Quantcast
Channel: Nosey Parker » humour
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

A Cold Virus Made Me Fat — Honest

0
0

donuts

 

I used to blame my excessive weight on eating too much junk food, drinking too much beer and wine and avoiding exercise like the bubonic plague.

 

Silly me.

 

Thanks to the wonderful folks at New Scientist magazine, I now know that I can blame at least some of my flab (ah, what the hell — I’m going to blame it all) on a bunch of guilt-free things like a common cold virus, not sleeping enough, being nagged by somebody else and breathing polluted city air.

 

Really. I’ll drink to that (and eat too).

 

If you want to be ambitious and read the whole article (big, scientific words and all), here’s a link to the New Scientist website.

 

NewScientist

 

But if you’re a bit lazy like me, stay here and I’ll give you a quick summary. I would recommend the latter course of (non)action, if only because the New Scientist article is entitled Eight Lazy Ways to Lose Weight.

 

The article’s author, Emma Young, also tells you what you can do to counter the fatty factors, but I’m not going there. We just want to know that external influences are to blame for our weight gain, right? If you want to get all ambitious on me you can read the whole article yourself (but  you’ll only end up making yourself feel guilty when you don’t do the things the article tells you will reduce your exposure to fat-generating environments and behaviour).

 

chicken

Cold virus

 

Who knew, after all, that the common cold virus adenovirus-36 (Ad-36) not only increases the number of fat cells in our bodies but also makes those fat cells fatter? It turns out Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Louisiana did.

 

Dhurandhar first discovered the connection between the Ad-36 virus and obesity in chickens (now is a plump chicken really such a bad thing?). Then he figured out that obese people are three times more likely than people of the healthy-weight persuasion to test positive for Ad-36 antibodies floating around in their bloodstreams.

 

Another study found kids with Ad-36 antibodies weighed an average of 23 kilograms more than kids without them. (The New Scientist didn’t give the full details of the kids but I knew you would want to know so I looked into it for you: The 124 children in the study ranged between the ages of 8 and 18 with a median age of 13.6 years. Of those six-score-and-four kids, 46% were classified as non-obese and 54% were in the obese category. You’re welcome.)

 

I also learned (again, all on my own) that the Ad-36 virus causes obesity in mice, rats and monkeys as well as chickens. Who knew mice and monkeys got colds? Certainly not I.

 

(There are 52 identified human cold viruses skulking around out there — one for each week of the year — so, unfortunately, every cold we get isn’t necessarily an Ad-36 cold and can’t be automatically blamed for our love handles, jelly bellies and balloon butts.)

 

Diet-nag

Don’t go on a New Year’s diet

 

Isn’t that good news? New Scientist says everyday stress is a known fat builder. A brain-scan study at the Yale Stress Center PROVES that stress causes your brain to crave higher-calorie foods. And some of the things that produce that fat-seeking level of stress are the psychological pressure of actually going on a diet and the nagging of relatives about your waistline.

 

sleeping-baby

Stay in bed

 

Too little sleep makes you fat — so roll over, pack in a few more zzzzzzz’s and just watch the weight fall off your lazy bones. One study found that people who became obese during a six-year observational period slept an average of 6.3 hours a night. Study partcipants who maintained a healthier weight slept an average of 7.2 hours a night. And (hallelujah!) the study found that low levels of physical activity didn’t affect the findings.

 

hold-nose

Don’t breathe

 

This really only applies if you live in a city. Breathing polluted air causes extra fat to pile on around your stomach and does other nasty things — at least in mice. But the scientists at Ohio State University who are conducting the study are sure the same thing is happening to humans. So if you can’t move to the country, just accept that breathing makes you fat.

 

 

Well, that’s four of the article’s eight hot points — and 50% is good enough for me. I want to get a bite to eat now, so you’ll have to excuse me.

 

Like I said before, you can always read the whole article yourself. But I bet you won’t, lazy bones.

 

 


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images