BY dR. DAVE HEPBURN | DECEMBER 26, 2012
The obesity culprit
“Just great! Little Billy Bloggins came to school spreading his cold around and now we’re all going to get fat. That little cesspool of viruses sneezed in my direction and the next thing I knew I was heading for the Ho Ho’s. Suppose I should’ve got that fat vaccine.”
“Absolutely. That blubber booster has kept me as trim and thin as an Olsen twin.”
Obesity vaccine? Medical research has astonished us by revealing that infections have turned out to be the unlikely cause of several common diseases. Peptic ulcers, cervical cancer and rheumatic heart disease are just a few examples of illnesses actually caused by viruses or bacteria. In addition, bugs may well be responsible for Tourette’s syndrome, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disease), diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Don Cherry, heart attacks and now even obesity.
The common human adenovirus, the same bug responsible for many routine infections like the cold, is the obesity culprit. Some strains of this virus have now been confirmed to increase the amount of fat in animal fat cells. Obese folk, it turns out, have a higher incidence of the adenovirus antibodies circulating about their bloodstream than skinny folk. While not known just how much of a role/roll the virus plays in the epidemic of obesity we are currently experiencing we do know there has been a dramatic doubling of this disease, not unlike an infectious epidemic, in the last 30 years.
Q: “So Dr. Dave, how do we avoid this adipogenic adenovirus?”
A: “We can prevent most viruses by getting into the habit of washing our hands when we’re exposed to germy environments like malls, schools or Sudbury.”
Q: “Will there be a vaccine against obesity?”
A: “Possibly. But in the meantime, exercise and eat properly.”
Q: “No vaccine yet! I hate dieting and frankly I find this news so depressing I’m tempted to perform a little self medicating with Peanut Bustercillin.”
Eh: “But that would be emotional eating and you absolutely must avoid that.”
Q: “Hey, I’m an emotional guy; watch me smack you across the head with this fruit rollup. I hate diets.”
A: “Well then why not consider the no diet diet. According to the researchers in the food sciences faculty at BYU we should consider becoming “intuitive eaters” instead of calorie counters and fat measurers. Eat whatever you want but only when you need to. Eat when you’re actually hungry, stop when you’re not. It’s not so much what you eat but when you eat; in other words when you need to.
Q: “If I tried that I would intuitively weigh about 600 pounds. I get intuitive every time I see a Krispy Kreme hamburger.”
Permanent weight loss requires attitude: Learning to eat to live rather than live to eat. We need to train ourselves how to be more in tune to use eating to satisfy hunger rather than to satisfy Jenny Craig. In fact, an Intuitive Eating Scale has been developed to help you recognize when to eat. How you score on this scale determines how you score on the intuitive bathroom scale. Professor Steven Hawks of BYU decided to try it himself and without restrictive or restraining dieting he lost 50 pounds in a year.
Nothing to sneeze at.
Dr. Dave's book The Doctor is In(sane) is now available for those with a sense of humor and half a sense of health.
