Fat and Fate: The New Lifeline

                                               Researchers that carried out the study tallied the results of dozens of studies about the effects of exercise on the so-called fat gene, which is suspected to increase the risk that carriers will be overweight or obese by 12 percent or more. The gene which is also referred to as “fat mass and obesity-associated” gene, or FTO gene was discovered several years ago and by most estimates, about 65 percent of people of European or African descent and perhaps 44 percent of Asians carry some version of the FTO gene.

These previous findings would seem to suggest that most of us are doomed to be chubby, an enervating idea — and one that may even be self-fulfilling. In one of the studies carried out in February, volunteers who learned that they carried the FTO gene or similar fat-promoting genes frequently turned afterward to heedless binging, consuming more fatty foods in the next 90 days than they had in the preceding months, because they believed that their fate, at least in terms of weight, was sealed.

However, reports of the new study has strongly suggested otherwise. The study discovered that physical activity, even in small doses, may change genetic destiny.

Ruth Loos a program leader at the Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge, England, and senior author of the study said “Soon after FTO was discovered in 2007, studies showed that physical activity attenuates the effect of the gene on body weight gain, however, these were followed by studies that could not convincingly confirm this interaction or that did not find an interaction at all.”

She and her colleagues contacted the researchers of many studies in the United States and Europe and asked them, as a professional courtesy, to reanalyze their data with the hope to reduce the scientific confusion about the role that exercise might play in the gene’s activity. They suspected that part of the reason for the varying results was that individual research teams had employed widely different methods to quantify and define physical activity levels. So for the most part they defined what constitutes a physically active person as someone who engaged in at least an hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week.

Even by this very generous standard, only 25 percent of the 218,000 FTO carriers who had been studied in the various experiments to date qualified as active.

However, the newly reanalyzed data showed that those people had managed to partly nullify their genetic heritage. Being physically active, in the new analysis, “reduced the effect of FTO by about 30 percent,” Dr. Loos says. But this still leaves 70 percent of the potentially fat-encouraging effect of the gene intact, she added, the consequences of physical activity on the workings of this single gene seem to be enough to perhaps allow someone who has the tendency to become seriously overweight to maintain a normal waistline.

Dr Loos further stated that “Our study shows that physical activity plays a role in weight control, even in those who are genetically predisposed”. She stressed that those little activities like walking the dog, weeding the garden would count and help to counter the effects of the FTO gene. Dr Loos concluded by saying that she hopes the recent findings about the FTO gene would empower people who may have given up hope in trying to control their weight.