Saturday, February 03, 2007

sick n tired of being sick n tired

I received an email from a weight loss surgery (WLS) patient who complained that since his gastric bypass 5 years ago, he'd had a major surgery every year and now, in 2007, he was facing another. He wrote that this is getting very old and that he's sick and tired of being, sick and tired.

This same patient has also complained about the lack of energy, the daily fight he has with his body to not eat and more.

The story struck me because many people use that reason FOR GETTING weight loss surgery in the first place i.e. that they are sick n tired of being sick n tired and yet, so many older post ops complain that after a gastric bypass they are MORE sick and tired than when they were fat.

And of course, those people have bought into THE myth that losing weight is so going to solve all their problems, that they ignore the fact that the surgery they requested will destroy their ability to digest most vitamins and most nutrients that they eat. Of course when someone is vitamin depleted, they will be "sick n tired" because we NEED 100's of vitamins and nutrients on a daily basis and our bodies can only exist well without these for a limited amount of time.

We all are upset about the starvation in Africa but how often do we realize that many folks trying to keep up, not only with fashion but with their medical provider's advice, would, if they removed their clothing, look similar to the gaunt, boney figures we see of the starving Africans?

We pass the buck to the fashion industry and I'm sure it doesn't help when teens see magazines filled with size 0 models but I suspect the motivating factor for most teens is their parents being "worried" about "the obesity epidemic" and this scare they did NOT get from magazines but from their local medical providers who are so sold on the "dangers of obesity" that they are even more and more, are advocating surgery to partially destroy the digestive system for teens!

And if you think of it, how crazy is this? Destroying one of the most important systems in our bodies for a look, and a size which has never really been proven to be healthy at all?

Isn't it a no brainer that starvation wouldn't be healthy for our bodies on the long term, however you achieve it? The only difference between starvation by weight loss surgery and starvation by dieting is that, as a friend who had weight loss surgery for 22 years, states, "you can walk away from a diet but you cannot walk away from a weight loss surgery".

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