I was watching the 7:30 Report (here in Aus) last week and they had this very interesting story regarding the scientific studies showing that genetic factors are largely to blame for many folks dealing with obesity. I have copied the transcript here and I have highlighted in bold a couple of interesting points made since I thought it was good to hear out of another person's mouth besides my own-and that is that lifestyle choices are still very important when it comes to combating obesity.
Two thirds of the Australian population now overweight or obese and the scientific community is turning to genetics for an explanation. With Christmas only days away, most Australians are preparing to throw their healthy habits out the window, and dig into all the foods we're told are bad for us. But for some this indulgence doesn't come just once a year
HEATHER EWART, PRESENTER: With Christmas almost here, many of us will throw healthy habits out the window and dig into all the foods we're told are bad for us.
For some people, that inability to stop eating isn't something that just happens once a year. With two thirds of the Australian population now overweight or obese, the scientific community is turning to genetics for an explanation.
The ABC's medical reporter Sophie Scott investigates.
SOPHIE SCOTT, REPORTER: Noeline Rudland tried just about everything in her lifelong battle with her weight.
NOELINE RUDLAND, LAWYER: You would have thought that I was this gregarious, outgoing, jolly woman who, you know, loved life and... but really inside I was just a mess and constantly tormented.
SOPHIE SCOTT: As her weight increased, so did her health problems. At 32, the Sydney lawyer was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and began to develop serious health complications. But it was a stark warning from her endocrinologist which forced her to take action.
NOELINE RUDLAND: That I could either begin a diet and exercise regime or I could prepare to die, and that was the turning point.
SOPHIE SCOTT: For people like Noeline Rudland, science is stepping in to unlock the reasons why maintaining a healthy body weight is so difficult.
KATHERINE SAMARAS, ASSOC. PROF., GARVAN INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH: People who are overweight have got very strong genes promoting them to be overweight.
SOPHIE SCOTT: Studies into identical twins have uncovered many scientific secrets. When American scientists looked at identical twins raised separately in different families they discovered body weight was largely inherited.
STEPHEN O'RAHILLY, PROF., CLINICAL BIOCHEMISTRY, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY: Your body weight as an adult was very similar to the identical twin you had never seen and not at all like the family that adopted you. That's the best piece of evidence we have really that genetics is a major influence on adult body weight.
SOPHIE SCOTT: In fact the research found as much as about 70 per cent of the difference in body shape and size is down to your genes.
STEPHEN O'RAHILLY: Obesity of course is a medical problem. It kills you.
SOPHIE SCOTT: Professor Stephen O'Rahilly from the University of Cambridge is a world leader in the field of obesity and genetics. He's found that many severely obese children are missing a key segment of their DNA.
STEPHEN O'RAHILLY: These were, you know, completely intellectually normal children, they were not developmentally delayed in any way, they were just very fat and in general they were very hungry. And they were obese because they were eating too much but they were eating too much because their bodies were driving them to seek food and to consume it.
SOPHIE SCOTT: Up to 60 different genes are linked to obesity. The genes were thought to govern our metabolism or how quickly we burn food but new research shows that the genes actually influence appetite and now much food we need to feel full.
STEPHEN O'RAHILLY: In even in a modern society there are lots of lean people and quite a lot of fat people. What determines who remains lean, who becomes fat, that's your genes.
SOPHIE SCOTT: The discovery that genes play such an important role might explain why so many weight loss programs fail. For people with the obesity genes the simple message to eat less and exercise more may not be enough.
STEPHEN O'RAHILLY: There's an assumption on the behalf of lean people when they look at an obese person they say, well, I find it very easy to remain as lean as I do. Why can't that person just eat less and be slim and healthy like me? And the fact is many obese people would like to and try very hard to, and indeed some even succeed to temporarily but the drive, internal drive of the body to go back to one's natural weight is very powerful.
SOPHIE SCOTT: Even more so when we're surrounded by temptation, difficult at the best of times but overwhelming at this time of year.
KATHERINE SAMARAS: If you happen to be born with the genes for energy conservation and poor appetite control you couldn't have been born in a worst time. We have a 24 hour smorgasbord that is being offering to us constantly.
SOPHIE SCOTT: Professor Katharine Samaras from Sydney's Garvan Institute is one of Australia's leading researchers into the link between obesity and genes. She's already using the new genetic knowledge in treating overweight patients.
KATHERINE SAMARAS: Whilst we tend to blame people for being overweight, and say, oh, if only they weren't so slovenly and if only they didn't eat so much, we don't really, that's really a very poor understanding of what's really going on. What's really going on is that people have got a genetic susceptibility to carrying extra energy for eating more.
SOPHIE SCOTT: And that's what doctors told Noeline Rudland. Even as a child, she was destined to be overweight.Poor diet and a lack of exercise just exacerbate her genetic vulnerability.
NOELINE RUDLAND: It's been important for me to understand that, while I take responsibility for my own poor choice, my own poor lifestyle choices, that it's not just my responsibility alone and that I do have a disease called obesity, that I do have diabetes and that I have a genetic disposition, which is clearly evident in my family.
SOPHIE SCOTT: But some in the scientific community believe that genes are not your destiny and important environmental factors are being forgotten.
EMMA WHITELAW, PROF., QLD INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH: I think that means people tend to feel powerless about their ability to determine their body weight. We really know that if you stop eating you get less fat and that's tending to be lost, I think, in the story.
SOPHIE SCOTT: When all else failed, Noeline Rudland took drastic action and had gastric banding surgery. The band is so tight she simply can't eat very much.
NOELINE RUDLAND: For lunch I will have a food replacement, which is in the form of a chocolate milkshake.
SOPHIE SCOTT: Since the surgery she's gone from size 24 to size 14 in 18 months. She's been able to reduce your diabetes medications and her blood pressure is now under control.
NOELINE RUDLAND: It's a just been such an enormous change to my life that I'm totally grateful.
KATHERINE SAMARAS: Understanding the science of obesity actually helps us be far more compassionate about the way we view the sufferers of the condition of obesity.
SOPHIE SCOTT: With her goal weight still 15 kilos away, Noelene Rudland has taken up hobbies that don't involve food and alcohol. These days she is healthier and happier.
NOELINE RUDLAND: The best thing that was ever said to me was, either get on a program or die, prepare to die. I think you can't put it any more brutally than that or confronting as that and fortunately I had the courage to listen.
HEATHER EWART: Sophie Scott with that report.
