Newsday, 9th May

Obesity is said to be epidemic of our times. It prevents us from doing things we’d like to do and fails to control our bodies.

Cindy Scheiner, 49, was so obese she couldn’t go back up the stairs to her office. A friend had to help her to find a refuge in the garage. Also Fern Fladell, 45, weighting 260 pounds worried one day her knees fail to carry her excessed body.

Both ladies took part in the fifth annual ‘Dream Walk’ last Saturday. About a dozen of people who underwent weight-loss surgery walked three miles on the Long Beach boardwalk.

Dr. Shawn Garber, director of the New York Batriatic Group who sponsored the event said, most of the people could hardly walk before the surgery. “Just as you treat a broken hip with a hip replacement, people who are obese you treat with batriatic surgery,� said Dr. Spencer Holover, another surgeon.

Weight-loss doctors say the surgery shouldn’t be the first thing patients wanting to lose weight should do, and that they have to bear in mind complications that may happen afterwards. Surgeons admit they happen less and less during recent years.
Weight-loss surgery patients who took part in the walk had their operations years after weight struggle. Cindy Scheiner lost 200 pounds from 2002 when she had the surgery.

Fern Fladell says she tried to lose weight since she was 11. She tried absolutely everything from diet pills to weight-loss camp. Eventually she had a surgery in 2006 and managed to drop weight from size 28 to a 28-inch waist.

All “Dream Walk� participants say the event is a great way of showing it can be done.

WSHM-TV, 4th May

At least one person diet after using a popular weight-loss drug – Hydroxycut. The drug has been removed from the pharmacies after the FDA received 23 reports of health problems including a death of a 19 year old man.

The drug was sold without prescription and was relatively inexpensive so many people, who wanted to lose weight, tried it. About 1 million doses of the drug were sold in the USA which means 1 in 300 people are still taking it.

The main component of Hydroxycut is hydroxy citric acid which is said to suppress the appetite. The component comes from Indonesia and it was used there just for that.

“That’s the danger with these kinds of supplements, they don’t undergo the rigorous study that prescription drugs do prior to their release to the market. So a lot of times we don’t know what the side affects are until people report problems,” said John Romanelli, director of Weight Loss Surgery.
Everyone who has taken Hydroxycut is advised to contact their doctor immediately and have their liver checked.