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
Some mental disorders (like depression for example) are quite closely correlated to eating disorders. This includes eating too much as well as not eating enough. So while it’s true you mostly gain weight from eating more, the disease itself makes the act of eating harder to control. One reason for this is it becomes a coping mechanism to deal with the illness, in a similar fashion how an addiction would work.
It’s easy to dismiss this as “oh, just eat less”, but being affected by those illnesses that kind of choice might be too hard to make.
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