Obesity in 2008
Obesity continues to be one of the great problems of America. Unquestionably the most obese nation in the world, America has began to see more and more negative consequences of an obese population. Politicians have begun to fight obesity, often through legislation. Americans, on the other hand, must not want the world to think of chubby children eating Cheetos watching cartoons when they imagine America. Sadly though, this may be the exact image that our nation conjures. Our fight against the growing problem of obesity may be one of the most defining events of this century.
Adding fuel to the fire is a recent discovery that shows that obesity may act as a safety blanket for cancerous cells in chemotherapy medicine. To put it simply, fat cells have been found to “protect” cancer cells from destruction via medicine. The specific cancer studied was leukemia, and when combined with other studies, scientists are convinced that they may have found an answer to why obese children were more likely to relapse. Cancer is still medicine’s biggest mystery, and this discovery offers scientists significant information about the mysterious disease. At the University of Southern California, endocrinologist Steven Mittelman conducted an experiment that led to this discovery. Mittelman injected obese and normal-weighted mice with cells known to cause childhood cancer. He and his colleagues then treated the mice with a chemotherapy drug and found that the normal-weight mice were less likely to get “full-blown leukemia.” They then focused their studies on human cell lines and subsequently found that fatty cancer cells were much more likely to resist the chemotherapy drugs. The two theories derived from these studies are that fat cells either act as a sponge soaking up the positive effects of chemotherapy or send signals that prevent the death of cancer cells.
The discovered link between obesity and cancer has added another reason to the long list of reasons to fight obesity. Below are some of the other threats of obesity:
- Obesity is extremely dangerous to your health, and can severely affect your life expectancy. It has been linked to cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, and certain types of cancer. Being obese can make you more susceptible to these diseases and therefore reduce your life expectancy.
- Obesity has been found to reduce life expectancy by 6 or 7 years, and is noted as responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths per year in the United States alone. Lower BMI obesity has been found to reduce life expectancy by 3-4 years, while extreme obesity may reduce life expectancy by 20 years or more.
- The increased risk in physical and mental conditions is another threat of obesity. The biggest link of obesity to a medical condition is type 2 diabetes, where excess fat has been found in about 70% of diabetes cases.
- Social stigmization may be another unforseen threat of obesity. The stigmization of the obese, especially by the common public may cause depression and other mental conditions.
The discovery of the link between cancer and obesity has caused even more concern about the growing problem of obesity around the world. While cancer still remains cureless, the more we learn about its causes, the better chance we will have of developing preventive measures.
