BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



people whose glands are disordered in some fashion as 

 to interfere greatly with their regulation of body weight. 



Just as there are thin people who eat tremendous quanti- 

 ties of food and still remain thin, so also there are fat 

 people who eat very small quantities of food and continue 

 to put on weight. This form of obesity is not understood. 

 There is some abnormality in the mechanism of the person's 

 body which forces him to store up fat. Some Chicago 

 investigators have observed that the metabolic rates in 

 these people were constant. They have also shown that 

 the obese person has a completely disordered mechanism 

 so far as concerns the handling of various types of food. 



One of the first attempts made by a scientific investiga- 

 tor when confronted with the care of a case of obesity is 

 to find out exactly the type of obesity from which the 

 person suffers. It is necessary for him to study the family 

 history and to know whether or not other people in the 

 family suffer in the same way. He has to look into the 

 family habits, particularly the diet. He has to make 

 tests of the rate at which the body consumes its food and 

 digests it. He tests the activity of the various glands, and 

 he attempts to estimate for the particular person concerned 

 what might be called the ideal weight for health. 



The best authorities are convinced that one should not 

 lose more than two pounds a w^eek, the average safe loss 

 being from three to six pounds a month. By the safe 

 methods one who is greatly overweight can take off from 

 twenty to twenty-five pounds over a period of four or 

 five months, and should then maintain this weight for 

 three or four months before any further reduction is 

 attempted. Intensive reduction of weight should be under- 

 taken only when the person is able to remain in bed con- 

 stantly during the period of intensive reduction. Certainly 

 nothing intensive should be attempted without having 

 the constant attention of a physician who will watch for 



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