Syndrome X and Diseases of Civilization: Why Do They Associate With Obesity?

Syndrome X and obesity are associated with elevated risks for a host of unpleasant medical problems, such as cancer, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and stroke. Why do all of these diseases cluster together? And can we infer something about the root cause of weight gain -- and about many (if not all) of these diseases -- by identifying the culprit behind the obesity epidemic?

KEY POINT: The Lipophilia Hypothesis tells us that dietary carbohydrates and other insulinogenic factors cause both obesity and the "diseases of civilization."

The Lipophilia Hypothesis makes a radical prediction that these diseases associate because they're all manifestations of the same underlying problem: a metabolism rendered dysfunctional by excess carbohydrate intake and hyperinsulinemia.

Indeed, there may be hundreds -- if not thousands -- of chronic medical conditions which turn out to be variations on this theme of carbohydrate disease. Even problems as far flung as acne, autism, gout, and food allergies might ultimately be caused by carbohydrate/hyperinsulinemia disease.

This is a revolutionary claim. And it is obviously testable. (Since the Caloric Balance Hypothesis makes no prediction whatsoever about why obesity associates with diseases, it can't be tested.)

If Lipophilia's prediction here can be confirmed, it would not only overthrow everything we've come to believe about what regulates our weight. It would radically jolt the entire discipline of medicine -- far more so, it can be argued, than have all the signature medical discoveries of the past 200 years put together!