What is Diabesity?

Environmental Toxins, Obesity, and Diabetes

Continued from Yesterday

The parallel increase in our environmental toxic burden and obesity must be addressed on a policy level and in the clinical treatment of diabesity. Environmental toxins interfere with glucose and cholesterol metabolism and induce insulin resistance.8 Toxins induce obesity and insulin resistance through multiple other mechanisms, including inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial injury, altered thyroid metabolism, and impairment of central appetite regulation.9

The most recent example of how toxins induce obesity is the dramatic increase in obesity in babies. In 2006, scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health found that rates of obesity in infants less than 6 months old have risen 73% since 1980.10 This epidemic of obesity in 6-month-olds is not related to diet or lack of exercise. Babies live on breast milk or formula and love. They don’t say, “Hey, Mom, take me out for a 1200-calorie McDonald’s breakfast or a giant tub of buttered popcorn.” Clearly, watching too much television is not a risk factor. So what is the cause? It appears it may be the load of environmental toxins in their little bodies.

Mounting evidence points to a unique and unappreciated trigger for obesity—exposure to small traces of environmental chemicals in the environment. The average newborn has 287 chemicals in the umbilical cord blood, 217 of which are neurotoxic. The chemicals these infants are exposed to include pesticides, phthalates, bisphenol A, flame retardants, and heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic.11 These chemicals have a broad range of negative effects on human biology. They are neurotoxic, carcinogenic, and now it seems, obesogenic.

A 2008 study found that a petrochemical study that lines water bottles and canned food containers, increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and abnormal liver function.12

Data from the government’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2002 found a very striking correlation between blood levels of six common persistent organic pollutants (petrochemical toxins) and diabetes.13 Those who had the highest serum levels of pollutants had a dramatically higher risk for diabetes.

Studies of Air Force veterans of the Vietnam War found that those who had been exposed to Agent Orange (dioxin) had a much higher risk for diabetes.14

Canadian Aboriginals15 and Great Lakes sport fi shermen16 both have higher rates of diabetes from eating contaminated seafood. The ubiquitous exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as p,p’-diphenyldichloroethene (DDE), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) has been linked to obesity and diabetes.17

Toxins interfere with and slow metabolism and contribute to weight gain and diabetes. A larger population study published recently in Environmental Health has confi rmed this fi nding. In the study, higher levels of organochlorine pesticides were found in those who suffered from diabetes.18

C0ntinued Tomorrow

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