Comment by JimmaDaRustla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JimmaDaRustla | Hacker News Reader

My take - shouldn't be a disease.

Reasoning: most diseases have a direct "cause and effect" - if you can't eat healthy because you weren't forced to eat anything other than chicken nuggets as a child, that may well be a disease. (My GF suffers from this; she says we will serve mini hamburgers and chicken fingers at our wedding...) But obesity in general, to me, is not a disease.

However, if labeling it as a disease can help people in any way to get on the path to a healthier lifestyle, then it doesn't bother me. Calling it a disease should not be a crutch, but hopefully a way to address the problem. I believe insurance companies will have to cover operations that can help people lower their weight.

I believe in Canada our health plan covers that, kind of bugs me though because it comes from my taxes rather than paid insurance.

There is something to suggest that obesity is more than simply having a bad diet. Obese people react differently to food, and it appears to have a genetic correlation.

One paper suggests that there is a dopamine response difference in the obese: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11210998

The causal direction is open to interpretation, but I still think that there is a difference between 'overweight' and 'obese'

"genetic correlation"

this probably plays a part in it for some, but only a small part if I would have to guess, there's way more to it.

First sign there's much more going on than just 'a disease' is the fact there are way more obese people in the US for instance than in most other countries. And also for instance that children where both parents are obese are more likely to develop obesity as well. First comes down to culture, second to lifestyle. Not two things I'd directly associate with words like 'genetic or 'disease'.

I can't say I agree with this analysis. In the first instance, the fact that both parents' obesity is a factor could be argued to point towards a stronger correlation. In a broad sense, it's also important to note that chronic diseases always have some behavioural and lifestyle component. For example, physical malformations can be caught early and given therapeutic redress -- Scoliosis correction might be a good example.

You're not condemned to be obese if your genetics give you the propensity for it, but it's also fair to say that the genetics mean that disease-like interventions are necessary. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesit...

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