Darren’s Diatribe

Like nearly everyone else in the world, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to lose a few kg. It is making the bike rides harder than necessary, especially uphill

I read an excellent article in the 4th November issue of New Scientist about the causes of the current obesity epidemic. Obviously the two main causes are poor diet and lack of exercise, but there are many others which may be surprising.

Not Enough Sleep

Various studies suggest that people who get less than 7 hours sleep have a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) than those who get more than this. Over the past few decades, the amount of sleep we get has been decreasing.

Climate Control

If the ambient temperature is cold, your body uses energy to heat itself. If the ambient temperature is hot, your body uses some energy cooling itself (sweating). Because more and more of our time is spent in air-conditioned environments these days, this contributes to our weight gain.

Less Smoking

Smoking causes you to weigh less, apparently due to it being an appetite suppressant and causing an increased metabolic rate. The recent reduction in the number of people smoking is causing an increase in the number of overweight people.

Vicious Circle

It appears that if your mother was overweight during pregnancy (not just due to genetics), then you are more likely to be overweight too.

Demographic Changes

Heaver people have more children, therefore gradually changing the proportion over generations.

Older people tend to be more overweight. As our population “ages” (higher proportion being older), this increases the number of overweight people.

Certain races of people have a tendency to be overweight, and the proportions of these groups are increasing.

There is a correlation between the age when a mother has her child and the incidence of obesity. The average age of mothers has increased significantly over the past few decades.

Drug Side-Effects

Some drugs have side-effects of causing people to put on weight. More and more people are using these drugs, causing more overweight people.

Pollution

Low levels of various chemicals (pesticides, dyes, flavourings etc) appear to cause weight gain. These have all been increasing in usage.

When you consider that we are now eating more, eating worse food (in particular, carbohydrates), exercising less, sleeping less, living in controlled climates, smoking less, taking more drugs, have more pollution, having children at an older age along with the changes in the demographics, it isn’t surprising that there is an obesity epidemic. I am not sure what the solution is though…

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 9:36 am and is filed under Health, Food & Drink, Exercise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.