Weight loss relapse associated with exposure to perfluoroalkylate substances
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
Certain PFASs are no longer manufactured in the United States, as a result of phase-outs including the PFOA Stewardship Program (2010-2015), in which eight major chemical manufacturers agreed to eliminate the use of PFOA and PFOA-related chemicals in their products and as emissions from their facilities.[95] Although PFOA and PFOS are no longer manufactured in the United States, they are still produced internationally and are imported into the US in consumer goods such as carpet, leather and apparel, textiles, paper and packaging, coatings, rubber and plastics.[96]
In 2020, manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced an agreement to phase out some types of PFAS which are used in food packaging by 2024.[97]
PFASs are also used by major companies of the cosmetics industry in a wide range of cosmetics, including lipstick, eye liner, mascara, foundation, concealer, lip balm, blush, nail polish and other such products.
We should have a "inform consumer first" attitude for product ingredients, packaging, and manufacturing conditions. Trade secrets should being a distant second concern with increased liability for undisclosed information.
In regard to PFAS and general plastic concerns, I've started limiting my exposure to plastic products. This process started 5+ years ago. It is essentially impossible to eliminate plastic. I am focusing on food packaging, textiles, housing finishes, and computer input devices.
Edit: Exact information that would adjust my consuming behavior: "Which pesticides were used in growing this food", "what is the exact type of plastic this bottle is made out of", "was this beverage or it's primary ingredients stored in plastic before being bottled in glass"
Are you saying like having some keyboard and mouse being made out of metal? Maybe ceramics or glass?
The conditions are _slightly_ different, and knowing your apple watch uses ceramics doesn't make you a materials engineer.
Is this a wishlist item or something you've actually found? I wasn't aware of any non-plastic computer mice or keycaps.
You can probably replace every component on a keyboard, today, with metal with the exceptions being limited to the switches and PCB.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenX
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8571496/
Yes, that's another highly fluorinated compound that may well be worse.
Not saying glass isn't better, just... I definitely get it.
What is BPA for in plastic?
What are the alternatives to BPA in plastic?
The answers are too long to post.
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that has numerous applications. It is one of the best-known and widely applied PFAS. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon
PTFE is missing the reactive tail that makes the other ones so problematic. It's in the same chemical family, yes, but is very different in its properties.
> Remember Teflon coated pans?
I have plenty of them.
> And how you are supposed to throw them out if they're scratched?
That's not true now, and has never been true. (Other than perhaps the scratches making your food stick.)
If you cook in such temperatures you must like eating charcoal.
You start with such high temps because unless cooking with an extremely high btu heat source, the temp of that pan drops dramatically once food is added. This is also why you don't add oil until right before placing your food item in. Otherwise, yes, even high temp oils would ignite before reaching 650f.
https://madebyradius.com/products/natural-biodegradable-silk...
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/dan...
fast food wrappers contain PFAS, it could be fast food makes you fat not from the food but from the packaging!
Here, the word "may" is correct but it should really be "we just don't know, it is possible". But "obesogenic" suggest that the link has been proven which it has not.
I am not defending PFAS. But our history is full of missed opportunities and billions of people doing stupid shit for decades because somebody jumped to conclusions to fast. We have still not eradicated notion that fats are all wrong and need to be removed from the diet where it is exactly the opposite -- it is very likely that removal of fats from the diet is responsible for the large part of obesity epidemic. Right after people believing you need to eat multiple meals a day to be healthy.
It is important to keep focus on stuff that we already know is detrimental to our health and these are excessive amounts of carbohydrates (filling the void when fats were removed from the diet), refined sugars and reduced time between meals not allowing people to exercise their lipid transport in reverse.
That's correct, but it's interesting to ask: what should public policy be in light of these findings?
We already know PFAS are dangerous for other reasons and the war against them is warming up.
And policy is not/should not be made based on just one study. Sadly, there are too many contradicting studies. Things like this need to be re-checked so that policymakers and societies don't waste time chasing things that don't bring any results.
Even then, we need to understand what is magnitude of this effect, what level of PFAS translate to what increase in obesity risk, etc. Then put it in context of already planned PFAS reductions.
Then if I was policymaker I would also look at what are potential projects we are not working on and where are highest return on investments. Just because there is something you can fix doesn't mean you should fix it. There might be another thing with more ROI where you should be spending your efforts.
That is assuming the conclusions of this study are correct, which I don't believe they are.
I hadn't heard of this before, but it's interesting; despite receiving guidance to consume smaller, more frequent meals, I've found the practice has a negative effect on my own energy levels and weight stability.
Would you mind elaborating on this point, or providing links to further reading?
Fasting is an opportunity for the body to burn stored fats. Insulin is a hormone that tells every cell in the body to take sugars from the bloodstream and effectively prevents burning stored fats. When cells are used to burning sugars all the time, when given access to sugars and fats they will chose sugars preferentially. So as long as they have supply of sugar there is very little fat burning happening.
What's more, when you stop eating for a moment, for whatever reason, your body still does not have ability to burn much fat for energy because the metabolic pathways to do it are too dormant to provide enough energy on a moments notice. You become hungry which is your body telling you it can't get energy and you resolve the only way to fix the issue is by putting more carbohydrate-rich food in your mouth.
Fasting periods are necessary for the body to train those metabolic pathways. For example, by eliminating breakfast and not snacking in the evening you can easily double the time it takes between two meals giving couple of hours each day during which your body has to get energy from the fats. Over time your body relearns to burn fats and when you don't eat for a moment for whatever reason it is able to start burning fats faster and start providing more energy lessening the feeling of hunger and immediate need to put more food in your mouth.
Fasting is the normal state of the human body. We have evolved in conditions where food was relatively scarce and when we finally caught something, we had to eat it here and now and then move on and wait until we are able to catch something else at unknown future time.
This means we have evolved to accept food for a relatively short portion of time, be very good at storing energy as fat and then to use this fat for a long time until we could catch something else.
This correlates perfectly with my experience: When I've tried to incorporate breakfast or other frequent small meals into my diet, I've found it wreaks havoc on my energy levels and feeling of fullness throughout the day. Without attempting to "fast," I've found that I feel best and experience fewer "crashes" when I skip breakfast and after-dinner snacks. You've just explained a convincing reason why that would be the case.
I now don't even need to eat every day -- I had situations where I skipped entire days of eating because I simply forgot about it.
If you think about it most people have hundreds of thousands of calories on them in form of a huge fat layer covering most of the body which is enough for even lean people to live off for weeks at a time. If you think about it, it is pretty silly to complain one is hungry when there is so much energy stored on us.
I remember this thought struck me when I was reading about first Inuits trading in Canadian outposts. They would sell their furs and buy food. When a curious scientist decided to follow them he discovered they would stop outside the outpost, eat ALL food they just bought in one huge binge and then travel back home for many days or even weeks without eating anything. They were not only good at storing fat, but they were also good at recovering the energy when they needed for however long they needed. This is what means to be fat adapted -- being able to completely separate intake of food from burning stored fat for energy.
People nowadays are like a car that does not have a tank for gas. You have to keep pouring the gasoline into the engine constantly or it will shut down. What you want is a large tank from which you can be constantly supplying energy to your engine but you can fill this tank at your convenience.
Somehow doing one thing right is supposed to prevent obesity in every single case?
That all obesity must necessarily be because of people eating multiple meals?
All chemicals should be considered dangerous without any other knowledge. Coevolution of humans with chemicals (which has a big overlap with “natural” in contrast to synthetic chemicals) is just a prior that makes danger less likely.
Correlation does not guarantee causation. But the stronger the correlation, the more you suspect that two phenomena are causally linked somehow. In this case, three pounds over half a year is a surprisingly large effect. If it were to continue, even if it slowly approaches an equilibrium, it could be responsible for a substantial increase in total body weight in millions of people. It's very possible that PFAS is just acting as a proxy for exposure to packaged foods, but that would be interesting in itself.
In this case, the best course of action is to study the phenomenon more closely, mostly because it is large.
Is it possible that people who are likely to be more obese are also likely to eat garbage food delivered in low quality plastic packaging? And more healthy people are more likely to cook their food from higher quality ingredients like fresh produce that is not delivered in plastic?
See, the above explanation, I think very reasonable (though requiring a proof), could explain why obese people could have higher PFAS?
Another possible explanation (again, I am just sayin', no proof for it): imagine all food is contaminated with PFAS, but obese people have different chemistry that is worse at removing PFAS from their bodies.
This is why we say "correlation does not imply causation". Yes, highly correlated things are interesting and require further investigation. Even if PFAS is not causing obesity we still might learn something interesting about either PFAS or obesity or something else that is connected to both.
As an example, we are told that fish is generally one of the healthiest fats around. But what people forget is that this is assuming wild fish and the kind that does not accumulate rare metals. Salmon is pretty health... unless we are talking farmed salmon. Farmed salmon is fed with highly processed, carbohydrate-rich feed which completely changes the fat content of the salmon making it very high omega 6 to 3 ratio. And God knows what else...
Beef tallow -- I have simple solution for this at least for my home use. I buy lots of quality red meat. Whenever I may broth or render fats for any reason, I gather them all and store them for later.
I make a huge, 15L pot of broth. I use various pieces of meat, especially ones that have a lot of collagen. If I think I have too little cartilage I will add achilles tendons which are pretty much pure collagen. I brown everything them either on a pan or in the oven and I simmer it for at least 12h until all meat disintegrates and all collagen and fats dissolve. I then remove and discard meat and bones and small particles by filtering it through fine mesh strainer, I remove (and store) the tallow. And then I reduce everything about four-five times to get the meatiest substance on Earth. Cool it down, it should completely congeal in room temperature. I cut it into cubes, throw it into plastic bags and into the freezer. Then whenever I want to make soup or a sauce or risotto or whatever else, I just take some cubes from the freezer and drop directly into the pan or pot.
I also make and freeze other useful things. For example, I always keep a supply of bolognese sauce which I make 9L at a time and then lasts me for a year.
On the other hand they do have a host of other potentially dangerous additives, dyes, preservatives, especially if you’re not in a place with strong regulations like the EU.
Why is this? America is a first world country... but why we don't have strong regulations?
Perhaps we should get with the times and accept that Goodhart’s Law applies to the measures of capitalism. A consumer can absolutely be poisoned or cheated by a product satisfying all commonly accepted quality criteria. As soon as those criteria are agreed upon by the market, they become targets to manipulate.
A lot of industrial "food" was started here... Often, the discoveries of good vs. bad in terms of new "food" can take 3-5 generations for the issues to show up in people. For example, Omega 6 fatty acids are 25-40% of fats in American bodies today vs 1900, where it was closer to 2-3%. Likely a factor in a lot of endemic issues with hormone production today. That doesn't account for modern wheat being a multiplier in terms of histamine response (often confused with glucose intolerance).
I'm not strictly anti-gmo, or against processing food... but it's a matter of extent, and what one mixes in to what is natural and what is so refined it no longer resembles real foot. Even then, hyper-palatability is another issue. There's also the half century push for reducing dietary cholesterol and saturated fats that has become ingrained in culture..
Or to put it another way, look at the list of F500 companies, esp. F100, and notice how many of them are in fields like healthcare, foods, and oil & gas (plastics being a way to utilize leftovers from petroleum refinement).
Lots of money means marketing & propaganda campaigns to sway public opinion, and a swayed public opinion leads to voting in politicians friendly to corporate views.
Friendly politicos then are able to sway regulations in favor of corporations. From there you get Regulatory Capture, where the regulators are often handpicked by the industry they're ostensibly supposed to regulate.
What exactly do you mean by unhealthy?
For the purposes of weight (fat?) loss (and ignoring PFAs contimation) foods are equivalent if calorically equivalent once accounting for thermic effect of protein, and digestibility of certain carbohydrates like dietary fiber and sugar alcohols...
> After the 26-week intervention period, food and instructions were no longer provided, and many chose to discontinue their participation during this period, whereas 101 remained up to the maximum duration of 26 additional weeks
This means PFAs could affect any of the main pathways of Calories In Calories Out balance from fidgeting, temperature regulation, ghrelin/appetite (lack of satiation control leading non-adherence to a diet) etc.
But there's little evidence that the foods themselves are "unhealthy" or fattening. They simply are consumed in quantities that hinder/negate attempts to lose weight.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
It's ironic that the products we use for beauty reasons can impact us so negatively.
I would argue that even if it was proven that one of those PFAS are dangerous in cosmetics some people would still use them.
I don't know how reliable that information is, but it seems reasonable.
My counterfactual: wouldn't you expect ski shop workers to become super obese? They're exposed to huge amounts of PFAS in ski wax.
That's not a huge difference, so it might even be happening for all we know.
So there are pollutants that mildly increase appetite or decrease basal metabolic rate.
If you're gaining weight and don't want to, the knobs of diet and exercise are still there, they don't go away simply because the number of calories you need changes a bit.
Fast food and ready meals are in plastic containers. There is almost certainly a link between those and obesity. But you can eat both and be thin, or muscular and lean, or any body type you want really, if you modulate their use.
People budget all of the time with their money, but ask them to do it with food and it's like you have two heads.
Edit: this comment isn't as relevant after the original was edited, alas
What you've written makes sense. I feel that "relapse" carries strong connotations of ongoing failure though, not just like, having a couple of rough days.
Food isn't like alcohol or heroin or gambling or whatever whereby one binge day can really fuck you up. You don't get skinny by skipping meals for a day, and you don't get fat by eating 6000 calories in a day once.
One of the core skills of keeping any daily habit is to not get so discouraged by momentary lost progress that you give up the whole game; but that's easier said than done.
How can someone already in this society be expected to fight it successfully, when the typical result for someone coming into it with a lifetime of healthy eating behind them and a good BMI is that they find themselves struggling with weight in short order?
Which isn't to say don't try, but also indicates to me that there's a 0% chance we're going to willpower our way out of the obesity epidemic, and it indicates to me that willpower is not the key factor in keeping other countries skinnier than us. If that's all we've got, we're just gonna keep getting fatter.
[EDIT] Though, full disclosure, I think our problems are deep, structural, and tied heavily to our kinda-awful and very messy "culture" and "society", such as they are, so am not optimistic we're capable of fixing this even if we knew exactly what to do.
The US has higher calorie fast foods, larger default portions, and walking is involved far less in the typical day than in most countries.
That means that if you just do what feels natural, in the US you're going to be eating more and doing less exercise than you would elsewhere.
That's not an argument against willpower, it's in fact the opposite. In the US _more_ willpower is required - you're explicitly going against the norm to an extent, if you move to e.g. Paris and get the metro and walk everywhere then by default you're going to be eating less and exercising more.
I don't think that anyone is claiming that we can reduce the statistical incidence of obesity via willpower. It's more that you, as an individual, can choose to be healthy. It's empowering and therefore important to know that.
Weight loss always creates an enormously contentious discussion because for so many people it is interpreted as a personal indictment of their choices and behaviour.
I fully agree with your whole post, from a background of general fitness (healthy diet, heavy daily exercise), and because I've been through the process of losing weight. It was difficult (at first), and is still sometimes difficult maintaining it.
If I hadn't experienced that weight loss experience (and the success it brought), and if I ate worse, didn't exercise, and weighed 10kg+ more, I'm sure something in my brain would probably lean me towards disagreeing with the simple model of weight loss. I'm sure I'd also look for blame elsewhere and look for workarounds, which a multi-million dollar industry would happily (not) provide.
Humans are funny.
Something I think about a lot is that fundamentally people don't treat physical activity and their diet as seriously as they would if it were really a priority. I include myself in that even as someone who works out often.
A software developer might sit in a chair for 8 hours a day on mental pursuits. But on the main page of HN, there's a "15 minute stretching routine" for people to do to help with pains. Not so they can be fit mind, so that they can manage sitting in that chair.
The whole mindset is bonkers. If you manage to get the balance of physical to mental to even be 20%/80%, hell let's do 10%/90%, and you treat your diet even 50% as well as you treat your financial budget, you will almost certainly be in fantastic shape compared to most of your peer group.
On the exercise front, it might be just due to most people not finding "their sport". When people find exercise they enjoy, it can easily start taking up a lot of their time and fulfilling that physical/mental balance you mentioned.
I think a lot of people take up rather cliche sports/exercises simply for weight loss, and thinking of it that way just doesn't stick. Running is the big one. I love running myself and I know many people who also do, but it seems like the go-to "lose weight exercise", and a lot of people seem to hate it.
Sometimes the path to start a sport / exercise you love can be very strange. I was pretty out of shape last year this time and July/August I just spontaneously decided to walk home from work (1.5 hour walk) and that stuck as a daily thing. One of those walks made me mull over joining a gym, so I did that and have been almost every day since last August. The treadmill there shunted me onto running outside, and revisiting a sport I did when I was younger (orienteering), and sports kept stacking on top, as well as interest in nutrition and health.
I lost about 15kg, taking me from overweight to the lower/middle of healthy, with a lot more strength and I'm barely ever ill now compared to before.
I could easily have not walked home on that day and none of it would have happened. I'd probably still be overweight (and unhappy). It was just random really. I know that doesn't help most people, but it's what I've found with myself and others. A few people I've gotten to know through the gym and other sports is that the "kick" was either a health scare or being in a dark place, and using exercise as an outlet got them into a way better place than they were before.
You just have to be so careful not to relapse though. There can just as easily be a kick in the other direction, and I try to keep that in mind.
I hate running. Cardio is my weakpoint in general. I enjoy cycling, but only with a purpose, like if I go from A to B to pick something up.
I would also say though that personally, I find going to work and doing the 9-5 way way harder than going to the gym.
My main source of confusion in life is that maximising money (not just having enough to survive but actively maximising it and giving up all of your time in order to do so) is standard, but maximising health is just like, I mean whatever, maybe.
I feel like you could give most people ten million dollars and they still wouldn't get in shape.
Or someone with cancer having it reoccur as a "tumour free relapse"?
Some definitions I found:
- suffer deterioration after a period of improvement.
- a deterioration in someone's state of health after a temporary improvement.
- to slip or fall back into a former worse state
- a recurrence of symptoms of a disease after a period of improvement
> The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that perfluorinated alkylate substance (PFAS) exposures are associated with body weight increases in a dietary intervention study.
The phrase appears to be intended to mean the same thing as "body weight increases in a dietary intervention" which seems to describe a relapse, assuming that the purpose of "dietary intervention" is to lose weight.
Edit: I guess the first sentence of this comment doesn't actually answer the question it's intending to. To the point of the question, maybe it would be weird to say that a relapsed anorexic had a "weight gain relapse" but only if it would be weird to say they are on a "weight gain treatment".
"adults with obesity first lost at least 8% of their body weight and then completed at least 26 weeks on a specific diet"