Alcoholism And Obesity Risks Go Together

Alcoholism and obesity risks go together, it seems. Addiction researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say that the association between a family history of alcoholism and obesity risk is becoming clearer. Both men and women with such a family history were more likely to be obese in 2002 than members of that same high-risk group had been in 1992.“In addiction research, we often look at what we call cross-heritability, which addresses the question of whether the predisposition to one condition also might contribute to other conditions,” says first author Richard A. Grucza, PhD. “For example, alcoholism and drug abuse are cross-heritable. This new study demonstrates a cross-heritability between alcoholism and obesity, but it also says — and this is very important — that some of the risks must be a function of the environment. The environment is what changed between the 1990s and the 2000s. It wasn’t people’s genes.” Obesity in the United States has doubled in recent decades from 15 percent of the population in the late 1970s to 33 percent in 2004. Obese people — those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more — have an elevated risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain cancers. Reporting in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Grucza and his team say individuals with a family history of alcoholism, particularly women, have an elevated obesity risk. In addition, that risk seems to be growing. He speculates that may result from changes in the food we eat and the availability of more foods that interact with the same brain areas as addictive drugs.

Source:MedIndia