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Medical reasons for weight gain and what they mean
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Traveler120 wrote: »
I've never seen a fat person in true starvation. Sure, they may be 'starving' as in they haven't eaten since lunch, but the images I've seen of starving children is where you can see ribs and joints and bones sticking out and practically near death. Their bodies use every last bit of fat available while maintaining essential functions of your heart, lungs, brain and organs until it finally runs out and starts compromising organ function which ends in death. In women, the body will shut off menstruation because it's not a priority but most other life sustaining functions will utilize your available body fat if you're not eating enough.nettiklive wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
It's never impossible to create a calorie deficit. But it may be impossible to create a deficit and still eat enough to get proper nutrition and/or not feel hungry most of the time.
But if your fat metabolism is screwed up...like the PP said..I wonder if you could be at a point where even the barest minimum calories you take in to survive will be stored as fat, while the rest of the bodily processes will be shutting down as if you're indeed starving.
Something to think about. Again it makes me think that CICO could be overly simplistic in some cases.
So, no, your body is not stupid enough to take what little food you're eating, store it all as fat, in addition to whatever fat you already have, and somehow choose to NOT use it for energy and instead shut down essential processes. Doesn't even make any sense or the animal kingdom would be extinct.
Well..maybe not in a healthy person, but in one whose hormones are disordered and body is not operating as it should?
Lots of illness don't really make evolutionary sense...allergies..cancer..yet they exist..
Also, if you look at the African starving children..yes they're skin and bones. But if you look at older women, who are likely starving just as much if not more (because women there do physical labor and are the last to get food after children and men), they will still often have some fat deposits around their belly, hips etc., especially if they've had kids. They're not likely overeating by enough to actually gain that fat yet it likely slowly accumulates as they get older anyways due to hormonal changes...1 -
nettiklive wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
It's never impossible to create a calorie deficit. But it may be impossible to create a deficit and still eat enough to get proper nutrition and/or not feel hungry most of the time.
But if your fat metabolism is screwed up...like the PP said..I wonder if you could be at a point where even the barest minimum calories you take in to survive will be stored as fat, while the rest of the bodily processes will be shutting down as if you're indeed starving.
Something to think about. Again it makes me think that CICO could be overly simplistic in some cases.
Someone who would gain fat while getting inadequate calories to live? Now you are talking a medical mystery type of thing. Can it happen? Maybe. Crazy stuff happens all the time, but it's going to be extremely rare. Like write your case up in a medical journal rare.4 -
nettiklive wrote: »Lots of illness don't really make evolutionary sense...allergies..cancer..yet they exist..
This is actually not true at all. Most illnesses are caused by germs which evolved to cleverly take advantage of holes in our armor and other flaws in our design. Other illnesses that are not caused by foreign living things which evolved to make us ill, are usually side effects of other things we've evolved to do. These make perfect evolutionary sense.
There's a great book about this called The Extended Phenotype.4 -
Nettiklive, I have experienced what you are talking about...gaining fat when it is absolutely impossible to gain it. I do have extremely messed up hormones, chronic illness and take medications. I wouldn't have believed what was happening to me if I hadn't experienced it; in fact, I didn't believe the evidence of my own body for quite a long time even as it was happening because I "knew" without a doubt that it was impossible.
Now, my current issue is caused by too many calories since the illnesses are being treated. But really talk of any doubt to the dogma of CICO really won't get you anywhere on these forums. It isn't socially acceptable.0 -
Tried30UserNames wrote: »Nettiklive, I have experienced what you are talking about...gaining fat when it is absolutely impossible to gain it. I do have extremely messed up hormones, chronic illness and take medications. I wouldn't have believed what was happening to me if I hadn't experienced it; in fact, I didn't believe the evidence of my own body for quite a long time even as it was happening because I "knew" without a doubt that it was impossible.
Now, my current issue is caused by too many calories since the illnesses are being treated. But really talk of any doubt to the dogma of CICO really won't get you anywhere on these forums. It isn't socially acceptable.
But are you sure it was fat, or could it have been water retention?1 -
It really all does come down to CICO. The only exception I can think of is MOMO Syndrome.1
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I've never seen a fat person in true starvation.
Do you work in medical care?
I work for a system of 6 hospitals and last month we had 2 patients with severe malnutrition/failure to thrive where the kidneys and liver started to lose function at a rapid pace because of their lack of food. They were both over 180 pounds and under 5'7 upon admission. You do not have to be stick thin for the effects of 'starving' to take it's toll on the body. It doesn't work like that in real life.3 -
Another thing, is I have read research showing that infants of mothers who were obese, had uncontrolled gestational diabetes or some other conditions during pregnancy were much more likely to be born larger and experience weight issues in the future. I have also known a normal-sized healthy mom whose exclusively breastfed baby was off the charts for weight, chubby babies are cute but she was so covered in rolls it looked really unhealthy. I don't know what her doctor said or whether she will grow out of it, but I think it just goes to show how much biology really does matter.
Also, if you look at certain genetic conditions, there are some that are marked by certain patterns of obesity, like in Down's Syndrome for instance.1 -
Cushing's causes weight gain in more than one way. First, it imbalances your hormones in such a way that calories are preferentially shuttled into fat metabolism. I want people who read that to think again about that for a moment. If you have Cushing's, your body will use every available calorie to create fat. At the expense of body functions. Thus, weight gain with this problem is not directly related to your food intake.
First, your body pretty much always uses "every available calorie to create fat." That's why we eat less and move more, thus making fewer calories available.
Second, since the calories that are available are a direct result of the calories you take in, weight gain with this problem is absolutely directly related to your food intake.
Even the article you link to doesn't say what you think it says; it just says that people with this condition are more prone to obesity, and explains why.
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xmichaelyx wrote: »Cushing's causes weight gain in more than one way. First, it imbalances your hormones in such a way that calories are preferentially shuttled into fat metabolism. I want people who read that to think again about that for a moment. If you have Cushing's, your body will use every available calorie to create fat. At the expense of body functions. Thus, weight gain with this problem is not directly related to your food intake.
First, your body pretty much always uses "every available calorie to create fat." That's why we eat less and move more, thus making fewer calories available.
Second, since the calories that are available are a direct result of the calories you take in, weight gain with this problem is absolutely directly related to your food intake.
Even the article you link to doesn't say what you think it says; it just says that people with this condition are more prone to obesity, and explains why.
The key phrase there is 'at the expense of bodily functions'. A healthy body is supposed to use calories to fuel bodily functions first, and only any excess calories are stored as fat. The body of someone with a disorder may be experiencing symptoms consistent with a severe deficit, like lethargy, cold, hair loss, poor immune function etc, and yet not be losing weight because the calorie 'pathways' are broken.
I think it makes total sense.
Yes, it's a direct result of your intake, but you have to have *some* intake, right? You can't eat 0 calories, or even 500. So you eat at a minimum healthy intake, say 1000 calories, but that's not enough to create a deficit because your metabolism is screwed. Is it not possible?0 -
xmichaelyx wrote: »First, your body pretty much always uses "every available calorie to create fat." That's why we eat less and move more, thus making fewer calories available.
Second, since the calories that are available are a direct result of the calories you take in, weight gain with this problem is absolutely directly related to your food intake.
Even the article you link to doesn't say what you think it says; it just says that people with this condition are more prone to obesity, and explains why.
Let me be more clear. With Cushing's, your body will preferentially make fat rather than shuttle glucose molecules to muscles and cells for use as an energy source. This does not happen in a healthy body, which prioritizes actually giving cells the energy they need. Rather than making ATP necessary for healthy cellular functions, a person who has Cushing's will experience lipid synthesis. This is the primary reason that Cushing's leads to problems in organs and tissues (bone, skin, muscle, neurological, etc).
This is why I said weight gain is only indirectly related to food intake on the first point; because the hormonal imbalance leads to weight gain that is disproportionate with the calories consumed.
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cwolfman13 wrote: »CICO is just the mathematical equation...there are things that can effect the equation...but that doesn't invalidate the equation. Certain metabolic disorders like PCOS, etc effect metabolism...so someone in that situation would have a slower metabolism than average...but ultimately it still comes down to consuming fewer calories than required...that's all CICO is.
Most of the medications and whatnot either make one ravenous so they overeat or they cause water retention
I am hypothyroid, and this is exactly what I tell other people with hypo who say it is impossible for them to lose weight. Maybe it has slowed your metabolism, but it has not made it totally irrelevant.
I can still find my maintenance calories just like anyone else and manipulate them to lose weight.5 -
FridayApril01st2016 wrote: »My mom has endogenous cushing's syndrome. It's absolutely awful. It went undiagnosed for many, many years after onset because her doctors dismissed her as a fat hypochondriac. When she was finally diagnosed (diagnosis confirmed at the Mayo Clinic) it was a relief.. but the untreated underlying disease had wrecked havoc with her body in so many ways.
Cushing's causes weight gain in more than one way. First, it imbalances your hormones in such a way that calories are preferentially shuttled into fat metabolism. I want people who read that to think again about that for a moment. If you have Cushing's, your body will use every available calorie to create fat. At the expense of body functions. Thus, weight gain with this problem is not directly related to your food intake.
Second, it upregulates hunger. So you have a one-two punch. There was a helpful review published recently on this topic.
Lee, Mi-Jeong, et al. "Deconstructing the roles of glucocorticoids in adipose tissue biology and the development of central obesity." Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA)-Molecular Basis of Disease 1842.3 (2014): 473-481.nettiklive wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »CipherZero wrote: »People overall seem to conflate weight gain and fat gain. Most medication weight gain is water retention. It's been my experience there's very few medications that cause fat gain, and those are ones that screw with satiation and/or cortisol.
So much this^^
Most people, especially on these forums, use "weight" and "fat" interchangeably as if they are the same thing. I saw this in a post on another thread just a few minutes ago. And we wonder why people are so confused.
The meds I'm talking about generally cause both water retention AND fat gain, as I mentioned, deposited in characteristic places.
What tomteboda said above about Cushing's.
The implications of this is that hormones can mess with metabolism to such degree that it is impossible to create a deficit even on extremely low intake. That defies the argument of some that everyone's metabolism is pretty much the same, give or take 200 calories or so, and that everyone can lose weight on a reasonable deficit (which is technically true but not achievable)
This is like saying, that it's impossible; to starve to death.
Well ... it is hard to starve to death .... it takes months and months of hunger and lack of food and in the end it's organ failure that does you in. My mom went through a man-made famine that the socialist communist Stalin caused back in the early 1930's. She litterally cooked rocks and roots from weeds and leaves into a tea to give her younger brothers something to put into their bellies. She didn't die, and neither did her brothers, but 4/5ths of the village she lived in did die. Her teas kept them alive even though they walked about with sunken faces and chest, visible bones in their arms and legs, ribs that looked like they could puncture the skin that covered them ... and bloated bellies ... because they all got huge bloat in their bellies.
Starvation is not a nice thing.1
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