This is the second part of a three part diary about how I lost over 120 pounds in 3 ½ years, and the discoveries made, and conclusions reached along the way. The introductory section is “I Am a Former Fatty: The Epiphany.”For those interested in the specifics of my diet, part 3 is for you, “I Am a Former Fatty: The Diet.”
Obesity statistics both in America and around the World are appalling: The World Health Organization says that over 20% of the world’s adult population is obese; In America, over 35% of adults over the age of 20 are obese.
Vox has a chart on the subject: 21 Maps and charts that explain the obesity epidemic. I don't know that they actually know it, but the picture, showing a massive pile of carb loaded foods, is a perfect illustration of the problem!
So what’s wrong with the American Medicine that obesity is an unstoppable plague? We’re supposed to be smarter and more capable than third-world denizens, right? With a place to lodge blame—Food Inc—why is there any lack of clarity about how to avoid or resolve obesity in otherwise normal people?
Because it is the business of Medicine, with help from Food Inc, to produce this obscene result.
The problem begins with what seems to be an unavoidable bias.
I have yet to meet a Doctor or other medical professional who does not believe, at some level, that obesity is the fault of the patient. Consequently, the vast majority of doctors fail to have meaningfully helpful conversations with their obese patients, partly because they don’t want to say unkind things that they think they would have to say, but mostly because they don’t know the answer and don’t really believe any inquiry beyond the fault of the victim is required.
Then there are those who openly blame the victim. I had one old fossil condescendingly pronounce his diagnosis that I was obese. Others darkly mutter incoherent things about “the Big MI” (heart attack).
Nevertheless, when you encounter obese people among their number, it is clear that they are as unable to understand the disease as anyone else; I now clearly see them as reduced to victim status as I was. That tells you everything you need to know about the milieu within the medical profession.
Those medical professionals that try to be helpful inevitably proffer some low-fat diet that by shear diminution of nutrients will cause weight loss—the kind of weight loss the always reverses because it is a form of self-injury. They do this because they unquestioningly accept common assertions that are not based on good science. Consequently they think that weight gain is caused by fat consumption, lack of exercise or generic “overeating.” Some have a nutritionist referral partner, whose advice will be equally conventional, useless and expensive.
They are all dead wrong and its long past time for them get over it.
Nutritional science is abysmal overall, but some recent research shows signs of breaking free of the stupid biases that hold it back. A study published in 2012 goes some distance to scientifically explaining actual physical effects I can demonstrate at will just by changing my diet. They reached a conclusion that’s pretty obvious to me:
“The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective.”
Translation: It’s the chemistry, not the calories.
A roundup of pertinent research of the kind Food Inc hates with a passion, circa 2010, can be found in Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart. This sentence from the article, citing one particular study, should be stapled to the forehead of every doctor in America:
“Although the subjects on the low-carb diet ate the most saturated fat, they ended up with the healthiest ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol and lost twice as much weight as their low-fat-eating counterparts.”
Repeat after me: It’s the Chemistry, Not The Calories.
Much of what passes for nutritional science is a manipulative sham, and every medical professional should know it and admit it. Poor methodologies and a whole slew of biases effectively damage much of the research that is done. Worse, even IFIC, an organ of the Food Inc admits that
“much, if not most, scientific research on nutrition and food safety ... is funded privately, by industry or other private sector organizations.”
Mind you, this observation was offered as a justification of sorts. They like to claim their science is just fine if other scientists accept it. So therefore, it doesn’t matter who funds the studies; no mention, of course, that those same generous souls determine what studies get funded in the first place. This is no open market for scientific endeavor.
How convenient. Take the International Food Information Council. Their wikipedia page lists their supporters, and they are the Who’s Who of the International Food Industry. ADM, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Heinz, McDonalds Corporation, Nestlé, Smuckers . . . . you get the picture. IFIC wants us believe that these corporate luminaries are funding this organization do things out of the goodness their hearts.
Where the science is not a matter of public interest and public investment, all that remains is junk science serving other agendas. The "scientific method" does not guarantee that researchers ask the right questions in the first place.
Oh by the way, guess who else is a sponsor of the IFIC? Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. The diet industry is just another part of Food Inc, even less trustworthy because they are exploiters of obesity.
As you might imagine, the industry’s research efforts are really more along the lines of undermining science that they don’t like. As noted in the Scientific American article on carbs,
“the sugared beverage industry is lobbying very hard and trying to cast doubt on all these studies.”
None of this would matter if medical professionals were responding to the good science, and recognizing the crap science for what it is. It’s not rocket science, after all. In fact, medical professionals seem utterly incapable of understanding it and have, instead, crafted a professional model (with all the cover that implies) that encourages grinding the obese through the system even when doing so is patently not in the interest of the patient. Here we descend into the ugly, merciless reality of the business of Medicine in America.
Obesity as a disease manifests itself in many ways beyond the excess mass—in common parlance, Obesity it puts you at “elevated risk” for this, that or the other thing. The uptick in blood pressure is probably the first such manifestation most of us encounter. At this point many doctors will attempt to prescribe a “diet”—see above on that subject—which inevitably fails after a time. That results in the first prescription: for many, the first of several since prescribing practices often result in giving you drugs that make you sick, so you become a living chemistry experiment attempting to control a number. Some doctors get so imbued with the bp number, that they will pile on prescriptions until the body surrenders. This by you is good medicine? It’s profitable, that’s for sure, especially with insurance inspired “wellness” programs driving the dollars.
By now, if you follow the typical trajectory, you’ve been inducted into the fasting tests hall of fame (fasting for blood tests, another catechism that bit the dust recently), and now the cycle of aberrant number & response accelerates; each new prescription adding a new layer of chemical interference in your body. A woman, then a pharmacist at NIH and a close family friend, once admitted to me: “We have a pretty good idea how people respond to any one drug. We’re not nearly as certain about how two drugs interact in many cases. More than two, and it’s a crapshoot.” Irresponsible is the word that comes to my mind.
Medicine blames you for your obesity and that comforts them as they expose you to “treatment” that is further and further removed from the underlying illness. Its good business that keeps the waiting room full. I’ve seen the wizard behind the curtain, folks, and I can no longer be fooled.
Then, one day, it all threatens your life for real. In my case, a set of “routine” tests came back totally boggled. Everything, and I really do mean everything, was off. Admittedly, to a careless observer this looked like across-the-board organ failure in progress; at least if you take the numbers at face value out of context it did. Would somebody please notice that I felt just fine?
In a mind-bending leap off the proverbial cliff, my then idiot doctor immediately ordered an expensive, rarely done test for a blood factor that is only known (pay attention to my language here) to be out of range when someone has a very rare genetic disorder, for which the only treatment is the modern day equivalent of leaches – periodically draining your blood a quart at a time to dilute the aberrant compound.
I made the mistake of submitting to the test without having done my own research. Had I researched the disease we were hell-bent on diagnosing, I would have realized it was improbable at best and declined. Trust me when I say that will never—ever—happen again. But I didn’t on that occasion, and wouldn’t you know that blood factor was off too.
Frankly, as soon as I saw the first bad test results, my thoughts turned to not just my obesity, but all my inputs. Six prescriptions a day, one of which was a liver active statin. I had largely given in to the obesity after so many failed diets. And moderate alcohol consumption was part of my diet. My intuitive sense was that the problem had to come from that combination. So I stalled the idiot doctor, although she callously (no, ignorantly) dismissed my concerns about the medications, cut my consumption of everything – except the prescriptions – and, of course, started to lose weight (spoiler alert: I eventually gained that back, but if you’re following the story, that should be no surprise). The tests got a little worse on the next round.
By this time, I seemingly had no choice but to give in to a referral to a liver specialist. I’ll give him credit for taking a decent family history that made him obviously skeptical (though he strove to hide it) of the rare disease theory. At first he agreed to my insistence that we wait and watch; that I felt this exercise was pointless. The next set of test results reversed and began reverting to normal. But the lure of the dark side was too much. The third time I saw him he became insistent that it was time for a liver biopsy
For those who don’t know, liver biopsies carry a significant risk of death should the needle hit an artery. It does happen, which it why they are usually done in a hospital. The fantasy disease we were chasing can only be accurately diagnosed by genetic test. I know what he was thinking—he had a fat guy with a nice case of NASH (fatty liver disease) on his hands to keep one more chair occupied in the waiting room. Do you get it now?
Here was the weird thing about that last conversation with him. By then (5 months into that particular odyssey) all the numbers were clearly moving back to normal—including the rare blood factor that by this time had dropped by 50%. His response to me?
“Well, its just a number.”
Oh My God. I walked out of there completely creeped out by the whole situation. 48 hours later, I came to my senses, called his office, canceled the biopsy and fired him.
I have not taken a single random “routine” test since then and I have terminated all chemical interference that requires such tests. But I did have a little surgery a couple of years ago (I was well into my body mass restoration program by then) and had the usual pre-surgical workup. Nothing bothersome about those numbers. Imagine that.
Because of that experience I think I finally understood that as an obese person I was getting abused by the system. I say abused because I don’t know what else to call what happens to obese people who are relentlessly probed and treated for peripheral indicators regardless of symptoms—many times substituting ersatz certainty about the meaning of this number or that for an actual knowledge vacuum—while the underlying disease remains unchecked.
This problem will only get worse because the nutritional research well is thoroughly poisoned for now. According to a recent CBC News report, thinking among “experts” is that long-term weight loss is impossible. What a marvelous boon for Medicine. Now they have real “scientific cover” for their business plan. Of course, that was part of Food Inc’s business plan all along.
Coda
My more recent doctor, whom I see only for one issue, has her own obesity problem. When I told her what I do to get the results she can see, her response was “Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
No, dear, you can. And you could share it with your other patients too if you didn’t fundamentally buy the accusation of fault. Its just that like all too many of your professional brothers and sisters you’ve given in to bad science, bad medicine and Food Inc.; only in your case you’re compelled to wear it like I did. You believe that all those pills you have to take are a reasonable solution to an unbeatable problem.
Wrong on all counts.
Anyway, she’s decided to limit her practice to rich folk who can afford a $1500 annual access fee. There is a delicious irony to the whole thing.
I’ll continue my search for the right doctor for me, though I doubt such a person can exist in the world as I know it today. I guess I’m on my own now. Maybe that is for the best.