The real takeaway from this research is that AMPK manipulation in the manner demonstrated here is categorically not an exercise mimetic because it does nothing in healthy individuals. A real exercise mimetic would extend median life span, since that's what exercise does in mice.
Other strategies that end up showing altered AMPK levels along the way have been shown to extend life and improve health in laboratory species. It is very complex, and researchers are very far from understanding how even very reliable and straightforward ways of slowing aging work. E.g. calorie restriction. Studied for a century, no comprehensive explanation of how it works yet.
This, along with tiny beneficial effects, is the reason we should largely ignore all of these efforts to throw drugs at metabolism in the hopes of lengthening healthspan. It is a grand waste of time, because even if wondrously successful the best you could hope for in the next few decades is something that is outperformed by actually exercising or practicing calorie restriction.
What a waste of billions of dollars that will be. Yet that's what is going to happen, judging by the willingness to fund this sort of work. It is like the research and development community has learned nothing from the outcome of fifteen years of sirtuin research.
If we want to see radical life extension in our lifetimes, it is going to come from SENS and the like, deliberate targeted efforts to repair specific aspects of biochemical damage that cause cell and tissue dysfunction. Not random drugs mined from the natural world, but elegantly engineered biotechnologies that do exactly what they are intended to do. You might look at allotopic expression of mitochondrial DNA for example, as developed by Gensight at the moment ( http://www.gensight-biologics.com/ ). The problem is identified, and a precise fix applied to cells via gene therapy to make exactly the problem and only the problem go away.
That is the future of medicine. Yet the regulations and inertia behind the old drug development pipeline is very resistant to change. We'd better hope that the disruption represented by Gensight and other similar efforts takes hold, because we're going to age and suffer just like our parents and on pretty much the same schedule if it doesn't.
This is kind of a straw man, isn't it? I realize the article leads with "exercise in a pill," but it's really about a compound that might help treat obesity and type 2 diabetes. Effect on lifespan/healthspan is only implied (via treatment of disease).
Edit: you might also want to be a little more up-front about your apparent involvement with alternative avenues of research.
It leads with exercise in a pill because AMPK manipulation is broadly expected to be a path towards an exercise mimetic. Go do some background reading on AMPK and related proteins and pathways and their effects on longevity and health in lower animals.
What I find annoying about this reporting is that it is being spun as a success when by all measures it is a failure. It is a failure in exactly the same way sirtuin research was a failure, in that it only appears to produce benefits in metabolically abnormal individuals, and even then they are not high quality benefits. Meaning it isn't at all what was aimed for: the researchers have failed in even their original modest goals of slightly slowing aging by recapitulating the broad effects of exercise.
Of course you can still make a profit selling very marginal treatments for type 2 diabetes to people who have that condition because they are obese and thus metabolically abnormal. This is a condition that can actually be reversed right up until very late stages by dietary restriction ( http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/db11-1835, http://www.bbc.com/news/health-13887909 ), for all that few people appear to either know or be willing to act on that knowledge. The sort of therapies that might result from AMPK manipulation would be terrible in comparison to the outcome of just eating less. But that has nothing to do with making real progress in medicine.
Medical research in general is so very vulnerable to disruption: you have entrenched groups producing terrible products at massive cost under heavy regulation in the midst of a revolution in the underlying technologies and plummeting costs of creating new knowledge and therapies. Something has to give.
What does "treat obesity" even mean? Obesity is a self-inflicted issue. Consuming more calories than you burn is all it is. Nothing more. Obese people need to have their food intake restricted. There is nothing to treat.
Well, I wrote 'help treat obesity'. There are existing drugs used alongside diet, exercise, counseling, etc. to help treat obesity, and this compound could potentially be an alternative to those.
It's also not certain that obesity is self-inflicted 100% of the time. Google 'obesity microbiome' and you will find research showing particular gut flora which triggers obesity in mice. Consider that e.g. gut flora are often transferred from mother to child, and that in general the bacteria in your gut have to come from somewhere.
Regardless, there's no reason to deny an avenue of assistance to an obese person who wants to lose weight. Simply asserting that they need to stop eating so much is very similar to asserting that an an addict (which is what this actually is, IMO) should just consume less. It usually doesn't work, we know it usually doesn't work, and continuing to just assert that it's that simple is, at best, ignorant.
No, but "An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest" by Turnbaugh, et al. (which has been cited over 2,000 times) shows that it decreases energy going out in feces.
Although I don't agree with you, the way you put this is unnecessarily antagonistic.
I'm 6 foot tall, I used to weigh, at peak, 340 pounds. After exactly one year of diet modification alone (I chronically under-exercise), I weighed 214 pounds, and now weigh about 190.
I did not reduce my caloric intake, instead I removed all foods that are known to screw with human biology, and decided to follow the Paleo diet: no grains (pasta, bread, cereal, corn, etc), no legumes (peanuts, peas, beans, soy, etc), no seed oils (vegetable oil, corn, canola, soy), no refined sugars, no dairy (to reduce hormone and lactose intake; I limit myself to small amounts cheese and full fat greek yogurt only).
What I do eat? Meat, vegetables, fruits, the aforementioned limited fermented dairy, mushrooms, and if I weren't allergic to them, I could add nuts to that list as well. I use healthy fats like bacon fat, coconut oil, and olive oil instead of seed oils. I also limit myself to one cup of coffee a day, and sometimes even then I don't feel like one, I don't really need it anymore.
My caloric intake has not really changed (it has always been between 1500 and 2000 a day), yet the fat just melted right off. The whole obsession with caloric intake (unless you're clearing 3000 calories with low physical activity) doesn't fix obesity: chronically low caloric intake (below 1500 calories for an extended period) makes your body think it's starving to death, and it will refuse to release energy from your fat cells and start hoarding it instead.
In other words, unsafe caloric reduction for long periods may cause weight gain in some individuals already suffering from some form of metabolic disorder (including prediabetes and diabetes and just being morbidly obese).
Yes, I agree there is nothing to really treat: eat foods that promote the proper functioning of your body, drop the ones that are known to cause chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders, and with grains in particular, the fact they contain phytates and protease inhibitors in very unsafe amounts (both cause malabsorption of nutrients).
Did you rigorously log your caloric intake before and after your diet changed? If not, there's not enough data to conclusively state that your switch to Paleo was anything other than a simple calorie restriction.
This kind of post is something i usually read at Reddit when something related to fat people are being discussed. And of course, many of them appear to have "a metabolic disorder". A post with a whole bunch of undocumented claims is something i do not expect here at HN.
You lost weight, therefore you either reduced calorie intake, or you burned more calories. If you somehow broke the laws regarding energy, you have discovered some magic formula that will make you rich.I am going to assume that you did not discover the magic formula as there is none as per now.
No wonder people have issues figuring out how to loose weight when they find claims like:
- "foods that are known to screw with human biology"
- "My caloric intake has not really changed, yet the fat just melted right off."
-"... caloric intake doesn't fix obesity"
- "chronically low caloric intake .. makes your body think it's starving to death"
" unsafe caloric reduction for long periods may cause weight gain in some individuals ..."
" ...foods that promote the proper functioning of your body"
".. drop the ones that are known to cause chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders"
DiabloD3 almost certainly limited caloric intake at some point (at intake or somewhere in digestion). But your comment doesn't address some complexity in the way the body processes food, or in the food itself. For example, eating 200 calories of refined sugar is considerably worse in terms of your eventual absorption of energy than eating 200 calories of banana. This is at least partly because the banana consumes more energy in digestion, and partly because less of the energy in the banana will actually eventually be absorbed by your body.
Parenthetically, the banana will not generate a considerable spike in blood sugar, something that, as I understand it, is very unhealthy.
While it's not an awful rough guide, nutrition is not as simple as calories in vs. calories out. Better perhaps if you're counting the calories in your stool, but who's going to do that? (And besides, that still wouldn't be a complete solution).
Also, in case you're reading this DiabloD3, congratulations. A drastic and I'm sure extremely challenging lifestyle change. I'm happy to hear about such a success story.
See, there lies a small problem: I can't measure caloric burn usefully. I can measure what little exercise I do, I can measure a rough amount of what it costs to merely be alive, but I can't measure beyond simple observations like that (I imagine such things can be measured, it is just invasive and expensive).
Intake really hasn't changed, I ate 1500-2000 calories a day then, I eat 1500-2000 calories a day now. I didn't log it, but I did a lot of rough estimates based on things I regularly ate then, and regularly ate now. The only difference I've found is I feel like I'm eating more food now than I did then; but it's because carb-rich food is rather energy compact.
Also, thanks. I only tell my story when someone has gone off the rails quoting the FDA party line of "caloric intake is 100% why you're fat", when it's a massively complex issue; and even with my lengthy reply, I feel I did a disservice in how complex the issue is.
I tried reducing caloric intake, eating lots of "whole grains", limiting meat intake, all the stuff the FDA has recommended for decades: I only kept getting fatter. Caloric intake alone cannot explain why the world is getting fatter: what we're eating clearly does when my diet has worked for so many people, me included.
I broke the laws of energy. Ok, not really. I was gaining weight because I was starving my body of nutrients, so it was storing everything as fat. I stopped eating crap and started drinking health shakes several times a day and started taking multi-vitamins. I have increased my caloric intake and have been steadily losing weight for two years now. It is not a diet, but a permanent lifestyle change. I feel better and have more energy. I don't log things in a scientific manor, but I don't really need to. My reduction in weight and increase in energy is all I need.
Agreed. The ethical implications of this also need to be considered. As much as I hate the "think of the starving children in ___" trope, artificially increasing your matabolism is increasing the amount of calories humanity needs to produce, and if use becomes widespread, could add up to a significant amount.
I have never been obese. I am 45 years old in a couple of days and I can see my abs. Unfortunately, I have a genetic defect that affects my metabolism, giving me a intermittent and profound fatigue every now and then. After reading, thinking and talking to dozens of doctors about the whole metabolic process, I have come to the conclusion that obesity is indeed a disease.
In the same way, when fatigue kicks-in, I just cannot avoid being tired: I am not lazy, I exercise every day, I eat clean and sleep 7-8 hours every single night but I just cannot avoid being tired. For casual observers, they will think that I am a lazy, but the truth is quite different. This same analogy applies to obesity.
If the function of the pill is solely to mimic exercise, then it does not offer any new treatment. Obesity and diabetes can be treated just as well right now, and the treatment is exercise.
> "the best you could hope for in the next few decades is something that is outperformed by actually exercising or practicing calorie restriction"
That would still be a monumental achievement (probably in the billions of dollars range) if a practical treatment came out of it. Most health costs don't come from healthy people, after all. A lot of people don't exercise and very few people practice calorie restriction.
But if there is other research that would work better, then the opportunity cost is high too.
There are far far more people willing to take a pill then exercise or caloric restrict. If this allows those people to survive long enough for more radical form of life extension, it could save many, many lives.
Actually, calorie restriction has shown to provide life extension in every species tried so far except for one highly over-referenced rhesus monkey study that were contradicted by a later study[1]. Human study results are much more difficult to obtain due to our average life span lengths.
Also there was a recent article that made it to the front page of HN talking about a positive study of intermittent fasting's longetivity-related benefits - which is probably a closely related or identical phenomenon (my guess).
To our knowledge, only one study investigated the effects of long-term CR (with a diet of reasonable quality) on health and longevity in nonobese humans and a control group (24). This study was conducted in 120 men, of whom 60 were randomly assigned to the control group and 60 to the calorie-restricted group. The control group was fed ≈9600 kJ/d. Calorie-restricted subjects received 1 L milk and 500 g fruit every other day, which led to an overall mean energy intake of ≈6300 kJ/d (or a 35% restriction from the intake of the control group). This regimen was implemented for 3 y. Stunkard (25) reanalyzed these data and reported less time in the infirmary (123 compared with 219 d) and a nonsignificant difference in the death rate (6 compared with 13 deaths) in calorie-restricted subjects than in control subjects, respectively, which suggests that chronic CR may prolong life span in humans.
>has no effect in humans
This is true in practice for most people. "Calorie restriction" is a misnomer. It should be called "calorie unavailability". Research has show that if the food is there in your fridge but you choose not to eat it, you don't get any benefits. The body and mind have to believe it is starving.
It certainly has documented effects on weight, blood pressure, insulin, etc. What you mean to say is that while it's been amply proven in lower species to extend lifespan, lifespan extension has not been proven in humans as of now.
Don't have much to say about how the compound affects your metabolism, but I'm weary of any kind of 'workout pill'. For years I too hoped that were would be some machine or pill that would automatically get me ripped without having to put in the conscious effort. However, once I finally got into the habit of exercising, I think what was more valuable than the results on my body was the habit of pushing myself to the limit every time and going beyond my comfort zone. It's something that touches everything you do.
From what I've read, in general the oral prohormones are harsher on the body as far as side effects. Some of the oral prohormones kill the liver & kidneys, which is why "real" steroids (hormones) are injected into the blood stream, which just trades off for different side effects, like higher risk of heart disease. Doing actual exercise feels great & lowers risk of heart disease. If some miracle breakthrough was discovered, I'd probably abstain & continue to just exercise. It seems like we never understand the true side effects of these things until decades later.
as good old chap Arnold once said, no pain, no gain. working out in any way goes much deeper than bigger muscles and better cardio system (and denser bones, and stronger joints, and...). one of most interesting side effects is that once you regularly push yourself from any sort of comfort zone into sweating-like-pig (or even better with climbing, pushing yourself over your fear or death which is pretty darn strong emotion), repeatedly, routinely, something strange and beautiful happens (well it did to me). you start taking life's challenges with a smile, not fearing them, rather taking them as a mean of improving oneself. I could go on, but I presume you get the picture.
No pill is ever going to supplement this. And as you write, I would be also extremely surprised if this doesn't have multitude of nasty side effects on various parts of our bodies.
But if you look around you, ie how much cash flows into diet supplements/losing weight business, yes it will be probably success. People are lazy, too busy etc. and are looking for quick solutions for their issues, rather than actually investing some time.
Yes, they use this stuff as supplements, but thing is that they do real exercise. If you think that a pill is gonna make you healthier than 1-2h of daily exercise you're in for a surprise... These journos and their misleading reports...
> Among the many advantages to using the mouse as a model organism, the most important is their striking similarity to humans in anatomy, physiology, and genetics. Over 95% of the mouse genome is similar to our own, making mouse genetic research particularly applicable to human disease.
I failed to get my hands on the actual research paper so I'm relying completely on the article's description of the study. To my unscientific eye it seems that the only thing altered between the control group and the test group was diet. Both were given "Compound 14". The test group that was fed a high fat diet showed better results. Claiming that it's thanks to "Compound 14" seems a little bit unscientific.
What I would like to know is:
1) What did the normal diet look like?
2) What would the results be like if both the control and the test group were fed the exact same diet from birth?
3) What are the researchers' biases?
4) Who is funding the research?
This sounds like a great enabler drug! You can eat more junk food and not gain more weight, even if you don't exercise, as long as you take this pill! If this does ever get sold as a pill, it may make billions for the people selling it, the junk food companies, and other drug companies that will benefit from the side effects this does not completely eliminate from your poor diet and lack of exercise, not to mention the side effects the pill itself will have. I can't wait!
Not sure why this comment is being down-voted. It is an easy out for obese people to continue on their over-consumption of food which could lead to other problems.
If this compound truly does "mimic exercise" it would change the world. The average lifespan would skyrocket and we could be so much more efficient due to overall health and almost no time wasted for exercise.
Bravely we move towards the day where we can just eat, eat and eat all day while staying alive to eat more!
But why not start working on an implant that stimulates our pleasure centers directly, at the push of a button and omit the eating part altogether! We'd not even have to lift our arm to our mouths! Just get a Soylent drip feed!
Why do we need a substitute to a healthy, balanced life? I'm sure its an amazing piece of science, but how is this better than being physically active? As a person who exercises, am I supposed to be considering this instead of my current lifestyle? And if not - if it wouldn't be a better option for me - then how could it be a better option for anyone else?
Exercising takes a really long time. If I wanted to be physically active, I need to allocate a big chunk of my day towards exercising, which means I need to give up something else --- something I actually enjoy.
One thing that physically active people tend not to realise is that not everybody finds exercise enjoyable.
I am not particularly unfit; I do various physically active things; but for me, regular exercise is horrible. I find it an utterly miserable experience; uncomfortable in every possible way, and worst of all, incredibly boring. And it never gets better. A while ago I made myself train up and enter a 10km race, and completed in a reasonable time. As I progressed, the only thing that changed was that I was capable of prolonging the discomfort for longer. That's a negative feedback loop! I was so glad when I actually completed the race and could finally stop.
I am so, so jealous of people who actually enjoy doing this crap.
So if there's a side-effect free way of getting the health benefits of exercise without having to put up with an hour a day of tedium and lactic acid reaction, that would be amazing.
Is it possible you're doing it wrong, or maybe we have different understanding of what "really long time" is?
I exercise 4 times per week, and my workout lasts 40-60 minutes including shower and clothes change. This includes pre-workout stretching, strength training and some static / balance exercises.
I try to use my time as effective as possible, so I'm almost never idle. I superset my exercises, i.e. do a rowing exercise, immediately followed by a pressing exercise. But some rest is still required, so I do a stretch or a balance exercise, i.e. working on handstands while resting.
This lets me include 6-8 exercises for 2-4 sets each in about 30-40 minutes.
Now you may say 4 hours per week is still too much. If I was seriously pressed on time, I would reorganise my training to only exercise each body part at most 1 time per week, thus combining 4 workouts into 3 shorter or even 2 longer ones, bringing the time down to 2.5-3 hours per week. I may stop exercising smallest muscles, such as biceps, directly.
Anyway, following my schedule I consider myself in a very good shape for 41, I'm 178cm/74kg, around 10-12% bodyfat if not less, can bench about 1.3 times my bodyweight, squat over 1.5 and deadlift over 2 times bodyweight.
Maybe you haven't found the right exercise? I'd rather stick needles under my fingernails than go for a jog, but happily spend 90 mins+ 4 times a week strength training.
Or maybe a sport might be more fun? Tennis, ulimate frisbee etc.
Competition sports I find a complete turnoff --- as soon as I find myself facing off against anyone else I instantly lose interest. (It comes from very bad experiences of mandatory exercise at school which basically taught me that I always lose.) I've tried weight training --- spent six weeks doing ~45 a day when my local gym had a special offer. That was even more ghastly; I'd find myself watching the clock desperately wanting it to be over.
The point I'm making is that exercise is not fun for me, and while I appreciate the effort, attempts to persuade me otherwise are doomed to failure. (The endless, banal music the gym played didn't help.) What was worse was that there was no objective way to measure progress so I didn't even know if it was doing anything.
(That said, I do enjoy hill walking (== hiking), but that's even more of a time sink and not something I can do on a daily basis. It's also strictly low-output aerobic.)
> What was worse was that there was no objective way to measure progress so I didn't even know if it was doing anything.
I agree that not being able to measure progress is horribly demotivating. But I find the opposite, that exercise is one of the few areas in my life where I can objectively measure progress. For example:
Body weight
Resting heart rate
5k run time
Longest distance run without stopping
Max weight / number of repetitions / duration for strength exercises
These are all objective measurements which can be tracked over long periods of time and directly correlate with the amount and quality of training that one does. I have found that this is the best long-term way to motivate myself.
Well, only the first two are objective --- the others are all way too subjective, as they depend horribly on how motivated I am. Even the objective measures are hugely variable, so in order to get any actual data, I have to measure trends over months, rather than weeks.
Being told that I need six months' work before anything measurable happens is not really something I find motivating!
One of the things you get to track improvement on with exercise is the ability to motivate yourself. It is part of you improving your physical and mental health, not unwanted noise.
For me when I started exercising seriously I started noticing I was consistently beating my personal bests [1] after about 2 weeks. It doesn't take 6 months. I even started feeling great from the cardio on Day 1.
[1] Running times over a set distance, and amount of pushups/pullups/situps in a row. If I actually recovered properly it would probably take even less time to beat the initial records.
I also didn't have great experience of team competition as a kid. I've since learnt that kids can be introduced to sport far more inclusively and positively, and now enjoy coaching my kids sports teams. But my own activities remain largely solo, uncompetitive and somewhat introspective - there are plenty of very physical activities that fit this bill, and you don't have to go anywhere near a gymn (which I personally don't like at all). Think surfing, skating, climbing, cycling, hiking, kayaking... You can get a great workout without "working out".
Are you willing to make the same claim about other addicts, smokers, alcoholics, drug users, sex addicts, and so on and so forth?
In all cases when you perform a behaviour your brain releases chemicals which make a person feel better, these chemicals which should be associated with behaviours which improve survival prospects can become addictive (in particular in a world where we have unnaturally high access to things which were scarce during our evolution, like rich foods).
Now in the cases of illegal drugs this is the intended effect, and without argument they're some of the most addictive substances we know of.
But it is utterly absurd to simply dismiss the mental health aspect (addiction, depression, etc) of obesity and call it a straightforward choice. It might be a choice to you and I, but by definition we aren't addicts. Just like with alcohol or sex, we can do it without the need or drive to OVER do it, addicts cannot...
I do find in recent years and completely against all evidence, bigotry has come out strongly against people struggling with food addiction. I legitimately feel like it is nothing more than attacking the mentally ill, nothing more.
>Are you willing to make the same claim about other addicts, smokers, alcoholics, drug users, sex addicts, and so on and so forth?
As an addict, yes. Every time you indulge it is a choice... Just like every single one of the 100 OCD times I check if my door is locked at night is a choice... If someone walked up to me and said "I'll give you 20$ to not drink today" I'd not drink that day, it would be annoying and I probably wouldn't be able to fall asleep for a long time, but I would do it. And if you want to claim that "doesn't make you an addict" well then, I guess I don't know what you call it when you drink at least a 6pack or a bottle of wine a day for 10 years is.
>Now in the cases of illegal drugs this is the intended effect, and without argument they're some of the most addictive substances we know of.
Nice blanket statement. I'd love to see someone get addicted to Mescaline or LSD; I'm fairly positive it's impossible. Not because of a physiological argument, it would just be downright mentally excruciating, just 3 days in a row and I toss the towel. And it's just obviously not the intended effect for lots, like rohypnol, ketamine, dxm.
And go ahead and strike that "illegal" bit out. If you think your doctor writing a little rx for it makes it not addictive (in many cases intentionally addictive), you're wrong. And what makes coffee different from coca? What about the neuroeffects of cocoa? You're entire life is drugs, drawing some silly line in the sand with "illegal" is just juvenile.
People who have no idea what they're talking about love to chime in on subjects like this. "Oh it's their choice" or "Oh it's impossible for them to make choices" or crap like that. It's a choice the same way studying maths for 10 hours before an exam is for most people -- yes, you can obviously do it, but most people give up after 15 minutes and just skim at their desk. No one runs around calling them mentally ill, when they are legitimately doing their entire life lasting harm by not becoming maths literate. And it's exactly the same chemical interaction, dopamine and serotonin pathways; you don't get that flowing with maths studying, but you do with video games or blasting bongs.
Addiction is a stupid label that people and politicians use to demonize behaviors that they dislike. I think that we should solve obesity the same way we solve smokers and other "distastefuls": public shaming, banning from public spaces, specially marked 'fat zones,' etc.
BMI and fat percentage have nothing to do with why flights want heavy people off. It's purely because of the weight. A 200 pound 6 foot male costs the same as a 200 pound 4 foot female.
Spend a little more time hitting the books instead of the weights before posting stuff like this next time.
In this context: I have no health problems so its fine by me. Meanwhile it is a great injustice on others. Not to mention the fact that once you start allowing limits there will be no end to them. Can't walk, guess you can't fly. Too slow? guess you can't fly either. What happens if you ever end up having health issues?
You are correct in noting that obese people are "mentally ill." They are not "diet resistant" nor do they have "slow metabolisms", PCOS, or thyroid problems.
Massively obese people have "slow metabolisms" after losing large amounts of weight. This change in their metabolism is independent of changes in lean mass or body composition[0]. This makes reaching a normal weight much much harder for them than for people who are a normal weight to stay at a normal weight.
Do you really think that 1/3 of the population is "weak-willed" or has other moral failings that means that their problem is not worthy of spending public money on? Solving the obesity epidemic is much harder than people simply becoming "better" or "choosing" to stop being obese. If this were the case less than 5% of the population would be obese.
Next time you do something you enjoy. I want you to not do it. Yeah you heard me, don't do it. Then continue to not do it for six months. After that time continue to never do it again. That's right never, even if the corporations market it right into your waiting arms or someone hands it to you with no effort on your part. I want you to never do it again, oh and by the way we will all hate you for it and nobody will help you get through this.
Now your probably thinking "Fuck this guy". Guess what, your addicted to whatever that was. An addiction is an addiction no matter how much your religiously deny it. To call it a disease is debatable, but unimportant.
Finally, anything that Quacks like a duck and looks like a duck is a duck right? Well then if lots of people die from a thing, and it is easily linkable to obesity, than clearly treating it like a plague is justified.
> You are correct in noting that obese people are "mentally ill."
Thanks for saying, but that's a little in opposition to what you said earlier (that it is a "choice"). By definition the mentally ill don't choose to be that way (and by extension neither do the obese).
I feel like we've tried and tried to address obesity with diets, but that's like trying to stop a sinking boat by bailing out water. Bailing water might keep you afloat for longer, but it doesn't plug up the leak that got you there to begin with.
Obesity is the same. Diets might keep them "afloat" for longer, but without dealing with the underlying addiction that caused the problem to begin with, you're only delaying the problem not solving it.
Which isn't to say there are easy answers, but some studies have used a combination of counseling, antidepressants, and monitoring to achieve compelling results[0]. It isn't a magic bullet however.
PS - You can either come at addicts with hate/disdain or sympathy/compassion, I choose to do the latter. "There but for the grace of God go I"
People who are addicted can "quit any time they want". If you have ever known an addict, and tried to get them to quit, this is a common phrase that you will hear them say. When they actually try to act upon their words they will nearly always be unable. They are so deeply ingrained in the habit, escape, or feeling of their addiction that they cannot escape it. Even if they do beat the odds, the chances of relapsing are just as high.
To make matters worse, a lot of people don’t recognize addiction as an illness. They seem to think that being addicted is a choice and that a person deserves everything that they are doing to themselves. Rather than assisting them in getting help, we pass the blame to the person who is addicted and tell them that they are there by choice and that they should just “STOP”. This leads to them not being able to turn anywhere for help because they can't be addicted, they are doing this to themselves, and so they continue to consume their addiction and hate themselves for it.
So now we turn the topic back to food addiction. We have a bunch of food addicts who have nowhere to turn because their addiction is not acknowledged. Hell, their addiction is downright shameful in the public eye. At least if they were addicted to heroin or cocaine people would understand, but since it’s food, no one does. Even though everyone every day sees addicts all around them in America. Even though lots of people are addicts themselves.
Sure they can try to eat less, or be told to eat less but it won’t help. No one believes that it is an addiction and no one will even acknowledge his or her pain. So they go deeper into their addiction. This is further compounded by that fact that corporations want them to consume more and more. If heroin was legal, and nobody saw heroin as an addiction, you can bet that we would have tons of heroin addicts everywhere. The companies would sell it as the new wonder drug, and everyone else would support them in their mass genocide.
Now even if we assume that it is a choice (which I disagree with), should it not be in the best interest of the public to keep companies honest? To force them to test everything that goes into consumer products rigorously before it hits the shelves? Why should money not be spent to keep the corporations from killing/maiming people second/first hand? Why do we protect corporations and not people? Why does an entity have more rights to live than a human?
Furthermore, it is ridiculous to say that we should never spend the public’s money on an issue that consumes and claims so many lives. Should we not try to find a solution to cancer because it does not affect you or others around you? Yeah we should only do that when/if you get it (/sarcasm). Any research or solution to a problem that is claiming a lot of lives is worth the time and money of the public. Who knows how many geniuses have come and gone because their life was snuffed out early, due to vehicular accidents, food, or other addictions? Who knows how much of peoples’, and by extent humanities’, time has been wasted by poverty and addiction. Why is apathy and scorn the norm for other people? Why can’t we just be compassionate and do our best to help everyone? Why can’t we just care?
The social implications of this get very scary when you look at it down the road. If we crack the code and really don't need to work out to stay fit some day, it would change a LOT in terms of mate selection, to say the least. Not sure how soon it will actually happen though.
Other strategies that end up showing altered AMPK levels along the way have been shown to extend life and improve health in laboratory species. It is very complex, and researchers are very far from understanding how even very reliable and straightforward ways of slowing aging work. E.g. calorie restriction. Studied for a century, no comprehensive explanation of how it works yet.
This, along with tiny beneficial effects, is the reason we should largely ignore all of these efforts to throw drugs at metabolism in the hopes of lengthening healthspan. It is a grand waste of time, because even if wondrously successful the best you could hope for in the next few decades is something that is outperformed by actually exercising or practicing calorie restriction.
What a waste of billions of dollars that will be. Yet that's what is going to happen, judging by the willingness to fund this sort of work. It is like the research and development community has learned nothing from the outcome of fifteen years of sirtuin research.
If we want to see radical life extension in our lifetimes, it is going to come from SENS and the like, deliberate targeted efforts to repair specific aspects of biochemical damage that cause cell and tissue dysfunction. Not random drugs mined from the natural world, but elegantly engineered biotechnologies that do exactly what they are intended to do. You might look at allotopic expression of mitochondrial DNA for example, as developed by Gensight at the moment ( http://www.gensight-biologics.com/ ). The problem is identified, and a precise fix applied to cells via gene therapy to make exactly the problem and only the problem go away.
That is the future of medicine. Yet the regulations and inertia behind the old drug development pipeline is very resistant to change. We'd better hope that the disruption represented by Gensight and other similar efforts takes hold, because we're going to age and suffer just like our parents and on pretty much the same schedule if it doesn't.