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Just a counter-point. Count your blessings if you are naturally slender.
Do your research. There is not a single diet or procedure (weight reduction surgery, for example) - not a one- that has a proven long-term effectivness rate of more than 10-15%. JAMA just devoted a recent issue to the efficacy of diets. One of the most popular, Weight Watchers, had an average effectiveness of a SIX POUND weight loss after being on the program for TWO YEARS.
Most of you replying to this thread sound college-age. I sincerely wish you the best in maintaining those fine physiques as the ageing process kicks in and your metabolism slows down.
BOSTON (March 19) - Binge-eaters who say they can't help it may be right.
(AP) A study suggests a weak gene, not feeble willpower, may be the cause
for some people. The research may point the way to a future pill to tame
their appetites.
The joint Swiss-German-American study makes the strongest case yet that
genetic mistakes can cause an eating disorder, researchers say.
Traditionally, eating behavior has been viewed as complex and cultural in
its causes.
"Willpower is not always important to reduce weight. Some people can by
willpower. Some cannot, and I think these patients have a hard time,'' said
Dr. Fritz Horber, the leader of the binge-eating study at the Hirslanden
Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland.
Researchers have been trying to understand the reasons for an epidemic of
obesity, which raises the risk for heart disease, diabetes and many other
ailments. About 30 percent of American adults are obese, up from 14 percent
25 years ago, according to government data. The surge is widely blamed on
abundant high-calorie foods and sedentary lifestyles.
However, some researchers have also begun to link several genes to obesity,
implicating heredity as an important underlying factor. Increasingly, eating
problems are thought to stem from a subtle interaction of lifestyle and
multiple genes.
Probably the most common eating disorder, binge-eating strikes up to 4
million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Binge-eaters, who are usually but not always overweight, frequently and
compulsively stuff themselves - often in secret - and feel ashamed
afterward.
In this study, which was published Thursday in The New England Journal of
Medicine, the researchers focused on a gene linked to obesity in earlier
studies. Known as the melanocortin 4 receptor gene, it makes a protein by
that name that helps stimulate appetite in the brain's hunger-regulating
hypothalamus. If a mutated gene makes too little protein, the body feels too
much hunger.
The researchers considered 469 severely obese white adults - a quarter of
them binge-eaters. However, the disorder was much more common among the 5
percent with the mutated gene. All of them were binge-eaters, compared to
just 14 percent of those with no mutated gene.
In another study in the same journal issue, a British team reported finding
mutations of the same gene in more than 5 percent of 500 severely obese
children. The genetic link was so strong that the researchers could use
results from chemical tests on their genetic DNA to predict how much the
children would eat at a meal.
Horber, the Swiss researcher, said other eating disorders, including other
types of bingeing, probably stem from a variety of genes and environmental
factors. However, he said the still-unnamed binge-eating syndrome tied to
this gene is especially important because it is perhaps the most stubbornly
resistant to dieting and exercise.
Horber said the binge-eaters in his study felt a wave of relief from guilt
when they learned of the genetic cause behind their compulsion. Dr. Stephen
O'Rahilly, one of the British study's researchers at the University of
Cambridge, said one family in that study was so ecstatic over evidence of a
physical cause that they made themselves T-shirts saying, "We've got an MC4
mutation.''
Eric Ravussin, a Louisiana State University researcher on obesity genetics,
said, however, that without more biochemical proof, he remains "a little bit
skeptical'' that these mutations - and not others located nearby on the same
chromosome - are the syndrome's precise cause.
But Dr. Joel Habener, a diabetes expert at Boston's Massachusetts General
Hospital who co-wrote an accompanying editorial, said the Swiss-led study
demonstrates either the "genetic cause or a very strong association.''
And he agreed with the researchers, who said future drugs acting like the
melanocortin 4 receptor protein may compensate for the genetic defect.
Habener said such chemicals are apt to be small molecules that can be
delivered as pills.
03/19/03 18:00 EST
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