A Contamination Theory of the Obesity Epidemic
Yes I know: we are in a dietary world that believes all fault lies with carbohydrates. I do not mean to imply that this does not have relevance to body weight, since I of all people know that it does.
…but there is something more going on in our modern world than merely that. And perhaps more than diet. Let me introduce something to you that I think some will find interesting. Bear with me here:
One cannot pretend that our water supply is irrelevant. It is at the heart of what is ingested by our animals, by our crops, by our people whether by proxy in their food or packaged foods, or directly in drinks or even tap water.
Aside from the “compound” (of which fluoride is merely 1 of many ingredients) in USA water, there is a lot of variation in groundwater or even fresh water itself. Some of these are caused by toxic runoff/pollution. Some are caused by the natural mineral complex in that region. Some can even be caused by how much air and sunlight that water source gets – as all the substances in the water combine, in various ways, depending on the addition even of those things.
There is a paper in preprint. I made this a PDF because I had trouble keeping large-font on the original, and the PDF came out with 2 out of 3 pages blank so I deleted all those, so this is more readable and I’m uploading here. It is novelette-length! – 64 pages sans references. Obviously if you’re not a big reader this won’t be for you.
It’s too big to upload it turns out alas, so I put it on one of my regular servers for download. This is temporary (say, six months) as I don’t own this paper. You can look it up in some public source by then if needed I imagine.
But I’d like to say a few things about it up front. Speaking of novels…
I. Data
The most important thing in our world when it comes to ‘problems’ is actually collecting, honestly recording, and making public, factual data on What IS. From that base – which cannot be garbage if this is to help – hypothesis, further correlation inquiry, and eventually, where possible, controlled study can be done.
To the degree that our culture, or our corporations, or our governments, are in denial – for reasons which range from honest ignorance to machiavellian design – of a given factor harming the population, we are worse for it. Whether that means data is not collected, or is not measured honestly, or interpreted honestly, or recorded honestly, or is not made public (we have seen a lot of this related to carbohydrates and seed oils in past large studies), we are worse for it.
When the data is decent, THEN people in many disciplines of study can begin to consider what patterns, what ideas, they have for finding a causative factor. This has to come first.
There has to be a lack of bias ‘resisting’ this, for this to occur. How do we know when there is bias? Well, here’s one thing: look for what is NOT measured. Or not measured or recorded in a way that allows the data to be usefully utilized by others. Maybe there is some hand-waving-away explanation of why that is. When there is bias, this will be an explanation which oddly, would be just as true for other things which are measured/recorded/public, yet mysteriously only apply to the missing-thing. So, is not a valid explanation.
I suggest that without regard to whether the primary idea of this paper is accurate, that for the sake of an infinite number of elements related to human health (from creativity to cultural survival), this data-collection effort should be the first, most primary responsibility of taxpayer-funded ‘science’ in any country.
Let’s start with measuring the lithium as a base in all groundwater and tap water systems, while they’re measuring nearly everything else imaginable – but not that.
II. Things to consider, part 1
This paper should be required reading merely for its educational value. Without regard to whether the three “initial suggestions for study” should turn out to be in any way related to worldwide obesity (and the paper details why these were chosen) – because as the paper mentions, their hypothesis stands without regard to the substance’s individual outcome, they are merely the three most likely places to begin, and may all be relevant to varying degrees – the paper walks through many topics I bet most people don’t normally think of. And are worth becoming aware of, since it helps temper how we interpret other data or research we may read.
This includes for example, not just dose-dependent results, which most of us think of, but:
- some things actually have different, even opposite, results at very low vs. very high dose
- the body may intake and hold different amounts of something depending on whether it’s an occasional large bolus, vs chronic small dose
- even with pharma chemicals that affect mostly the brain, usually there is a % of subjects who have the opposite effect. For example a psych drug may cause nearly the same % of people to lose weight (sometimes a lot), as it causes to gain weight (sometimes a lot)
- some things take time to gradually show up (e.g. some weight gain in response to a medication is prompt, while others shows up later and gradually, and the dose-dependency may be more the long-term of it than the individual-dose-quantity of it)
When you are looking for suggestive correlations as an idea of what to study, this effect on the end-numbers interferes.
II. Things to consider, part 2
In the old book “Biochemical Individuality” that I loved (a critical topic it seems nobody still (half a century later) wants to talk about), the dramatic difference in internal organ size, shape, weight, function, cell count, glandular output, etc. is addressed.
Add to this that all chemicals, even biochemicals, are subtractive and additive: what they become, what effect they have, will depend on what else is in the system in question. The same chemical can be tens of orders of magnitude more damaging for one person than another merely depending on something they might have been exposed to long prior, or long later. (This paper gives some examples.) Let alone what they have in their body, or going on with their body or liver, at that moment. Of course, it can be the opposite: one can be helped by something in the body, as well.
Some of the chemicals that can cause big differences in other chemicals are ubiquitous – like chlorine. Chlorine and now chloromines are in most water supplies, so from hot showers to drinking water, things made with the water or its drinking, is going to be very present. Obviously, these things make teasing out differences require more data, from more groups of people, over more time, so that the many individual differences – which become noise – are balanced by larger patterns.
II. Things to consider, part 3
There are also significant genetic differences in who gets obese: Jeffrey Friedman, whose team discovered Leptin, once pointed out that the average weight gain from the “obesity has doubled!” media was actually only 7-10 pounds. However, that’s just the top number, and using the bell curve’s bigger percentage is better media. In reality, there was a very marked difference in the weight variance of gain between certain “ethnic subgroups.” As a planet (mostly), we may all be getting fatter, but for a large % of people, it’s not enough to worry anybody. (The fat, anyway. Other things are still in play.) Some genetic groups are, as a larger ‘average’ number, going to be more affected by certain things.
II. Things to consider, part 4
And then there are regional issues. If the theory of this paper is correct (again, without regard to whether their suggested ‘starting 3’ elements to study pan out to be), this is important. Now granted, our food is nationwide, sometimes worldwide, our industrial chemicals are as well, and the pollution of groundwater can affect things quite some distance away. But for the most part, some things ARE more likely to be local, starting (but not ending) with groundwater and municipal water, and its affect on local dairy just for example. (The paper didn’t mention this, I just did.)
II. Things to consider, conclusion
Now imagine – and we don’t have to merely imagine it, this is reality – we combine all these things. Individual biochemistry; ethnic subgroup and genetics in general; past, present or future exposure to chemicals which interact with each other or with the body as-affected-by something prior; corporate and government variability in what additives (for example, to oils, solvents, fabrics and carpet, etc.) are legal or prevalent in different areas or eras; and regional variability in groundwater that affects a great deal of local food, drink, and tap water, from showers to ingestion.
To say this becomes a gordion knot of biochemistry causative effects and results is an understatement. So we should not be expecting that any one or even a dozen studies are going to figure things out. And that merely leads to us only getting tiny little pieces of data as shared by this or that study.
What ought to be happening, is that if taxpayers fund all these agencies and science, the data should be massively available in a reference-pointer database. Because what we NEED, is DATA. So that any competent individual or team around the world can use that data toward more inquiry, other data collection, initial hypothesis, and so on.
Right now, any taxpayer – and any researcher – should be able to think, “Hmmn, I wonder how much of plastic-type X, or lithium, or antibiotic-Y, is in the water supply in, oh I dunno, Des Moines, IA?” and go online and find out.
Remember when Dr. Atkins came out with his first big book, and was attacked like crazy over it, and discovered that there were actual large studies where despite tracking every imaginable nutritional thing, they had – MYSTERIOUSLY!! – “not tracked sugar” intake, or things like that? (I might be remembering this detail wrong.) There are other examples and more than one thing, from more than one study, like this. I am not one for making laws generally but when you are spending government (read: the people’s) money to do something, EVERY bit of actual raw data should be public, by requirement.
III. "Please look"
The authors of this paper are mostly, it seems to me, merely pleading with funded sources, the governments, to LOOK.
In uncountable papers over the last half century, it is “mentioned in passing” that “environmental and other toxins” are very likely to affect obesity (and other health) levels. It’s ubiquitous at this point like a no-brainer everyone knows.
But it seems not much is done with specific research toward solving it.
Because fat sick people are incredibly profitable? More easily controllable in several ways? Maybe.
Effort toward gathering the data that would ALLOW hypothesis and research to be done that could lead to solving it.
In the past, a lot of research was done with lead. A lot of laws followed that research, attempting to get lead out of the gasoline, out of the manufactured products, and so on. Even non-measurable-levels of lead have measurable effects on children, let alone even the tiniest measure. Dominantly on IQ, violence, and other negative results. This research was done despite the fact that lead is a natural mineral, and is in most groundwater to varying degrees, so it’s not like it can be eradicated from everything. But learning more about its effects allowed us to reduce it dramatically, to the positive end for individuals and culture at large.
This should probably be done for every mineral, and every “major” chemical (it can’t be done for everything – they are uncountable). If we had actual data on a vastly larger array of minerals, plastics, biochems, in our groundwater, and it was easy to get to, correlations would be a lot more indicative, and effort to understand this better could see a lot more progress.
IV. What it leads to
Once upon a time it was noticed that feeding mice less made them live longer. So calorie restriction became the big thing for good health.
Then it was discovered that in fact, it was merely that feeding them less MEAT made them live longer. Oh gosh, ok now it’s just meat that’s so bad.
Then it was discovered that actually it was feeding them less RED meat that made them live longer. OK, white good, red bad, check.
Then it was discovered that it was just the methionine in red meat that was reducing life spans. OK got it, meat still generally bad, red meat still specifically bad, methionine the key to bad, check.
Then it was discovered that oh it was actually that they weren’t getting enough glycine, which balanced the methionine.
Oops never mind.
But none of that science was wrong, it was merely incomplete. In the end the problem was not the “ingested toxin” as believed – it was a LACK of something else which was needed for balance.
Much like the problem is not usually sodium, which is a vital mineral, it is lack of potassium, which needs to balance it.
It is not usually a lack of calcium, it is a lack of Vitamins D3 and A and K2 to pull it from blood and deposit it in the right place.
…You get the idea.
Let us say just for example that long-term low-level accumulation of lithium is “inherently obesogenic” – to varying degrees depending on infinite factors, some of which I went through above. Now say that we see that it is profoundly present in certain groundwater regions – vast regions – every farm animal, every agri crop, everybody who showers, everybody there and everybody who ingests anything from there – is affected.
I understand that there would be gigantic governmental and corporate resistance to even documenting this let alone making it public. Because it would not be something that we could wave a magic wand and fix. (I am ignoring, out of courtesy, the willingness of entities making a profit off bad health as motivation here.)
But for people who are N=1 sorts, people who care about their health and their family’s health, there ARE things that could be done.
For example, higher levels (<1g doses but throughout day) of ascorbic acid helps detox heavy metals; reduces cortisol; increases the recycling of glutathione and vitamin E; and (insert probably 87 other things I don’t have time for here or that aren’t even known yet). Much like “adding glycine” (or pref “the collagen spectrum” aminos) to high meat diets, this alone – let alone other “liver-supporting supplements” well-proven to be profoundly helpful (like milk thistle and dandelion). Phase 2 detox liver requirements are commonly deficient. Glycine, choline, inositol, as well as taurine and cysteine and glutamine, are all needed. Phase 1 is often supplied, but that often makes toxins more deadly, as part of making them more able to be taken-apart in phase 2 – but then phase 2 doesn’t happen for lack of sufficient component nutrients.
I suspect that even adding all those things to average intake would probably improve the health of nearly everybody alive who isn’t in peak health already – let alone people who have actual health problems. And if toxins are even part of modern obesity – which it does seem that most researchers believe they are, without specification or detail – then everything we can do to support the liver, which is responsible for handling toxins, and combining and separating molecules and such – would be a good thing.
I wonder…
How come out of all the possibilities, and all the things they looked at, of the 3 things they came up with that have the most major amount of indicator for being at least one of the primary causes of obesity – lithium in water supplies – is the one pointedly not measured? It’s in the top 3 of “likely candidates” and yet somehow… we don’t collect any data on that??
There was a movie based on the science fiction ‘Firefly’ TV show, called “Serenity,” which has this theme of a planetary government who after doing some studies decided that a tiny % of this chemical in the planetary terraformed air supply would be a great thing for this well designed, perfect place. It was known to make people slightly more peaceful. Some % of people reacted at one extreme: they lost all volition to do anything. Including breathe. Some % of people reacted at the other extreme: they became profoundly aggressive monsters. They killed everybody else. The interstellar government covered up all information about the planet in embarrassment at how big a F-up this was… and pretended the most terrifying creatures in the system were merely myth and conspiracy theory… not monsters the government created.
It was an interesting plot because this mirrored the statistical reality of almost ANY additive to human ingestion, whether it’s from your fire-retardant curtains, your carrots, your beef, your milk, your shower water, or your orange juice: Some largest % in the middle are not affected enough to be harmed but are affected enough to show it in the system and perhaps mild, untraceable effects; some % on either end, may have serious effects – and often opposite effects.
In modern research, those are the ‘outliers’ and if the % of them is not too large, they may even be dismissed from consideration. Biochemical individuality results in modern science: if you’re truly individual, you don’t actually count.
Combine lithium with flouride and you get lithium flouride which is not nearly as water soluble. If you use a water supply with a “flouride compound” (I have no idea what is in that conglomerate used today), or a flouride mouthwash, and the water has even low levels of lithium, is that gradually adding up in the tissues of the body?
The paper mentions that it’s been shown that some things are far more long-term in the white brain tissue and thyroid than in the blood and other organs for example. So a blood test is not always a good example of the real status of something that may have an effect. Even if we were testing.
Well nobody will know until somebody will measure it, honestly, record it, honestly, and make it public, so someone else can consider it, and maybe do research on it. Someday.
In the meantime, I intend to put a little more attention on basic foods or supps that detoxify heavy metals and improve my liver. That can’t hurt, and might help, who knows.
PJ
