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Weight control, what is due to genetics, what is due to the environment. |
What is genetic and
what is due to the environment?
The argument
regarding what is innate (genetics) versus affective
(environment) divides scientists.
Religion
provided the foundations of this duality with its inborn
hierarchy while reformers came with individual interpretation of texts, the free
enterprise system, and the possibility for everyone to control
their own destiny.
This duality has always been endorsed through political ideology, and religion. The question “environment
versus inborn” still arouses too many passions for a
definitive answer. The
liberal school of thought supports the side of the environment,
while the conservatives think the individual is responsible for
his well-being.
Many chemicals in the brain are implicated regarding individual
susceptibility to store fat. Each one of these mechanisms is
subject to the influence of several genes. In the brain, we know
of 41 neuron transmitters, 13 of which are implicated in weight
regulation. One area has been identified as the center for
hunger. Another location serves as the origin for satiety. We
know of transmitters made by the fatty cells
regulating total body fat but their function and activation are too
rare and yet too unknown, to create a medical concern.
The capacity to make
fat is in directly related to the needed capacity for survival.
Currently, there is 6% obesity in France, compared to 9% in the
Netherlands, 14% in the UK, 18% in Germany and 32% in the United
States.
The survival capacity of Americans is highest, in spite of the
similarity of the genetic inheritance. The genetic influence is
so significantly entwined with the environmental one that it is
doubtful that we will ever find a single, or major cause.
What
we have studied here is what determines weight management common
to all species.
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