Body weight Flashcards
(184 cards)
What is energy balance?
When energy intake equals energy expenditure
Why was BMI created?
- In 1930s incurance companies wanted to determine how likely someone was to die
- The best determiner of this was BMI
What is the healthy BMI range?
17.5-25
Either side of this likelihood to die increases exponentially
How do you work out BMI?
Kg/m^2
What BMI is clinically obese?
Above 30
What is a different way to look at body morphology besides BMI?
Waist to hip ratio
What are the good values for waist to hip ratio for men and women?
- Men, less than 0.85
- Women, less than 0.80
When over 30 BMI what are some co-morbidity risks?
- Diabetes x7 in men and x28 in women
- Cardiovascular disease x3
- Sleep apnea x3
- Some cancers such as ovarian, uterine and bowel
How much a year does it cost the NHS to treat obesity comorbidities?
10 Bill
What has caused the increase in obesity over the years?
Genes haven’t changes much therefore the changing environemnt and where the genes are acting is causing this.
What is the hetirability of obesity?
70%
What did GWAS of BMI show?
- Certain loci have different associations with BMI
- Lots of different genes involved
- Willer et al 2009
What was an exciting gene discovered in GWAS studies and why?
- FTO
- Huge amount of variation in terms of BMI but changes are small
- In KO mice, only 1-2% change
Where are genes showing associations with BMI expressed?
In the brain
Where are genes for waist to hip ratio found?
Expressed in adipose tissue
Who discovered the importancce of the brain in metabolism?
- Clause Bernard
- Stimulated different parts of a dog brain
- If stimulate a part of the spinal cord, increased circulation of blood glucose
What happens in patients with cancer causing the expansion of the pituitary gland?
- Frolics syndrome causing obesity
- KO pituitary in dogs- no change in body weight
- The pituitary is pushing against the hypothalamus
What is the dual centre theory?
- 1940s did a set of experiments, made bilateral electrolytic lesions in the ventromedial hypothalamus
- Rat got fat
- If made in the lateral part, the rats lost weight
- During the 1990s they could identify the neurons in these areas which were a good basis for the theory
What is the homeostasis and set point theory for body weight?
- There is a sensor
- Controller (hypothalamus?)
- And effector (eating, metabolism)
- These cause a body weight set point like blood glucose levels and temperature homeostasis
Does the homeostasis and set point theory for body weight hold up?
- No
- More variation per person in weight, if there was a set point, there wouldn’t be obesity
- Cannot measure our body weight intrinsically
What is the settling point theory?
- Body weight is determined by input and output
- The level of output (energy expenditure) is determined by weight
- If eat more, weight increases and so will energy expenditure as have more tissue to maintain (direct proportion)
- If eat less, energy expenditure goes down
- We reach a settling point as body weight is proportional to unregulated input
What is the dual intervention point model?
- The settling theory holds between a certain range
- If body weight is too low, we hit the lower intervention point- cannot lose more weight as won’t grow, reproduce and will die
- If body weight is too high we hit the upper intervention limit. Would become a prime target for predators and cannot hunt etc
- Genetic factors detemine the intervention points. However, the evolutionary pressure for the upper intervention point has been removed allowing genetic drift and obesity
- Speakman et al 2011
What two theories did electrolytic lesioning lead to?
- Hypothalamus responds to short term signals such as glucose (Sean Mayer)
- Static theory suggesting that hypothalamus responds to longer term regulators such as fat tissue, measuring the energy that is being stored (Gordon Kennedy)
What did the electrolytic short term signal theory suggest?
- As glucose drops, the hypothalamus detects this and we eat (glucose static theory)
- Isn’t necessarily true