Obesity and Genetics
Yesterday I ran across a nice article in the New York Times, which is an excerpt from Gina Kolata's new book, Rethinking Thin. I'd heard the odd reference to fifty-year-old research from Jules Hirsch, a physician at Rockefeller University, that strongly correlated (70 percent-strong!) ( Read more... )
I suspect that as human understanding of human biology continues to advance, we'll discover that *gasp* all metabolisms aren't created equal, and they don't stay the same as one ages. The former is obvious. Some people are insulin resistant, and do much better on a protein and fat heavy diet. Other people get gout on diets like that. Also, Most peoples of the world are lactose intolerant after childhood.
As for metabolism changing with age, one need only go back to your previous post about vitamin B12 and the torturous chemical process by which it's digested, and how that breaks down with age. I tried B12. It seems to help.
The one biggest thing one learns when one sees a display like Body Worlds is that human bodies are not mass produced. They're variations on a theme, physically and structurally. Yes, we're all very similar, but our science is reaching the point where to understand how our bodies work, we must begin to contemplate them as individual organisms.
On a larger view, I have to wonder if we're reaching the limits of reductionist science generally: if perhaps it's time to reevaluate the scientific meme of reduce, experiment, generalize, and consider that above a certain resolution, generalization is no longer possible.
-Jim
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