"Gluttony, sloth and the metabolic syndrome: a roadmap to lipotoxicity"
Roger H. Unger and Philipp E. Scherer
doesn't seem to be published yet, so I'm not sure if this will actually be the abstract:
"Once considered divine retribution for sins, comorbidities of obesity (metabolic syndrome) are today attributed to obesity-induced metabolic defects. Here, we propose that obesity and hyperleptinemia protect lipid-intolerant nonadipose organs against lipotoxic lipid spillover during sustained caloric surplus. Metabolic syndrome is ascribed to lipotoxicity caused by age-related resistance to antilipotoxic protection by leptin.
"The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the
fattest of them. . ." 78th Psalm, Verse 31."
Great start, even I have to admit. It gets better.
I got as far as the this diagram before having to stop. Head banging is fine for rock concerts, not so good on a hard desk.
Why are Texans so fat? According to Messrs Unger and Scherer:
Woo hoo! It's gluttony and sloth. With the number of guns that there are supposed to be in Texas (I wouldn't really know) I'd be careful about throwing such generalised insults around! Though I guess insulting people in a scientific journal is a lot safer than doing the same thing in a bar in down town Dallas.
They are also, being diabetologist and/or obesity experts, utter lipophobes (see the bottom line and text of their illustration) and struggle manfully with trying to show lipids (and even, OMG, cholesterol) are directly toxic. As I say, these folks are not too bright. I doubt they would understand glucotoxicity if it kicked them in the pancreas. But then, they are probably both on a statin.
I briefly re drew their illustration for them:
I had to split the slide in two to fit in the basic cause at the top of slide 1!
The ability to confuse symptoms with causes is hysterical. They really should read Good Calories Bad Calories, but it might be a little technical (and dispiriting!) for them.
However the reason for this post is that we have, on page 3 under "Protective role of obesity", this AMAZING quote:
"Thus, we propose that adipogenesis delays, rather than causes, the metabolic syndrome induced by chronic caloric surplus."
This is ABSOLUTELY crucial. These people have finally gotten the message! And they are idiots! When a concept is so clear cut that even morons can see it, there really is hope for the world.
GOOD.
Then (thanks, Hege) there is George Bray. Bray is one of the architects of the current obesity epidemic. Probably believes in gluttony and sloth as Unger and Scherer do. Anyway, have a read at Michael Eades' post to find a little more about what Bray is like. If you haven't already got him on the list (come the revolution).
Bray is now blaming fructose for the obesity epidemic.
When dinosaurs move, well, there will be progress!
It's a good year so far!
Peter
