mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

Gastric bypass patients get drunk faster - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com

Link: Gastric bypass patients get drunk faster - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com.

Sigh. Once again, it is demonstrated that gastric bypass surgery essentially "breaks" the human digestive process.

Plus what the hell is with the dismissive attitude of the doctor quoted right at the end of the article, opining that alcohol is merely a waste of calories? Any wine connoisseur would be so turned off by that kind of attitude as to tune out anything else that doctor has to say. Plus there's been a whole bunch of research recently suggesting that wine, far from being empty calories, has distinct health benefits. So once again we witness doctors who purport to be experts on obesity, but who are so out of touch with the real-world lives of their patients that one wonders if such doctors just pop nutrient pills instead of enjoying food.

Experts warn of detox diet dangers - Chew On This - MSNBC.com

Link: Experts warn of detox diet dangers - Chew On This - MSNBC.com.

I hope it goes without saying that I, too, think crash-fasting for any reason, including to lose weight, is not a very smart or healthy idea. In the short term, all you're doing is pushing water weight around; in the long term, you're doing damage to the body by depriving it of substances it needs to keep running and rebuilding itself.

I do, however, sympathize with the desire to cleanse one's system of accumulated toxins and other chemical crap--and I chide the author of this article, and the sources she quotes, for not exploring that further than she does. Yes, as the pundit she quotes says, we do already have built-in systems for purging toxins--the kidneys, liver, lungs, and skin--but we could do a lot better job of helping those systems out than we do.

And that better job does in fact involve a kind of fast--but not a fast from all foods whether nutritive or no, especially not one accelerated by laxatives. Rather, what we really need (and I'm stll far from achieving this yet, though I'm closer to the goal than I used to be) is a long-term fast from as many artificial-chemical-laced foods as possible, gently aided by lots of fluids to help the kidneys do their work, and lots of fresh natural foods--including plenty of roughage--to help our GI tract and the rest of our metabolism do their work. If we could just consume like that, we'd be well along to cleaning out all sorts of crap from our system.

Obviously that kind of "fast" is going to be a harder sell for a lot of people, because we're an immediate-gratification society and the only-eat-real-food "fast" takes a lot longer than the short-term miracles promised by the flush-fast literature. But ironically, even the dieting industry is ambivalent about how long it takes to do things the old-fashioned, slow way--otherwise, why the hell would Optifast exist??

As a matter of fact--hey, while these experts are so busy fulminating about fasting schemes put forth by "alternative" health pundits, how come they don't even breathe word one about the hazards of medically sanctioned fasting programs like Optifast?  Hmmmmm ... a little blind spot with regard to their colleagues in the applied-science biz, you think?

ScienceDaily: Changing To A Low-fat Diet Can Induce Stress

Link: ScienceDaily: Changing To A Low-fat Diet Can Induce Stress.

Aha! So that crazy manic craving thing that happens right after you start a severe "diet" may not just be "all in your head" ... or rather, it's in your head, but probably in a more hard-wired way than the lay public supposes. Once again, this is the kind of study that needs to be replicated before being accepted as gospel, but even so it's yet another pebble in the mountain of probability suggesting that the popular approach to "dieting" is doomed to backfire.

How broccoli and soy fight cancer--a possible mechanism

Link: Why broccoli, soy fight cancer - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com.

As usual, the news wire reporter has written an overoptimistic headline--this research finding still needs lots of followup. But there's no denying that it's a pretty intriguing finding:

"Using cells in a lab dish, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that diindolymethane (DIM), a compound resulting from digestion of cruciferous vegetables, and genistein, an isoflavone in soy, reduce the production of two proteins needed for breast and ovarian cancers to spread."

Fortunately, I loves me some cruciferous vegetables and soy products--got a bunch of broccoli and a tub of tofu in the fridge right now--so tanking on these foods is no burden, nomatter what the mechanism by which they do their voodoo.

Gallstone Risk Seen With Roche Weight Drug Xenical: FDA Staff

Link: Gallstone Risk Seen With Roche Weight Drug Xenical: FDA Staff.

I don't know which I'm more appalled by, the fact that this drug has been let loose on the diet-obsessed public, insufficiently investigated gallstone correlation and all, or the "oh by the way" fact dropped in this article that they're giving this drug to children.

This Xenical crap just sounds like bad news all around--yet another superfluous drug with which desperate fat people can torture themselves while lining the drug industry's pockets. And oh yeah, if you like that, you'll love its over-the-counter version with the adorable little-girl name "alli". This article says pretty much everything I could want to say on both those scores.

Neurological condition linked to obesity surgery - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com

Link: Neurological condition linked to obesity surgery - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com.

Charming. Someone explain to me again why this "cure" is preferable to the "disease" it's supposed to treat.

Oh, and I love this info from this article's background-info widget:

• 10 percent to 20 percent of patients who have weight-loss operations require follow-up operations to correct complications such as abdominal hernias, breakdown of the staple line and stretched stomach outlets.
• More than one-third of obese patients who have gastric surgery develop gallstones, which are clumps of cholesterol and other matter that form in the gallbladder. During rapid or substantial weight loss a person's risk of developing gallstones is increased. Gallstones can be prevented with supplemental bile salts taken for the first 6 months after surgery.
• Nearly 30 percent of patients who have weight-loss surgery develop nutritional deficiencies such as anemia, osteoporosis and metabolic bone disease. These deficiencies can be avoided if vitamin and mineral intakes are maintained.
• Women of childbearing age should avoid pregnancy until their weight becomes stable because rapid weight loss and nutritional deficiencies can harm a developing fetus.

Just insane. 30 percent get nutritional deficiency and gallstones. And doctors are still recommending this to patients with totally straight faces? Sigh.

Fainting dieters delay NY subways - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com

Link: Fainting dieters delay NY subways - Diet & Nutrition - MSNBC.com.

Admittedly, this article is so poorly written that I can't quite figure out what actual evidence they have for the above claim. But damn, you have to admit that's one hell of a ripsnorting headline.

Plus I do have at least one datapoint to support it: me.

It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was commuting between my family's home in the north suburbs of The City, to a summer job all the way downtown nearly to Wall Street. I was also attempting to diet once again. One morning, as I stood in a packed A train headed downtown, I felt my head start to swim.

I just clung to my pole, wondering if anyone would give me their seat even if I told them I was about to pass out. But I couldn't bring myself to ask, and so just resolved to try and tough it out. Not the smartest decision, but I was a kid then and still  easily intimidated. I did manage to stay upright, but looking back, I could easily imagine it going the other way.

As for what possessed me: in those days I was fully under the thrall of society's loathing for fat, especially on females. So I was just doing whatever the latest pundit had said was the way to escape the curse. And being (or trying to be) a compliant little dieter, I dieted no matter what, even if the temperature and humidity were both over 90. Besides, none of those dieting pundits took time to explain about avoiding dehydration, so how was I to know?

However many dieting-related faints do happen on the New York subways, it's crucial to avoid the  temptation to deride these folks for bringing it on themselves. They may be naive, but in their minds they're simply trying their damnedest to comply with society's demands.

ScienceDaily: 'Mindless Autopilot' Drives People To Underestimate Food Decisions

Link: ScienceDaily: 'Mindless Autopilot' Drives People To Underestimate Food Decisions.

Also known as: while you're not paying attention to all those unconscious food decisions, the almighty Lizard Brain slides into the control seat and makes those decisions for you. And you just know the Lizard Brain always decides in favor of more food, not less.

(Yeah, I'm on a roll with this Lizard Brain thing--but damn, does it ever explain a whole raft of different dieting behaviors...)

Yet another diet drug "wonder" in the pipeline...

... as in: "Wonder how much this drug, and the others currently in development, will screw up people's health this time?" Apparently, though, it's the financial rather than the health risk/benefit analysis  which is uppermost in the minds of investors lining up for a piece of this lucrative Big Pharma pie:

Link: Amylin's weight loss drug�is risky but promising - Nov. 3, 2006.

Study: Losing fat stimulated anti-tumor defense in mice - CNN.com

Link: Study: Losing fat stimulated anti-tumor defense in mice - CNN.com.

Interesting. Including the fact that neither of the fat-reduction methods tried on the mice involved dietary restrictions--one group exercised it off while the other underwent liposuction (!). Yet they're generalizing to weight loss in general--and, even with white-coat caveats, tentatively applying the whole shebang to human weight loss efforts in general.

Heh. The day HMOs start recommending liposuction as a covered medical therapy for obesity is the day I run for cover--that procedure is, in its own way, just as risky a procedure as bariatric surgery. Not that I expect to see that anytime soon, but with active campaigns to make bariatric surgery an insurance-covered procedure, who the hell knows anymore?

All I know is that, when I had my hysterectomy, the doctors were all paranoid that my fat heightened the risk of infection--apparently post-surgical infection in fat tissues is a big issue. And what is liposuction except a huge surgical incursion into the fat tissues? Remember that post of mine awhile back about adipose tissue doing a hell of a lot more in the body than just insulation and storing energy ...

Which actually lends strength to the original hypothesis of this little scientific report, that reduction of fat tissues might also reduce certain cancer tumor growth. Perhaps that metabolically-active fat tissue is putting out some chemical that is interfering with apoptosis, as the referenced article suggests. Given my little cancer scare, and the history of breast cancer in my family, I can't help but pay attention to such news items. I just wish the experiment could have been better designed.