The Biochemical Implications of Being Obese.
It's not just the weight gain that we ought to be concerned about.
We tend to associate obesity with excess weight gain. We can see the buildup of the paunch. The fleshiness can be very visible and telling indeed.
Some of the key statistics of obesity, as indicated by the World Health Organisation, are presented below:
In 2022, 1 in 8 people in the world were living with obesity.
Worldwide adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990, and adolescent obesity has quadrupled.
In 2022, 2.5 billion adults (18 years and older) were overweight. Of these, 890 million were living with obesity.
In 2022, 43% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight and 16% were living with obesity.
In 2024, 35 million children under the age of 5 were overweight.
Over 390 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 years were overweight in 2022, including 160 million who were living with obesity.
We have 890 million obese people in the world, which suggests that roughly 16% of the global population is obese.
That can pose a problem to human health, especially when The National Institute of Health indicates that obese people are at a higher risk of developing various health problems. A full list of these problems can be found here.
We tend to think of weight gain as more of an aesthetics problem than it is of a health problem. “I can’t fit into my clothes anymore!” is a more pressing issue because it is seen.
But the biochemical signalling pathways in the cells in our body are slowly being modified from the accumulation of excess fat cells in our bodies, and that is unseen.
Obesity does present itself in the accumulation of fat cells (scientifically termed as adipocytes).
But what we do need to understand here is that our cells are living biological organisms that take in biochemical nutrients and produce biochemical products/waste.
According to this article,
Adipocytes themselves produce IL-1β. This initial event may then lead to IL-1β-induced chemokines, resulting in the recruitment of macrophages. Subsequently, macrophage influx and activation within fat tissue may act as a prominent source of IL-1β secretion, triggering insulin resistance.
Interleukin 1-beta (IL-1β) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that is a significant player in various situations. As per the quote above, IL-1β is one of the major contributors to insulin resistance, and insulin resistance can eventually lead to Type 2 diabetes.
Insulin Resistance and Its Influence In The Body's Biochemistry
There has been much commotion about rape culture and sexual violence these days. A lot of the (unfair) blame has been placed on women who dress sexy, and men who end up giving in to their urges, as if it was the man’s right to do what he wanted.
In fact, IL-1β also disrupts the equilibrium between bone formation and bone resorption in favour of resorption, which causes bone minerals to dissolve back into the blood faster than it is being formed.
When that happens chronically, we’d see the subsequent development of osteoporosis and a likely weakening of the teeth as well.
How Osteoporosis Isn’t Just About A Calcium Deficiency
The adult human body’s skeleton comprises 206 bones. They support our frame and our structure. We need them to stand up and walk. We need them to move about.
IL-1β can also signal the synovial cells in our joints to produce more matrix metalloproteinase enzymes, which digest collagen and eventually leads to joint degradation, or osteoarthritis.
What Pain In The Joints Indicates For The Rest Of Our Body.
Osteoarthritis is a common issue that plagues most people who experience chronically painful joints that have lost a fraction of their original functions. We feel it as we age and as our bodies degenerate.
IL-1β also weakens the blood brain barrier and allows more noxious biochemicals to permeate into our brain, which contributes to brain inflammation. Would that also facilitate the onset of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s?
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Our brains contain approximately 86 billion neuron cells that are used in storing and processing information.
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The banana is a carbolicious fruit that many of us do enjoy snacking on. It’s a source of quick, “natural” energy. Professional athletes chomp down on them in between games to get their second wind.
When we can link all the start of these medical conditions to the adipocyte cells that we’re accumulating in our bodies as a result of overeating or insufficient exercise, there really isn’t that much incentive for us to reach for the last donut on the tray just because our mouths feel itchy for a snack.
What’s the problem here, then? The problem is that the regulation of the IL-1β production mechanisms in the obese person’s body has gone awry, hence they’d be at higher risk of suffering all these severe health issues.
It’s not about what is seen; it’s about what remains unseen.
At the end of the day, we do need to be conscious of what remains unseen.
We do need to understand that obesity is not just an aesthetic issue. There are so many biochemical signalling pathways going on within our body.
I have only touched on ONE biochemical cytokine here (IL-1β), which already can have many different ramifications on our body as it gets overproduced in obese people.
There are, of course, many other different factors involved, such as the NLRP3 inflammasome and the nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) transcription pathway, which all link back to the pro-inflammatory signalling mechanisms in the body.
The solution is not to reduce inflammation, as many people think it ought to be, but it would be to get a proper regulation of the signalling mechanisms.
Maintaining a healthy weight with a healthy proportion of fat and muscle mass would help to regulate the signalling mechanisms much better.
But unfortunately, having a one-way increase or decrease in a process is much easier than having to constantly compensate for an increase or a decrease in a proper balance.
When the inflammatory signalling is affected, we can expect the immune system functions to be affected too. Hence, while the risk of developing all these problems is related, and the obese are at a higher chance of developing it, people with relatively healthy weights can also be affected. It all boils down to a situation of probability and chance. Staying healthy by regulating the inflammation pathways in the body would be far more effective than just losing weight.
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