Dying to be Thin
February 28th 2008 20:44
Category: No Category
It seems to me that we mostly think of the death rates around weight issues to be related to anorexia, or the diseases 'linked' to being overweight.
In our cultural rush to cure the scourge of body fat ravaging our population, all kinds of medical marvels have been invented. One such is surgery to temporarily reduce the size of the stomach - lap band surgery, it's called.
Google it - it's fraught with real, life-ending, danger. But people classified as 'obese' are rushing to have it. According to the Melbourne Herald Sun on Feb 28 2008, more than four times the number of Victorians had the procedure in 2007 than had it in 2000. That is, 2300 people subjected themselves to this procedure. One doctor interviewed for the piece said he was seeing double the number of people compared to two years ago.
So it goes like this - you have a general anaesthetic, a risky but managed procedure, and a large band 'ties off' part of your stomach, reducing its capacity. You can't fit as much food into your stomach and so you eat less. And as the conventional wisdom knows, eat less and you lose weight. At least for a while. So it's all good, right?
Well yes, unless you're one of the more than 500 people in Victoria alone - this picture repeats internationally - who have severe complications, some of them so life threatening that they're terminal.
The Herald Sun says that one in ten who had the surgery last year had to have the band replaced, repaired, or revised. That's TEN PERCENT of people who had the surgery.
374 people had weight loss surgery REVERSED (that includes people who had stomach-stapling surgery) for all kinds of reasons including adverse effects.
At least one person dies each year from complications attached to this surgery. Would they have died anyway? Well we'll all die eventually, but would they have died from weight-related complications? Who knows, the interpretations of weight-related complications change depending who is looking at them.
Insurance companies now require doctors who perform this procedure to pay a $50,000 excess because it's so risky. And the complications they assess are as a result of the surgery, not the patient.
The more we medicalise this so-called dangerous disease of having 'too much' body fat, the more money there is to be made from it. But some of the doctors performing the surgery know that the real reasons people are overweight are not being looked at, and if the reasons were addressed then people would not be losing their lives.
In truth, we still don't know why we get fat. We know some of the mechanisms, but even Nutrition Australia says we don't know the real cause.
Personally, I think the almost-hysterical focus on body fat as a modern evil that must be stamped out, is putting an unhealthy and unnecessary focus on what is really a helpful cell - fat. Body fat does so much to keep our bodies healthy, it protects and cushions our organs, and so much more. I think our maker didn't make a mistake here, I think a communal consciousness shift is far more at cause.
More on that in other posts.
In our cultural rush to cure the scourge of body fat ravaging our population, all kinds of medical marvels have been invented. One such is surgery to temporarily reduce the size of the stomach - lap band surgery, it's called.
Google it - it's fraught with real, life-ending, danger. But people classified as 'obese' are rushing to have it. According to the Melbourne Herald Sun on Feb 28 2008, more than four times the number of Victorians had the procedure in 2007 than had it in 2000. That is, 2300 people subjected themselves to this procedure. One doctor interviewed for the piece said he was seeing double the number of people compared to two years ago.
So it goes like this - you have a general anaesthetic, a risky but managed procedure, and a large band 'ties off' part of your stomach, reducing its capacity. You can't fit as much food into your stomach and so you eat less. And as the conventional wisdom knows, eat less and you lose weight. At least for a while. So it's all good, right?
Well yes, unless you're one of the more than 500 people in Victoria alone - this picture repeats internationally - who have severe complications, some of them so life threatening that they're terminal.
The Herald Sun says that one in ten who had the surgery last year had to have the band replaced, repaired, or revised. That's TEN PERCENT of people who had the surgery.
374 people had weight loss surgery REVERSED (that includes people who had stomach-stapling surgery) for all kinds of reasons including adverse effects.
At least one person dies each year from complications attached to this surgery. Would they have died anyway? Well we'll all die eventually, but would they have died from weight-related complications? Who knows, the interpretations of weight-related complications change depending who is looking at them.
Insurance companies now require doctors who perform this procedure to pay a $50,000 excess because it's so risky. And the complications they assess are as a result of the surgery, not the patient.
The more we medicalise this so-called dangerous disease of having 'too much' body fat, the more money there is to be made from it. But some of the doctors performing the surgery know that the real reasons people are overweight are not being looked at, and if the reasons were addressed then people would not be losing their lives.
In truth, we still don't know why we get fat. We know some of the mechanisms, but even Nutrition Australia says we don't know the real cause.
Personally, I think the almost-hysterical focus on body fat as a modern evil that must be stamped out, is putting an unhealthy and unnecessary focus on what is really a helpful cell - fat. Body fat does so much to keep our bodies healthy, it protects and cushions our organs, and so much more. I think our maker didn't make a mistake here, I think a communal consciousness shift is far more at cause.
More on that in other posts.
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