BESITY AND OVEREATING: CHICKEN AND EGG, PART II By Peter Mangiola Rn Msn

OBESITY AND OVEREATING: CHICKEN AND EGG, PART II

OCTOBER 24, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT

In the first part, we talked about how the idea that people are fat because they overeat is exactly backwards — the fact is that people overeat because they are fat. Now we’ll take a look at the leading concept of how we get fat in the first place.

What Isn’t True

The obvious idea — that eating fat puts fat on your body — is simply wrong. There are dozens of studies that prove that dietary fat (fat into your mouth) is processed by your body and used for a wide variety of chemical purposes that range from building up cell walls to processing certain vitamins to being burned for energy. But what fat doesn’t do is cause your body to excrete insulin. Remember from Part I what insulin does? Right — it tells your body to create fat. So if eating fat doesn’t tell your body to create fat, what does?

Sugar.

Insulin, Resistance, and Fat Development

When you eat sugar, it is rapidly assimilated and added to your bloodstream. But excess sugar in your blood can damage your tissues and organs; that’s what makes diabetes a dangerous disease. So in a healthy body, the body executes the “get rid of the excess sugar” protocol: it releases insulin, which causes a series of reaction that packs that sugar up and stores it — in your fat cells.

Now, in a healthy person, those fats are released when needed, and the hunger hormones we mentioned in Part I aren’t produced until the fat stores have worn down to the body’s base level. But in a huge number of people, for reasons that science is still arguing over, there’s a glitch. Either the hunger hormones are produced before they’re needed, or the hormones that tell the body to access the fat in the first place aren’t functioning properly.

Whichever it is — and we don’t honestly know — the result is the same: your body packs on fat every time you load up on sugars (or, more accurately, carbohydrates, including rice, bread, pasta, and basically everything that American food uses as a vehicle to get the important part into your mouth.) And while that fat keeps getting added, it never comes back off like it does in a healthy body.

So you don’t get fat by eating fat. You get fat by eating sugar — which happens to be the single cheapest and the single most addictive kind of ‘food’ in the world. And once your fat, your hunger hormones cause you to overeat. Is it any wonder, given how cheap and addictive sugar is, that we have an obesity epidemic in the United States?

ADULT ADHD: DO I HAVE IT? PT II: HYPERACTIVITY by Peter Mangiola Rn Msn

ADULT ADHD: DO I HAVE IT? PT II: HYPERACTIVITY

OCTOBER 24, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT

In Part I, we talked about the ‘attention deficit’ part of ADHD; today, we’re talking about hyperactivity. What does it mean, as an adult, to be diagnosed as clinically hyperactive?

The ‘Hyperactivity’ Part

Unlike a child, adults rarely ‘bounce off the walls'; hyperactivity manifests very differently in people who have fully developed brains. Instead you might hear people say ‘Dude, chill out,’ or, ‘Can’t you just wait?‘ On the flip side, adult hyperactivity can lead to intensive, unwavering focus on particularly stimulating activities, so you might hear ‘Can’t you put it down and pay attention to meinstead?’

Adults who show just five of the following symptoms (as before, kids must show six or more) are diagnosed as “hyperactive.”

1. Frequently fidgets, taps hands or feet, wiggles, or squirms.
2. Frequently cannot remain seated.
3. Frequently feels restless; the desire to get up and move is so intense as to be distracting.
4. Frequently cannot remain quiet during leisure time.
5. Frequently acts as if “driven by a motor”; is always “on the go.”
6. Frequently talks too much.
7. Frequently blurts out answers before the question has been completed.
8. Frequently cannot patiently wait for his or her turn to come.
9. Frequently butts in on conversations or games uninvited or out of turn.

Mixing and Matching

It’s possible (and actually common) for an adult to receive a diagnosis of ‘ADD’ — qualifying for the attention-deficit part of ADHD without any hyperactivity. ‘HD’ — hyperactivity without attention deficit — is rarely diagnosed in adults (though common in children.) And of course the combined diagnosis of ‘ADHD’ is readily found in both adults and children.

The diagnosis is important in helping your doctor assign the right medicine for you. It’s also important in helping a behavioral or occupational therapist find the right set of therapy and counseling for you. While most of the outside world won’t know or care about the difference, clinically (and personally) it’s important to know what you have.