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From here.

The shift is aimed in part to get doctors to tackle obesity as if they were treating a disease instead of a lifestyle condition in need of modification.

Just wow. I'm curious to see how that new health care law ties into this.

The AMA's new stance could have a "tremendous impact on [obesity] legislation in Washington [and] with insurance companies," Dr. Louis Aronne, an obesity specialist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, said on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday.

No shit.



Edited By Malcolm on 1371662586

thibodeaux wrote:There is some evidence that obesity might be caused by bacteria.

Then I'm certain they can rig up a test for it. As for everyone else, I find "disease" to be stretching it.

Heh. Medication for the new disease. To paraphrase Chris Rock, "The reason the government keeps all the drugs they don't like illegal is because they want you to buy their shit. They want you hooked on their legal shit. If you don't think you've got someone wrong with you, they will find something wrong with you."

Medicare Part D does not cover weight-loss drugs, although a bill was just introduced to change that.

I imagine bribery was involved somewhere.

But hey, listen to these people, this has to be legit:

Some people can do better than average, however. Marty McNamara, who started taking Qsymia in November, said he had dropped from 424 to 332 pounds as his appetite has virtually disappeared. Mr. McNamara, a 6-foot 5-inch highway maintenance worker from Ridgecrest, Calif., said he now eats only fruit for lunch.

“It’s amazing, because I like food,” he said, but quickly corrected himself. “I used to like food.”

It makes you not like food? Appetite virtually disappears? Awesome drug, that is. Because your body loves when you go through a sudden, acute drop in caloric intake.

Terri Baker of Houston is approaching that point now. Ms. Baker said she had not lost any weight yet, but said the drug made soda taste flat to her, allowing her to break her soft-drink habit. She plans to give the drug some more time, even though it will now cost her $150 a month.

“I really want to try this,” said Ms. Baker, who is 52 and weighs 200 pounds. “Nothing else has worked.”

Maybe she's tried this and it really didn't work but, diet and exercise yield nothing? Again, it's working by making food less tasty or palatable. If that's your weight loss solution, you can achieve a cheaper but equivalent result by having someone take a crap on your plate.



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Gene and hormone related to obesity. How to fix it?

She said exercise such as cycling was an excellent way to lower ghrelin levels and there was a significant amount of research from pharmaceutical companies working on the hormone.

She added: "Also protein meals do lower ghrelin more, so anything that suppresses ghrelin is more likely to be effective in FTO patients."

Diet and exercise? The hell, you say.

New obesity cure: we're going to make you swallow a balloon, then fill it up so your appetite is suppressed.

Sullivan said it would be hard to estimate the cost of the new system right now. She acknowledged that it's unlikely to be immediately covered by insurance.

"But, assuming it's the same price as the other balloon systems at my own institution, I would guess it would probably be somewhere around $1,500," she said.

GODDAMN. When stapling your stomach and lap belts aren't enough...

TheCatt wrote:EVERYTHING IS A DISEASE

Well, being a fat-ass reduces the ease of performing basic activites. So sure... it's a dis-ease. Like a broken leg.

Malcolm wrote:Gene and hormone related to obesity. How to fix it?

She said exercise such as cycling was an excellent way to lower ghrelin levels and there was a significant amount of research from pharmaceutical companies working on the hormone.

She added: "Also protein meals do lower ghrelin more, so anything that suppresses ghrelin is more likely to be effective in FTO patients."

Diet and exercise? The hell, you say.

Ghrelin-blocking treatments have already been tested on rats and pigs. The future is near.

Been measuring my caloric intake for the past four weeks. No changes to my eating habits yet as I just wanted to get a general baseline.

I am very consistently under the calories that are theoretically required to not lose weight by 4,000 calories a week. That's with specifying for the calculations that I do no exercise and am very sedentary. I'm breaking the laws of physics!

Holy fucking shit. The newest weight loss device.

American health regulators have approved a novel weight-loss device critics have likened to engineered bulimia — a surgically placed tube that allows users to drain or “aspirate” 30 per cent of the calories they eat from their stomachs.

You may recognize this as glorified bulimia. No wait, it's actually worse.

Side effects include occasional indigestion, nausea, vomiting, constipation and diarrhea, the agency added.

Risks related to the surgery include abdominal discomfort or pain, hardening of inflammation around the site where the tube is placed, leakage, bleeding and “device migration into the stomach wall.”

Just fucking seriously. Has it come to this? If that's not enough, here are some pills.