Obesogens are as nasty as they sound – obesity generators. They sound like a secret elite force of fat causing ninjas. In many ways that is exactly what they are. These are chemicals commonly found in our industrial environment that trigger our bodies to gain weight regardless of what we avoid eating or how much we exercise. Most of them function by disrupting our hormonal system by mimicking hormones while others have other more sinister mechanisms.
The idea of obesogens was first proposed back in 2006 to explain the contradictory data about the rapidly rising weight in the population, not only here in America, but all over the world. Comparing old studies of the measurements of BMI to modern ones, populations that were consuming the same number of calories and exerting the same amount of work were steadily getting heavier. The old calories in/calories out beliefs were obviously not working. The same populations had the same genetics, so genes could not be the answer. So something had to be causing this steady average weight gain across the entire population.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about one possible cause for this disrupted metabolic issue when I wrote about the unhealthy increase in the use of polyunsaturated oils worldwide since the 1950s. This has promoted steadily increasing levels of inflammation in our bodies and is seriously implicated in the rising incidence of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and the whole laundry list of chronic diseases. But at the same time that we have been using increasing levels of seed oils, our exposure to new industrial chemicals has gone through the roof. Most of these chemicals are derived from crude oil, so they are organic chemicals that easily interact with the organic chemistry our bodies run on.
Estrogen disruptors and mimickers: these are the first types of chemicals discovered to increase our fat levels. These chemicals look like the hormones estrogen and progesterone to our body. They will latch on to the receptors on our cells and tell our cells to do things that are not part of what our own hormonal system wants to do. Some of them are known to reprogram our bodies before we are born if our mothers are exposed to them, causing increased weight gain as we grow older. Others increase the formation of white fat cells at any age as we are exposed to them. Here are several of the more common obesogens we are all exposed to.
BPA – Bisphenol-A
This endocrine disrupter was all the news a few years back as it is in most plastics used with food. The big news item was how we were all being poisoned by the plastic from our water bottles and the coating on paper receipts. A big push was made to replace BPA with other chemicals that enable the plastic to be formed into the shapes manufacturers want. Unfortunately, the replacements like BPS and BPF are being found to be just as dangerous. Virtually everyone has BPA in their system right now. Even scarier is how much of it shows up in the fetal umbilical cord blood of new infants as it is in the womb that this has its worst effect. Negative effects are found at incredibly low levels of only 2-5 parts per billion and the average American has 2.7 parts per billion.
Phthalates
Phthalates are similar to BPA in binding to the estrogen receptors of the body. They are used to make plastics soft and flexible, so they are used in all sorts of children’s toys, beauty aids, flooring, paints, and food containers. One study found that children absorbed phthalates directly from contact and through the air from flooring products. Not only do these chemicals induce obesity, but also trigger type 2 diabetes, and disturbingly, genital malformations in young boys.
Organotins
Tributyltin is the most studied of this class of organic chemicals, and the pathways that directly induce white fat cell proliferation are well understood. Tributyltin is mostly found applied to boat hulls to stop the growth of stuff on the hulls, as well as used as a preservative for wood. As such many lakes and coastal areas are contaminated with it. It is also known to cause fatty liver disease.
PFOAs – Perfluorooctanoic acid
Everybody knows this one – Teflon. That’s right, the non-stick coating on your frying pan and cookware. Did you know it is also sprayed on your carpets to keep them from staining? Bird owners know how toxic this stuff is as the Teflon that out-gasses, when the pan is heated, will kill their pet birds. News flash – it is not good for us either. That gas is a neurotoxin. It is also an obesogen. So if you are cooking in Teflon pans to reduce the need for cooking oil so you can lose weight, well it’s not going to work.
Herbicides
Atrazine and Glyphosate (Roundup) are the two most widely used herbicides in the world, and both are obesogens, but by different pathways. Atrazine is another estrogen disrupter while glyphosate messes us up in different ways by screwing up our gut microbiome, punching holes in our gut lining (leaky gut), and inducing inflammation. There is also evidence that it interferes with our toxin removal pathways creating more toxic burdens within us.
Essential Oils:
It is well known that many plants contain estrogen-like chemicals that are called phytoestrogens. Women with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer are warned to avoid foods like soy, flax, cruciferous vegetables, and many others. This is controversial as the phytoestrogens may actually benefit women by being weaker estrogens that will prevent some of the damage caused by their own cancer-causing estrogens by filling up the receptor sites and having less impact. Society has heavily embraced essential oils, some of which have known estrogen disrupting effects such as tea tree and lavender oils.
Petrochemical products:
Literally thousands of petrochemical products have hormone-disrupting effects, many of which are well known but not regulated. What! Why not? Well, the only regulation the FDA has to limit any chemical product is if it has been found to cause cancer. That’s it! It can cause your brain to fall out of your backside, and there is nothing the FDA can do or say about it. If it does not cause cancer then it can freely be put in your cosmetics, bath products, cleaning products, baby products, added to your foods, and so on. This is why I make all my own products and food from ingredients I know are safe and refuse to buy the stuff the stores are selling. If I weren’t such a do-it-yourself kind of guy I suppose I could buy my products from the health food store, so that is what I recommend you do if you are not industrious (insane) enough to make all your own.
The list of obesogens, all the hidden fat-causing chemicals, would fill entire books. There is no magic potion or pill you can take to make you safe and stop their impact on your health. These nasty chemicals simply have to be avoided. I know this is a major pain in the butt, but there it is. They are bad for you, and if you choose to expose yourself to them in exchange for the convenience they offer, then you bear the consequences. Some of them are unavoidable. For instance, I just read that the asphalt our roads are made from outgasses toxic vapors for years. That new car smell comes from toxic gases released by the plastics in the car. Air fresheners used in stores and commercial buildings (and plugged into household outlets) are all toxic and damage our lung tissues. We can’t even avoid obesogens by living by ourselves on a desert island. Micro and nano plastics have so filled the oceans that fish are filled with them and plastic waste washes up on the shores of even the most remote beaches.
To clean up our health now requires active efforts to avoid these chemicals and clean up our personal environments and food supply. Industry invents around 2000 new chemicals every year. Currently there are almost 40,000 chemicals in use, most of which have had zero testing for their effects on human health. For cosmetics I recommend checking out your favorites on the Environmental Working Group’s skin deep data base (here). For foods, look at the ingredients. If you don’t know what something is exactly, then don’t eat it! My personal rule is to only buy fresh foods, not packaged stuff with multiple ingredients. Cleaning products and household cleansers – make your own or buy organic safe products. Throw out your Teflon pots and pans. Teflon hides in lots of other products – check it out. As I have said before, most of the stuff trying to kill us presents as making life more convenient and easy. We trade away our health for that convenience. We can create a healthful environment for ourselves if we care enough to put in the effort.
Take care,
David