Is Obesity a Genetically Induced Brain Disease?

You may have heard that a piece on the TV program called 60 Minutes recently sparked some controversy. A doctor stated that obesity is a brain disease, and the largest contributor to obesity is genetics. To quote her, "That means if you were born to parents that have obesity, you have a 50-85% likelihood of having the disease yourself even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, [and] stress management..." She tells us that lifestyle won't make a difference for genetically flawed people.

The 60 Minutes Program then segues into the new weight-reducing medications, stressing how effective they are, potentially leaving the audience with four takeaways: 1) Obesity is a brain disease. 2) Obesity is genetic 3) Lifestyle changes won't work for the genetically flawed. and 4) Drugs are better than lifestyle changes, especially for the genetically flawed. This post will address these issues and more.

The Intriguing World of Pottenger's Cats

Francis Pottinger jr. MD is one of those names we all should know. Sadly, few do. He experimented with Cats for ten years, from 1932 to 1942. His research and findings are now known as the Pottenger Cat Study. I will get into the amazing findings of his work and their dire implications for us later in this post, but his work was one of the first to look at epigenetics, although that term was unknown to him. Additionally, he paralleled the changes he saw in his malnourished cats to humans, which I will also cover today.

Vitamin D and L-Cysteine Together Are Very Effective Against Covid-19

Now that we are heading into winter in the northern hemisphere, many of us may experience lower vitamin D levels as the sun is no longer capable of helping us produce it. A promising study showed that using a form of vitamin D called calcidiol reduced the risk of ICU admission by 93% compared to the group that took no calcidiol in Covid-19 patients. But some people don’t respond to supplementation when their levels are already low. I will tell you how you can improve your production of active vitamin D, whether you should supplement, and how a commonly available supplement can really help.