How Will They Know When It's Over--When There Are No More Fat Ladies To Sing?

A cure for obesity would have serious repercussions. What would society do with fewer fat women and more beautiful ones? Quite a quandry that, what? This provocative newsrelease suggests the possibility of the end of obesity--with implications for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and above all, love. Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) promises to move mountains.

....CNTF protects against some of the effects of obesity.

It does this by activating an enzyme, skeletal muscle AMP kinase, which increases the ability of the body to metabolize fat and sugar. This work may lead to new strategies to reduce the risk of metabolic abnormalities associated with excess weight.

Dr. Steinberg's research shows how CNTF activates similar pathways to those stimulated by exercise.

"While hormones such as leptin were initially thought to be the cure-all for weight loss, they were later found to be ineffective in obesity due to the presence of proteins which inhibit their ability to stimulate fat metabolism," says Dr. Steinberg, a Canadian researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia. "Fortunately, CNTF's effects on fat burning are maintained."

Nearly half of all adult Canadians are overweight or obese and 26 per cent of Canadian children and adolescents aged two to 17 are overweight or obese. From 1985 to 2000, 57,000 deaths in Canada were associated with overweight and obesity.

"The incidence of obesity in Canada has more than doubled over the course of the last 20 years and is a major contributor to cardiovascular risk factors including diabetes and elevated blood fats," says Dr. Ruth McPherson, Heart and Stroke Foundation spokesperson and lipid expert. "Physical activity and healthy diet are important lifestyle factors in combating obesity. This study provides new clues on the regulation of skeletal muscle metabolism relevant to the treatment of obesity."
Source.

Exercise and wise nutritional choices are best, of course. But look at society. Children are taught to be tolerant of what should never be tolerated, and to have self-esteem when they have done nothing to earn it. Children are being taught to be ineffectual and indiscriminate consumers of the garbage that is fed to them by the pseudo-intellectuals in education and popular culture. Why should they not also be indiscriminate consumers of sugar and fat--so that their bodies become as fat-filled as their minds? Where is the drug that will cure that condition?

Only joking, of course. Go ahead, take a bite of that cookie. By the time you finish, you will be feeling right as rain.