May 3, 2021 — Obesity is a highly heritable condition. But in the general population, genes only explain about 40 to 50 percent of the variability in BMI. How can both of these things be true? Work to understand the causes of obesity spans a century. So scientists have learned a great deal about the genetic inheritance of obesity […]
February 14, 2021 — Good cardiovascular health is simple, says the American Heart Association. Just follow Life’s Simple 7. It’s the AHA’s trademark guide to good health. Four ideal health behaviors and three ideal health metrics. The metrics are cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose. The behaviors are eating healthy, being active, not smoking, and having a BMI less […]
November 24, 2019 — Who dunnit? That was the essence of the debate between Sadaf Farooqi and John Wilding at the Society for Endocrinology BES Conference in Brighton, UK. Some very smart people have a tough time wrapping their brains around nature, nurture, and obesity. So Farooqi and Wilding took opposite sides of a simple proposition: This house believes […]
April 19, 2019 — Facts are stubborn because they’re real. Two new studies in Cell today shine a light on a basic fact about obesity that we’ve known for decades. Obesity is a highly heritable condition. Roughly 70 percent of a person’s risk of obesity is driven by the genes they inherit. But some people work awfully hard to […]
April 21, 2018 — The Daily Express is doing a fine job of upholding a strong reputation for promoting fat shaming in the UK. The tabloid managed to find a sensational guilt trip in three Lancet articles this week on women’s health. The headline was: “Unhealthy lifestyles of mothers-to-be could wreck the lives of future generations.” But the real bottom line […]
April 11, 2018 — A colleague recently asked: How do you keep doing what you do in the face of so much awful stuff? By awful stuff, she meant flagrant examples of weight bias. Like the Guardian’s recent Op-Ed by Lizzie Cernik, proclaiming “It’s not fine to be fat.” The short answer to our friend’s question is this. Bias […]
December 5, 2016 — A new study in Obesity debunks the notion that people can’t handle the truth of genetic obesity risks. Catharine Wang and colleagues conducted a randomized, controlled trial of telling people about their genetic and lifestyle risks for obesity. They found that: Those who received genetic risk alone had greater intentions [to lose weight] at follow-up, compared […]
