Nine More Reasons for the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes

Chemical pollution is a powerful force in the epidemic of obesity and diabetes, but it's not the only reason more and more people all over the world are becoming obese and are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Here are nine more:

• Women are having children later in life. In the twenty-first century, first pregnancies at the age of 40 are not unusual. Some women are having children after the age of 50. For reasons scientists do not entirely understand, children born to older mothers have more white fat, the kind of fat that stores calories, and less brown fat, the kind of fat that burns calories. Children born to older mothers burn fewer calories by generating body heat and have "slower" metabolisms that store more calories.
• Heavier women are, on average, more likely to have more children. There is a good biological reason for this. For most of human history, food has been in short supply. A woman with higher body fat was more likely to be living in a family or a village that could feed children, so she was more likely to ovulate with each menstrual cycle and more likely to get pregnant if she had sex at the right time in her cycle. As more and more women are obese, more and more women are having more children. This effect is greatest in Africa and the Caribbean.
• Overweight people tend to marry and have children with overweight people. Scientists call this phenomenon "positive assortment for adiposity." Especially since the media promote thinness as "sexy," fatness tends to become domestic. Overweight parents tend to have overweight children.

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• Television and the Internet occupy many people until late at night. Sleep deprivation leads to increased fat storage and decreased sensitivity to study. In one experiment, blood sugar levels rose 30% in young men who were deprived of 4 hours sleep per night for 6 nights. Habitually cruising the Internet or watching late-night TV may make insulin insensitivity permanent. Several studies show that African-Americans are especially susceptible to this effect.
• More and more people are taking more and more medications. Blood pressure medications, antidepressants, drugs for diabetes, contraceptives, steroids, and antihistamines all encourage weight gain. People taking these drugs don't gain weight if they eat less—but it's hard to find the willpower to eat less when chronic conditions make you feel unwell.
• Cold-weather heating systems are much more effective than earlier in human history. In much of Europe and in the northern United States, most homes were (and in some cases are) chilly throughout the winter. It was once common to need to wear a sweater indoors during the winter months. Even now, some Europeans and Canadians keep their homes around 10° C/52° F from November to March. Keeping warm burns calories, as many as 1000 calories per day.
• Have you ever thought that you could just sneeze and gain weight? It might actually be true. Certain strains of cold viruses seem to cause obesity. The adenoviruses, in particular, trigger product of inflammatory chemicals that swell belly fat. They cause weight gain and they also compact blood vessels that bring sugar and oxygen to fat cells. Since the sugar can't reach storage depots in belly fat, blood sugar levels go up.
• Especially in North America, many foods are low-fat or low-carb. People wind up consuming more calories (and even more fat and carbs) than normal because they mistakenly believe these foods are "safe."

And another reason for the worldwide epidemic of obesity? We just can't escape being reminded about food . Reality TV programs about competitive cooking , Internet ads that seem to be placed on web pages by an algorithm that somehow knows we are hungry, constant references to food in media make everyone want to eat more, more, more.

There are plenty of external forces to blame when you gain weight—but there is only one person who eventually will overcome them. Life's not fair. It's not easy to lose weight—but you are the one who will be able to control your health when you make the right choices with the right information.