Do you know that friend who can eat anything she wants and not gain weight? In the meantime, do you eat everything right and never seem to lose weight, at least not for long? Sometimes you think: I have a feeling the fight is stacked against me and it’s not my fault. I have a slow metabolism. I was born that way. Well, now it turns out you can be right! There is a gene called fat, or a mutation in one of the important chromosomes, that determines in part who burns calories like a torch and who burns like a candle, and some unfortunate people are born. But that doesn’t mean you have to give up despair. Quite the contrary, there are ways to make a short circuit that wiring and a doctor has tips on how to overcome it and you can too.
“Your genes carry the gun. The lifestyle pulls the trigger,” says Dr. Joel Kahn, who himself discovered he possessed the genetic trait that facilitates fattening and loss. Kahn is a vegan cardiologist and has been eating a plant-based diet since the age of 18 and credits this healthy plant-based approach (long on vegetables, low in fats and sugars) to keeping your weight under control. “I’ll never be skinny like some of my colleagues who eat this way, but I wore a husky dress to the mitzvah bar and I knew I should change my diet.” He went to the plant at the age of 18, but this time he says he had already figured out how to manage control of his portions and stay trimmed. But herbal food for 40 years has been the key to lifelong health and to maintaining a healthy weight.
Joel Kahn has not only learned to eat healthy personally, but he has also made his life helping others do so. He is the founder of the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity at Bingham Farms, Michigan, a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine and a bestselling author of The whole heart solution.
What does the “fat gene” variant do and can it be counteracted?
“The proper name of the gene is the FTO gene, a small fragment on chromosome 16, which means fat mass and obesity,” Kahn explained. In a study with schoolchildren, it was found that it does not affect the way your body manages calories, but it does increase the amount of odds you eat.
They identified children who had the FTO gene and offered them foods that had been measured and weighed to see if they ate more. In fact, students with the gene are likely to take in more calories from each meal than those who don’t. This is good news for anyone with the FTO variant, as it does not affect your metabolism, but is related to eating more foods, especially high-calorie foods, according to the study.
“The FTO variant appeared to be involved in calorie intake, not in how the body handles those calories,” according to the study’s authors.
The FTO gene appears to regulate ghrelin, a hormone that tells your body to eat more. if you eat and ghrelin is still present, the brain never gets the signal to stop eating. FTO can make the ghrelin last longer for people who have the variant than for people who don’t have it. For most people, as this is what they have had since birth, they learn to pay more attention to their indications of satiety and have to teach themselves when to stop.
How do you know if you have the fat gene, also known as the FTO variant?
To find out if you have the FTO variant on chromosome 16, you can pay for a genetic testing profile like 23andMe or MaxGen, Kahn explains. He found out because he is in a genetic testing group, which has told him more about his health than most people learn without it.
If you have the variant, do not call your parents because they were the ones who gave it to you (it is likely that, after all, at least one of them has had problems with their weight). The good news is that you can do something about it. When you start spending more time in the product aisle, buying whole plant foods, and eating a nutrient-rich diet, it’s easier not to overdo it with calorie-rich foods. If you don’t have the hunger signal that tells you to turn off food, choosing foods high in fiber that are full, nutrient-dense, and healthy will make it easier to control your weight, and still be satisfied. And since most people with FTO tend to overdo calorie-rich foods, which researchers believe can end their runaway appetite. Therefore, choosing a diet based on whole food plants will also help you stay away from processed foods, Kahn explains.
DNA is the only thing that cannot be changed. Lifestyle habits have a greater impact
Instead of crying over the fact that you may have this lack of a power switch when you sit down to eat, think about all the good things in your DNA: your creativity and intelligence, your sense of humor, your strong arms, loving smile, great hair. And instead of trying a fad diet after a fad diet, just go on a diet (which usually doesn’t work) and just start eating a clean, plant-based diet, rich in vegetables and grains, fruits and berries. dried, seeds, and anything that normally grows in the ground. You’ll end up eating healthier than 90% of the rest of Americans, who don’t get their five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
In a study by the Early Growth Genetics Consortium (EGGC) that examined 20,000 individuals of European descent, babies under two with the gene show no significant difference in BMI from the rest of the population, but once the child is old enough to feed and does not have the normal indications of satiety, his BMI increases, so at six years of age there is a difference in BMI compared to those who do not have the variant. The study showed that this can affect their ability to maintain a healthy weight unless they learn to curb appetite and listen to subtle signs of satiety. This is also good news for all of us, as it shows that if teens with the genetic variant can learn to curb the appetite for high-calorie foods, so can we.
Eating a plant-based diet can change the game, as it makes you feel full
“I was never the kid who could win the 50-yard race at school,” he explains. He jokes that it was so slow that some people think he still does. If you can relate to that, going to the plant might be the right choice. “For some people, your BMI will never be so low. But I’ve kept mine in the normal range by eating like this all my life.” Still, it helps to know your genetics and your family history, he explains. He learned that he had the FTO gene from both parents, so he has been eating well to prevent this variant from winning.
“People who eat herbal will tell you that an oil-free, sugar-free diet will be bulletproof,” Kahn says. But even then, you may also be unlucky with a gene for high cholesterol, so while this is a healthy way to eat, he adds, you’ll still need to consult your doctor if you don’t know your family history. . “If you eat a whole diet based on food plants, you’ll almost be bulletproof,” he adds.
Even herbal, you need to monitor your food choices, Kahn adds, as “vegan” in itself is not synonymous with healthy. “You can eat vegan and still eat too much or be loaded with sugar. The environment has also changed since I was little and now there are plastic phthalates and other chemicals in foods that just weren’t there when I was little.” In addition, he says, our stressors prevent us from sleeping well, which further increases ghrelin. So if you have this genetic variant, try to sleep more. “There’s data on how we slept less than 30 or 40 years ago. All of that pressure has an effect on our diet and our health. And that’s why genetics can be more important.”
Kahn says the term precision medicine or personalized medicine paves the way for health care. “We’re still a bit far from practicing this, a genetics-based medicine,” so doctors can treat patients differently depending on their DNA. Until then, eat healthy, sleep and be friendly with your parents.