Stress, insomnia, not food, make you fat!

It is not as simple as what you eat that makes you fat, but factors like allergies, stress, insomnia and being toxic that contribute a great deal to those unwanted kilos. “It’s not just calories in and out – if it were that simple everyone in the world would be the way that they want to be,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Dr Pamela Waritan as saying. The University of South Florida College of Medicine Metabolic and Nutritional Programme co-director Dr Smith said in her new book that for every extra 0.45kg someone carries on their frame, they put 1.36 million kg of stress on their joints each year.
“Sometimes it’s confusing to people if they have an allergic response.
You can have two kinds of allergic response, one is what we call an IgE, which can be shrimp, and is pretty immediate, for example, resulting in shortness of breath or a rash. “The other which is termed as an IgG response, is an allergy which can usually happen a couple of days later. People may gain weight, get a stomach ache or a headache but they don’t equate it to the food (they have eaten).” Symptoms include abdominal pain, backache, dark circles under the eyes, diarrhoea, dizziness, hives, muscle aches and pains, a persistent cough and memory changes. Dr Smith said lack of sleep and stress also contribute to weight gain.
“When people stay stressed they put weight on around the middle. And I do think modern life affects it for many different reasons. Insomnia and sleep deprivation, people that don’t get 6 or more hours a night of good solid sleep also suffer.”
Her book ‘A Guide to Solving Your Weight-Loss Puzzle: Why You Can’t Lose Weight’ also reveals being toxic is another key factor. Symptoms of toxicity include abdominal bloating, belching, cramping, gas, heartburn and weight gain, depression, itching, muscle aches and pains and skin rashes.
Going to sleep whit your contact lenses ‘can blind you’: Here’s a word of caution for those who wear contacts — going to sleep in your lenses can blind you, experts have warned. According to them, people should make it a point to take out and rinse contact lenses as poor lens hygiene can lead to a range of nasty eye ailments, including microbial keratitis, an infection of the cornea, the clear frontal part of the eye where lenses sit. Left untreated, it can lead to permanent visual damage —and, in extreme cases, blindness, they have warned.
The eye has natural protection against the foreign bodies— through a fluid covering the eye that contains protective enzymes and by blinking, which prevents anything sticking to the eye’s surface. Yet minute air and waterborne microbes sometimes break through these defences, penetrating the protective layer of cells on the cornea. The bacteria pseudomonas is the most common keratitis-causing microbe, while the most dangerous is acanthamoeba, a single-cell organism found in tap water, particularly in hard-water areas, which breeds in dirty lens case, say the experts. “Pseudomonas and acanthamoeba occur naturally in the environment, but particularly in bathrooms. Rinsing or storing your lenses in tap water really can get you in a lot of trouble,” the ‘Daily Mail’ quoted Dr Simon Kilvington, a University of Leicester microbiologist as saying.
Reusing lens cases for more than a month is also dangerous, he added. Parwez Hossain, a University of Southampton eye unit senior ophthalmology lecturer says significant numbers of cases could be avoided if people took the time to clean and store their lenses properly. “Contact lenses are one of the leading causes of corneal infections, most stemming from abuse of the way they should be cared for. “Wearers may not feel all the features of early infection. The pain will start as the infection takes hold, generally getting worse once the lens, which was affording some protection, is taken out.