The NEAT effect: non-exercise activity thermogenesis and weight control

Health

The idea of sitting being the new smoking is that evidence is mounting that sitting is unhealthy. In particular, being seated all day at work is an unhealthy practice. Constant sitting has a number of negative health outcomes, including back pain, reduced longevity, obesity and a number of other conditions.

NEAT is "non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is energy that one needs to perform basic, everyday tasks such as doing dishes, standing in line or grocery shopping. When you are seated, you are not burning NEAT calories as efficiently, because the body has been signalled to basically stop using calories; in other words too much sitting conditions the body to being even more sedentary. NEAT helps to control weight because NEAT activities result in many more calories being burned in a day. Someone whose job entails them to be on their foot and relatively active can burn 1000 calories more than someone who spends the day seated, and this is at a minimum.

The video "Is eating healthy food making you fat?" has the premise that eating healthy foods leads people to eat more and exercise less. Consumers are motivated to exercise less. They also argue that many "diet" foods are just as unhealthy as "normal" foods, leading to consumer confusion. I do not agree with the premise, however, as it is based on logical fallacy. It is not the eating of healthy foods that makes people fat, but rather the choices that people make subsequent to the eating. Those are independent choices, and have no link with the food choice. It is just as easy for somebody to exercise more after eating "healthy" foods. It is not the food that made the bad choice, but the person, and the person's decision is where the fault lies.

2. The premise of the article "Denial." is that one contributing factor to obesity is that people often do not realize that they are obese. The idea is that obesity is a "new normal" and this skews people's ability to comprehend the weight problems that they have. "New normal" equates with denial because of the way that it skews perceptions. This is not particularly ground-breaking stuff at all. Evidence of this normalizing of obesity is everywhere. First, in most places there are a lot of obese people. Obesity is declared an illness (i.e. something that happens to you, over which you have no control), and one can get a handicapped sticker for their car because of obesity. When you are surrounded by obese people, and society enables you at every turn, this is not going to help. Most people think of fast food as a legitimate dining option, something that you partake of multiple times per week -- society's attitudes towards food have normalized the pathways that to obesity. Most American communities are built for cars to a degree such that is difficult to perform daily chores of life without driving everywhere. So nothing about this article surprised me -- Americans are completely and utterly in denial about their obesity issues, and that is not going to make it better.

3. Inflammation a natural response to an injury and becomes worse as we age. Overactive inflammation can cause pain, can cause heart problems, can kick-start other diseases like Alzheimer's or diabetes, and there may even be a connection between inflammation and cancer. The five factors that are associated with metabolic syndrome are a large waistline, a high triglyceride level, low HDL cholesterol level, high blood pressure and a high blood sugar level. Weight loss can help with most of these factors. Weight loss is directly associated with the size of one's waistline (the waistline is actually a proxy for BMI, but one that discounts those with high BMI on account of being weightlifters). The other factors, such as one's cholesterol level and blood pressure, are associated with weight as well. Lower weights correlate with lower blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides. By lowering one's weight, the risk of these other factors in metabolic syndrome are lowered as well. Exercise helps to generate weight loss by increasing the amount of calories that one burns.

4. The article "Do Probiotics ... " discusses the role of microbes in digestion, and whether or not probiotics help with this. There are trillions of microbial cells in the digestive tract, and one argument is that oral intake of probiotics does not deliver enough to overwhelm the natural microbes. The probiotics would not be in sufficient dose to be effective by that line of reasoning. Studies have shown that probiotic effects are modest at best, and typically would only be seen with a large number of servings. Thus, while many companies market probiotics, the evidence that supports them helping to colonize the digestive tract with so-called "good bugs" is somewhat thin. The procedure that worked at the end of the article was a fecal transplant. This worked on a patient with chronic C. diff infection. Arguably, this is a red herring because probiotics are typically used casually be consumers without medical advice, whereas a C. diff infection is a pretty serious medical issue. The two things (minor indigestion and C. diff infection are not comparable). But yes, it was a fecal transplant that worked.