DEBUNKING DR LUSTIG

I have typed this title in capitals, because I think it deserves it. I have written about 45 articles in this blog so far as a response to some points in his lectures he delivered worldwide and many of them contain my disbelief that obesity is not a problem as Dr Lustig claims. Before that he used to say that fructose consumption causes obesity, but he stopped saying this because the body of evidence disproved his claims from 2009 and suddenly sugar is not THE cause of obesity anymore:

Dr Lustig has changed his focus and says that the obesity actually does not matter.

Instead it is only the metabolic syndrome that is the problem, plus the type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders:

He kept supporting his argument by one diagram, saying that 20% of obese people are metabolically healthy and that the people of 'normal weight' contribute to the pool of metabolic diseases by 40 percents: 

He had even put it in numbers: 

I have highlighted several times throughout this blog that this group of 'normal weight' did not distinguish between slim and overweight people and I suspected that most of these 40% would apply to the overweight subgroup. Therefore, in my opinion, the prevalence of metabolic diseases closely relates to the prevalence of excess adiposity among the population, where the overweight and obese people form a distinct group from people of truly normal weight. My suspicion was proven correct, as the linked article shows at its end, based on earlier published content of Dr Lustig himself. In the light of this information, now his sudden turn looks suspicious. 

Dr Lustig has been saying again and again that anybody can get metabolic syndrome and that the obesity is irrelevant. Well, I have different information, which contradict this thesis. One of such information can be easily found online if one puts a little effort in it. Just type key words 'healthy obese' and see what comes up.

One of several studies I have found, published in 2012, concluded:  

"...metabolically healthy obese individuals are at higher risk to develop hypertension, type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome than their non-obese counterparts. Our data provide further evidence that opposes the notion of metabolically healthy obese as harmless conditions."

The study also stated: 

" ...there is no evidence that these subjects are permanently protected from the risk of obesity-related co-morbidities."

This was a prospective cohort study on Taiwanese population and they applied the cut-off points typical for Asians: BMI 23 for overweight and BMI 25 for obese Class I, and for Class II the BMI cut-off point was 27. All participants with any feature of metabolic syndrome were excluded, except the waist circumference, which is larger in obese people anyway. 

Here you have another article which summarizes the current research on what is the truth about the healthy obese people. Here you can also read, that: 

"We have an enormous challenge at a public health and individual level in dealing with obesity-related disorders. Being obese doesn't just affect the heart. Being obese means you're more likely to have joint disease, psychiatric disorders and cancers," Puri said.

He added that, over the next couple of decades, obesity and its consequences will be driving health care costs."

So, where does the money go, Dr Lustig? And what do people actually die from? I have discussed my concerns, before I actually looked at these data, in another article here. 

I think this was enough to make you see that Dr Lustig is ready to ignore objective facts, announcing that he does not believe in common sense, because he believes in data - selectively picked by him and presented so it fits his agenda, I add.

In fact, as I have realized some time ago, Dr Lustig even negates his own work from 2005, where he published together with E. Isganaitis that obesity is central to the development of insulin resistance - which was in opposite to his newer claims that liver is the primary target to insulin (which it is not as you will read later) and that people get obese because they firstly develop a hepatic insulin resistance, as another article of mine discusses. Below you see the snapshot of the 2005 work of Dr Lustig which, despite it was emerging from the new evidence back then, does not seem to be true anymore - according to the new information presented by Dr Lustig. 

The 2005 article further discusses the role of increased concentration of free fatty acids in the peripheral insulin resistance and I will come to this point later as well. The scientific community is accepting this mechanism, but Dr Lustig seems to go against the flow with his fructose induced hepatic insulin resistance as a primary cause of the peripheral insulin resistance in 'normal weight' people and that the insulin resistance causes obesity, not vice versa.  

In addition, at the end of the snapshot you can read how the evidence shows that reducing of body weight leads to improvement of insulin sensitivity. Yet Dr Lustig claimed quite recently that reducing obesity does not lead to improved metabolic health. Come on! All this twist just to rise the argument about how excess fructose causes all the metabolic issues in people indulging on fast food rich in both sugars and processed fats, being of high glycemic index, consuming larger portions of highly palatable food and not exercising enough, as he published in the 2005 article as well???