Man has the easy way to fight the obesity epidemic

Those responsible for epidemiology, this science of medicine which studies the evolution of human health, are very pessimistic about the evolution of our weight and predict an epidemic of obesity that risks jeopardizing the global evolution of life expectancy and to make the bed for unpleasant chronic diseases for the daily life of those who suffer from it… Which gives pride of place to all the inventors of often eccentric diets and to a search for the pharmaceutical industry which yet blocks in front of what would be its new Holy Grail, the anti-obesity miracle pill!

However, the solution is known. We could sum it up by saying: it is better to run than to tighten the belt… This is what has been shown for more than 20 years by a large survey, which is called EPIC-Norfolk, and which at the beginning was interested in cancer. . A very important survey since it covered 20,000 men and women, who were weighed and measured. A DNA sample made it possible to determine their predisposition to obesity. From there, the scientists looked to see if an environmental factor like physical activity could influence this genetic susceptibility. The results amazed all the doctors: in these people, physical activity did reduce the genetic risk of obesity by 40%. Consequence: these people did not lose weight… they simply never put on weight. By using a universal and free remedy: physical exercise! These promising results made a lot of noise at the time because they gave doctors tools to guide them, both to prevent and to optimally manage chronic diseases such as obesity for which compliance is essential. that is, the ability to follow the advice and prescriptions of doctors, is difficult.

The rest of the story has unfortunately not confirmed these beautiful promises. Not because the results were false, but because the solution is slow to be implemented… This medical scoop, which for once did not concern the mouse, was the promise of getting better in a fairly short timeframe (around 20 years). ), because not only did we know how to detect very early before the damage… but above all, we knew the treatment.

Epigenetics

At the time, this study was one of the discoveries of the year. Which shed light on a very modern notion at the time: the way acquired by transforming our genes. The reason the children of hashish smokers suffer more from psychosis than others, why decades after a famine, the grandchildren of the survivors experience food problems has a name. Why women, pregnant during the events of September 11, 2001, in New York, gave birth to children whose cortisol levels remained much higher than normal (cortisol is a substance secreted under stress) is epigenetics, a new discipline of medicine, which offers an explanation and which burst into the eternal debate between the innate and the acquired.

This means that some diseases are not due to a big change in genes, but to very subtle and individual mutations which will probably be present in the offspring from the following generations.

In the theory of the evolution of species that over millions of years transformed fish into humans, it was not believed that lifelong changes were possible. Epigenetics aims to find the marks of the environment, drugs or events of our existence, on the genes of each of us and individually.

The difference between genetics and epigenetics is the difference between writing a book and reading it. Once the book is written, all copies sold will be the same. However, each reader will have a slightly different interpretation of the story, which will spark personal emotions and projections in them as they read. In a very comparable way, epigenetics would allow several readings of a gene, giving rise to various interpretations, depending on the conditions in which each of us is placed.

The book on the fight against obesity is open, but for readers who are currently blind …