[Article] Genes of famine survivors now contributing to obesity levels

Victor

Hmm, it's interesting the way Darwin works. This in a way reflects modern medicine and the headaches it is storing up by allowing "unhealthy" children, that would previously have died at a young, mature and pass on their genes. All is well and good if medicine stays "state of the art", but if there is a crisis (e.g. war) suddenly what medicine has made chronic illness revert to fatal illness.

http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/3534077?view=Eircomnet

Genes of famine survivors now contributing to obesity levels
From:The Irish Independent
Tuesday, 6th July, 2004

THE "thrifty" gene which helped our ancestors survive the Famine is now a liability and contributing to obesity levels, it was claimed yesterday.

The genes, which are advantageous when food is scarce, are detrimental in times of plenty, according to the study to be presented to a symposium in Trinity College Dublin today.

Prof Andrew Prentice of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine pointed out the survivors of famines are those who were fortunate enough to be very efficient in consuming energy and storing fat.

"Unfortunately, these have become a liability in the modern world of constant feasting and sedentary lifestyles - and they simply encourage obesity," said Prof Prentice who will address a symposium of the Nutrition Society and the Association for the Study of Obesity. "It is likely that victims of the Irish famine who survived the hunger ships helped to create founder population in North America that were selected for thriftiness - and hence may be particularly prone to obesity."

Meanwhile, Dr Sinead McCarthy of the Department of Clinical Medicine in Trinity, warned that being "apple shaped" is a danger to health.

She pointed out that carrying weight around the middle appears to exacerbate the risks of obesity such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and unhealthy levels of blood lipids, such as cholesterol and triglycerides. Smoking, she also said, is usually associated with a higher waist-to-hip ratio, the common measure for increased central body fatness.

"This may add to the cardiovascular risk already associated with smoking."

In Ireland, the North-South Food Consumption Survey, which examined food intake and body fat distribution in almost 1,400 people, showed that while no specific food group could be identified as a contributing factor to obesity, the amount of food eaten, as well as the size of the portion eaten, were associated with both obesity and a high waist circumference.

Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent

simu

Interesting but I thought more people died from infectious diseases than from actual starvation during the famine.

Sarky

Professor Andrew Prentice... A. Prentice...

Well I laughed, anyway...

Capt'n Midnight

aren't we forgetting about regulation ?

most biochemical pathways are controlled by hormones n' stuff control (cf. insulin and blood sugar level) and many steps are reversable ( your body makes fats and protiens sometimes and sometimes it breaks them down)

in marathon training there is a process called carbo-loading where you eat a lot of starch and it gets stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles. the idea is that just as your body is geared up to process the starch into the liver it will take it out faster too.. (not recommended unless you are a sub 3hr person since after that you need to burn fat)

so for most people who diet severly the body starts to break down fats and proteins, the problem is once food is present it gets stored better. Also when you are starved your metabolism slows down - you don't waste as much energy. Also bad traits when it comes to putting on weight again.

Remember that excluding the Western World in the last two generations, for the vast majority of people hunger has been a reality. We are not the norm. Our bodies have 3.5 billion years of adaption to shortages of food and most of us (4-5Bn) still need these adaptions to survive to old age.

Victor

Originally posted by simu
Interesting but I thought more people died from infectious diseases than from actual starvation during the famine.

Probably, but much fewer people would have died of those particular diseases if they hadn't been malnourished.

Twistedlilkitty

I heard something similar to this about CF (cystic fibrosis) and places lacking water and sickle cell anaemia and malaria.......does the famine gene give you a hankering for spuds? hmmmm spuds.....

Victor

Originally posted by Twistedlilkitty
sickle cell anaemia and malaria.......

Yeah people with sickle cell anemia are more resitant to malaria than others. So while in most parts of the world the anemia would have led them to be Darwin's victims (or at least not Darwin's victors), in malarial areas these people "thrive" as the malaria kills off their long-term opponents. Not mentioned in the school books a lot. I'm not sure of the statisitics but the majority of people (or their recent ancestors) with cell anemia are from tropical / sub-tropical Africa, even though malaria occurs in many parts of the world.

John

Here's a map of malaria zones, these areas would have higher frequencies of sickle cell anaemia (as Victor correctly pointed out, higher due to natural selection).

Click here for the map

DriftingRain

Intresting Read Victor!

Thanks I enjoyed it!

~DR~

AngryBadger

Isn't the proposition, or at least the interpretation of it, a moot point here? The genes that govern the metabolism of a generation are always going to act a certain way, to say that these genes are now a liability, when in fact the real problem is slow cultural evolution is a mistake.

The genes that confer thrifty-ness on us will be present for decades to come and beyond, they confer a survival advantage in times of extreme competition from whatever source. Obesity nowadays shbouldn't be attributed to the activity of genes performing exactly the function they evolved for, but to a lack of cultural adaptation, i.e. food is not a shortage nowadays, so we don't need to eat at every opportunity and above our metabolic needs.

What's being suggested here, or, and I say again, the point people seem to ba taking from it, is that obese people are in some way victims of genealogical inheritance, which isn't the case. They're victims of culture, end of story.

seamus

This is why I think we'll start developing different species. We already see different advantages have been developing in different parts of the world for ages. It's probable that, like most species, we develop a main species, from which a lot of different ancestors develop. Give it 100,000 years, and we'll see what the world looks like....

luckat

Have they isolated the gombeen gene carried by the people who survived the Famine and got rich and fat while others starved?

AngryBadger

seamus wrote:

This is why I think we'll start developing different species. We already see different advantages have been developing in different parts of the world for ages. It's probable that, like most species, we develop a main species, from which a lot of different ancestors develop. Give it 100,000 years, and we'll see what the world looks like....

ok...ok, right, ...I know that what i'm about to do will get me flamed....but why would you even make a statement like this? obviously at some far flung point in the future we will, in all likelihood have diverged along a couple of different evolutionary branches, but that has got no relevance to this article, that's like saying, yeah...so the sun will collapse in 70 trillion years and we'll all be dead, at a funeral......

Sorry but to say that people getting fat is good support for us evolving is.....i can't even find the right flame-worthy words to explain it.....goodbye

seamus

I was drunk. Very drunk.

(Ow my head)

AngryBadger

can't argue with that

pork99

It is likely that victims of the Irish famine who survived the hunger ships helped to create founder population in North America that were selected for thriftiness - and hence may be particularly prone to obesity.

So the Irish are the only people who have a major famine in their history? :rolleyes:

Maybe it's from living on an island but the Irish tend to believe we are unique in being conquered by a more powerful neighbour, suffering a massive famine etc; the Sinn Fein "Most Persecuted People in History" theory.

Surely periodic famine was one of the universal conditions of mankind through most of history?

Sleipnir

Human beings have been around for, what, 4 million years?
We've only had more than enough food in say the last 100 years?

We're designed to store food because we've had 4 million years of not having very much so when we came across an abundance of food out bodies said
"hey, we need to store this cos there might be no food next month"
and it still does that.
It's difficult to break a 4 million year old habit and now that American's can have pizza for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner and supper, they get fat.

Capt'n Midnight

pork99 wrote:

So the Irish are the only people who have a major famine in their history? :rolleyes:

Maybe it's from living on an island but the Irish tend to believe we are unique in being conquered by a more powerful neighbour, suffering a massive famine etc; the Sinn Fein "Most Persecuted People in History" theory.

Surely periodic famine was one of the universal conditions of mankind through most of history?

"during the potato famine there were enough potatoes but the pope was selling them to other countries and making little children work in the potato factories"

GuanYin

Sleipnir wrote:

Human beings have been around for, what, 4 million years?
We've only had more than enough food in say the last 100 years?

We're designed to store food because we've had 4 million years of not having very much so when we came across an abundance of food out bodies said
"hey, we need to store this cos there might be no food next month"
and it still does that.
It's difficult to break a 4 million year old habit and now that American's can have pizza for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner and supper, they get fat.

Without sounding like an advocate of Weight Watchers, human beings have evolved, not by making sure they have the right amount of food, but by optimising the use of the right amount of the type of food that they consume.

There is a subtle but very very important difference.

Victor

pork99 wrote:

So the Irish are the only people who have a major famine in their history? :rolleyes:

Some factors to take into account. (a) It was a serious famine, but not total (people survived to pass on their genes) (b) There haven't been all that many famines in western Europe in the last 200 years.

Capt'n Midnight

Sleipnir wrote:

Human beings have been around for, what, 4 million years?
We've only had more than enough food in say the last 100 years?

We're designed to store food because we've had 4 million years of not having very much so when we came across an abundance of food out bodies said
"hey, we need to store this cos there might be no food next month"
and it still does that.
It's difficult to break a 4 million year old habit and now that American's can have pizza for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner and supper, they get fat.

Actually you will find it's 4 Billion years if you measure from when life started
or about 600 million years since our ancestors had diffenteriated cells for feeding

in tests with rats when you remove sugar/salt/artificial sweetners the rats no longer over ate - the feedback mechanisms worked. Now we have junk food - sugar / salt / artificial flavours & colours / high fat content /eating too fast - especially if the food is soft (natural food has to be chewed before swallowing so it takes longer to eat) and they screw up the feedback mechanisms so you ingest too much food before you feel full enough to stop eating.

BTW: MSG causes the oppsite reaction - it makes you think you are full before your stomach is full - but it is nasty evil stuff in excess so not a good idea either.

also portions have been getting bigger from fast food places so that don't help. and in the old days you to prepare the food first so slower.

pork99

Victor wrote:

Some factors to take into account. (a) It was a serious famine, but not total (people survived to pass on their genes) (b) There haven't been all that many famines in western Europe in the last 200 years.

200 years is pretty insignificant in the context of app. 400,000 years of human evolution. Anyway there were frequent famines, sometimes as bad as the 1840s famine here, in Europe before 200 years ago.

Famine recurred so insistently for centuries on end that it became incorporated into man's biological regime and built into his daily life

"Civilization & Capitalism" Vol. 1 - Fernand Braudel

Capt'n Midnight

Famine is a by product of farming.

Before this hunter gatherers would move around and would have smaller families even to the point of infanticide so they would never put so much strain on the enviroment that they would themselves would not starve.

Where as people tied to thier plot of land would not be able to move to exploit seasonal resources. "tied to the land" - farmers emigrate and move, few farming communities last a thousand years, most much shorter as groups get dispossed "to hell or connaught" the norman invasion , highland clearances , fencing the commonage etc. etc. And of course only the eldest son gets to stay on the farm the rest (ie most of the population) have to leave. Nomad hunter gatherers on the other hand have stayed in the same general area for tens of thousands of years - so that lifestyle must work.

pork99

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Where as people tied to thier plot of land would not be able to move to exploit seasonal resources. "tied to the land" - farmers emigrate and move, few farming communities last a thousand years, most much shorter as groups get dispossed "to hell or connaught" the norman invasion , highland clearances , fencing the commonage etc. etc. And of course only the eldest son gets to stay on the farm the rest (ie most of the population) have to leave. Nomad hunter gatherers on the other hand have stayed in the same general area for tens of thousands of years - so that lifestyle must work.

So why did farming take off and marginalise the hunter gatherer life style? Because it could support bigger populations.

I agree that hunting-gathering had the advantage of flexiblity in being able to simple move on when resources were exhausted. However over hundreds of centuries in prehistory such populations must have expanded. As this happened the excess population moved on to exploit land not already inhabited by humans. This mechanism drove the movement of our ancestors from our original continent Africa into Europe and Asia and beyond.

The problem with this is that the world is finite and eventually there is nowhere left unoccupied. How do you more efficiently exploit finite resources to support a growing population? With agriculture.