Overweight is not a fate

Overweight is not a fate. Through sport and a healthy lifestyle a genetic predisposition can be lowered.

(01.08.2010) Even if people have a genetic predisposition to „Get fat“ It does not automatically mean that sufferers also suffer from obesity. Rather, obesity depends on how much one moves physically and what kind of lifestyle one cultivates. This is reported by a recent study by the Department of Epidemiology of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge.

The researchers reported in the science magazine „Plos Medicine“, that a genetic predisposition leads to overweight quickly, but can be reduced by about 40 percent, if you maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. The scientists around Ruth Loos examined around 20,000 subjects. The investigations compared the genetic dispositions of the participants with each other. It became apparent that every single genetic risk factor increases the body weight of an average person by 592 grams. If the participants were physically active despite their genetically overweight predisposition, the genetic dispositions to overweight hunger were minimized to 364 grams. From this it can be explained that healthy ways of life can reduce the risk of overweight. This was also explained by Study Director Loos: Obesity is not a fate, but can be controlled consciously. As a basis for the calculation, a statistical model person was used, which was 1.70 meters tall.

It can be determined by the study that despite a personal predisposition to obesity, the genetic disposition can be compensated by 40 percent through sports and healthy eating. In the test series, the study participants carried between six and 17 of the genetic risk factors in the genome. The different effects of the dispositions were subsumed when further risk factors were added. That is, the more factors complement each other, the greater the predisposition to overweight. The factor could be calculated by the statistical model of a 1.70 meter "average person". For active people it was 379 grams below the average, for completely inactive with 592 grams above. That makes a difference of 36 percent. The lifestyle thus influences to a large extent, whether someone is suffering from obesity or not.

The scientists now want to pursue the question of how far the western ways of life and the genetic components are related to each other. Because for years it has been observed that in the western industrialized countries, the average body weight of people is constantly increasing. People eat more and more calorie-rich foods and move less and less. The proportion of those who suffer from severe or even obesity is steadily increasing. The question now is whether the genetic factor is to predispose to „Get fat“ was only triggered by the Western lifestyle or at least favored the genetic factor. Further studies are now to follow to verify the assumption. (Sb)

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Image: Rainer Sturm, Pixelio.de