Saturday, July 13, 2013

Does Global Warming cause obesity?

The AMA decided to make obesity a "disease".

Nonsense, of course. Obesity is a symptom, one aspect of various syndromes (especially Metabolic syndrome, which is genetic, but also can be a symptom of low thyroid function, adrenal gland problems, lack of exercize, overeating from depression, etc.).

Ah, but by making it a "disease" it means you will be paid to see a person who comes in with it.
It also means that our patients won't have to pay a quack to give them diet pills, and that big Pharm will come up with new pills to treat this "disease".

The dirty little secret: The long term "cure" rate of obesity is 5 percent...true, a person's health can improve if you get them to eat correctly, exercize, and lose ten pounds, but that won't cure the primary problem: that we no longer starve six months a year and so don't need our genes to put on weight when there is enough food to eat.
That is what the gene for "metabolic" syndrome does: let you put on weight.

So the Pima Indians in Mexico, who eat a low protein low fat diet and work hard in their fields all day are slim and don't get diabetes, but their American relatives, who get "commodities" (high fat, high protein) and no longer have to grow their own food have the highest percentage of obesity and diabetes in the USA.

The only Amerindian tribe I worked with who were not obese were the Apaches, many of whom still work as ranchers and in more traditional lifestyles. The tribes that were destroyed, have a lot of substance abuse, and now have people living on welfare, are obese, not because they can't afford veggies, but because they don't do hard physical labor anymore, and their genes are still programmed to put all excess calories into fat so they survive the lean hunting season or the lean planting season, before next year's crop is available.

The diabetes epidemic will get worse with the immigration bill: Because although Miami has lots of middle class Cubans and Colombians, and the South west has many Spanish metzisos who have lived there for 400 years, most Mexican immigrant are essentially either Indian or metziso/mulattos (and sometimes, like George Zimmerman's mom, of an Indian/African ancestry).

So expect a lot more obesity, and a booming business for fat docs, even among the poorest neighborhoods.

So what's that about global warming causing obesity?

Well, two ways:

One: The same industries that let people get rich enough to eat good food cheaply are the ones that pollute. Even McDonald's is blamed for global warming, since there are now ranches where there were jungles in Brazil etc. (never mind that the jungles weren't there but were farmed land before 1492, but that's another story).

Two: as there is more carbon in the atmosphere, the plants grow better, and as the world is warmer, there are more areas to grow crops. That means cheaper, more abundant food for the growing population in the third world cities.

What about desertification? Well, part of that started in 8000 bc...and some of the deforestation is because of corruption (you can replant the forest, but that takes money...and the gov't tells the forestry companies to stay out. So locals cut the trees and since they can't afford to ship them out or make roads or buy trucks, they clear cut and wait till the monsoon washes them down to the lowlands...)








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