What is Diabesity

Environmental Toxins, Obesity, and Diabetes

Continued from Yesterday

Heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic also cause diabesity. A recent article in JAMA linked arsenic exposure to increases in the risk of type 2 diabetes.19 Other data link mercury from fish consumption, dental amalgams, and vaccines through multiple mechanisms including enzymatic disruption, impaired glucose transport, oxidative stress, induction of inflammatory cytokines, and mitochondrial injury.20 This suggests a new model of potential treatment for diabetes and obesity. A comprehensive detoxification program for petrochemical and heavy metal toxins may be an effective addition to the treatment of diabesity.

Toxins induce insulin resistance by interfering with the function of a class of nuclear receptors called PPARs (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors) needed for optimal insulin function, glucose control, fatty oxidation, and regulation of inflammation. 21 Using new techniques of genetic and metabolic analysis, researchers have shown how toxins cause increases in glucose, cholesterol, and fatty liver.22

While observational data are suggestive, newer experimental data confirm causality between environmental toxins and obesity. New evidence shows that weight gain can occur in the absence of excess calorie intake. In a recent study, rats given toxic chemicals gained weight and increased their fat storage without increased caloric intake or decreased exercise. In 6 months, these rats were 20% heavier and had 36% more body fat than rats that had not been exposed to those chemicals.23

This is no longer something that can be ignored. The data are clear enough. The body burden of persistent organic pollutants (plastics, pesticides, industrial petrochemicals) and heavy metal toxins must be addressed in public health policy and in any treatment program for diabesity.

This is not a fringe idea of radical environmentalists. The National Institutes of Health, the US Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Academy of Sciences recently convened to examine this new phenomenon of obesogens—toxins that cause obesity.

The sustainability of our environment is directly connected to the sustainability of the health of the global population. The connection between toxins and their effects on metabolism are well established. The link between our addiction to energy, industrialization, and the millions of pounds of chemicals and heavy metals released every year into our environment and the epidemics of chronic illness from which we now suffer should make us all stop and think about how we live and the choices we make every day in the food we eat and the products we purchase. There is a role for a new ecological intelligence in the production and consumption of products and services.24

http://www.alternative-therapies.com/

http://www.depsyl.com/

http://back2basicnutrition.com/

http://bionutritionalresearch.olhblogspace.com/