Could Genetics Merely Give People Another Excuse For Their Morbid Obesity?

Could Genetics Merely Give People Another Excuse For Their Morbid Obesity?

by

Don Saunders

Gastric bypass surgery is a lifesaver for a growing number of people as the problem of obesity continues to sweep across the western world but its biggest problem is to be found in the fact that a sizeable number of people either fail to lose a reasonable amount of weight following surgery or subsequently regain much of the weight that is lost initially.

Of course there are a number of explanations for this failure to lose weight or to regain weight and at the top of the list in undoubtedly the fact that far too many people simply find it too difficult to make the lifestyle changes needed following surgery and simply eat themselves back to obesity. However, scientists have now discovered a genetic component that might explain some people’s failure to lose weight following a gastric bypass.

In a study involving in excess of 700 severely obese patients blood samples were tested for two single nucleotide polymorphisma (SNPs). In simple terms a SNP is a human DNA sequence, variations of the pattern in which could indicate how people will develop diseases and respond to such things as vaccines and drugs. Without going into the details of this particular study which are complex to say the least, the scientists concluded that approximately twenty percent of the people examined showed a combination of specific SNPs that indicate that they are at risk of not merely failing to lose weight following weight loss surgery, but could in fact be at risk of putting on weight.

The problem we face today is not mainly that of finding a solution for those people who suffer from obesity, but of stopping obesity in the first place and this is essentially a matter of education. There is no question that a minority of people are susceptible to obesity and genetics and other similar factors could well play a role in this. Nonetheless, by far the majority of the obesity which we nowadays results from nothing more than poor eating habits and a lack of sufficient exercise.

The true problem however is that when people have reached it is human nature to look for any reason for their excessive weight that takes away that guilty feeling brought on by the fact that they might just have created the problem themselves. Now what better excuse could you give someone than to tell them that their excess weight is genetic.

This is not to say that research into SNPs is not valid or to suggest that there is no genetic component to the failure to lose weight or to gain weight after weight loss surgery. The danger however lies in publishing this data too early in the research process and to simply hand people yet another excuse for not dealing with their obesity at a time when obesity is at epidemic levels and most worrying of all is increasingly being seen in very young children.

Research is vital and needs to be given its place in the scheme of things but we need to be careful that it does not sidetrack us from the need to tackle the problem of obesity by educating people to change their eating habits and take more exercise.

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