Losing and regaining weight

So there is this lady I know on the internet. She lost over 200 lbs and attributed it to Weight Watchers and dancing.  I followed her as she posted a video of her getting her lifetime membership award at Weight Watchers and as she started to lead a dance class at a local gym.  She was a real inspiration in my own weight loss journey. And she was even featured in a TV story.

That was in 2009 and I saw a recent video of her - she's still dancing and is fit, but she seems to have regained at least 100 lbs or more.  I starred at her, astonished,  because somehow, I guess I thought she would never again, regain.  I do admire her for still getting out there and teaching dancing though.

In truth, damaged metabolisms can happen for all reasons, including too much dieting. Experts have said that, with every diet, our metabolism shrinks down a few hundred calories a day. And those like me, who had tonsillectomies in the 1950's and 1960's often, got damage to the pituitary gland which tends to greatly lower the metabolism. Bottom line, many of us do not have to really overeat, to gain back the weight.  In fact, if we eat the "normal American diet", even on a moderate basis, we can easily regain the weight and then some, as I found out in my numerous attempts to diet.

This time, I have kept off the 106 lbs for over 6 years. How?  I count every calorie that goes into my mouth.  (we joke that "if it goes internal, it goes in the journal").

What is sad, is that no medical provider has ever told me that I might have to count calories for the rest of my life if I wanted to keep off the weight.  Neither did they tell me that some folks become overweight just by eating normally.  (Society's image is, that if a person is fat, it means they do nothing but sit on the couch eating bon-bons and medical providers, many of them, seem to agree with this image).

Is it worth it to me, to count my calories to keep off the weight?  Yes it is to me,  because I am healthier at a BMI of 27 than I was at a BMI of over 40 and I fit in auditorium chairs and other places better and I don't have to have a wardrobe in 3 sizes and I do not get any negative feedback from medical providers... but it's a matter of preference and lifestyle and anyway, I think we should all accept each other for the beautiful humans we are and not quibble about weight or other superficial things.

That being said, I think that medical providers should give better advice on how to lose weight and keep it off (I suspect it usually requires counting calories, measuring and journaling food intake for those of us with pituitary damage or "those genetics") instead of blaming us for being overweight.  Experts say that our size is 60% genetic and there may be some 40 genes involved  (Dr Rudy Leibel, obesity expert for example).  Bottom line - who we are should not be determined by our size!

Carnie Wilson - 2nd weight loss surgery

Carnie Wilson, singer and daughter of Beach Boy, Brian Wilson (pictured in red dress in photo with her singing group);  got a RNY gastric bypass, 12 years ago. She lost 150 lbs initially, and told the press, "It was so easy -- it was like I blinked my eyes and the scale went WHUUP!". 

A frenzy of people signed up for gastric bypass surgeries. One person who worked for a weight loss surgery surgeon, told the news that every time Carnie Wilson appeared on TV, their phones rang off the hook!  The surgical group who did Carnie's surgery, dramatically simulcasting on the internet during her surgery and launching a huge publicity campaign in partnership with the manufacturer of surgical instruments, went from doing 5-7 weight loss surgery procedures a week to doing 12 weight loss surgery procedures a week.  The future looked rosy, for Carnie and the Weight Loss surgery industry.

But dark clouds were gathering on the horizon.

Soon after Carnie Wilson's famous quote to the press above, she began regaining the weight, despite fighting hard to keep her weight off, including, hours of exercise, engaging personal trainers, putting salt on desserts so she wouldn't be tempted and publicly humiliating herself, talking about her weight problem. By 2011 when she appeared on the Dr Oz show, she'd regained to her average weight before surgery, about 240 which is a lot for her since she's only 5'1".

Apparently, she lately, had a gastric band placed over her bypass to force a restriction of her food intake, and has lost 30 lbs so far.

The bottom line is the gastric bypass or any weight loss surgery, is no free ride.  Just like using a non surgical tool like weight watchers, it's a lot of work on a daily basis for the rest of your life or you will regain the weight and/or get sick!  A percentage of gastric bypass patients get sick anyway, even if they do everything right.

Carnie Wilson, like so many others, was given the impression surgery worked automatically and easily.



That so many people embark on weight loss surgery seemingly ill prepared for the reality, can be at least, partially blamed on allowing the mass advertising of surgery without requiring the advertiser to list side effects and disclaimers like "results not typical".  Some weight loss surgery surgeons have an annual income of $1.5 million dollars - people have done strange things for much less money than that.

Let's hope the second weight loss surgery procedure will bring her what she's looking for.  She's such a beautiful woman and a great singer and somehow all of that tends to get lost in her frantic efforts to get slimmer. To me, that is sad.

Click on this blog link to see photos and story.

Does Obesity really cause brain damage?

Obesity might cause inflammation in the brain, shouts out the latest headliner coming out of the NPR News.

According to the NPR article:

...some provocative research suggests that a part of the problem might be that obesity could change the area of the brain that helps control appetite and body weight.

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and since my trust of media reporting on studies is about zero, I decided to look up the original study to see what it really found.

Not surprising, the study report article differed completely from the news article.

In this study, the researchers found that when rats were fed a diet high in fatty foods, even before they became overweight, there was evidence of inflammation in the rat hypothalamus gland, a gland in the brain which is thought to regulate body temperature and metabolism.

The scientists wondered whether humans reacted similarly, so they MRI-ed the brains of 34 humans and found more evidence of damage to the hypothalamus in the 12 humans who were obese than in those humans of normal weight.

Michael Schwartz, one of the researchers on this rat study was very shocked at the results, he told NPR. Schwartz is the head of the Obesity and Diabetes Center of Excellence at the UW School of Medicine.

I do see some possible issues in the study such as, can it be assumed that normal weight humans did not consume as much fatty food as obese humans?

But unlike the media, the scientists commented that this damage may be a factor in developing obesity and not that obesity caused damage as the NPR article stated. The scientists named their article, "Obesity is associated with hypothalamic damage". The media in their typical fashion of misreporting, headlined their article "Could Obesity Change the brain?".

Actually, I am not surprised that the hypothalamus glands of some overweight people might be damaged but of course, the study never stated that the obesity proceeded the damage - either in the rat study or in the human study.

Interestingly, this study may dovetail another recent study which found that a rather alarming percentage of people developed obesity after their tonsillectomies (which may be due to hypothalamic damage). The scientists in that study stated they did not know what caused this but suggested it might be that swollen tonsils caused difficulty in swallowing before they were surgically removed. I was one of those who packed on the pounds after my tonsillectomy and no, I had no difficulty in swallowing before that surgery! I also was very active, spending most of the day, running around, riding my bicycle etc. However, I was more hungry after my tonsillectomy which could be the effects of a damaged hypothalamus.

The study at the UW seems a landmark study, the first which suggests that damage to the hypothalamus might be a factor in obesity, which is a pretty shocking result as Dr Schwartz suggested however, with the media misreporting the study to something totally different, the public may never know what the real study found!

Obviously, the rat brain is quite different from the human brain. And the scientists admitted they cannot really generalize from how the rats reacted, that humans would react in the same manner but they did suggest more research along this line would be appropriate.

As an aside, it would be nice if, for once, the media would consider accurately reporting about the scientific research instead of totally changing what the study was even about. (the photo is of the Olympic weight lifter and medalist, Cheryl Haworth)

Bariatric surgery slashes cancer risk?

Latest news - front page for several days - has been that having a gastric bypass can cut cancer risks.

Bariatric surgeons at McGill University compared the records of 1000 patients mostly gastric bypass to 5700 people matched by age, weight and sex who did not have the surgery.

In the surgical group, 2 percent developed cancer and in the non surgical group, 8.5 percent developed cancer.

Although the study is yet unpublished, these bariatric surgeons presented their preliminary findings at the latest meeting of bariatric surgeons of the ASBMS recently. (talk about preaching to the choir).

And isn't it amazing that an unpublished study has made such headlines for several days now?

What is even more amazing is that while Dr Glenn Gaesser found in his metastudy that obese people were 40 percent less likely to develop cancer, how these surgeons found the opposite. Of course 6 percent more cancer isn't really that great although you can express it to sound amazing as MSNBC did .... saying 80 percent greater chance of cancer in the non surgical group.

One of the objections to this study was actually brought up by another bariatric surgeon. Edward Phillips, a bariatric surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center told the LA Times that patients who have weight loss surgery, are often screened for cancer before surgery. "We may be selecting patients who don't have cancer for surgery, thus biasing the study", he said.

It's hard to judge without seeing the study. For example, a lot of very obese people are yo yo dieters and that weight cycling raises all health risks. Also I am wondering why they had to pick so many obese people to compare. Why not select 1000 fat people to match up with the 1000 WLS patients? Because I bet in 1000 fat people you might not get any cancer at all and that wasn't what they wanted to prove with their study.

The study only ran for 5 years and critics of the study have pointed out that it often takes a cancer many more years to develop than that and that had the study been taken out longer, the results might have been different.

Breast cancer was one of the cancers which they saw less of in the bariatric patients. Could it be that after a gastric bypass, patients were unable to take birth control medication (a major risk factor for breast cancer - that is medications work differently in gastric bypass patients because of the malabsorption issues)? Or that the gastric bypass patients were unable to eat or digest foods with transfat in them (another cancer activator). Also most weight loss surgery surgeons require their patients to quit smoking whereas the fat controls were not necessarily non smokers. Another thing is that most gastric bypass patients can no longer drink alcohol especially the newer ops as they would have been looking at, if the study only ran 5 years - alcohol can be another risk factor for cancer.

There are just too many other factors which could be operational in all of this to assume that it was the surgery and weight loss which explained the 6 percent less cancer in the surgical group.

For example, most gastric bypass patients are told to exercise often in order to help keep off the weight. Exercising can knock the risk of cancer (in anyone of any size) down, 40 percent. Most of the obese controls were probably not exercising regularly.

Ideally the fat controls should have also been matched for exercise, not smoking and dietary modifiations (like the elimination of trans fat in the diet) if the scientists wanted to really see if it was the surgery or the weight loss which explained the less cancer in the surgical group.

A non randomized study always raises red flags. The fat people could have been picked for their cancer risk (i.e. cancer in the family etc).

I guess the thing which rather annoys me about this whole deal (besides the news media making it a headline for the last week or more) is that all the research I've done comes out the opposite...

• Cancer is seen 40 percent less in fat people than in slim people - it has been considered a disease of the slim and yet now they are trying to link it like everything else to obesity.
• Two oncologists have told me that fat people if they get cancer, are much more likely to survive than slimmer people.

So unlike the media is trying to tell us, the "link between obesity and cancer" has not been well proven at all. On the contrary. The American Cancer society has stated that lifestyle (not girth) is a factor in 85 percent of cancers.

Even the release form for gastric bypass used by many surgeons and usually attributed to Kaiser Permanante warns:

Keep In Mind: Slender individuals have adult diabetes. Slender individuals have heart attacks. Slender individuals develop arthritis and have joint problems. Slender individuals have strokes and develop cancer. If obese individuals have these problems more commonly than the slender, it is because the same bad health habits just don't happen to cause obesity in some individuals "fortunate" enough to be slender no matter what they eat. They may be slender but they could very likely die just as early in life as someone who is overweight.****

And obviously those who wrote this release form do believe in bariatric surgery.

Additionally, I have seen many get cancer who were very slim. Some of them were very fit like a 53 year old family member. She ran marathons and I'm sure the last time she visited her doctor before she came down with the cancer which was to kill her 3 years later, her doctor proclaimed her totally healthy, at her perfect weight with low risk numbers.

So much for the risk numbers and perfect weight predicting protection against cancer!

I would not take this one to the bank. Many gastric bypass patients can develop a condition called "leaky bowel" wherein bacteria, not killed in stomach acid, enter the small gut and are absorbed along with the food. With this condition causing in many, auto immune disorder like RA and lupus, it is suspected that the immune system of a gastric bypass patient might been impaired by the surgery and not strengthened as these McGill bariatric surgeons would like us to believe.

V-Bloc - new hope or old spin?

Several years ago, they did a study on a device developed, I believe, in Switzerland called the "gastric pacer". Several US Weight loss surgery surgeons jumped on the bandwagon. What this device (implanted in the back - and similar in function to a heart pacemaker) did was send electrical impulses to the vagus nerve of the stomach. No intestines were rearranged, the stomach was not otherwise disturbed and it seemed a really great idea. One surgeon wrote to a listserve "I am testing a device now which will outdate all weight loss surgery in five years!"

I followed the studies on gastric pacing and even interviewed some patients. Unfortunately the results, weightloss-wise, were extremely poor. One patient out of the three studies in one area, lost 70 lbs. One patient lost 100 lbs but became very ill from several things including cancer, partially from the side effects of the device and had to have it removed. The rest in the three studies, either lost very little weight or no weight at all. All of the patients except the two previously mentioned, ended up getting other procedures, either gastric bypass or lap band which they all, down to the man, found not only far more effective with weight loss but also, far more comfortable than the gastric pacer.

But worse yet, this "totally non invasive device" (as it was _heavily_ advertised) had a set of co morbidities of its own, some of which I understand are also true of the heart pacemaker but to a lesser degree.

First, it could travel around in the body causing problems getting where it didn't belong (like heavily inflaming surrounding tissue). The one patient who had to have it removed in an emergency situation, had it travel halfway down her back.

Secondly, the amount of current required to block the vagus nerve turned out to be about 10 times the amount of current required in a heart pacemaker. When the device was working, many patients complained of tingling uncomfortable feelings in their arms.

Third, patients were told it stopped the appetite. But the way it stopped the appetite was to keep the stomach from emptying into the small intestine, a condition well known to GERD patients. What they didn't tell the patients was that if the food just sits in the stomach, it starts to rot and can cause a horrendous case of upset stomach (and burping up, rotten food - I know because I have GERD myself). It can also cause too much stomach acid which splashes into the esophagus and can cause not only heartburn but also a condition of ulcers and sores in the esophagus called "Barrett's Esophagus" which can lead to esophageal cancer - a rather distressing type of cancer.

Fourth, patients were told the battery on the gastric pacer would require changing every 2-9 years which are the statistics on heart pacemakers. But what patients found out was that, because the amount of electrical current required for blocking the vagus nerve, was about 10 times what a heart requires, gastric pacer batteries generally had to be changed every 9 months to a year and that required a small surgery.

And finally, for many patients, disturbing the emptying of the stomach did not cause a great deal of weight loss just like the discomfort (and even stricture) associated with GERD doesn't necessarily cause weight loss either. (Again I can attest to that one - I easily managed a BMI of 44 for years until I found Weight Watchers, even with GERD, and a stricture of the esophagus).

Needless to say, the gastric pacing listserve was closed, the studies of this "utterly hopeful" device having been ended but not without a few lawsuits from sick or upset patients.

But ........

As they say in "infomercials"... but wait! Because the gastric pacer came back in 2005, with a new name, new studies and more heavy advertising! That's right.

In 2005, a small company named EnteroMedics in Minnesota announced that they were working on a type of gastric pacer. The press release included the following:

The company says cutting off the nerve supply may slow down digestion because the stomach doesn't register the food and start the digestive process.

Well, apparently they had begun trials of this device in several cities and like the gastric pacer, they claimed it's totally non invasive. Interestingly enough, the TV blurb on it used a gastric bypass patient to show how great losing weight is and claimed the new gastric pacer (the V-Bloc) "may" work just as well as the gastric bypass.  (Which they soon found out to be not as true - in some studies the weight loss in the controls equaled or exceeded that of the people using the v-Bloc.

So you'd think the second time around, they would have gotten the message.  But apparently they didn't because in Jan 2015, guess what's back!

None other but the V-bloc dolled up with a new name but it's the same old, same old.  They opened a new website for it at: http://www.enteromedics.com/vbloc/

Look quickly because after two or three go-arounds with this device, I suspect the website will be as long lived as the last websites were.  But not until they've sold patients with huge promises of its success.  People cannot remember as far back as 2005, I guess they are reasoning (or hoping?)

The following is from my research in 2005 - I'm quite certain this device has the same issues despite the new name! :)

It was difficult to research the V-bloc. Both the EnteroMedics website and the research study website were very vague about how the device works.

So I called a phone number which stated: "For more information about VBLOC Therapy and the EMPOWER clinical research study, please call the nurse-staffed information line at ......"

I spoke to 2 nurses, one of whom got short with me when I was apparently asking too many questions. She said "really this phone number is merely to identify and qualify patients for the study". To which I answered "well that's NOT what you stated on the website" and I quoted the above. Then I reminded her that as soon as they have advertised the device on TV, then the public has a right to know the details. By the time I spoke to the second nurse (a different lady from the first nurse so they apparently are paying no small fee for having nurses to answer phones!), I had a specific question and was prepared with an answer when she told me the line was just to qualify patients.

I did find out that the chest belt part of V-bloc is the battery pack so apparently one improvement V-Bloc has over the gastric pacer is that to change the battery you don't need the small surgery.

But something else on the EnteroMedics website about what the V-Bloc really does (and this website is not given on the Empower study website either - I had to google it) is a bit unsettling. They admitted that they don't really know how the Vagus nerve interfaces with the appetite but listed the functions of the vagus nerve and it's more than just stopping the peristalsis (the muscular action of the stomach to digest the food and send it to the small bowel). Here is the list of vagus nerve functions which the V-Bloc supposedly stops (from their website) :

The mechanisms responsible for obesity and the role played by the vagal nerves are not yet fully understood. Vagus nerve function appears to play a significant role in enabling multiple mechanisms including:

• Expansion of the stomach as food enters.
• Stomach contractions that break food into smaller particles.
• Release of gastric acid to continue food processing.
• Emptying of the stomach contents into the small intestine.
• Secretion of digestive pancreatic enzymes that enable absorption of calories.
• Sensations of hunger, satisfaction or fullness

In plain terms, the V-bloc not only gives you a horrendous case of indigestion but also can induce a  simulation of "gastroparesis" (stomach not emptying due to partial paralysis), and can interfere with the pancreatic enzymes as well as with stomach acid which will not only affect fat digestion but also protein digestion and vitamin digestion!

In another place on the same website, it stated that the idea for the V-bloc (and probably the gastric pacer also) was that before they had the medication to stop the stomach acid for ulcers, the so called PPIs, they would go in and cut the vagus nerve to help ulcers.

Before the availability of proton pump inhibitors (drugs that reduce the amount of gastric acid released into the stomach for persons with ulcers), surgeons routinely cut the vagus nerves near the stomach to treat ulcers. This procedure is called a "vagotomy." For a period of time following surgery, many of the people who underwent this procedure absorbed fewer calories from fat, lost weight and had decreased appetite.

Notice for a "period of time after surgery". That is, it did not work indefinitely to stop the appetite.

Other than the battery pack (it's carried on a case the size of a compact disc, one nurse told me) worn around the chest (which I suspect might be inconvenient at times) which is an improvement over surgery every nine months to change the battery, it seems the V-bloc is pretty much the "same dog, different fleas" as the devastatingly unsuccessful and risky in its own way, gastric pacer. And something which the TV said has been added i.e. wires in the esophagus (I don't know how accurate the TV report is but since the Enteromedics folks are not giving much information, it's all we have).

The new device might have a smaller battery....

"He who does not study history, is doomed to repeat it" and "doing the same thing repeatedly hoping for a different result is insanity" (said Albert Einstein) so take a tip from those who struggled and suffered with the gastric pacer a few years ago, and consider waiting on the V-Bloc! Its predecessors interfered with digestion as much as the gastric bypass but did not even produce good weight loss results for most people.

At best scenario, the weight loss promised is 15-20 percent of the bodyweight in the first year. Doing the math, 15 percent of 300 lbs is 45 lbs. And likely the real results will be more like 10 percent or less. (as they were with all trials on the gastric pacer).

Surely a horrendous case of indigestion, food rotting in the stomach, heartburn and nausea may slow the appetite but at what price? You can do that without expensive electrical devices and multiple wires implanted in your body.

If you did not come here from the new blog - it's been re-introduced in 2015 ... click here to see the new blog on it...

Dr Oz sells out to the Weight loss surgery industry!

I looked forward to Dr Oz's new program "The Oz Files" on Discovery Health. This week's episode was entitled "Defeating Obesity". Dr Oz is a cardiac surgeon and although some of the things he has said about obesity are questionable, I felt he was basically mainstream health conscious.

But the Oz Files was a great disappointment. Interestingly enough, Dr Roizen, his partner who has joined him on most other shows was missing. As the show wore on, I had to wonder whether Dr Roizen didn't approve of the slant of the show which was doing anything but advocating health!

The scenario of the show was that four fat people were picked to lose a lot of weight in 6 months. Located all over the country, they were given little guidance on how to do this - just cameos with Dr Oz cooking a healthy food or telling them they should exercise. Instead of guidance in a more healthy lifestyle, the people were told things like their bodies were dying from the obesity (untrue) and if they didn't lose weight immediately, they would get diabetes (untrue - how does Dr Oz explain the 33 percent of type II diabetics who have never been fat in their lives?) and that the "omentum" was "poisoning" their livers and kidneys.

The "Omentum" has been a favorite of Dr Oz's. If you look it up on the web, it appears a sort of sheathing for the abdominal cavity but beyond that, no one knows what it really does so Dr Oz declaring that it somehow poisons the organs in a fat person, is more than a bit over the top since this is NOT based on science.

Bottom line, the four people were made to feel terrible about their weight, and their future but only told to "eat less and exercise more" (wow, what a revelation! NOT).

One of them had a gastric bypass. She was 5'6" and not even 300 lbs.

One of them was "lagging" on her weight loss after a couple of months so was put on the diabetic medication, Metformin to help kill her appetite. To put a healthy person on a diabetic specific medication is very questionable.

And the two other people, battled it alone. It was emphasized throughout the show that they were not doing their part in losing the weight. Also the husband of the gastric bypass patient was taken to task for "not keeping up with his wife", Dr Oz, totally ignoring that the quick weight loss period in a gastric bypass patient is NOT from living healthy but simply from fasting because they cannot eat due to the massive surgical changes made to their digestive tracts.

At the end of 6 months, the results were predictable and Dr Oz announced them with glee.

The gastric bypass patient had lost 70 lbs (but remember, less than 30 lbs of that was likely fat because gastric bypass patients are on a fasting diet the first few months after surgery as their bodies heal - their bodies can only get sugar out of body fat and must cannibalize muscle and bone and organs for the rest, a fact totally ignored by Dr Oz who gleefully pointed out how the gastric bypass patient lost that weight through "changing her lifestyle to diet and exercise" and how he applauded her because she did what she needed to do and "partnered with science".

The person on metformin lost 45 lbs and Oz "lauded" her also saying she was now a slim person (she wasn't really). But the fact is, without medication that her body did not need, she would _not_ have lost that much weight and when the medication is discontinued she will likely gain back.

The other two people did not do well on their weight loss, but Oz patronizingly said they learned a lot from participation.

The content message of the show was clearly, the only way a person can lose a large amount of weight is having a gastric bypass!

Where is the "healthy lifestyle" here? Vitamin deficiencies on the long term which made the inventor of the gastric bypass stop doing the surgery he invented, in 1980? 40 percent serious complications within five years of surgery? And worse yet, we now have two studies which found that the weight loss at the 10 year point after a gastric bypass was somewhat unimpressive. 16 percent of the original weight? (Swedish Obesity Study).

I am confused. Is Dr Oz really deluding himself that the gastric bypass is a healthy and effective way to lose weight? Perhaps but if that is so, he's in for a rude awakening when he finds out the dark side of the surgery, how few people can stay healthy and keep off the weight.

Or is it as Dr Ernsberger once wrote:

"In my experience, most physicians, especially academic physicians, disapprove of these operations. However, they will only admit this in private, because of an unwritten law in medicine that forbids one to speak ill of another's procedure. Thus, there is no one with an MD after their name who will appear on camera and criticize the operation."

Paul Ernsberger, PhD, Department of Nutrition,
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, 10900 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44106-4906

In any case, I am very disappointed in Dr Oz that he could make a show which only had a thin veneer of teaching health and actually was just- yet another- infomercial for gastric bypass.

Can you be fat and fit? Latest spin says "No"

Based on a "data dredge" study (meaning they took existent data which was not designed for THAT study so is outdated and also doesn't usually have the right information), some of those in the diet industry are now telling us that we cannot be fat and fit.

The study, like other epidemiological studies boasted big numbers, 39,000 women classified as normal weight, overweight or obese (BMI 30 or over). It was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, April 28, 2008 issue.

I looked up the article, because the news service headlines read "Fitness does not reduce risk if you are fat". The media told us that people who were obese had a 50 percent greater rate of heart attack even if they exercised than people who were not obese.

If the study had really suggested this, it would be very questionable ... the exercise habits were self reported and people often exaggerated their level of fitness (mostly exaggerate it!). Also overweight and obese women are often weight cycling (popularly called "yo yo dieting") because the body produces all kinds of hormones to force weight gain if it thinks your weight is too low (and too low varies for every different body). And of course, several CLINICAL studies have suggested that any kind of dieting increases heart disease risk by 50 percent.

However, in looking up the abstract, the study did NOT suggest that there was no benefit for an obese person to be fit. On the contrary, the last line of the abstract reads:

The risk of CHD associated with elevated body mass index is considerably reduced by increased physical activity levels.

The media ignored this statement and picked up the next line in the conclusion:

However, the risk is not completely eliminated, reinforcing the importance of being lean and physically active.

Ok, that's fine except it is a meaningless statement because a reduction in risk doesn't mean no risk... regardless of weight. However, it made a great statement for the media to base yet another article of misinformation on.

Now if we look at the study further, we find that although researchers wanted the expenditure of 1000 calories in exercise a week (which isn't very much... about 3 x a week, 40-60 minutes each time), the average expenditure in calories in exercise for those considered "active" (remember this is self reported) was 550 calories a week which isn't for most people, even twice a week. And even that small amount, said the researchers, reduced the risk of CHD significantly regardless of weight (34 percent, they stated).

It should be remembered that many people feel NON cardio is exercise to be counted like gardening and likely reported that as "activity" even if it didn't fit in the categories which were basically cardio exercise (I guess gardening could be reported in the "walking" category if you stretched it).

So although this wasn't the best designed study (to put it mildly) the results were not what the news media reported them to be. Exercise does significantly reduce the heart disease risk... regardless of weight.

Rudy Leibel, obesity researcher said "there probably is a benefit to being of 'normal weight' but there is no proof that people forcing their weight down below their set point enjoy that advantage". This is kind of a no brainer and I have no problems with it. Although right now, according to CDC statistics, people in the BMI category of 25-35 are living longer than those in the so called "normal weight" category.

Another strange thing in our society is that although most of us have had friends who exercise a lot of cardio, are lean but smoke cigarettes, drop dead rather early in life, I have not noticed any studies suggesting what we already know to be true - that smoking may cancel out the good effects of exercise in some individuals (regardless of weight or fitness level).

And in fact, many people who smoke, are doing so to keep their weight down because they are under the false conclusion that doing anything unhealthy is better than being fat. And of course, where do they learn that but from our media.

The Cooper Institute studies of 50,000 people over the last 30 years or so, suggested that people who were obese and fit had only a 00.08 greater risk of heart disease than those who were normal weight and fit. And those studies also suggested that being lean (under normal weight) was at the highest risk even if fit. But of course you will never see that in the media which is, bottom line, hard selling a diet.

One more comment about this study. Most people do not keep up a fitness program more than a year or two but in a self reported study, those people may not have reflected the change (stopping exercising) in their surveys.

Exercise greatly cuts risk of illness regardless of what people weigh but cutting risks doesn't mean no risk, of course. And to enjoy that reduction of risk, people must make cardio at least 3 times a week (and 5 times a week is way better) a part of their lives FOR life.

And it seems the greatest risk to our health may be believing the media which when not lying, is incorrectly reporting health topics.

What are we doing to our teens?

Most teens I talk to, feel they are fat, even though they are not.

Several teens I know personally, started smoking to control their weight.

Somehow we are _not_ getting across the message that smoking has been _proven_ health threatening and are concentrating on giving folks the message that obesity is _extremely_ health threatening even though there is virtually NO scientific evidence that obesity alone is health threatening at all.

How much of a problem are eating disorders among teens and pre-teens? If you look at youtube.com, there are huge numbers of videos which advertise themselves as "thinspiration". These videos either show slim young women squeezing what small amount of fat they have on their bodies in disgust or else, are slide shows of super slim fashion models and actresses. Often the songs which accompany the videos give mixed messages. One song begs "SOS me - rescue me" while another song states that no one notices that her body is falling apart.

One young woman who is 21 years old, and said her latest dieting effort began with her wanting to "get her body back" after having her son, started uploading videos in August 2007. Her first video made while she was smoking a cigarette, had her talking a lot about how she cared for her skin. But in the end of the video, she admitted that she had a problem with eating and also showed us a piece of tape covering a scar she made on herself when she was 16 ("S" for sinner, she said) and how she covered it all the time now. "Smoking is bad" she admitted but then added that she smoked a lot during her 'fasts'.

Another video made in early late 2007 by the same woman, was all text. It told how she had been in a mental hospital because of a suicide attempt. How from the age of 16 and on, she had tried all kinds of drugs in a desperate attempt to lose weight. And how she was going to rehab and get well now (but not take any prescription drugs). "I want to get my son back" she wrote, "he's 3 years old!". Another video showed a visit with a bright eyed 3 year old boy, her son. The video was entitled "I miss my son".

Sadly her rehab didn't work- a recent video talked about her 40 day fast which would end April 11, 2008. Two body shots showed that she had lost quite a bit of weight since she uploaded her first video - she looks like the typical anorexic in those shots. But this fast is not about her eating disorder, she tells us - it's to "gain control". She is allowing herself 1 glass of juice a day and the rest, non calorie drinks like coffee, tea and water. She is continuing this for 40 days, during which she will exercise and get control and save up the money (if she can get a job) to get a pole and start pole dancing. "Weight doesn't matter" she keeps saying adding how she discarded her scale.

One of the comments to this video states:

binges are bad! i was doing well, eating at the most, 300 calories a day, but, then i tried to fast and the binge monster came to me and i ate until i exploded although some people say it wasn't that much food. but all you have to do when you want to binge, is look in the mirror and tell yourself how it will ruin this progress! and then eat an apple or whatever and then wait. tell yourself if you're still hungry in 10 min that you will eat. chances are, you can control your binge better. but you are lucky if you can purge after. it doesn't work for me :(

NOTE: what she suggests in the above quote is a version of what Weight Watchers calls "the 20 minute rule". How much of this comes from our general obsession with dieting and a diet industry which makes a larger profit than even the pharmaceutical companies?

Several feel that anorexia and bulimia are more widespread than we'd like to think. It is usually blamed on fashion models and slim actresses however, most people who are dieting or restricting calories mention health as their first concern. An article in a London newspaper, suggests that there are many internet sites which encourage young women to starve themselves to be very slim:

The UK article suggested that 1 percent of teens have an eating disorder but an estimate from an Australian newspaper stated that 1 in 8 teens has some kind of disordered eating.

What is confusing is that most teens who are restricting (and often over exercising, will not admit it. On the contrary, they say they "eat a lot" while getting slimmer and slimmer. And instead of a cause for concern, slimmer teens are often rewarded with getting more clothing and perks from their family, as well as compliments from their classmates and often, a lack of concern from their medical providers while the fat teen is teased, often not rewarded by the parents and constantly battered by the media as well as medical providers to "lose weight or die". And we wonder why these teens start smoking to "control their weight"? They are following what _we_ are telling them... that _anything_ is more healthy than being overweight!

Ironically, it's the fat teen who is often much more well nourished than those trying to keep what is considered an "ideal weight" (which the CDC has said may be underweight for most people).

And again I ask - will the insanity ever end?

Big Medicine - Big Problems?

The TV show we all love to hate, "Big Medicine" which details two surgeons in Texas, father and son, who "practice Weight Loss surgery together" seems to have run into some problems.

First, in the last episode I watched, they heavily - shall we say - misrepresented a weight loss that is, how much weight was lost as a result of a gastric bypass.

I've seem them do this previously but perhaps not as much as an exaggeration as with this patient.

That is, when she came to see Dr Davis, she weighed in at 335. She told Dr D that her high weight had been 360 but she had apparently been losing some weight on her own. Dr D, as is his protocol with patients to be, put her on a liquid diet to lose some more weight. He states that this liquid diet usually takes care of any fatty liver present and makes the gastric bypass surgery less risky.

"What we are doing, " said "Big D" the dad surgeon candidly in one show, "is creating a situation of malnutrition in our patients!"

So on the day of surgery, after being very conpliant to her liquid diet, she had lost another 17 lbs and weighed in at 318.

They showed her a month later for her follow up visit and at that time, she weighed in at 290, a loss of 28 lbs, 4 weeks after her gastric bypass. While that isn't a bad weight loss, apparently those in charge of the show felt that was not the huge number on the scale which tends to sell the surgery better.

No problem - this is TV so they can change it. They flashed on the screen a before and after photo - The after photo was the usual type cover-up because with a 28 lb weight loss, she didn't look that different (especially considering that most of the weight lost after a gastric bypass because of the low amount of caloric intake, is muscle and bone mass - muscle is compact tissue which does not show much when it's lost). That is, more slimming clothing and a more flattering angle in her "after" photo.

But they openly misrepresented the numbers. They listed her beginning weight as 267 and her weight, 1 month after surgery as 290, with a total weight loss of 70 lbs which they claimed happened in 4 weeks after the gastric bypass. Yes, I stopped the DVR and made sure that was the claim.

This was going one step further than the usual - claiming the high weight and then the current weight and hinting the surgery had been totally responsible when in fact, it never was. I sat staring at the stopped video in amazement about how they could openly misrepresent things when folks' lives were at stake.

After every show, they give a promo of what's on the next show and the show after this one looked interesting. It promised to show us a 20 year gastric bypass patient who had regained all her weight. This is not surprising considering one of the few 10 year studies on gastric bypass done in 2006 suggested a 34 percent failure rate - weight wise with gastric bypass in patients who had BMI's over 50 - that describes most patients seeking gastric bypass! That failure rate is true even though the surgeons generously count a maintained loss of 50 percent of the initial loss as "success" (as small as 40 or 50 lbs kept off in many patients) and keep in mind most patients have the surgery to keep off 100 percent of their excess weight because they can keep off a percentage of excess weight by themselves without surgery! (cite: Annals of Surgery. 244(5):734-740, November 2006. Christou, Nicolas V. MD, PhD; Look, Didier MD; MacLean, Lloyd D. MD, PhD Abstract: Objective: To complete a long-term (>10 years) follow-up of patients undergoing isolated roux-en-Y gastric bypass for severe obesity.)

I thought that show was going to be interesting and looked forward to it. Revisions on Gastric bypasses are highly risky and quite ineffective i.e. either the patient loses only another 20 lbs or so or worse yet, the patient loses too much weight and may require take down.

But my wait was in vain. That show never was aired. In its place, a re-run was shown and the following week, "Big Medicine" had been replaced by another show.

"Big Medicine" has been pulled suddenly from the air with no explanation.

I wrote to TLC asking about it and got a polite form letter back explaining that they received so many letters they just can't answer each one but thanks for writing. TLC has left their area on "Big Medicine" up only when you click to "get the schedule" (when the shows are aired) you get a blank screen. No plans to air it in the near future, it suggests.

Several are asking on the TLC forums, places which are moderated and usually receive a quick response but in this case, no one is talking. No one has answered the questions about where the show disappeared to.

Finally in desperation, I called the Surgeon's offices in Houston. They were polite and friendly - and totally evasive. They didn't know why the show was pulled - "Just probably some scheduling changes" the nice young female voice suggested and they could not say when it would come back on the air. "Probably in a couple of weeks," the lady assured me but when I asked her for a date, she didn't have that. "They don't tell us when the shows will air," she said. I asked her whether there had been a problem with the revision patient in the show which never aired and she said "Oh no! Everything is fine!". I asked her about one of the larger patients who had had his gastric bypass a year ago and who was not walking at the 7 month point post op, opined Dr Garth Davis, because his breasts were weighing him down so they scheduled him for a mastectomy which was done in August 2007. To date, he has lost down to 300 some lbs. "is he walking yet?" I asked. She lowered her voice a bit and mumbled, "n-no." Obviously the reason he was bedfast was not his weight which begs the question whether they should have operated on him at all.

"Perhaps they are faced with a lawsuit," suggested my engineer husband whose cleverness I really enjoy. I had not even considered that possibility but now as I think of it, that's a rather good possibility. Gastric bypass surgeons often weather many lawsuits because the gastric bypass has a high failure rate and a high complication rate combined with less than inpressive results especially in the longer term (more than 3 years post op). One study of 10 year gastric bypass patients found that only 7 percent were able to keep off all the weight they lost. This isn't much better than diets and at least you can walk away from a diet. (cite: (Dept. of Surgery C, Soroka Medical Center, Beer Sheba (Israel study) Harefuah 1993 Feb 15;124(4):185-7, 248 (article is in Hebrew))

I googled "Big Medicine" this morning and found that on one site, people were asking some questions about it and the gastric bypass in general. One letter suggested that some of the plastic surgery patients looked less than great after surgery and that one lady might have had a reason for a lawsuit - her implants had ended up in the wrong place. This writer went on to say that one of the patients, a man, looked like death warmed over after his gastric bypass.

So people are asking questions about it.

It remains a mystery for now.

There are many mysteries connected with this surgery. Dr Paul Ernsberger, PhD and associate professor of nutrition at Case Western medical school, detailed one of those most baffling mysteries on the Donahue show a few years back. He stated:

Well, the gold standard in medicine is the controlled clinical trial. We don't go subjecting 100,000 people to a surgical procedure without doing a controlled clinical trial or dozens of clinical trials, and then looking at the results. Do you know how many clinical trials have been published on weight-loss surgery or gastric bypass? Zero. None of them have compared it to clinical conservative treatment and found it to be superior for life expectancy or for anything else other than, you know, risk factors.
A number of trials have been started, and the final results have never been reported. We have to ask, you know, why haven't we seen the final results? I think it's because it's bad news.

Perhaps what we think is a mystery about the gastric bypass or the sudden and unexplained disappearance of "Big Medicine" (in addition to a couple of the new shows never being aired) is really also, bad news.

The cost of obesity and other spin

It's good to know how to interpret spin - that's the newspaper word for what Orwell called "Newspeak".

For example, we are told that obesity contributes to 100,000 deaths each year. Now that sounds like a lot except it's only a drop in the bucket in the total yearly deaths.

In 2002, in the USA, the death toll was 2,400,300. Since obesity apparently contributed to 100,000 of these, that means obesity _did not_ contribute to 2,300,300 deaths. Expressed in percentages, that's 4 percent of the deaths per year, obesity had a part in! Which means obesity did not have a part in 96 percent of the deaths per year!

Looks a bit different if we look at the whole picture, doesn't it? Why do we even think obesity is any kind of "problem"? Maybe the real problem are those who wish to sell us obesity solutions?

Even if we take the older figure of obesity contributes to 300,000 deaths a year, that's still 2.1 million deaths that obesity doesn't contribute to, isn't it.

The latest spin we are hearing is how expensive obesity is and how if we just lose 10 lbs we will save the health care system, millions.

The only way obesity can get expensive is with weight loss surgery. The average weight loss surgery costs 15,000 and they can cost as much as $50,000 and guess who pays for it.

Especially considering that in folks with BMI's over 50 (which most people seeking weight loss surgeries are), there is a 34 percent failure rate according to several studies.

Here's the cite for one of these studies - this is not available on the web (we wouldn't want folks seeking weight loss surgery to see stuff like this, would we?)

Annals of Surgery. 244(5):734-740, November 2006.
Christou, Nicolas V. MD, PhD; Look, Didier MD; MacLean, Lloyd D. MD, PhD

Abstract:
Objective: To complete a long-term (>10 years) follow-up of patients undergoing isolated roux-en-Y gastric bypass for severe obesity.

As you can see, this was a study on gastric bypass which is supposed to be so powerful in keeping off weight!

Actually, the longer a person lives, the more expensive their health care costs so if people of size really don't live as long as slim folks, then they would cost less, says an AP story which circulated recently.

LONDON - Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

Doing the math, thin people if they do live the longest, are going to cost us the most money!

Smoking contributes to 400,000 deaths a year... that's still over 2 million deaths than neither smoking nor obesity contribute to.

Back to the gastric bypass, it kills off 2 percent of those who have it, within 30 days of surgery so would that outweigh the outrageous cost per surgery, most of which is paid for by insurance and premiums are passed down to other insured? (cite: death rate 2 percent within 30 days of surgery from 62,000 patients: report delivered to the College of surgeons in Oct 21, 2003.[Study title: The Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Patient Survival: A Population-Based Study])

Wait, I'm getting more and more confused here. If living longer costs the system more money and obesity contributes to only 4 percent of the 2.4 millions deaths a year, why are people even worried about obesity?

It's the people who live the longest who are going to cost the health care system the most.

Bottom line. The news media is not gospel. Look at the big picture and spin quickly falls apart.

And for heavens sake, don't base a surgical decision on media spin!

diet pop - not so diet after all?

Years ago, in 1973, I went to Weight Watchers and lost down to a socially acceptable weight (about 100 lbs less than I weigh now!). And I seemed to be, for the first time, "easily" keeping it off. My secret? 6-8 cans of "Diet Rite Cola" (remember that brand?) a day. Or sometimes more. And a bedtime snack of whipped carnation non fat milk (1/4 cup) sweetened with --- artificial sweetener of course!

Unfortunately while enjoying my smaller size, I found I was getting some strange symptoms in my eyes. Blurs in the field of vision. Pain in the eyeballs. And lumps in the eye lids.

I went to the eye doctor and he wasn't much help. "You have lumps in your eyelids!" he announced, being champion of the obvious.

So I reaccessed what I was doing and "a lot of diet pop" came up. Could THAT be it, I wondered. So I gave up "Diet Rite Cola", cold turkey. And I gave up my nice evening snack of artificially sweetened whipped non fat instant milk. And in a month or so, the lumps in my eyelids disappeared as did the pain in the eyeballs and the blur in the field of vision.

I also pretty well trashed my gall bladder in that dieting stint in 1973 which I found out with a shock when I tried the - then newest thing - the Atkins Diet, had a day and a half of delightful parties in my mouth like cheese quiche and then had the granddaddy of all gall bladder attacks!. Well, that's another show but a common repercussion apparently, of losing a lot of weight on a diet. In fact, in many weight loss surgery patients, they just remove the gall bladder at the time of surgery because they know it's going to go bad anyway. A common repercussion, one of many from dieting which is buried in the medical literature and never talked about in polite company.

The problem with my giving up "Diet Rite" was that without the caffeine load I was getting from the diet cola, I started to feel extreme starvation fatigue (Gina Kolata called it "Primal hunger" in her recent book, "Re-Thinking Thin") It's our body's major production of hormones to force us to eat to gain weight and feel better. Worked for me. I'd felt this kind of fatigue before, (also identified in the Ansel Keyes starvation studies of the 1940's) when I was in my early 20's trying to force my weight to a socially acceptable number and I knew there was only one way to feel better. To eat! So eat I did. I'm not a binge eater. I just ate normally but that caused a 90 lbs weight gain.

The sweetener in Diet Rite Cola was saccharine, then considered "totally safe" despite the fact that it had caused some bladder cancer in the rat studies.

In 1980, another sweetener came out. Aspartame or Nutrasweet. I investigated it, wondering if it would work better than saccharine had done for me. But when I found it could turn into formaldehyde in your body, seemed kind of a no brainer that it was more than a bit toxic. That logical thought process and my observing a member of my online community (BBS in those days) get a case of Multiple Sclerosis rendering her bedfast which "miraculously went away" when she stopped consuming Nutrasweet, were a strong argument in my book to stay away from the chemical! I decided to not consume Nutrasweet or aspartame long before the anti Aspartame folks arose on the net. And to this day, I still remain an aspartame virgin.

My huge weight gain after my first tour of Weight Watchers was my fault of course, or so I believed.

However, a recent story tells us that some of my weight gain might have been because my heavy consumption of artificial sweetener had caused changes in my brain chemistry. ouch!

In fact, they are telling us, drinking only one can of diet soda a day can cause those changes in brain chemistry which can result in not only, weight gain but a significantly higher risk of heart disease.

After 2 large studies showed that people who drink diet pop had a 30 percent greater chance of gaining weight, and a 30 percent greater chance of low HDL cholesterol and/or metabolic syndrome, two heart disease risk factors, we recently have become aware of a rat study out of Purdue which actually showed the brain chemistry changes in the rats.

Too bad for the pop moguls who had just successfully de-valued the large studies of people "well you see, people who drink diet pop tend to eat more and exercise less" they told us. They don't want us to stop buying diet pop because Americans spend $21 billion bucks on it per year.

The pop industry is trying to de-value the Purdue study but it seems to just not go away. Not only that but now ABC news pulled up other things discovered about artificial sweetener - things which seemed to have evaded the news previously. For example, one expert opined that "the acid load delivered by soda of any kind" can be damaging.

The acid load. hmmm. I remember an internet forward stating that Diet Coke was good for cleaning the toilet. I had seen it eat away the tarnish on a penny in seconds after the penny was dropped into a small glass of it. My husband was not surprised at this - "phosphoric acid is a solvent used in some shops to clean tools," he told me. Diet Coke did clean the toilet well, I found out.

And after a lot of my teeth had had the enamel worn away, I read that cola can eat through the enamel on your teeth.

Diet guru Richard Simmons announced about 10 years ago, that when he quit drinking diet soda, he lost 12 lbs without changing anything else. He was largely ignored, of course.

Now people are beginning to listen. The anti aspartame folks telling us for years, that nutrasweet is an "excitotoxin" (kills brain cells and may be a secondary cause of other ailments like Parkinsonism) or that aspartame delivers a fairly heavy load of methanol into our system (kills liver cells and can cause cirrhosis and after that, can muck up the mitochondria and more) didn't have that much affect on people.

But tell them that diet soda may make you gain weight? That they listen to. Apparently having a dead brain or dying nerve cells isn't a dealbreaker but having a fat body is? 'Nuff said. For once, fat-a-phobia may actually cause us to be healthier.

(Although, they will probably find an equally dangerous chemical to substitute, says my less optimistic side, a chemical which after those selling it tell us it's "safe", people will flock to buy it.)

Pizza, Fat and Genetics

My 12 year old granddaughter is as slim as a rail. Not "skinny" but just perfect... looks great in pants etc. Like I never did, never was. And she basically eats what she wants too. Fast food, pizza, whatever. Even according to the fat-a-phobes, she is apparently like 90 percent of the other kids because the so called "obesity epidemic" only affects 10 percent of kids!

And I was in the "lucky" 10 percent!

I remember those darned kids who lived on pizza and coke when we were in High School and never had a weight problem. I had to starve, literally, to get down to 135-140 and then the minute I stopped starving I gained right up to 170. (And I'm 5'5" so I'm somewhat altitudinally challenged). Unlike these modern kids, pizza and coke was basically never in the house for us - neither candy except at Christmastime and Easter. We had apples and oranges for snacks.

Pretty much through elementary school, I did 2 hours daily of bicycle riding or skating or playing ball (after school that is, and during school, we had P.E. daily and also active recesses - something kids do not have now).

In High School, I was in intramurals twice a week (played volleyball or tennis or badminton or had trampoline), I swam during my study halls and I walked home from school, 3 miles every day with books and a violin. I also walked to stores and/or my violin students homes (what I did to make a few bucks in High School) That kept me at a weight of 170 lbs, unless I starved (ate about 500-800 calories a day) so I DID starve to stay within a somewhat normal size in High School. No breakfast, no lunch and then, a small supper... can we say "eating disorder" sports fans? Of course no pizza and very little coke. My High School social life was spent in watching others stuff their faces with goodies with apparently no worries about "getting fat".

So, my 12 year old granddaughter told me that they had pizza the other night. Now she's somewhat active but not near as active as I was, riding my bicycle for hours etc - Just out of curiosity, I asked her if pizza filled her up. She answered "Oh yes!" and I said "how much pizza do you have to eat because you are full" and she answered "about 1 and 1/2 pieces!"

I remember distinctly, not only did pizza NOT fill me up but left me with hidden hunger and a sick stomach if I ate more than a bite. And that to fill me up, took at least 3 or 4 pieces of pizza. And at 400 calories a slice, that's a bunch of calories to consume at one time.

Maybe there is something to this satiety disorder thing.

So now I eat mostly veggies, still no pizza, fast food, candy or junk food. And I exercise at least 40 minutes of cardio a day and often more. That to keep at a svelte (not) 250 lbs. (I'm not counting the half hour of yoga I do daily because that's not "fat burning" - actually seems nothing is fat burning for me!)

I talk about this because I see in the papers daily and on TV, slim people expounding about how ALL fat people eat too much and move too little. The latest study (maybe I should put that in quotes!) tells us that you should diet when you are pregnant because if you have a big baby, you are "dooming" your child to a "miserable" lifetime of obesity.

Well, ironically enough, I -ate- during my pregnancy (gained 40 lbs), was clinically obese when I delivered by natural childbirth - I also exercised daily during my pregnancy so was a fit fat mom. I had a normal sized baby who was an Apgar 10 (that's a scoring system from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest score a baby can get meaning no birth defects and perfect healthwise).

So much for the "diet during pregnancy - deliver a small baby" myth. Add that to the numerous myths we hear daily about obesity - like the one which states that -all- fat people eat too much and move too little.

And my 12 year old granddaughter, you know the one with the ideal figure? She weighed 9 lbs at birth and now can eat anything she wants and still is slim without being overly active (like I was).

The name of the game here is -genetics! As geneticist Rudy Leibel states "Size is 40-80 percent genetically controlled".

Genetics, the big "G" word that no one wants to put in the media because we people of size are not only a great target for derision and bad examples, we also are a great market for the diet industry which has now "ballooned" to 55 billion bucks a year just in the USA.

That's a twofer - two for the price of one. Verbally abuse fat people then sell them a diet, over and over again. No wonder the 90 percenters who do not have to deal with clinical obesity are not wild about stopping -that- gravy train!

But it's NOT a diet!

Weight Watchers has a new ad campaign. They tell their viewers that "Diets don't work". Which is true - countless studies suggest that 95 percent of dieters regain the weight within four years of losing it. So that's great but they go on to say "Weight Watchers works". Wait a minute. Weight Watchers is a DIET and they just said "Diets don't work". And Weight Watchers, although one of the healthiest weight loss programs out there, is STILL a DIET.

My personal opinion is, although that seems a good idea, it may backfire on them because if they ADMIT that diets don't work (and everyone knows that Weight Watchers IS a diet) then, folks might get to thinking that maybe it's NOT time to re-join!

Resolutions to "lose weight" were somewhat absent from the numerous New Year's interviews and news articles. And a news article suggests that Americans are AT LEAST as interested in health as they are in thinness. Only 29 percent of those asked, admitting to dieting (but remember many dieters do not admit that a weight loss program is "dieting"). Of course, people may be going underground with their interest in slimness because it's fallen out of style to admit that you want to be slim. However, diets or weight loss programs are STILL being sold as a looks improvement - with smiling slim ladies and a few gents saying how wonderful it is to be slim, how they can buy clothing off the shelves and fit on carnival rides. The usual sound bites.

And despite the word "diet" being a no no now, Diets are going strong in 2008...

Discovery Channel's "body challenge" is one diet which has been heavily advertised. That's 8 weeks long and encourages a quick weight loss with supposedly changing one's habits (an 8 week membership at Bally's is included). But as we all know the quicker you lose the weight, the quicker it comes back. And will people REALLY change their habits in 8 weeks? Questionable.

Of course, the 55 BILLION buck a year diet industry doesn't mind repeat customers, in fact they thrive on repeat customers.

Oklahoma City is being put on a diet by their mayor who brags he wants his people to lose 1 MILLION pounds. (will they gain back 2 million lbs then?). The enthusiastic mayor of OK city has TWO domain names for the program and fancy websites with messages like how much obesity costs. Their program encourages exercise and watching what you eat. The 2600 people who have signed up already, have lost 300 lbs (they say). Nice but 2600 is but a small percentage of those who live in OK city. Perhaps not all residents are that enthusiastic about the major's challenge!

And NutraSystem has a new ad (with plenty of happy smiling slim people) and a new program called Nutrasystem advanced. You get 2 free weeks of food, food is shipped in plain boxes so your mailman doesn't know you are on a (gag) diet and the smiling slim folks in the ad tell us how much they love the food and especially the chocolate. The small print in the ad (which becomes available to those of us who have DVR's and can stop the action) tells us that those used in the ad were "renumerated" i.e. paid, and that they lost weight on the OLD program and that it isn't exactly 2 free weeks - it's more like buy 3 weeks, get on free, twice. Also says the small print, you only get the entre for $10 bucks a day. You have to buy the fruit and veggies. Seems rather pricey to me.

And then, somewhere in a quiet corner amidst all the noise of all the diet (oops NOT DIET - weight loss) groups advertising is HAES, Health at Every Size. The only program which has been suggested by CLINICAL studies to really work to help people GET HEALTHY. HAES is where you try to eat healthy and exercise a few times a week and don't fret about your weight. Because we know that DIETS DON'T WORK for most people. HAES, unlike diets, DOES work.

Problem is, I think just about EVERY American knows how to lose weight and what they SHOULD be doing for health but many choose to not do it. And maybe, that's ok too. It's nothing to feel guilty about, because for as many epidemiological studies which suggest that being obese is dangerous, there are an equal number of epidemiological studies which suggest that obesity really isn't a big factor in health, one way or another.

One of my favorite things to think about is this:

On the Titanic, destined to sink that night, how many women denied themselves desserts due to "watching their weight"? And if they had it to do over, would they have skipped that dessert?

So take a walk a few times a week, try to eat more veggies, don't fret about your weight and .... enjoy your dessert because you never know when it will be your last.

New "Prevent childhood obesity" initiative forgets some things

Today we got the news that Laura Bush (our First Lady) saluted the announcement of a new initiative to prevent "childhood obesity" and promote "healthy weight".

Although I generally like the Bush administration, what I do NOT like is that they are even MORE in bed with the pharmaceuticals and the diet industry than are the Democrats. I guess they really believe in this stuff because the President with a healthy cholesterol level of 170 is , believe it or not, exposing himself to muscle weakness risks and cancer risks by taking one of the statin drugs.

There are two problems with the childhood obesity "epidemic". Judging on 2 large survey studies (you know how accurate epidemiological survey studies are.... NOT), the CDC came up with the following:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, data from two National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) (1976-1980 and 2003-2004) show that prevalence of childhood overweight is increasing. For children aged 2-5 years, the prevalence increased from 5.0 percent to 13.9 percent; for those aged 6-11 years, prevalence increased from 6.5 percent to 18.8 percent; and for those aged 12-19 years, prevalence increased from 5.0 percent to 17.4 percent.

Well that's all well and good but even the worse stats such as those for those kids aged 12-19 years old put "obese" kids at a MINORITY. 19 percent obese means that 81 percent of the kids ARE NOT obese.

The other problem is, of course, that the BMI scale, an outdated inaccurate scale which was invented in the 1850's which does NOT take into consideration, muscle, gender or bone mass, puts many who are NOT obese into the "obese" area...

Finally when we think of "obese" we think of those very large kids like "the Maury Show" features from time to time (you know the ones they put in diapers and give donuts to before they show them on TV and berate the parents for "childhood abuse"?). But "obese" is medically defined as any BMI over 30.

For example, some very slim but muscular Hollywood stars and many Olympic athletes are also classified as "obese" (including the governor of California).

So no one is really sure whether those "classified" as "obese" by weight are really obese or just very muscular and/or big boned.

In any case, by any measurement, the majority of kids ARE NOT OBESE. Has anyone asked the question, why start a weight based initiative when MOST of the kids are not obese?

What this is ESSENTIALLY doing is making ALL kids including the non obese ones, utterly paranoid about BECOMING obese. Disturbing reports from the UK and Australia, both of which have stressed weight based initiatives against "childhood obesity" stated that a raising percentage of kids 12 and up are dieting, vomiting, starting smoking and doing other unhealthy things to avoid the "dreaded" obesity because the bottom line is that any kid who has a "normal" BMI will be accepted as living a healthy lifestyle REGARDLESS of how that "normal" BMI was attained.

One of the kids on a "National Body Challenge show" who was very slim asked their nutritionist why HE had to eat the "healthy food" because he wasn't fat. I have met several people who feel that they don't have to eat healthy because they are not fat therefore they assume they are healthy. Also several people who smoke who feel they are healthy because they are not fat regardless of the fact that smoking is directly associated with 400,000 deaths a year and 95 percent of chronic lung disease.

When I was a kid, they were hung up on the one number classification of IQ. Despite the many drawbacks of IQ tests and the numerous talents they do NOT test (IQ scales were never meant to be a one number fits all), children were judged and branded by their IQ number and many children were emotionally scarred for life because of this judgment. Now the one number gauge of worth is BMI.

So have these initiatives inspired kids to exercise or eat more veggies and eschew fast foods, potato chips, French fries and the like? NO WAY! Kids are MORE sedentary today than ever, they fill up on junk food and fast food and avoid good food.

So if we THINK we are giving kids the message they ought to live eat more healthy and exercise more, we are badly mistaken. The message we are giving kids is as long as they are slim, they can be as sedentary as they want and stuff junk food all day and all is ok.

Meanwhile, we are seeing outbreaks of childhood diseases which were only a memory in my day, like whooping cough, among vaccinated kids, and even things like cancer and sudden heart attack are on the rise in our kids. Maybe, just maybe, a factor in this might be that they are undernourished for fear of "obesity" (which 81 percent or more never had to worry about anyway)?

One wonders if society will ever learn to use their brains. Or are THOSE brains getting starved out also?

BBC investigation shows obesity crisis to be overblown!

We used to believe scientists and what they told us. We used to
believe official reports. Now it turns out that, more often than not,
they are telling us nonsense. We just want the truth. Sensationalist
scaremongering used to be confined to the tabloids. Now it's done by
every quango and official body in an effort to justify their existence.
Tim H, UK (comment about the "obesity epidemic" media blitz)

A new BBC program states that the "obesity epidemic" risks may be way overblown, and points out that childhood obesity statistics were not based on real data but on projected and computed data (the largest children regardless of size would be called "extremely obese").

The investigators also state that "most teachers they talk to" have NOT seen this vast amount of obesity in the schools! (neither have I seen "all these obese kids" - most kids I see in school today are painfully slim with the same percentage (or less) of obese children we saw in the fifties in each class - 1 to 3 kids)

Further, continues the investigation, the estimations of the "cost of obesity" in Britain (from a well publicized report) were computed on an error which the author of the report admits but said it made "little difference" (and the error was never corrected). Turns out the error DOUBLES the figures (incorrectly) in places.

The Foresight report put the cost to the UK by 2050 at over
45bn(pnds) a year, almost half the NHS budget.

But Radio 4's The Investigation found the estimate was based
on a misreading of figures from a parliamentary report.
The report's author admitted to the programme that he had
made an error but claimed that it made little difference.
The calculations were based on a Commons Health Select
Committee Report which estimated that in 2001, obese
people cost the NHS 1bn (pnds) a year.
But the calculations for the Foresight report failed to
notice that figure doubled to 2bn (pnds) when allowing for the
costs of both obese and overweight people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7106219.stm

Another British govt report found that:

The increase in obesity will have surprisingly little impact
on period life expectancy of the population

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/22_11_07_modelling_fat.pdf

Finally, although a British study attempts to "show" that obesity raises the risk for cancer, the real statistics show that there are no more deaths from cancer in the obese than in slim people.

(If this "obesity epidemic" is threatening us with diabetes, why is it that in the last several decades though the INCIDENCE of obesity has doubled, the NUMBER of cases of diabetes has remained relatively the same with only a few more reported cases now than several decades ago?)

You can download the investigation podcast here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/fileon4/

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7105630.stm