Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Alex Hansen's picture

Obsesity and Anorexia?

The topic of obsesity is very interesting and how the body deals with food intake, how the body's metabolism works.  The mechanisms that change one's metabolism such as excercizing to increase metabolic rate appear to have an importance in examining how the body deals with calorie intake.  Do such activities account for this set point change at all?  How much excersize is specifically needed if it is such a cause of the set point change?  Can two people excersize for equal amounts of time, yet cause a different set point change for their individual bodies?  Does excersize play a role in the harsher environment explanation of why two different individuals can have different set points even if their height is the same?  Can excercize fight against these explained viruses that might act as the reason behind these set point changes?  What can an individual do to protect themself from these viruses, to fight against these viruses?  If excersize is infact a protective measure, are there others as well? 

How does sex play a role in these differences as well? How can there be so much difference between males and females in body type and metabolic rate?  Are these viruses affecting set points different for males versus females?

Also, what role does heredity play in obesisty and metabolic rate?  Body type appears to be hereditary, so how does this affect set point changes?  Does this work to support the fact that people are born with certain set points?

Also, what affect does anorexia have on these points?  It is known that after a certain point of basically starving oneself, the body's metabolism begins to shut down because the amount of calorie intake becomes so low.  Does this have any affect on the heredity of the set points if the parent is anorexic and has messed with his or her metabolism in such a way?  Also, does this perhaps by any chance weaken the immune system and possibly make the individual more susceptible to these viruses?  As the sizes of clothing have changed and the notion of what is thin continually increases to that of lower weights, and the size of models as well has become smaller, is it true that the number of individuals who are anorexic increases as well?  If so, and this truly affects these points and the metabolism, what will eventually happen to these points in years to come as anorexia increases?  Are more people becoming susceptible to these viruses, the children of these anorexic individuals?  Although anorexia is almost the opposit of obesity, both involve calorie intake that does not correspond to their weight and height, does not correspond to their needed calorie intake for that day.  What is eventually going to happen to these points as both obesity and anorexia seem to be increasing? 

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
5 + 1 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.