These are a few of the more unusual reasons why there is an explosion in the number of people that are overweight. Some of them are really surprising I find.

1) Not Enough sleep.

Apparently, there is strong correlation between the hours you sleep and you overweight. There is the obvious connection that overweight people have a ore restless sleep, but it was also shown that less sleep gives a hungry feeling that is more difficult to satiate.
A group of young nurses was followed and their sleep patterns recorded. 20 years later hose that slept only 5 hours put on more weight than those that slept 6 hours and they put on more weight than those that slept 7 hours. Puzzling.

2) Climate control

As we tend to live more and more in circumstances in which our environment has an ideal temperature of 21 degrees Celcius, we burn less fat in trying to regulate our internal temperature. This goes for cold (heating) and warm (climatisation) regions.

3) Less smoking

A though one, but people who smoke are thinner on average. And if you ever tried to stop smoking, you know that you gain a few kilos.

4) Prenatal effect

Having an overweight mother enhances you chances of having the same problems, and this very early in life.

5) Getting older

This you can see all around you. I see it even in my parents and less in myself (because I do something about it), but older people tends to put on weight. I guess this is because their calorie needs are less but they do not change their diet.

6) More drugs

In the 1970s a new class of antipsychotic medication called neuroleptics came on the market, and millions of people worldwide now take these drugs. Alongside their undoubted success in treating psychosis, neuroleptics have a drawback: users typically gain 4 kilograms in the first 10 weeks, and another 4 or 5 kg in the year that follows.
Neuroleptics are not the only class of drugs to cause weight gain: anticonvulsants to treat epilepsy, antihypertensives for high blood pressure, protease inhibitors to treat HIV and diabetes medications, including insulin, have all been associated with packing on the pounds. Beta blockers add an average 1.2 kg to people using them, and taking contraceptive pills for two years will pad you out with an extra 5 kg. Even common, over-the-counter antihistamines can fatten you up.

7) Pollution

In daily life, people are exposed to tens of thousands of industrial chemicals: pesticides, dyes, flavourings, perfumes, plastics, resins and solvents, to name but a few. We swallow them, inhale them and absorb them through our skin.
There is some evidence that low levels of some of these chemicals can lead to weight gain. Some of these chemicals are endocrine disruptors that interfere with the functioning of hormones such as oestrogen. Numerous animal and human studies suggest that when oestrogen is not functioning properly there is a tendency for weight gain.

8 ) Fat equals fecund

Statistical analysis proved that indeed fat people tend to have more children. And as children of fat people have a larger probability to get overweight too (see point 4) this increases the number.

9) Older mums

Combining point 5 with the fact that the age at which women have their first child has increased by 5 years (on average) makes it easy to see that this is indeed a possible cause for the trend of seeing more fat people in the streets nowadays.

There are off course other factors at play, but it seems to be hard to make the correlation stand out with the recent increase in the number of overweight persons.

One of the obvious is too much food, junk food or lack of physical exercise. Studies have, up to date, not been able to pin down the relationship in a certain way.

This post was inspired by a 2006 New Scientist article.

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