{"id":134029,"date":"2025-10-20T14:07:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T14:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/134029\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T14:07:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T14:07:17","slug":"a-gene-that-causes-obesity-can-also-help-with-cholesterol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/134029\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gene That Causes Obesity Can Also Help With Cholesterol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How do you measure someone\u2019s health? In recent years, correlating someone\u2019s BMI and their overall health has fallen out of favor. \u201cBMI is just one data point, along with many others, that needs to be considered to determine a person\u2019s health,\u201d Yale\u2019s Wajahat Mehal, MD <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalemedicine.org\/news\/why-you-shouldnt-rely-on-bmi-alone\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Yale Medicine<\/a> in 2023. The latest sign that someone\u2019s weight and height are not the only factors to ponder when it comes to your health comes from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-025-03976-1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a paper<\/a> published this week in Nature Medicine, which neatly illustrates the more paradoxical aspects of genetics and the human body.<\/p>\n<p>That paper explored a particular genetic mutation, MC4R deficiency, that can raise the risk of someone with this mutation becoming obese. There\u2019s another side to that as well, though: the paper\u2019s authors note that the same mutation can also result in \u201clower lipid levels and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These researchers also found two distinct groups of people for whom, as they phrased it, \u201cMC4R deficiency is associated with significantly lower concentrations of total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and TGs, with no effect on HDL-cholesterol.\u201d While the paper\u2019s authors caution that there are \u201cseveral limitations\u201d in this study, including the number of subjects involved, this does represent a step forward in better understanding the relationship between the brain and the human metabolism.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehook.com\/internet\/anorexia-obesity-twitter-poll\" class=\"align-middle\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-629405043-e1690989944294.jpg\" alt=\"No, Fathers, Anorexia Is Not Preferable to Obesity\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of the study\u2019s authors, Sadaf Farooqi of the University of Cambridge, explained more about the paper\u2019s findings in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-03387-9\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">comments made to Nature<\/a>. \u201cThe protection from cardiovascular disease is very striking,\u201d Farooqi said regarding the MC4R mutations. It\u2019s unclear if these findings will be able to lead to drugs that can address heart health on a greater level, but even on their own, they represent an expansion of human knowledge on the body\u2019s inner workings.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore Like This<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Charge will help you move better, think clearer and stay in the game longer. Subscribe to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehook.com\/campaign\/the-charge?utm_source=bottom-article&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=the-charge\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wellness newsletter<\/a> today.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you measure someone\u2019s health? In recent years, correlating someone\u2019s BMI and their overall health has fallen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[272],"tags":[18,458,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-134029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-genetics","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}