Why You Are Not To Blame For Being Fat

Americans believe obesity is the biggest health threat in the nation today – bigger even than cancer. But though research shows that diet and exercise are insufficient solutions, a majority says fat people should be able to summon the will power to lose weight on their own. The findings are from a nationally representative survey of 1,509 adults released on 1 November by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, an independent research institute. The study, funded by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, found that concerns about obesity have risen. Just a few years ago, in a more limited survey, cancer was seen as the most serious health threat. Researchers say obesity, which affects one-third of Americans is caused by interactions between the environment and genetics and has little to do with sloth or gluttony. There are hundreds of genes that can predispose to obesity in an environment where food is cheap and portions are abundant. Yet three quarters of survey participants said obesity resulted from a lack of will power. The best treatment, they said, is to take responsibility for you, go on a diet and exercise. Obesity specialists said the finding went against evidence about the science behind the disease. It’s frustrating to see doctors and the general public stigmatizes patients with obesity and blames these patients, ascribing attributes of laziness or lack of willpower. Among the survey participants, 94% had tried to lose weight with diet or exercise, to no avail. A quarter of those people said they had tried five to nine times, and 15% said they had tried more than 20 times. Trying 20 times and not succeeding – is that lack of willpower, or a problem that can’t be treated with willpower.

Frequent Facebook Users More Likely To Live Longer

As our social lives have moved onto social media sites like Facebook over the past decade, there’s been a lot of hand wringing over what all that screen time might be doing to our health. But according to a new paper; time spent on social media could be associated with a longer life. The paper, published in the journal PNAS on 31 October asserts that the health effects of active online social lives largely mirrors the benefits of busy offline social lives. Researchers find that people with more friends online are less likely to die than their disconnected counterparts. This evidence contradicts assertions that social media have had a net-negative impact on health. The study’s methods were approved by three university and state review boards, but skeptics will more that Facebook itself was closely involved with it. Researchers have something’s in writing that they couldn’t interfere with the publication of the research no matter what the result was. They noted, though, that some at the company had been “pretty confident that they were going to find this result. The research confirms what scientists have known for a long time about the offline world: People who have stronger social networks live longer. The study was based on 12 million social media profiles made available to the researchers by Facebook, as well as records from the California department of health. It found that “moderate use” of Facebook was associated with the lowest mortality rate, and that receiving friend requests correlated with reduced mortality, but that sending friend requests did not. The paper fond that people with large or even average social networks lived longer than people who had very small social networks. The paper itself acknowledges the study’s “many limitations,” saying that Facebook is unique among social media websites and that its data might not be more broadly applicable. It also points out that its findings represent a correlative relationship as opposed to a causal one: There is no evidence in the paper that using Facebook has any direct effect on a person’s health.