A New Understanding of an Old "Obesity Gene"

As you know if you've been following this blog for a while, obesity risk has a strong genetic component .  Genome-wide association studi...

The Genetics of Obesity, Part III

Genetics Loads the Gun, Environment Pulls the Trigger Thanks to a WHS reader* for reminding me of the above quote by Dr. Francis Collins, di...

The Genetics of Obesity, Part II

Rodents Lead the Way The study of obesity genetics dates back more than half a century.  In 1949, researchers at the Jackson Laboratories id...

The Genetics of Obesity, Part I

Choosing the Right Parents: the Best Way to Stay Lean? In 1990, Dr. Claude Bouchard and colleagues published a simple but fascinating study ...

Beyond Ötzi: European Evolutionary History and its Relevance to Diet. Part III

In previous posts, I reviewed some of the evidence suggesting that human evolution has accelerated rapidly since the development of agricult...

Beyond Ötzi: European Evolutionary History and its Relevance to Diet. Part I

In the previous post, I explained that Otzi descended in large part from early adopters of agriculture in the Middle East or nearby.  What I...

Lessons From Ötzi, the Tyrolean Ice Man. Part I

This is Otzi, or at least a reconstruction of what he might have looked like.  5,300 years ago, he laid down on a glacier near the border be...

Eocene Diet Follow-up

Now that WHS readers around the globe have adopted the Eocene Diet and are losing weight at an alarming rate, it's time to explain the ...

New Obesity Review Paper by Yours Truly

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism just published a clinical review paper written by myself and my mentor Dr. Mike Schwart...

What Causes Insulin Resistance? Part IV

So far, we've explored three interlinked causes of insulin resistance: cellular energy excess, inflammation, and insulin resistance in t...

What Causes Insulin Resistance? Part I

Insulin is an ancient hormone that influences many processes in the body.  Its main role is to manage circulating concentrations of nutrient...

Does High Circulating Insulin Drive Body Fat Accumulation? Answers from Genetically Modified Mice

The house mouse Mus musculus is an incredible research tool in the biomedical sciences, due to its ease of care and its ability to be genet...

The Case for the Food Reward Hypothesis of Obesity, Part II

In this post, I'll explore whether or not the scientific evidence is consistent with the predictions of the food reward hypothesis, as o...

A Roadmap to Obesity

In this post, I'll explain my current understanding of the factors that promote obesity in humans.   Heritability To a large degree, obe...

Obesity and the Brain

Nature Genetics just published a paper that caught my interest ( 1 ). Investigators reviewed the studies that have attempted to determine a...

Malocclusion: Disease of Civilization

In his epic work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration , Dr. Weston Price documented the abnormal dental development and susceptibility to too...

Ischemic Heart Attacks: Disease of Civilization

Or, more precisely, disease of industrial civilization. The scientific literature contains examples of cultures that don't suffer fro...

Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials Part III

I'm happy to say, it's time for a new installment of the "Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials" series. The latest study was...

Masai and Atherosclerosis

I've been digging deeper into the health of the Masai lately. A commenter on Chris's blog pointed me to a 1972 paper showing that...

Genetics and Disease

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the role of genetics in health. It seems like every day the media have a new story about gene X or ...