Thursday 3 September 2009

Walnut sized stomach

Reading this article called rather eerily, "full without food" I finally realised something that I'd not before crystallised clearly.

Gastric bypass surgery proves it is known that fat people are telling the truth. We are mostly lead to believe by the medical profession and others that being fat is about eating too much, more than your body needs. We are told that all fat people have to do is eat a little less over a period of time, the body will use up the excess and voila, fat becomes thin.

Eating too much means that our stomachs should be swollen and enlarged by this excess.
If so, why not gastric reduction? Reducing the size of the stomach to normal, or halve at most?

Because they know full well this won't work. It is also incidentally one of the reasons why so many go on crash diets, not solely to get the unpleasantness over and done with as quickly as possible-although, who could blame them if they did? It's because that is the only way a heck of a lot of people can see any weight loss of any kind or significance, such is the ability of the body to adjust to any calorie reduction less than palpable starvation.

Instead of gastric reduction, it is gastric bypass, the stomach is both reduced virtually bypassed by being reduced to the size of a walnut and "re plumbed" lower down the small intestine to induce malabsorption.

If what we are told is true or they believed it, this would kill a person, as they would starve to death. It's not as if its a twin op with a scheduled reversal after the required weight is lost.

And it's not as if this surgically induced crash diet is temporary, it is designed to be permanent, meaning that not only do they know the patient will not starve to death, they know this crash diet will maintain the patient in a state of semi starvation to try and retain any discernible weight loss.

It could be argued that they expect the stomach to stretch somewhat, but they warn people to keep their intake low, so they expect this intake level to be doable. The expectations of the operation are reflected in the quoted title, you are expected to transcend your hunger a bit like this .

Even though most people do not lose that much weight considering what has been done to them- Sue has a great post on this article including details about statistics and outcomes- this kind of operation is considered a success, which is funny because a fat person manages to lose weight using diet and exercise still remains fat. It would not be considered a success by many.

As usual, the authorities cannot judge themselves by the standards they set for us- seeing the results of such a drastic solution as crap would be too upsetting when its righteous surgeons, why, it might make them feel bad, why punish them like fat people?


We strong fatties can congratulate ourselves, we are made of sterner stuff so can take this level of judgement and deal with the 'pain', more so if we are children apparently.

Another thing I'm reminded of reading the chemical analysis of processes of eating and digestion described, is the comparison with observing brain chemistry/activity in say a MRI. Looking at the brains of depressed people and saying, we are seeing the chemical composition of the disease, depression. The unresolved question is are we seeing a manifestation of a brain malfunction or a mind's depressed mood in action?

There seems to be an element of this with observing eating;
It seems the gut normally secretes hormones that make us feel hungry or full, and bypass surgery ramps up production of the ones that make us feel full.
I wouldn't be surprised would you? If you cut the organ which receives and digests food to the point incompatible with that purpose, your body will try to protect itself from starvation by purging using an emergency raising of satiety chemicals.

Add to that the fact that eating 'too much' for your reduced organ would likely force vomiting and/or diarrhea, It certainly tries to protect itself similarly during bulimia. Appetite signals often goes on an upward trajectory, as it is a form of starvation by purging. When there is little room, the greater danger comes more from being unable to keep anything down.

Thing is, this kind of information is presented as if it somehow explains 'obesity' rather than merely observing metabolism in action. The truth about what is a virtual stomach amputation is that it is yet another tribute to the remarkable capacities of our bodies for self healing and recovery from the most outrageous abuses we inflict on it.

This whole thing is a case of taking the most drastic possible measures to enforce dieting on the body, and the body's attempts to slowly recover. It's really just the old weight loss diet induced weight loss, then in this case, the extent of  healing needed just slows down rebound.

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