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By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
Aug. 1, 2006 Many years ago some invstigators were busily investigating exercise, and they had a group of people expend a certain number of calories in water aerobics and a comparable group expend the same number of calories on dry land. And the dry land group lost weight and the water-based folks did not. The researchers postulated (though I don't think it was ever proved) that the folks in the water lost heat and as with whales, their bodies succeeded in preserving their layer of insulating blubber. And we all can see, if our eyes are wide open, that the American people are becoming definitely blubber-layered. It used to be rare to see patients who weighed over 200 pounds, and now some days almost all my patients weigh that much--and that includes the women! Why has this transformation of American blubber-acquisition come about? I have a theory. Air conditioning. If being cooled by water tricks the body into conserving blubber, why not exposure to air conditioning? Does being out in heat cause the body to lose blubber? Seems possible. then there is the additional effect of air conditioning: People stay indoors more and get less exercise. I note the air conditioning commercial playing locally now wherein the father, enjoying his new air conditioner, opens the window, stays indoors, and plays catch with his son, whom he sends outdoors. Now, however, the son would likely stay indoors playing a video game rather than face summer heat. Before air conditioning, it was often hotter indoors than out. Children were outside i nthe summer, climbing trees, playing baseball, playing cowboys and Indians, skipping stones at the pond, casting a fishing line into the creek, hiking and camping, pushing an unpowered lawn mower. That brings to mind another cause of weight gain: Labor-saving inventions. We make work so easy that we have to pay hundreds of dollars to go to an air-conditioned health spa and sweat, and then we go into the sauna to find the heat that we have removed from our lives by the air conditioning. Rather ironic, isn't it? No wonder we are becoming whale-like, gathering our thick layer of blubber around us. ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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