the Risk Factors and Causes of Obesity: Genetic Predisposition to Obesity

• If both of your parents are overweight, you have an 80 percent chance of also having weight problems.
• If one parent is overweight, your odds are 40 percent.
• If neither parent is overweight, you have only a 10 percent chance of being overweight.
• If you’re African-American, you’re twice as likely as a Caucasian to be fat.
• If you’re a Native American, a Pacific Islander, or a Hispanic, you’ll have more trouble fighting fat than someone of European ancestry.
• If you’re Asian-American, you have less chance of becoming fat than members of other ethnic groups. But any excess fat will tend to land on your abdomen.

Finally we can now state authoritatively that obese or overweight people are not in that situation because they are lazy or they are overeating. Genetics factors are equally a major cause of obesity. You can get more clarification on areas of concern to you by scheduling for an appointment with the experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under Doctor Akoury’s care today.

Understanding the Risk Factors and Causes of Obesity: Information about causes of Obesity Exposed