According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Obesity in the US affects 100.1 million adults and 14.7 million children.”*
Given the fact that in 2022 the total US adult population was almost 261 million, that means over one-third of our population is overweight.
With a statistic like that, there must be many factors that play into this prevalent condition.
Internationally recognized expert, Dr. George Bray, known as the
“Father of obesity research,” discusses this sensitive topic, its history, developments in the field, and the relationship between obesity and diseases.
“Obesity causes a lot of diseases. But not many diseases cause obesity directly,” Bray said.
The diseases linked to obesity include:
- Diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Heart disease
Bray’s early career focus, he said, was to “develop ways in which you could produce obesity in animals as a model and compare them to human models when they existed.”
He came up with three:
“1-Hypothalamic obesity (where you can get massive obesity);
2-Genetic diseases (leptin deficiency is a good example, which causes severe obesity before one year of age);
3-A very high fat diet – a diet consisting of 40-50% fat (which will produce obesity in most animals and humans).”
To the contrary when on a low-fat diet, “It is very difficult to be fat. Low fat diets just don’t produce obesity, period,” Bray explains.
Our society is filled with individuals who have many similarities, stark differences, viewpoints, behaviors, and habits. That’s one of the key features that make us individuals.
My personal hope though is that we as society members can become advocates for each other for the sake of our health.
This includes support, acceptance, and compassion.
Do you know anyone that doesn’t have a single medical problem, disease, or condition? In addition to that, have you contemplated that many individuals likely suffer silent battles? What about yourself? What do you keep buried inside?
That’s where obesity is different.
Obesity is a public, all-eyes-on-you, disease.
Bray explains, “One of the problems with obesity, compared to high blood pressure or heart disease, is you wear it on the outside. You can always tell someone who is obese.”
Obesity more often than not feels like an inescapable game with no end in sight.
He explained that there is a genetic and cultural component to obesity and “clearly populations in which fatness is very common – some of the Samoans, Polynesians, other islands.”
When does any negative stigma towards obesity start in individuals?
“A study was done originally in the 1960’s and replicated some 25 years later in children, preschool and school age,” as in: “What child would you like to play with?”
The response?
“The overweight child is almost always at the bottom of the beat,” Bray said.
“It is a strong and persistent bias against fatness that pervades our society from childhood on up,” he concluded.
How do we change that? What actionable steps can you and I do today to accept others no matter their weight?
In my eyes it should not be a heavy-hitting task. Obesity needs to be greeted with kindness, compassion, and the same human-to-human interaction and decency of any other body weight.
There is far more to individuals than meets the eye.
Please share this article with your community members.
Bray has played a pivotal role in obesity research and working to improve society’s health. He is a longtime advocate for patients and early explorer of the biology that underlies individuals’ personal struggles with excess body weight and the consequences which cascade therefrom. Bray has received significant awards throughout his career some including: The Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, Joseph Goldberger Award from the American Medical Association, the Stunkard Lifetime Achievement Award. He has authored/co-authored more than 1,700 publications.
Watch for more from Dr. George Bray in the coming weeks.
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