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Item #8
Baboon
Behavior Offers Clues in Battle of the Bulge
Don't
Be Too Quick to Blame Your Diet, Research Suggests
Lack
of exercise - and not diet - causes obesity and diabetes among those
who are predisposed to the conditions, suggests new research on wild
baboons by Saint Louis University geriatricians published this month
in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
In
addition, researchers discovered that obese animals were NOT the ones
with the highest cholesterol levels, suggesting cholesterol problems
and obesity are triggered by different mechanisms.
"Figuratively
speaking, if humans don't exercise, some are likely to become obese
and as fat as baboons. You're genetically predisposed or you're
not," says William A. Banks, M.D., professor of geriatrics in the
department of internal medicine and professor of pharmacological and
physiological science at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
"Our research suggests some people get obese by not spending all
the calories they are taking in rather than taking in a large number
of calories."
Researchers
studied the eating and exercise patterns of two groups of wild baboons
in East Africa. One group of baboons had to forage for their food. The
others found a stash of food that humans had discarded that was much
closer to where they lived, which meant they expended much less energy
for their daily food raids. The fat content and number of calories
that both groups of baboons ate was about the same, but the baboons
that ate the leftovers didn't have to work as hard to get their food.
"More
than a third of the baboons that didn't have to exercise as much to
get their food had indications of obesity, evidence of early diabetes
caused by insulin resistance and elevated cholesterol levels,"
says Banks, who also is a staff physician at Veterans Affairs Medical
Center in St. Louis.
"The
baboons' condition is similar to a condition in people called
metabolic Syndrome X. Everything breaks down at once as patients
develop diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and obesity."
Most
of the baboons that found the easy calories - seven out of 11 - did
NOT develop the condition, indicating that some primates are more
sensitive than others to becoming obese and diabetic. Their levels of
leptin, the protein produced by fat and an indicator of obesity, were
similar to those that had to forage in the wild for food.
"The
implication for humans is some people can get away with indiscretions
such as not exercising and will gain a little weight without suffering
these serious health consequences. Other people are going to balloon
out and get sick with less provocation," Banks says.
Surprisingly,
the baboons with the highest cholesterol levels were those that ate
the food discarded by people and had normal leptin levels, indicating
that high cholesterol and obesity might be controlled by different
factors.
"They're
probably two separate but inter-related aspects. This may be telling
us they segregate more than we thought," Banks says.
"This
is a unique natural experiment with an uncanny replication of the
human condition in a non-human primate. It's pointing to a bigger
importance to exercise than we thought."
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