Kind: captions
Language: en
Froy fryer has less than 2% body fat
although he looks extremely fit it's the
lack of fat that makes his muscles stand
out is no pattern on his face his cheeks
look sunken and his eyes are every
second
how far you off that way the little bit
of fat on my body is behind my eyeballs
and on my liver so walking around not
having fat it feels like constant
needles are poking through the bottom of
your shoe you know some of us stand up
all day and we're okay with it
Troy's not because he has no padding on
his feet nothing in between his knees
there's no comfort at all it's just
unbelievable to watch him struggle troy
was born with a normal amount of fat but
by age six he began rapidly losing
weight despite having a voracious
appetite I would go through two or three
loaves of bread in one day making 10
sandwiches at a time so I would keep
eating and eating and eating until it
would hurt if I didn't get that food I
would get really upset and really angry
about ripped doors off their hinges I
actually sent him in for a psych
evaluation thinking that there was
something wrong because he couldn't take
the answer no it's like he was starving
[Music]
by age 9 Troy was clearly ill doctors
were shocked to find that his blood was
full of fats and cholesterol
symptoms typical of obesity it made no
sense until Troy was diagnosed by the
genetic disease called lipodystrophy we
always think about thinness or something
good but in generalized lipodystrophy
it's beyond thinness it's actually
absolute lack of fat under the skin so
the excess energy doesn't have a place
to go and that's why Troy was sick with
no fat tissue excess calories collected
in his liver enlarging and inflaming it
and when it got to that point of the
doctor saying there's nothing else we
could do for you
Troy Turner the doctor and said so how
and when am I going to die
salvation would come from the discovery
of a mouse that also couldn't stop
eating but unlike Troy this mouse was
fact not thin a genetic mutant from a
breathing experiment it was nicknamed OB
for obese this mouse had a defect in a
single gene and the impact of that gene
was a mass the weight three times normal
and had five times as much fat and that
over eight veraciously and genetics is
very powerful because what it tells you
is that obesity has a biological basis
what that basis is required identifying
the gene scientists began to hunt for
the mutation that made the mouse obese
combing through the 2.5 billion letters
of its genome
they give us an alphabet you spell out
letters of the genome there are four
letters AG t and see these spell out
indirectly proteins and a single
spelling error can lead to a defective
gene in 1994 after a decade of work
Friedman and his collaborators honed in
on a gene only found in fat cells that
was really the moment of a lifetime I
pulled out the film with some vague hope
that maybe this would reveal something
about the nature of the OB gene and I
looked at it and in that instant I knew
that we had identified the gene that
makes a hormone and that plays a very
active role in regulating appetite
metabolism and probably other biological
systems so if you injected that hormone
into the blood of an OB mouse the mouse
lost weight it would completely cure the
mutation of a OB mouse and over the
course of a few weeks depending on the
dose you give they'll look
indistinguishable for a normal Mouse the
hormone was named leptin from the Greek
word leftist meaning thin its discovery
transformed our view of fact and the
biological forces controlling appetite
the ob mouse cannot see itself in a
mirror and realize that it's hugely
obese it thinks it's starving to death
because this very critical hormone is
not being made by the body and the idea
that a hormone produced by fat can
control what you think about food in a
very important way this is a very
radical notion a normal fat cell
produces leptin which travels to the
brain and signals the hypothalamus the
region that determines when and how much
we eat high levels of leptin tell your
brain about 20 the fat story but low
levels
to eat and for those like Troy who can't
make leptin because they lack fact
getting the hormone would be life-saving
the starvation was gone within three
days of him taking leptin we saved a lot
of money the Troy went from eating what
three people would eat to eating what a
normal person would eat in a day knowing
that I was full I'm like wow this is
amazing does hurt
leptin can't cure Troy's disease but by
curbing his hunger it protects his liver
leptin does not bring the fat back it
just helps to deal with fats absence
patients finally can't take a deep
breath that they're full and they don't
have to worry about eating