I just watched an episode of House and he diagnosed a girl with Cushing’s – an illness that can cause obesity.
How is that possible? I was under the impression that our bodies use energy we get from food, and if it doesn’t get the food it’ll burn fat resulting in us getting slimmer – how can a disease change that?
How does it not go against some laws of thermodynamics? Maybe I’m just being silly.
In: Biology
I don’t know much about Cushings, but I have an autoimmune thyroid disease which stops your body from being able to make enough thyroxine, a hormone which controls your metabolism. In a hypothyroid state your body can’t metabolise calories for energy properly so you store a lot more fat, and your body’s fat burning processes are massively impaired. So without changing your diet at all you can become overweight and even obese. Without medication, eventually you would die. When you take the medication (thyroid hormones) and are no longer in a hypothyroid state you can then burn energy again and the weight tends to drop off over time. I have had some dramatic swings in my weight from this when unwell, despite usually being slim when well.
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