"OBESITY can be “caught” as easily as a common cold from other people’s coughs, sneezes and dirty hands, scientists will claim today. Researchers believe that an airborne “adenovirus” germ could be causing the fat plague that is blighting Britain and other countries..."Here's my question: would the fat cells multiply in the absence of extra calories? It's the calorie overage that would still fill these fat cells with triglycerides. No overage, no filling, the end result being extra small, flat fat cells. Thus, the root cause is still not the virus, but rather the consumption of too many calories. The virus, in essence, cannot break the conservation of energy principle. That's not environmental, that's personal!
“...When it goes to fat tissue it replicates, making more copies of itself and in the process increases the number of new fat cells, which may explain why people get fat when they are infected with this virus.” (HT:drudge)
When fat cells fill up all their stores with triglycerides from bad diets (bad meaning too many calories for what you need), they tend to split anyway because you are essentially maxing out their storage capacity. Once new fat cells are made, they are permanent, but that's no excuse to fill them up. You see, 'deflated' fat can hardly be seen (they're tiny!). For example, see any before/after pictures of bodybuilders or figure/fitness competitors. Here is an example (transformation of the week on bodybuilding.com) I pulled off of the web:
In the before picture, she was fat (275 lbs). In the after picture, she is very lean (147 lbs) with hardly any visible fat under the skin (women keep more fat then men as they need more 'essential' fat for reproductive purposes). The difference in the number of fat cells before and after? ZERO! The cells are just 'flat;' i.e. - not filled with triglycerides. Best way to do that - reduce the number of calories you eat and/or increase energy expenditure!
Thus, take a dose of suck-up pills and get off your duff! (and can we please stop treating this as a 'virus' already while pounding down whoppers and fries?)
