Friday, February 08, 2008

By Victoria O’Hara - Belfast Telegraph
An Ulster woman last night said she was left devastated after being told - on the very day of the life-changing surgery she had waited months for - that it was only performed in England.

The woman, who is from the Antrim area, had her bags packed ready to undergo bariatric surgery - an elaborate procedure designed to promote weight loss - in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast on Wednesday.

She had been preparing for almost four months after receiving a date for the operation in October.

11/02/2008 Daily Mirror 11/02/08
The NHS is facing a “perfect storm” of rising obesity, an ageing population and higher cost of drugs, a report warned last night.

Independent thinktank Reform said in its study that unless big changes are made the public will get worse treatment for more money.

It claimed: “Research points to a ‘perfect storm’ of rising demand.”

The think-tank argues that by 2031 obesity will be rife and there will be a third more adults of pension age. The Government is “in denial” and the remedy would be to allow in more private companies.

By DENISE GRADY New York Times
Published: January 23, 2008
Weight-loss surgery works much better than standard medical therapy as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes in obese people, the first study to compare the two approaches has found.

The study, of 60 patients, showed that 73 percent of those who had surgery had complete remissions of diabetes, meaning all signs of the disease went away. By contrast, the remission rate was only 13 percent in those given conventional treatment, which included intensive counseling on diet and exercise for weight loss, and, when needed, diabetes medicines like insulin, metformin and other drugs.

Channel 4 News 16/10/07
Less than one in ten women who lose weight by dieting manage to keep it off, according to a new survey.

Only 9% diet successfully while the remaining 91% put the fat back on and are doomed to a cycle of calorie counting for the rest of their lives.

Researchers found women used a range of substances - including class A drugs - to lose weight. Almost four out of 10 (37%) had tried slimming pills, laxatives (26%) and amphetamines or cocaine (15%).

Three out of 10 (31%) women admitted they had made themselves sick after eating and one in ten (10%) said they would have a gastric band fitted.

23 August 2007

The average adult in the UK is drinking an extra day’s worth of calories every week through alcohol, according to a study by Standard Life.

The average adult is drinking enough lager, wine, cider and spirits to add almost 3,000 calories to their weekly calorific intake.

This is the equivalent to 500 calories above the average male recommended daily limit of 2,500 calories and 50% more than the advised maximum of 2,000 calories a day for a woman.

Annually UK adults are drinking around 155,000 calories through alcohol, adding to the country’s growing obesity problems. With 3,500 extra calories creating one pound of fat, adults are drinking enough alcohol each year to add 44lbs to their bodyweight, or just over three stone.

There are two Metabolic Hormones Controlling Appetite, Leptin and Grehlin

Leptin:
Discovered in 1994, signals the brain that the body has had enough to eat.
The earliest-discovered of these hormones, and the first hormone ever shown to have a direct role in appetite and weight control. The hormone is secreted in fatty tissue and released into the bloodstream.  However, as the amount of fatty tissue in the body increases, the body begins to “resist” the leptin.  Obese people often have extremely high levels of leptin circulating in the blood.  However, the brain “ignores” the leptin because  it has become desensitized to it.  For this reason, injecting leptin into obese people to “curb” their appetite has been shown to be ineffective.  Also, if obese people reduce fatty tissue by losing weight, it is not clear whether the brain ever recovers its normal sensitivity to leptin.

After examining more than 2,700 men and women with an average age of 45, scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas found that those with even a little fat around their waists were significantly more vulnerable to heart disease, even if their overall weight was normal.

Their findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), may come as a shock to many who would not consider themselves fat. But they reinforce a growing belief among medical experts that waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is a more accurate measure of healthy shape than the widely used body mass index (BMI).

Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph 12/08/07
Almost 700,000 people are so fat that they need drastic surgery to tackle their weight problems, the Government’s health watchdog has found.

Despite the scale of the obesity crisis, primary care trusts (PCTs), fearful that the £3 billion cost of the operations would cripple the NHS, are restricting surgery to the most desperate cases. Last year, fewer than 5,000 such operations were performed.

Analysis of the guidance drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) reveals that 688,000 people in England, classified as “morbidly obese”, are entitled to be fitted with gastric bands or to have stomach stapling operations to reduce the amount of food they consume.

By Gregory Lopes - Washington Times - August 13, 2007
Companies seeking to cut rising health care costs are starting to dock the pay of overweight and unhealthy workers.

Clarian Health, an Indiana hospital chain, will require workers who smoke to pay $5 out of each paycheck starting in 2009. For workers deemed obese, as much as $30 will be taken out each paycheck until they meet certain weight, cholesterol and blood pressure standards.

Clarian employees will also be required to take part in a health risk appraisal that will inform the company which employees smoke.

Article at http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2007/08/eat_away_just_dont_digest.html

News 14 of North Carolina is reporting that the Carolinas Medical Center has implanted its first Endobarrier Gastrointestinal Liner as an experiment in treating morbid obesity, especially in type 2 diabetics. Similar in function to gastrointestinal bypass surgery, in that it limits digestion, the device is implanted non-invasively through the esophagus. Though information is almost non-existent about the device online, including who the manufacturer is, it is also being experimented with at Academisch Ziekenhuis Maastricht (Maastricth Academic Hospital, Holland).
“This is again performed endoscopically with a device that goes down the esophagus into the stomach where the device is deployed. The theory is food goes on the inside of this endobarrier. The digestive enzymes are on the outside of the endobarrier and the food and digestive enzymes don’t mix until two feet further down stream in the smaller bowel.”
While it is similar to the gastric bypass, it’s not a replacement for those who need the surgery just yet.