October 12, 2022

Evolution physiology points to several factors that need to be considered with obesity. One factor is that some types of foods promote fat production, because ancestors to humans sometimes needed fat storage. It's observable that wheat and bananas create such a signal for fat production. Such physiological patterns are carried in DNA perpetually for future expression.

A more complex factor is phenotypic variation. All species use phenotypic variation to cope with rapid changes in demands which vary too much for genotypic adaptations. Seasonal variations require a lot of phenotypic variation in plants.

One of the phenotypic variations for humans is muscle types. There are two types of muscle cells: fast and slow. Each person has a different combination of fast and slow muscle cells which is determined by phenotypic variation.

Along with fast muscles cells, a high rate of metabolism is used. And with slow muscle cells, a low rate of metabolism is used.

Also with fast muscle cells and high metabolic rate is a higher, natural blood pressure, which is needed to increase metabolic rate. And with slow muscles cells and low rate of metabolism is lower, natural blood pressure.

The rate of energy availability is regulated with insulin, which determines how much glucose enters the blood. Glucose is the source of energy for cells. It gets converted into ATP as the energy carrier for metabolic reactions including muscle contractions. Muscle cells need glucose as the source of their energy.

But the evidence and logic indicates that insulin control of glucose is not influenced by phenotypic variation. That's because phenotypic variation is too complex and takes up too much space on chromosomes to include a lot of side reactions. That means some of the side reactions are not optimized for phenotypic variation.

In other words, one size fits all for the effects of insulin. Yet persons with fast muscle cells need a higher rate of energy availability, while persons with slow muscle cells need a lower rate of energy availability.

There are lot of contradictions in the physiology of higher organism, particularly humans. One reason is because complexities got so extreme that conflicts cannot be totally resolved. All of the different biological functions of an organism have a degree of interdependence. When the interactions get complex, variations become contradictory and impossible to adjust.

Due to the extreme complexity of recent biology, there are so many complex functions dependent upon each other that changes cannot easily occur. Then species do not easily adapt to changes in environmental conditions. For that reason, all biology would die out in 2-10 million years due to over differentiation (complexity), even if humans were not influencing the result.

Humans evolved near the maximum extreme of complexity that biology can produce; and one of the results is a lot of contradictions that don't get resolved well. One of the contradictions is that insulin apparently did not adapt to the requirements of the phenotypic variations of metabolic rate.

Genotypic variations also enter into human complexities. There is naturally a lot of genotypic variation that results from various environments that ancestors lived in. Color of skin is a genotypic variation that varies with exposure to sunlight.

One of the genotypic variations of humans is size. In some environments, large size was needed by human ancestors; and sometimes, small size. The amount of fat needed could also have a genotypic element in addition to phenotypic due to some environments for ancestors.

Genotypic size variations combined with phenotypic metabolism variations could result in some significant contradictions. If for example, a person has a phenotypically high metabolic rate and insulin is not putting a lot of glucose into the blood stream, there would be a tendency to over-eat to get the needed energy. With insulin not allowing the needed glucose in the blood, over-eating would result in unnecessary fat production.

If some genotypic demands are added to that equation, the problem gets compounded. A genotypically increased size and fat production combined with a phenotypically increased rate of metabolism would create a much greater need for glucose than insulin is allowing into the blood. So a person over-eats a lot trying to get the illusive glucose into their cells, while too much of the energy has to go into fat production, because insulin is not allowing the food to go into enough glucose production.

One method of coping with such contradictions is a raw food diet. That diet creates a signal for reducing fat and increasing energy availability, because monkeys adapted to that pattern and they needed to be feather-weight for climbing trees. That pattern still exists in human DNA and gets expressed when eating a raw food diet.

Other types of sugars are not good substitutes for glucose, because most cells can only metabolize glucose, not other sugars in a significant way beyond some rare side reactions.

Nature used disaccharides to cope with this problem. That means two sugars are link together. An example is table sugar, which is sucrose. It's a combination of glucose and fructose. Lactose (milk sugar) is another example. It is a combination of glucose and galactose.

The disaccharides are needed to get control over the rate that glucose is used, so it doesn't all head for the cells instantly. After the disaccharides are split into glucose and something else, insulin can then control the rate of glucose availability.