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Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer

Obesity is a disease with high potential for fatality. It perfectly fits the disease definition, as cancer does. This is because it damages body structure and functions, both mechanically and biologically, and alters physical, mental, and social health. In addition, it shares many common morbid char...

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Autores principales: Boubertakh, Besma, Silvestri, Cristoforo, Di Marzo, Vincenzo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9221301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35741001
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cells11121872
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author Boubertakh, Besma
Silvestri, Cristoforo
Di Marzo, Vincenzo
author_facet Boubertakh, Besma
Silvestri, Cristoforo
Di Marzo, Vincenzo
author_sort Boubertakh, Besma
collection PubMed
description Obesity is a disease with high potential for fatality. It perfectly fits the disease definition, as cancer does. This is because it damages body structure and functions, both mechanically and biologically, and alters physical, mental, and social health. In addition, it shares many common morbid characteristics with the most feared disease, cancer. For example, it is influenced by a sophisticated interaction between a person’s genetics, the environment, and an increasing number of other backgrounds. Furthermore, it displays abnormal cell growth and proliferation events, only limited to white fat, resulting in adipose tissue taking up an increasing amount of space within the body. This occurs through fat “metastases” and via altered signaling that further aggravates the pathology of obesity by inducing ubiquitous dishomeostasis. These metastases can be made graver by angiogenesis, which might boost diseased tissue growth. More common features with cancer include its progressive escalation through different levels of severity and its possibility of re-onset after recovery. Despite all these similarities with cancer, obesity is substantially less agitating for most people. Thus, the ideas proposed herein could have utility to sensitize the public opinion about the hard reality of obesity. This is increasingly needed, as the obesity pandemic has waged a fierce war against our bodies and society in general, while there is still doubt about whether it is a real disease or not. Hence, raising public consciousness to properly face health issues is crucial to improving our health instead of gaining weight unhealthily. It is obviously illogical to fight cancer extremely seriously on the one hand and to consider dying with obesity as self-inflicted on the other. In fact, obesity merits a top position among the most lethal diseases besides cancer.
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spelling pubmed-92213012022-06-24 Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer Boubertakh, Besma Silvestri, Cristoforo Di Marzo, Vincenzo Cells Review Obesity is a disease with high potential for fatality. It perfectly fits the disease definition, as cancer does. This is because it damages body structure and functions, both mechanically and biologically, and alters physical, mental, and social health. In addition, it shares many common morbid characteristics with the most feared disease, cancer. For example, it is influenced by a sophisticated interaction between a person’s genetics, the environment, and an increasing number of other backgrounds. Furthermore, it displays abnormal cell growth and proliferation events, only limited to white fat, resulting in adipose tissue taking up an increasing amount of space within the body. This occurs through fat “metastases” and via altered signaling that further aggravates the pathology of obesity by inducing ubiquitous dishomeostasis. These metastases can be made graver by angiogenesis, which might boost diseased tissue growth. More common features with cancer include its progressive escalation through different levels of severity and its possibility of re-onset after recovery. Despite all these similarities with cancer, obesity is substantially less agitating for most people. Thus, the ideas proposed herein could have utility to sensitize the public opinion about the hard reality of obesity. This is increasingly needed, as the obesity pandemic has waged a fierce war against our bodies and society in general, while there is still doubt about whether it is a real disease or not. Hence, raising public consciousness to properly face health issues is crucial to improving our health instead of gaining weight unhealthily. It is obviously illogical to fight cancer extremely seriously on the one hand and to consider dying with obesity as self-inflicted on the other. In fact, obesity merits a top position among the most lethal diseases besides cancer. MDPI 2022-06-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9221301/ /pubmed/35741001 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cells11121872 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Boubertakh, Besma
Silvestri, Cristoforo
Di Marzo, Vincenzo
Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer
title Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer
title_full Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer
title_fullStr Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer
title_full_unstemmed Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer
title_short Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer
title_sort obesity: the fat tissue disease version of cancer
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9221301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35741001
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cells11121872
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