Is it Genetic

…or caused by a virus? – Are you fat? It may not be your fault. If you were a fat child, it’s probably genetic. It could even be due to the kind of bacteria you have in your intestines! Maybe you even “caught” it when you were exposed to a virus. But no matter how you got it, you DO need to do something about it, because being fat makes you more likely to get cancer.

In LiveScience.com, Christopher Wanjek reports that UK researchers looked at 300,000 cases of cancer and found that being overweight increased the risk of developing 20 different kinds of cancer. BBC News reports that overweight children are more likely to be that way because of their genes than their lifestyle.

Researchers studied over 5,000 pairs of identical and non-identical twins and found that the differences in their weight were 77% due to their genes. Despite this, children who are overweight tend to grow up to be obese adults, so their parents need to teach them good eating habits while they?re young.

In fact, a craving for sweets in genetic for our ENTIRE species. In LiveScience.com, Meredith F. Small explains why: humans are naturally drawn to sweets because we are primates that evolved eating fruit in the trees. Ripe fruit has a higher sugar content and thus supplies more energy. It also supplies more water?something that’s hard to come by if you?re a tree-dwelling monkey.

It turns out that the kind of bacteria you have in your gastrointestinal tract plays a vital role in regulating your weight. There are trillions of “friendly” bacteria living there, that help extract calories from what we eat, help store these calories for later use, and provide energy and nutrients for the production of new bacteria to continue this work. Researcher John DiBaise says, “?manipulation of the gut [bacteria] may represent a novel approach for treating obesity that has few adverse effects.” And New Scientist magazine reports that researchers are getting closer to understanding how a single virus, called adenovirus-36 (Ad-36), causes fat cells to grow.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk

Did you know that there’s a FREE diet book right here on our website with a special chapter on how to deal with cravings for sweets? It works for kids too! To read it, click here and scroll down to What I Learned From the Fat Years. Anne Strieber, who used to be a diabetic, devised this diet herself, using scientific principles, and lost 100 pounds by following it?and you can too. Click on unknowncountry.com every day to learn the key to eating right. The key to OUR being here for you tomorrow is YOU: so follow the right path and subscribe today!

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