Weather Report: Loud
As I was in the shower this morning I started to hear the distant rumble. By the time my morning routine had carried me to the kitchen for the first cup, the thunder-boomers were almost constant. The light show outside the kitchen window is quite impressive.
Welcome to Spring Break all you little darlings…Judging by the weather forecast I looked at last night, most of this week will be stormy…Comfortably mild, but wet.
Oh well, let’s see what the email gremlins brought in the night before this little summer storm out of season decides to kill the power…
Health Note – Why is America Fat
As someone who has battled weight problems ever since I was hospitalized with paricarditis in 1997. This article from the Washington Post this morning touches on something that has been peculating through my thoughts for a while, environmental causes of obesity. I have been following the arguments about the fattening of America for the last decade with a personal interest. My weight problems started with high dose steroids and have progressed over the last ten years. living on salads and walking for a couple of hours an evening did nothing to stem the rise in pounds. Following the American Heart Associations diet of low fat high carb menus was the absolute wrong thing to do. Adkins worked for a while but never to the point I was trying to reach, and it really didn’t “seem” healthy to me. Moderation seem to manage to keep the weight from going higher but doesn’t seem to stop the rise.
To find out that the chemicals “we” are putting into everything we use are changing the hormonal balances within the body and changing the very nature of our fat cells themselves is troubling to say the least. I was beginning to suspect the growth hormones given to our beef cattle. They probably are a contributing factor. But add the chemicals in your water bottle and your food storage dish…
Too many calories and too little exercise are undeniably the major factors contributing to the obesity epidemic, but several recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.
The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals’ sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity — a process scientists call adipogenesis.
Go read the rest of the article. Maybe we can stop this before we kill ourselves…
Source: Chemicals May Play Role in Rise in Obesity – washingtonpost.com
Well it’s late and raining and I’ve got a ways to go to get to work…