Gastric Bypass/Banding

by | Jan 18, 2013 | Weight Loss | 0 comments

A post at fattoskinny.net where I have commented to about surgical procedures as a way of losing weight

 

morgan said:

I was just watching a British program about obese patients that undergo either gastic bypass (really major surgery – approx 3 hours) or gastric banding (‘minor’ surgery of approx 30 minutes).  How they cost the health system a fortune due mainly to medication for high BP, heart conditions and mostly diabetes and that this op is the solution.

I watched these people crying, being horrified and terrified they would not wake up after the event, being on a liquid diet a month before hand to clear up a fatty liver so that the surgeon could see around it to do the proceedure, then in one case (not even a month after) eating his wife’s chocolates and  having ice creams when he went out. The other case a woman who moments after coming out of recovery was stating that she was hungry.

It is beyond me that these people would resort to this rather than give up their favourite foods (sugar).  It seemed that they thought that it would be a ‘miracle’ and they would be slim without effort afterwards.  Whilst they did lose weight it averaged at about 6 kg (14lbs) a month, which really is only 3-4 lbs a week.

It seems that the medical board is pushing these types of surgery as a solution to saving costs in the long run.  Is this what health systems now think is the go;  to do these ops, so in the long run they don’t have to pay for medication.

They lost weight in the month prior on a liquid diet (which I think were protein drinks) – why would they not continue with these drinks to loose the weight rather than the op?

I feel I am being harsh because I know it is desparation that makes them do this and they feel it is a last resort of sorts, but it seems they are ill prepared for afterwards.  They obviously still have major food issues.

 

My thought:

In my mind, operations like this should be banned and the doctors who recommend them should be sent on compulsory  retraining courses to learn about nutrition, that there again, if they advised on nutrition, then they wouldn’t be making money as doctors which if you think about it, is a very sad conclusion.

I would agree with Doug, these doctors do know much of what we know and I’m sure the fact that they receive thousands for doing an operation like this whereas they would only receive hundreds for putting a patient on a sound eating regime has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they continue to recommend the expensive operations or has it?

Cheers,

Mark

Low carb and diabetes

by | Jan 18, 2013 | Diabetes, Low carb diet | 0 comments

Here you will find my comment on post at Jimmy Moore’s about low carb and diabetes

 

amywolfe87 posted:

I lost 18 pounds thanks to low carbing but my nurse is worried as my BMI plunges. She thinks I need to eat more carbs (I’m currently between 80 – 120 grams a day). My constipation is also being blamed to low carb. Is there actually a connection on it? Has anyone else had this problem? Thanks.

 

My response:

Hi amywolfe87,

Janknitz makes a lot of  sense in what she says and I too would advocate reading Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetic Solution; if nothing else, just to understand what you’re body has been going through and to have some scientific  back up as you start to take charge of your health and needed to talk to medical professionals about it.

In addition to what Jan has said, I would also encourage you to exercise more; in fact exercise is probably the main factor that will help a recovering diabetic to overcome their problem in the fastest way possible. It really is one of the most powerful and quickest ways to lower your resistance to insulin and leptin.

The other advantage of exercise is it will get everything moving including your digestive tract and  in addition to the probiotics suggested by Jan, I would also suggest that you do a short course on digestive enzymes as well as that would balance out the work of the probiotics in a way that probiotics can’t do on their own.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Super-Low Carb Or Intermittent Fasting?

by | Jan 18, 2013 | Low carb diet | 0 comments

Below is a copy of the post over at Jimmy Moore’s regarding low carb and fasting that I have replied on

 

From JimmyMoore:

Super-Low Carb Or Intermittent Fasting?: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ask-the-…sting.html ~Why not both? Eating a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb ketogenic diet will spontaneously make you IF naturally. That’s what I’ve found doing my n=1 experiment testing nutritional ketosis over the past eight months. Consuming food that produces an adequate level of blood ketones will allow me to go 16-24 hours between meals on most days with ease. So I think you can get both the benefits of healthy high-fat, low-carb AND intermittent fasting at the same time. If you are eating enough in your high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb meal(s), then IFing is a cinch.

 

My response:

Strangely enough, I found exactly the same experience when I first started low carbing and was weight training at the same time. It was very easy not to eat anything between 6 in the evening going right through ‘til mid day the next day. In fact, the lack of hunger throughout that 18 hour period was for me, in many ways, proof that the way I was eating was right for me.

Fast forward a decade or so and I can still eat like that without any problem. My bacon and egg breakfast will quite often slip through to 1 o’ clock and become lunch and lunch will move through to later afternoon or early evening with an occasional munch on a bit of cheese or slice meat depending on what sort of work load I’ve got going on during the rest of the day.

I find I thrive under a regime like that. In fact calling it a regime is probably totally misleading as it’s not something I dictate to my body. It’s more something that my body leads me into doing. I find I sleep better and I have more energy and of course there’s a gain in time through not having to prepare or even think about more than two meals at the most each day

Why not give it a try?

Mark

Dieting Does Not Seem to Matter in Health of Obese Seniors Age 75 and Older

by | Jan 18, 2013 | Diet, Obesity | 0 comments

Another one of the post at forum.lowcarber.org that I have commented on regarding obesity and diet 

 

IdahoSpud said:

Reports even suggest there may be survival benefits associated with overweight, mild obesity among the elderly

Jan. 15, 2013 – Putting senior citizens age 75 and up – described as of “advanced age” – on an overly restrictive diet to treat their excess weight and other conditions appears to have little benefit, according to researchers at Penn State and Geisinger Healthcare System. 

Eating diets high in sugar and fat may not affect the health outcomes of such elderly people, the researchers say.

“Historically people thought of older persons as tiny and frail,” said Gordon Jensen, head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State, “but that paradigm has changed for many older persons. 

“Currently, 30 percent or more may be overweight, and by 2030, almost 30 percent are projected to be obese, not just overweight. Recent reports even suggest that there may be survival benefits associated with overweight and mild obesity status among the elderly.” 

“We all know that adverse dietary patterns, such as a Western diet containing high amounts of fat or a diet containing high amounts of refined sugar, both of which may contribute to obesity, are associated with adverse medical conditions and health outcomes for many people, but until now, the health effects of these types of poor diets have not been characterized for people who live to 75 years of age and older,” said Pao Ying Hsao, postdoctoral fellow at Penn State. 

The team’s research is part of a decades-long collaborative study between Penn State and the Geisinger Healthcare System on the effects of nutritional status and diet on the health of more than 20,000 older people living in Pennsylvania. In the current study, the team followed 449 individuals for five years who were on average 76.5 years old at the beginning of the study. 

“This is one of the first studies to examine obesity-related health outcomes and dietary patterns in such aged persons,” Jensen said. 

At study baseline, the team assessed the participants’ dietary patterns by calling each of them by telephone four or five times during a 10-month period and asking them about their diets over the previous 24 hours. 

The participants were categorized as adhering to one of three different dietary patterns. 

● The “sweets and dairy” pattern was characterized by the largest proportions of energy from baked goods, milk, sweetened coffee and tea and dairy-based desserts, and the lowest intakes of poultry. 

● The “health-conscious” pattern was characterized by relatively higher intakes of pasta, noodles, rice, whole fruit, poultry, nuts, fish and vegetables, and lower intakes of fried vegetables, processed meats and soft drinks. 

● The “Western” pattern was characterized by higher intakes of bread, eggs, fats, fried vegetables, alcohol and soft drinks, and the lowest intakes of milk and whole fruit. 

Using outpatient electronic medical records, the researchers identified whether the participants developed cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, hypertension (high blood pressure) and metabolic syndrome during the five-year period. 

They found no relationship between dietary pattern and prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome or mortality in the participants; however, they did find an increased risk of hypertension in people who followed the “sweets and dairy” pattern. 

The results appeared in this month’s issue of the Journal of Nutrition Health and Aging. 

“We don’t know if the participants had been following these dietary patterns their entire adult lives, but we suspect they had been because people don’t usually change dietary practices all that much,” Jensen said. 

“The results suggest that if you live to be this old, then there may be little to support the use of overly restrictive dietary prescriptions, especially where food intake may already be inadequate. However, people who live on prudent diets all their lives are likely to have better health outcomes.” 

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service funded this work. 

Other authors on the paper include Diane Mitchell, researcher in nutritional sciences at Penn State; Donna Coffman, research assistant professor of health and human development at Penn State; Terryl Hartman, professor of nutrition at Penn State; and G. Craig Wood and Christopher Still of Geisinger Healthcare System.

 

My comment:

Concluding my first read-through this article was another pointless study. However I thought I might have missed something so I read it again. This time I reached a different conclusion: Another totally pointless study.

As anglgrl pointed out, all of the categories that they used were carb-loaded one way or another. I just wonder exactly what the United States Department of Agriculture Research Service were trying to find out, as in which cheap ingredients are they planning to promote next?

jr4bbit has summed it up very nicely when he says, what is the point of studies like this?

Cheers,

Mark

Obese youngsters at far greater risk than had been supposed

by | Jan 18, 2013 | Obesity | 0 comments

This is a copy of the post at forum.lowcarber.org where I have commented on about childhood obesity

 

IdahoSpud:

While a great deal of research on childhood obesity has spotlighted the long-term health problems that emerge in adulthood, a new UCLA study focuses on the condition’s immediate consequences and shows that obese youngsters are at far greater risk than had been supposed.

Compared to kids who are not overweight, obese children are at nearly twice the risk of having three or more reported medical, mental or developmental conditions, the UCLA researchers found. Overweight children had a 1.3 times higher risk.

“This study paints a comprehensive picture of childhood obesity, and we were surprised to see just how many conditions were associated with childhood obesity,” said lead author Dr. Neal Halfon, a professor of pediatrics, public health and public policy at UCLA, where he directs the Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. “The findings should serve as a wake-up call to physicians, parents and teachers, who should be better informed of the risk for other health conditions associated with childhood obesity so that they can target interventions that can result in better health outcomes.”

With the dramatic rise in childhood obesity over the past two decades, there has been a parallel rise in the prevalence of other childhood-onset health conditions, such as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, asthma and learning disabilities. But previous studies on the topic have been limited due to a narrow focus on a specific region of the county, a small sample size or a single condition.

The new UCLA research, a large population-based study of children in the United States, provides the first comprehensive national profile of associations between weight status and a broad set of associated health conditions, or co-morbidities, that kids suffer from during childhood.

Overall, the researchers found, obese children were more likely than those who were classified as not overweight to have reported poorer health; more disability; a greater tendency toward emotional and behavioral problems; higher rates of grade repetition, missed school days and other school problems; ADHD; conduct disorder; depression; learning disabilities; developmental delays; bone, joint and muscle problems; asthma; allergies; headaches; and ear infections.

For the study, the researchers used the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, analyzing data on nearly 43,300 children between the ages 10 and 17. They assessed associations between weight status and 21 indicators of general health, psychosocial functioning and specific health disorders, adjusting for sociodemographic factors.

Of the children in the study, 15 percent were considered overweight (a body mass index between the 85th and 95th percentiles), and 16 percent were obese (a BMI in the 95th percentile or higher).

The study, which is currently available online, will be published in the January-February print issue of the journal Academic Pediatrics.

The UCLA researchers speculate that the ongoing shift in chronic childhood conditions is likely related to decades of underappreciated changes in the social and physical environments in which children live, learn and play. They propose that obesity-prevention efforts should target these social and environmental influences and that kids should be screened and managed for the co-morbid conditions.

The researchers add that while the strength of the current study lies in its large population base, future studies need to examine better longitudinal data to tease out causal relationships that cannot be inferred from a cross-sectional study.

“Obesity might be causing the co-morbidity, or perhaps the co-morbidity is causing obesity – or both might be caused by some other unmeasured third factor,” Halfon said. “For example, exposure to toxic stress might change the neuroregulatory processes that affect impulse control seen in ADHD, as well as leptin sensitivity, which can contribute to weight gain. An understanding of the association of obesity with other co-morbidities may provide important information about causal pathways to obesity and more effective ways to prevent it.”

 

My comment:

This study is somewhat limited as it only looks at children between the ages of 10 and 17. Yet probably everyone of us know quite a few youngsters who are much younger than that and are grossly overweight which does rather point to the unmeasured third factor mentioned by Mr. Halfon. His example of exposure to toxic stress moving through to ADHD seems more of an open invitation to receive funding rather than a legitimate reason for the problem with childhood obesity. In fact in many ways, they seem to me, to have  missed entirely the point at comparison of children’s heights, weights and body shape from the 1950s, say, with those that we see around us now. Tied into the diet that both groups were eating would reveal a lot more than the study I believe.

Problems that we see within our child population now just weren’t around back then but neither were the children who grew up back then faced with a diet that was rich in sugar grain and other high carbohydrate ingredients. Neither did they have open access to copious quantities of sugar-filled carbonated drinks that the youngsters of today drink without any moderation whatsoever. While the children who grew up in the 50s and 60s may not have had copious quantities of it they still had meat and an assortment of vegetables as part of their regular fare, something that is sadly missing from the diet of many youngsters today.

Common sense together with a little understanding of history, a small amount of research points to the simple fact that this problem is really down to three main factors. Firstly, the western population has become slowly, over the last few decades, less and less educated about what constitutes a good diet which together with the fact that general food preparation skills aren’t being passed on as they used to be has meant that people are more and more becoming reliant upon convenient foods as a way of providing nutrition to their family. That is of course augmented through the pressure of smart marketing campaigns that leveraged social pressure pseudo science and takes full advantage of the ignorance of its target market. Those first two factors lead ultimately to the last factor which is that people now make exceptionally poor food choices not just for themselves but for their children as well; consequences of which we are seeing all around us.

The UCLA researchers preposition that obesity prevention should target social and environmental influences is more or less half right but together with those social and environmental influences, they need to understand that this include the need to better educate both children and parents for at least the two next generations in order to reverse and recover from the problem that we’re seeing with overweight youngsters right now.

Cheers,

Mark

 

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Link to Study