I heard about this TED talk by Dr. Peter Attia the other day and watched it immediately. I had been hearing some rumblings that factions of the scientific and medical community have been questioning which comes first, type 2 diabetes or obesity.
It’s known that obesity is associated with type 2 diabetes. However, association is not causation, and there are people with obesity who do not have type 2 diabetes, and there are skinny people who have type 2 diabetes (pay special attention to what Dr. Attia says about those people). Could it be that the metabolic changes that come with type 2 diabetes lead to obesity in people whose bodies have functional protective responses?
This all sort of parallels the controversial research which suggests that being overweight may not be unhealthy, as well as research suggesting that people who are “skinny fat” (i.e., they carry excess “unseen” fat packed around their internal organs) have more health risks than people who carry excess fat where it’s visible. Some interesting questions are certainly being raised (“Curing ourselves of new idea resistance”), and I look forward to reading the research that continues to emerge. In the meantime, I think you’ll find this talk quite interesting.
