Overweight and obesity is the single biggest threat to your health. This is not because it tops the list of risk factors for disease (although it is generally within touching distance of number one spot in most cases), but because it’s still seen as a bit of a joke. With children it’s often dismissed as ‘puppy fat’. In adults, well, it gets a bit more complicated especially with the advent of fat acceptance movements, an area I wish not to get involved in, far too much ego-driven posturing from both sides of the divide. In general most people try to avoid other obvious causes of disease such as smoking or because retro is cool; building our homes entirely out of asbestos, but body parts covered in excess fat, such as the colloquial ‘bingo wings’ are seen as some oddly tenuous objects of jest.
Partly due to this mental disconnect over 60% of the adult population in the UK has allowed themselves to become overweight or obese. Our kids aren’t faring too well either, almost a third of them are also in this condition.
People are still under the illusion that excess bodyfat is merely a cosmetic issue. I personally couldn’t care less about the aesthetic basis for arguments, after all ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. Although there are evolutionary drives that influence attraction, it is heavily biased by subjective idiosyncrasies. So stepping aside the shallow ‘tis and ‘tisn’t arguments of superficially conceited individuals whom can’t get past their own hubris, let’s subjugate our ego’s and delve a little bit deeper.
Although the idea was first batted about in the 1950’s, it has only been in the last 20 years that researchers have discovered concrete evidence that the adipose tissue (fat cells) that makes up your bodyfat is not merely a storage warehouse of potential energy. It is actually part of a neuro-endocrine system that secretes a number of hormones that intimately control the functioning of your body. Once released these hormones proceed to affect every other organ and system in your body. We now know that when bodyfat gets above about 18% in men and 22% in women the leverage of this system begins to dominate, and the distorted chemical message starts to cause the whole body to degenerate.
Think about what happens when, for instance, another endocrine gland such as the Thyroid becomes over- or underactive, and sends out too strong of a message or doesn’t send out enough, both situations if left untreated, result in life threatening complications, yet we don’t treat bodyfat with the same reverence. In addition to under appreciating the severity of the problem to my knowledge there also isn’t a movement seeking personal, social and medical acceptance of people with goitres, although I have the perfect mantra for them to use ‘Wear your Goitre like an Accoutre’.
The hormones that Adipocytes (individual fat cells) secrete are called Adipokines, around which an emerging field of science is starting to build up a huge and rapidly expanding head of steam, especially since the mapping of the human genome in 2003. You may have even heard of one of these adipokines called Leptin which was discovered in 1994, we’re only just starting to get a handle on its workings.
Although the science on the Adipokines is fairly recent, we still have a fairly good idea how to modulate some of them for better or worse. However, I won’t be able to give you a good enough account of the science and keep the length of the article bearable, so I’ll truncate that side of things here and do a separate piece on each of the main players at a later stage.
What I would suggest is to get your bodyfat percentage measured (not your Body Mass
Index), if it’s above the aforementioned figures provided you may, it’s entirely up to you, want to consider taking steps to reduce your bodyfat towards these levels, as it’s one of the main variables you have within your control that will influence your health.
At the end of the day it’s your body, you can do what you like with it. If you are comfortable with yourself and are happy to accept the consequences, that’s all good too. After all, there’s always a silver lining, as I was once told it’s just ‘more cushion for the pushing’.
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