In modern-times, overeating and sedentary activity can be viewed as cultural, psychological, or acquired addictive traits. Overweight attainability has recently been attributed to an ease of obtaining a calorie-rich diet and a growing ease of life. The behaviors of obese individuals has been deemed moral judgment and continued failures of “eat less, exercise more” approach has led research to be done in the realm of biological influences in obesity. Studies have indicated that there is a link between eating habits and altered neurochemistry in individuals who are obese. My senior capstone course addressed the issue of obesity and its relevant scientific research, but the importance of the topic has continued to allude me. To illustrate my convictions on the topic, I will first analyze the biological implications in obese patients, apply some of my moral justifications to the issue, and conclude with a complete exhortation on the topic of obesity.
Biology of Obesity
With a high calorie diet, a tendency to consume excess triglycerides (fats) is observed. Excess triglycerides disrupts our blood-brain barrier. Leptin lets the brain know when we are full. In obesity, individuals begin to develop insulin and leptin resistance, which shuts down the pathway. This happens because as your adipose (fat) tissue continues to accumulate, excess leptin is sent to your hypothalamus, overwhelm your neurons, and results in resistance. The result is a vicious cycle that compiles its effects in every step, and explains a biological contribution to the effects we see in obese individuals.
Moral Justifications
Modern-day figures, statistics, media, and the scientific community bombard us with factual evidence. This substantial information is intended to inform us in our life decisions, but to what extent? For the most part, information is secondary in importance to our personal decisions, the foremost being an application of morals. If you are sensitive to extreme conservative-type thinking, I would suggest clicking the back button and reading a different blog.
For example…
1) Being involved in competition is important. Competition is the heart of our growing society. Whether it be analyzing the free-market, acquisition of power (if you deem that morally important), or playing in your last high-school football game in hopes of winning a state title, extreme effort that comes from the individual. At some point, they decided to achieve something, and with that choice they undoubtedly made sacrifices and endured hardships.
2) Anything worth having is worth fighting for.
3) I hate to break it to you, but Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt walk by you and your parents while touring Rodeo Drive, and guess what, both your dad and mom’s autonomic nervous system got its work in for the day. Astonishingly, your parents don’t go and hit on these attractive movie stars, oh wait isn’t that pretty normal? The answer is yes, that is absolutely normal, but why? The answer is because your parents resisted their initial biological stimulus and applied a higher ideal of morals to their resistance.
4) ISIS is terrorizing the world on a daily basis it seems. Concentrated in the middle-east, a majority of this group could be eliminated with the use of atomic warfare which we have more than enough of. So why doesn’t President Obama just push the big red button? I’ll let you figure that one out.
Through these examples we can see a pattern of moral exhortation within individuals. Now lets talk about social and cultural influences in obesity… [cricket sound] …and that is all that needs to be said.
Again before I continue into the final section of my blog, these are my personal convictions. They aren’t yours, they aren’t your friends, they are mine. But also keep in mind as to what I said earlier that morals should guide most, if not all, of any personal decision you make in your life. Thus I deemed it appropriate to include them into my personal blog about an issue.
Exhortation
If I haven’t been obvious enough up to this point, even after understanding the biological contributions to obesity, I do not believe it is substantial enough to wholly cause the “disease”. In fact, with our current understanding of obesity, I believe it is morally wrong to continue to research the topic when those funds could be directed at research towards diseases/disorders that are not within the control of the patients. To bring my opinion in to context, I will illustrate an example that I have experienced through my involvement as a collegiate wrestler to great extent: After three days of drinking less than 4 oz of water with my two whopping meals for the day that didn’t exceed 6 oz of food, I can GUARANTEE that stuffing my face with as much calories and binge drinking would have rocketed my serotonergic system into another universe compared to that of any meal an obese individual has ever had. But wait, how did I make weight the next day? Oh yeah that’s because I held myself to a higher standard, a standard that overcomes biological desires on a daily basis in an attempt to achieve something great. In fact, these biological desires could even be called essential due to the extreme caloric skew I experienced while I was training for wrestling.
Even if an obese individual cannot tell when he/she is full, there is this thing called math. There are abundant resources on how much an individual should be eating on a daily basis. Calculating your BMI, looking at those elusive nutrition facts labels on all of our food, and applying those resources are a simplistic way to discredit any notion that “not knowing when your full” is sufficient for academic research. If an obese individual can establish a moral desire to be at a healthy weight, supplying them with these resources is all that should need to be done, easy as that.
BMI calculator: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm
How to read food labels: http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/LabelingNutrition/ucm274593.htm
Obesity and Biological Influence
