Quote:
Originally Posted by JulieJ08
I think it's perfectly reasonable that it can contribute, due to inflammation. I think where the problem comes in is with the reporters in popular media. They take a simple study that suggests some small effect, and report it as "You're fat because you didn't brush your teeth!!!" It's the reporting that's nonsense, not the science.
I think it's not just the reporters, but the "listeners," also. It's pretty common, in fact probably the majority opinion in our culture to believe there is only one cause for weight gain. Even people who believe that "some" people may be overweight due to medical and metabolic disorders, they believe that "most" people are overweight for the same reason.
I believe there are thousands of factors that contribute to weight gain, and the combination of factors are unique to each person. Someone morbidly obese since early childhood may have very different factors than a person who begins to gain weight after menopause.
You can say that all obesity and overweight can be cured by a person taking in fewer calories than they burn - but it's alot like saying the "cure" for poverty is for poor people to earn more money (Great observation, now how do you make it happen - I bet it isn't going to be the "same" for every poor person, just as the factors contributing to their poverty are likely to often be different).
I have no problem with considering poor dental care a contributor to weight gain - how much of a contributor? Probably not much. Could a person be five pounds overweight because of the effects of poor dental care? Maybe. 200 lbs overweight? Probably not (though maybe a few pounds of that 200 could be a result of the dental issue).
A lot of people believe that these studies finding contributors to weight gain, encourage people to use excuses to justify being fat. I really don't see that happening very often. Most fat people that I've met, and certainly myself, have a history of blaming no one, but themselves for their weight. Sometimes perhaps taking too much or too severe blame (I'm a piece of crap because I'm fat, is NOT conducive to weight loss for most people, in my experience. It just reinforces the belief that one isn't worth anyone's even one's own self-respect. If you don't like or respect yourself, why would you care about your appearance or health?)
I don't think excuses find people, people find excuses. While someone may "use" the dental excuse now, the research finding didn't give the person the idea to make excuses. They would have used another excuse if this one weren't available, and likely did.
I think that for everyone losing weight in the long term, is like finding pieces to the puzzle. Some people may have a two piece or three piece puzzle, and some people might have a 5000 piece puzzle.
I think the biggest problem with considering obesity a one or two piece puzzle, is that people ignore the influence of the other pieces. When I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and put on a CPAP machine at night, my pulmonologist suggested that I would probably lose some weight without even trying. Yeah, I thought he was completely insane, and forgot about it. Then about six months later at a doctor's appointment, I found that I'd lost 20 lbs without any attempt on my part whatsoever.
I always knew that I had TOM eating issues - from the very first TOM at 9 or 10, I felt starving "that week" no matter how much I ate. Then, it would take the rest of the month to get the weight off. I was finally able to get a doctor to agree to let me experiment with bc like Seasonique to reduce the number of periods, only about a year and a half ago (though I'd been suggesting it for the past 20 years). It was the miracle I'd expected. No, it didn't reverse my obesity, but it has made dieting a whole lot less torturous (two pieces down, and who knows how many to go).
I've found that low carb eating is another "piece," for me. I wouldn't have considered low carb eating, if two doctors hadn't suggested it for my insulin resistance (another piece). Hypothyroid is probably another, but it's not anything I can do much about at this point, because my thyroid levels aren't quite low enough for medical intervention (but I'm told I have all the signs it eventually will be). I suppose I could self-medicate, but that's a bit drastic. I'll just work on the other pieces in the meantime.
When I thought my "only" problem was eating too much, and moving too little, but didn't look to any of the factors that made moving more/eating less more difficult, my only tool was "willpower," which ensured that I spent more time and effort into "white-knuckling" it, instead of trying to find ways to make the job easier.
It's like if you were told that you just weren't trying hard enough to jump over a wall, so you keep trying to put more and more effort into the jump, while ignoring an assortment of climing tools a few feet away.
