Childhood Obesity May Be Caused by Missing DNA

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Imagine being told your child will be removed from your home because s/he is morbidly obese and you are a neglectful and abusive parent for allowing this to happen. I know that I have watched several tv programs about obesity and when I see an obese child I can't help but wonder what the parents are thinking to allow this to happen.

From AOL news:

"Some children get severely obese because they lack particular chunks of DNA, which kicks their hunger into overdrive, researchers report...The work, reported online Sunday by the journal Nature, has already produced a real-world payoff. Farooqi said four children with the chromosome 16 deletion had drawn the attention of British child welfare authorities, who blamed the parents for overfeeding them"

Read the news article here. http://news.aol.com/article/missing-dna-may-promote-child-obesity/803650

I am sure the parents are feeling a great deal of relief.
 
Debaroo said:
Imagine being told your child will be removed from your home because s/he is morbidly obese and you are a neglectful and abusive parent for allowing this to happen. I know that I have watched several tv programs about obesity and when I see an obese child I can't help but wonder what the parents are thinking to allow this to happen.

From AOL news:

"Some children get severely obese because they lack particular chunks of DNA, which kicks their hunger into overdrive, researchers report...The work, reported online Sunday by the journal Nature, has already produced a real-world payoff. Farooqi said four children with the chromosome 16 deletion had drawn the attention of British child welfare authorities, who blamed the parents for overfeeding them"

Read the news article here. http://news.aol.com/article/missing-dna-may-promote-child-obesity/803650

I am sure the parents are feeling a great deal of relief.
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Childhood obesity is caused by overeating and lack of exercise.
 
I have two daughters, eighteen years apart.
The first daughter had a father who has a family history of weight problems, like me.
The second daugter had a father who has a family where everyone is very thin.

Both daughters were raised by me alone for their first ten years.
The first one was a little chubby,about 10 lbs over weight,
the second daughter has always been very thin, about 10 lbs under weight.

To make things a little more complicated: when my first daughter was ten she was placed in foster care. In foster care she reached a weight of about 300 lbs at age 14.
So it was not my parenting that caused my first daughter to become over weight and in foster care she gained the most weight of all while living with a compulsive over-eater and kept away from any physical activity besides house work.

Do I think DNA has anything to do with a childs weight? Yes, absolutely,
but while I could never make my first daughter a skinny child she wasn't obese until she was over-fed and kept inactive.

And as for having a second daughter who is under weight there is nothing I could ever do to make her fat. She is never hungry and is ADHD, that's genetics.
 
Debaroo said:
Imagine being told your child will be removed from your home because s/he is morbidly obese and you are a neglectful and abusive parent for allowing this to happen. I know that I have watched several tv programs about obesity and when I see an obese child I can't help but wonder what the parents are thinking to allow this to happen.
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But it seems, though, that it's still the parents' fault. Or could be.

Wait, hold on, let me finish. :(

If obesity is due to a medical condition, rather than parents simply encouraging the child to overeat, then it would fall in the category of any other medical condition that needs to be managed.

Yes, it's tragic that a person has to live with an insatiable hunger. But I don't think one can then assume that there's no treatment whatsoever, and the child should simply eat whatever he or she wants and gain whatever weight results, and suffer the consequent health problems of morbid obesity in addition to the psychological problems of hunger.

So, knowing it's a genetic condition, now the question comes, are the parents managing the child's condition in a way that's acceptable? If a parent left any other medical condition untreated, society generally doesn't just allow them to say, "Oh well, the child was born with epilepsy, the daily seizures aren't our fault," if there are in fact medications to minimize the seizures, even if the underlying condition can't be actually cured.

Even before this genetic factor was discovered, was there no successful treatment whatsoever for morbid obesity in children? I don't really know--it's not a problem of anyone I've encountered--but I could imagine approaching it from the direction of any compulsive disorder, with a combination of medication and/or therapy to cope.
 
Reality = X parts Genetics + Y parts Environment.

ETA:

The British researchers checked the DNA of 300 children who'd become very fat, on the order of 220 pounds by age 10. They looked for deletions or extra copies of DNA segments.
They found evidence that several rare deletions may promote obesity, including one kind they studied further and found in less than 1 percent of about 1,200 severely obese children.
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So CainKane1 might still be right 99 times in 100...
 
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You might want to include Z = behavior

Fact: You can't become obese without over eating.

What drives one to do it, and action to be taken to overcome the problem, is a large set of variables.

It's easy to blame it on some variable while doing nothing about it and letting Z rule the equation .
 
shadron said:
Errrr, pardon me, sir. You left your dogma sitting on the seat over there, I thought you might want to take it with you.
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No dogma, it's the simple truth. There are no other ways than eating and exercising to change one's weight. If you don't like your weight, you are not eating and/or excercising the right amount.
 
The point of this thread is that children were (are) being removed from parents because it was thought that the parents were being negligent.

"It said the findings might improve diagnosis of severe obesity - which on occasion has been wrongly attributed to abusive overfeeding. ...

Although much of the problem is due to lifestyle factors such as an unhealthy diet, and lack of exercise, some cases are thought to be down to genetics. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8394991.stm

People wth these deletions in the DNA have a very strong desire to eat and gain weight easily. It's difficult enough for many people who do not have these deletions to control their overeating, but, I think one should have some compassion for those who are driven to eat due to some genetic flaw.
 
If it takes removing them from their parents to save their lives, I would say it is justified ..

Watching your children grow obese without some action to bring it under control is abusive, regardless of the root cause.

It sounds like we are more concerned with peoples feelings than the health of the children .


"It said the findings might improve diagnosis of severe obesity -
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Are there really problems diagnosing sever obesity ? Like, sometimes they are not sure ?:rolleyes:

.... which on occasion has been wrongly attributed to abusive overfeeding. ..."
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I guess you could drop the word ' abusive ', and everyone's feelings would be better, then it just remains implied ...
 
Even if accepted at face value, the illness in this case is excessive hunger. It's still the parents' responsibility that excessive hunger becomes excessive eating.
 
shadron said:
Errrr, pardon me, sir. You left your dogma sitting on the seat over there, I thought you might want to take it with you.
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No. It is thermodynamically impossible for obesity to be caused by anything other than overeating and lack of exercise.

It's the parents' responsibility to enforce moderation in eating and reasonable amounts of exercise just as much as it's the parents' responsibility to enforce that type I diabetics get their insulin supplements or phenylketonuriacs get the appropriately low phenylalanine-diet and protein supplements.
 
Read the article I linked to in the BBC news. It does address that parents with these children do need support and help in managing these children.
 
drkitten said:
No. It is thermodynamically impossible for obesity to be caused by anything other than overeating and lack of exercise.
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Huh? Thermodynamically impossible? You're way overstating.
A human's change in weight is caused by the difference between what goes into the human and what goes out. But from a purely mechanical (non-biological) point of view, there is plenty of room for a weight change from sources other than caloric intake and expenditure. As a simple example, water retention forms a major weight issue for many people. And, while there's no reason to believe it is case, it is certainly possible for the body to create and maintain mass based on factors other than raw caloric intake.
 
I wonder if that study was done with a biased intent. Has anyone ever seen an Amish kid that was morbidly obese? I sure haven't and they have a diet that is high in fatty foods.
 
Debaroo said:
The point of this thread is that children were (are) being removed from parents because it was thought that the parents were being negligent.
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And I *still* think that. If a child is morbidly obese the parent's aren't taking enough care of the child.


Maybe an individual child requires a lot more care than others, possibly so much that an avergae parent cannot provide it - still, it is the parents' responsibility.
"It said the findings might improve diagnosis of severe obesity - which on occasion has been wrongly attributed to abusive overfeeding. ...
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Yes, I'll sit here holding my breath until they show me just one person who got overweight without eating too much. Just one.

Although much of the problem is due to lifestyle factors such as an unhealthy diet, and lack of exercise, some cases are thought to be down to genetics. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8394991.stm
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How can it be down to genetics? Genes have hardly any calories at all...

People wth these deletions in the DNA have a very strong desire to eat and gain weight easily. It's difficult enough for many people who do not have these deletions to control their overeating, but, I think one should have some compassion for those who are driven to eat due to some genetic flaw.
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I have compassion. I am slightly overweight myself because I just like to eat. Still, the only way I have to manage my weight is by eating more or less and excercising (i.e. using up energy) more or less.

There are some surgical shortcuts, I belive. Being comatose with a high fever for a whole once got me from chubby to slim as a kid. On the whole, I wouldn't recommend it, though.
 
Rasmus said:
<snip>

There are some surgical shortcuts, I belive. Being comatose with a high fever for a whole once got me from chubby to slim as a kid. On the whole, I wouldn't recommend it, though.
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Tetanus works too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus

In order to survive a tetanus infection, the maintenance of an airway and proper nutrition are required. An intake of 3500-4000 Calories, and at least 150g of protein per day, is often given in liquid form through a tube directly into the stomach (Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy), or through a drip into a vein (Total parenteral nutrition). This high-caloric diet maintenance is required because of the increased metabolic strain brought on by the increased muscle activity. Full recovery takes 4 to 6 weeks because the body must regenerate destroyed nerve axon terminals.
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It's truly amazing to me the enormity of the effort put into finding solutions to obesity other than diet and exercise. "Anything, ANYTHING, please, but our food and sloth!" cry the masses.

Everyone is dealt a different hand. If you're missing a little chunk of DNA that makes your hunger drive insatiable, then you're going to be either fat or hungry. You have my sympathy, truly, you do. But the truth does not change because you got a bum deal in your chromosomes.

Person A has to work x amount to burn 400 calories or keep off the fat created from failing to burn it off. Perhaps person B has to work x + y amount to do the same. Perhaps some poor sod C who's missing some chunk of DNA has to work x^2 amount to do the same. None of this changes the truth. Dr. Kitten is right, only changing the intake and output of the body can change your weight. One's subjective difficulty in balancing this equation is what differs.

Believe me when I say that it discomforts me when others suffer. But that does not mean I have to buy into their desperate excuses. Is it difficult for you to lose weight? Then be fat. Enjoy it. I won't hold it against you, and I'm sorry that some in society do that. :(

I think (just my opinion, no evidence or anything like that) that it may be more detrimental to one's health to be distressed over some extra poundage than to just do the best you can and just move on with your life.
 
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king catfish said:
It's truly amazing to me the enormity of the effort put into finding solutions to obesity other than diet and exercise. "Anything, ANYTHING, please, but our food and sloth!" cry the masses.
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I think its awesome that you used the word "enormity" to make your case :p



king catfish said:
Person A has to work x amount to burn 400 calories or keep off the fat created from failing to burn it off. Perhaps person B has to work x + y amount to do the same. Perhaps some poor sod C who's missing some chunk of DNA has to work x^2 amount to do the same. None of this changes the truth. Dr. Kitten is right, only changing the intake and output of the body can change your weight. One's subjective difficulty in balancing this equation is what differs.

Believe me when I say that it discomforts me when others suffer. But that does not mean I have to buy into their desperate excuses. Is it difficult for you to lose weight? Then be fat. Enjoy it. I won't hold it against you, and I'm sorry that some in society do that. :(

I think (just my opinion, no evidence or anything like that) that it may be more detrimental to one's health to be distressed over some extra poundage than to just do the best you can and just move on with your life.
Click to expand...

It just irks me that people would rather make excuses then admit the truth even to themselves. I admit that I'm a hedonist but I'm too damn hyper to be overweight :( Y'know in some cultures a man with a belly gets respect.
 
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