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| Understanding OBESOGENS: Vital for Combating Obesity | | |
Dr. Pragya Khanna
In a country like India
where 270 million
people live below the 'poverty line', obesity, for some, seems to be a distant issue, meant for the rich people of first world. According to Dr. Prabal Roy, senior bariatric surgeon at the Asian Institute of Medical Science, Indians had faced malnutrition for a long time and are now being exposed to the 'over-nutrition' of the modern world as a result of globalisation. "India is currently witnessing rising numbers of people in the middle-class who are obese. A lot of the Indian population has started depending on processed/packaged foods that contain a huge percentage of trans-fat, sugars, and other unhealthy and artificial ingredients. Obesity is considered the core of many diseases. Increased weight carries significant health risks like cancers, diabetes, heart diseases and strokes," Roy says. And yet, we seem to do nothing to offset the danger, allowing ourselves to be controlled by a 'pandemic', happily shrugging off the dangers with reprehensible indifference.
One thing is certain, India is under siege: junk food, alcohol and sedentary lifestyle are leading us to silent self destruction, making one in every five Indian men and women either obese or overweight. With lifestyle disorders forcing more and more people to reel under excess body weight, even relatively younger people are developing joint disorders and knee pain. Excessive weight is associated with a series of health problems, including problems with blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular ailments. Yet another problem is that obesity puts people at an increased risk of developing osteoarthritis.
There is enough convincing evidence that suggests that diet and activity level are not the only factors contributing to steady rise in obesity around the world. Chemical "obesogens" may be the main culprits that may alter human metabolism and predispose some people to gain weight. Fetal and early-life exposures to certain obesogens may alter some individuals' metabolism and fat-cell makeup for life.
We blame weight gain on eating too many burgers and burning too little fat, but scientists are discovering that chemicals we're exposed to everyday could be a big part of the obesity epidemic. Called obesogens, or endocrine disruptors, these natural and man-made chemicals work by altering the regulatory system that controls your weight, thereby increasing the fat cells you have in your body, decreasing the calories you burn, and even altering the way your body manages hunger.
These obesogens encourage the body to store fat and re-program cells to become fat cells, prompt the liver to become insulin resistant, which makes the pancreas pump out more insulin that turns energy into fat all over the body and prevent leptin (a hormone that reduces appetite) from being released from your fat cells to tell your body you are full.
Obesity is strongly linked with exposure to risk factors during fetal and infant development. "There are between fifteen and twenty chemicals that have been shown to cause weight gain, mostly from developmental exposure," says Jerry Heindel, who leads the extramural research program in obesity at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
A growing number of people are unable to shed those extra pounds despite strict diet regimes and long hours of workout. Evidence shows that the toxins in the environment could be playing the spoilsport. They modify the body's physiology and make it difficult to lose weight. While the West is waking up to the complex linkages between chemicals and obesity, realisation is yet to dawn on doctors and researchers in India.
Now the question is where can one find them: The short answer: everywhere, particularly because high fructose corn syrup, which can be found in every kind of urban (or so called modern) food, from sodas to yogurt to pretzels, is an obesogen. The ubiquitous, gelatinous sweet stuff makes your liver insulin resistant and fiddles with leptin to increase your hunger, setting up a vicious cycle where you crave more food that is then more easily turned into fat.
Other more common places to find obesogens are:
Your faucets: Pesticides seep deep into the soil and find their way to the water table and into your tap water. The main obesogen in tap water is atrazine that slows thyroid hormone metabolism. Another culprit found in tap water, tributylin, a fungicide commonly used, stimulates fat cell production.
Cans and water bottles: Bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic estrogen used to make plastics hard which has been banned from baby bottles in the US, but is still present in many other plastics (especially sports water bottles) and the lining of most cans, has been shown to increase insulin resistance in animal studies.
Non-stick pans and microwave popcorn: Animal studies have shown that early exposure to a chemical used to make items non-stick - Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) - leads to obesity in later life. It also is known to affect thyroid glands, which are important regulators of hormones that control weight. Found mainly in products like Teflon pans, it's also hidden in microwave popcorn bags and pizza boxes.
Shower curtains and air fresheners: Phthalates are chemicals found in vinyl products such as shower curtains and fragrance products such as air fresheners that may lower testosterone and metabolism levels, causing you to gain weight and lose muscle mass. They're also found in vinyl flooring and industrial-grade plastic wrap used to shrink wrap things in the grocery store.
It is quite surprising that of all the modern trends that have been linked to ever-expanding waistline, portion size, more McDonald's, couch potato lifestyles, and some lesser-known possibilities, like air-conditioning, viral exposure, and lack of sleep, one of the weirdest is designer handbags. Lol!
If your branded clutch is making you fat, it would be because it contains, as at least some high-end handbags do, a new kind of chemical to worry about: that is regarded as one of the obesogens.
Obesogens are believed to work in at least three ways: first, by directly affecting adipocytes, or fat cells, by either increasing their fat-storage capacity or increasing their number; second, by changing metabolism, by both reducing the number of calories burned at rest and promoting the storage of calories as fat; and third, by changing the way the body regulates feelings of hunger and fullness.
Don't think you're avoiding them because you've never spent thousands for a purse. Obesogens are ubiquitous. If you've ever eaten seafood, plugged in an air freshener, handled a cash register receipt, eaten canned vegetables, sat on a couch treated with flame retardant, or cooked in a non-stick pan, you've already been exposed. Oh Yes!!! Taking showers with vinyl curtains count, too. Most alarming is new animal research that suggests that chemicals, to which your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were exposed, including the long-banned pesticide DDT, can cause you to gain weight, even if you've never been exposed yourself.
There are a few ways by which we can avoid obesogens to some extent:
Buy wild fish and meat products that are hormone- and antibiotic free. That is, we can buy meats straight from the butcher counter (instead of pre-packaged) and ask that they wrap them in brown paper. Install a granular activated carbon filter on your faucet to filter out chemicals such as atrazine. Use aluminum water bottles or those that are BPA-free and steer clear of plastics. Keep water bottles cool (warm temperatures increase BPA leaching) and never microwave plastic. Eat fewer canned foods. Opt for fresh instead. Get rid of your non-stick pans if possible.
If you must use a Teflon pan, never use a metal implement on it that can scratch the surface and release the chemicals inside, and throw away any scratched non-stick pans. Skip the air fresheners, open the windows, and try a vase of dried lavender instead. The United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has put part of the blame for obesity on 'Obesogenic environments'. In simple terms, environments that encourage people to eat unhealthily and not do enough exercise.
It is places, usually urban, that encourage cars over walking, says Prof. Mike Kelly, Director of NICE centre for public health. Many urban cities fall into this category nowadays. It is also buildings with lifts and escalators prominently sited and staircases hidden away, most modern shopping malls, residential complexes, and other such buildings.
Food is the other vital factor. High Streets and public places such as stations and cinemas are dominated by shops selling fried chicken, potato chips, burgers, sugary drinks, pastries and sweets. They are calorie-dense foods. The magnitude of the enticement is far greater today, says Kelly. And research shows that the number of takeaways in an area has an impact on obesity, he says.
Ok! You must have made an account of things that you would like to avoid in future. After all this brainstorming, the main strain comes from the fact that the primary obesogens remain the classics: grains, refined sugar, and seed oils (that cannot be avoided); inactivity; poor sleep; and chronic stress. And please, before you go installing a reverse osmosis filtration system to remove any obesogens in the tap water, allowing only chemical-free produce and meat to pass your lips to avoid all pesticides, banning all plastics from your home to avoid all potential xenoestrogens, handling only online receipts to avoid the BPA, catching your own fish with just your hands to ensure it's truly wild and to avoid BPA leaching from nets, and making your entire kitchen 'clean', to get the traditional obesogens under control. Let's give it a thought!!!
The fact is that we live in this world, and we have to deal with it. We need to breathe and drink, even if the air contains pollutants and the water contains obesogenic chemicals. Most of all, we have to live. We can't go through our lives scared of everything, afraid to do anything, paralyzed by over-analysis, saturated with stress hormones from worrying about everything we can't control or completely avoid.
Do the things you love to do, take the basic precautions (look for BPA-free products, use glass instead of plastic, buy organic and local when possible, limit the use of cosmetics or find or make natural products, spend time in nature away from pollution, avoid products that contain phthalates when possible, buy quality meat and seafood, burn incense instead of use air fresheners, those sorts of things), and don't freak out about things that are out of your control. You can't evade WiFi signals or cell phone radiation (but you can turn your cell phone and router off, if you worry about that sort of stuff).
The very fact that you're aware of them and take simple steps to avoid them puts you ahead of others, without all the added stress of outright militant avoidance.
Stay Healthy!!! |
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