The obesity debate is full of caveats and retreats. Sure, having some body reserves is helpful for stressful times.
But that must be weighed against the negatives of excess weight on a smaller frame.
Mobility, joint stress and arthritis and general comfort, even respiratory competence, are negatively impacted by excess body weight in women, who start off with less size, structure and muscle mass.
http://acsh.org/2014/02/obesity-good-older-women/female
You are good, John. Yes, it is called von Gierke’s disease. Yes, I have an endocrinologist working for me right now. They won’t do genetic testing on an older person, so diagnosed through symptoms. No cures, just learn to live with it, try not to have too many hypoglycemic episodes per week. Can’t tolerate sucrose so I use dextrose for my tea. Moderate protein, moderate carbs, moderate fat. No vegetables or fruits, no whole grains, no milk products, no eggs. I was just trying to keep it simple in my post up above, because my life is anything but simple. Haven’t had a bad hypoglycemic reaction for several months, so may have finally found a balance with everything. So I carry a few extra pounds? That is really the least of my problems (even if I do whine about it too much).
I mentioned the blood sugar levels for losing weight, because that is what my husband was told by his doctor. He is a diabetic in remission (diet controlled). When he allowed his blood sugar to go up to about 150, he started losing weight. He now weighs what he did when he was in college. He uses his diet to keep the blood sugar at about 110 to 120, and weight is staying pretty much the same.
Life would be much simpler if I was just diabetic, but I wasn’t lucky that way.
whoa janice–there is something very wrong about your post. see an endocrinologist. humans don’t have your glucose tolerance curve–they just don’t.
and hypoglycemia is a real thing when it happens, otherwise fasting blood sugars should be in the 80s to 100s. Hypoglycemia can occur because of insulin excess, either iatrogenic or because of insulinoma, liver disease that impairs gluconeogenesis. Any way a formal properly performed 5 hour glucose tolerance test, and investigation of the other contributors to metabolic handling of sugars is important, unless you like theories about why you can’t lose weight and don’t wanna know.
Absolutely right, GH05T. I would add that not only is it difficult to determine how many calories are absorbed, it is also difficult to determine how many calories are expended, for very much the same reasons. For instance, as a person’s body experiences a caloric shortfall, body motion becomes more efficient. This happens subconsciously, of course.
Also, I have been told that my body probably won’t shed extra pounds unless my blood sugar will go up to at least 130 mg/dL for several hours. Since my blood sugar only goes up to about 100 mg/dL for about 15 minutes after I eat, and then drops to my normal 80 mg/dL, I have almost no chance of losing weight. That is the irony of hypoglycemia. Would be easier if I was diabetic.
Smokey is right. This would be the first study to contradict decades of evidence and thousands of studies and documented health statistics which have shown weight gain with aging to be associated with lower mortality, especially among women, and weight loss (intentional or unintentional) after age 55 to be associated w ith higher mortality. In fact, this “study” is not clinical or scientifically sound research by any stretch of the imagination or that credible professionals would definite it. I suspect that had this study’s methodology been used to hype chemical scares, the ACSH would have resoundly debunked it as junk science. Instead, we have another example of weight phobia long exhibited by Kava and ACSH.
One only has to go to abstract of the JAMA paper to see how far removed from sound science what is being published in the medical literature has succumbed. This study was an examination of women from the Women’s Health Initiative observational study (another dredge of this huge data base) who “could have reached 85 years or older if they had survived… Multinomial logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios and 95% CIs for the association of baseline body mass index and waist circumference with the outcomes…”
Count the weenie words.
So models are being created using flimsy data and countless assumptions to predict who might have survived… Good grief.
Computer models are not clinical or real-life research. This is not evidence of anything.
Part of the trick there is that there is a big difference between the number of calories that go into a persons mouth and the number of calories that persons digestive system can usefully extract from the food. To put it bluntly, there is a caloric content in excrement. Diet gurus like to gloss over this fact and severely oversimplify the metabolic systems in there efforts to advertise whatever they’re selling.
I have a mature body size. It is all muscle, of course. I have carefully calculated my caloric intake, and I take in about 10% less calories than what is required to maintain my weight, assuming that I never move off the couch. However, I am not losing any weight. Additionally, if I do try to cut back on my already-limited calories, I go into severe hypoglycemia. I usually eat a number of very small “meals” per day to avoid hypoglycemia.
However, people in my family tend to live up into their 90s, no matter what their size or weight. We also have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and bad cholesterol ratios, all of which is usually not treated. I think we have a genetic condition that causes us to distrust doctors.
It has been my personal observation that doctors are depending more and more on proxy measurements to make guesses about what your health will be in the future. That is, most blood work does not really test an organ/system/condition directly, it tests something related to an organ/system/condition which possibly correlates with something that is happening. Modern medicine is based on what is easiest to measure, which is blood work and height/weight. So, instead of looking at a patient directly, the doctor is focusing on blood work and height/weight. Oh, that and asking you if you are under a lot of stress recently.
I do believe that doctors are important, but not for keeping us healthy. Doctors are at their best when they are fixing certain obvious problems. The rest is just working for insurance companies, following political directives, and treating our symptoms.
I’d like to add that every obesity=disease study I’ve read finds a statistical correlation not a cause. The possibility that disease causes obesity is almost never explored in spite of obvious evidence.
I, myself, was told “you don’t look like someone with sleep apnea” by my PCM because I wasn’t middle-aged and fat. Fortunately he wrote me the referral anyway and the sleep specialist had no such prejudice. Unfortunately, as CPAP therapy becomes more common the insurance companies are making it harder to get. I know three people that have been told they have to lose weight before receiving therapy despite the doctor’s prescription thanks to a statistical correlation between OSA and obesity.
Let’s analyze this for a moment. The prime symptom of OSA is daytime sleepiness. You’re exhausted all the time. The more you nap the worse you feel. I was “sleeping” about 12 hours a day and still falling asleep while driving. What’s more likely, an unknown mechanism causes sleep apnea in obese individuals, or being exhausted all the time prevents you from effectively exercising and reduces your metabolism? It seems obvious to me that sleep apnea, left untreated, leads to weight gain.
That one is easy, but there are many other diseases blamed on obesity that deserve similar analysis. Societally fat people are one of the few subgroups it’s still ok to make fun of. The attitude is that it’s automatically your own fault. The only popularly accepted cause of obesity is laziness and overeating. As a result insurance companies can deny obese people coverage on a large number of ailments and avoid the usual socio/political backlash by claiming obese people are somehow driving prices up.
As an avid follower of Ms. Sandy’s blog until it went inactive a few years ago(http://www.junkfoodscience.blogspot.com), I’m always interested in what new things people are trying to say about food, obesity and medical health. Most of it turns out to be questionable at best, but I still want to read what they’ve found before passing judgement.
As the link above took me to a story about the impact of smoking on breast cancer survival (yeah… weird), I went looking on the site and eventually found the article in question.
Two things:
1) Until I can see the exact stats and measurements used (which aren’t in the abstract, btb), I have to accept the authors at their word on everything they conclude. That is something I HATE doing. Remember the old saw about “lies, damned lies, and statistics?” Yeah.
2) That said, if the authors aren’t trying to be shady and actually did find exactly what they say they did, then this is the first major study I know of which clearly associates obesity with an increased risk of death. (Most studies either show an inverse relationship, or else no correlation at all.) Such a contrary result demands evidence to be accepted, and so I will wait patiently for the study’s results to show up where I can see them without paying $23,793.71* just to read one paper online.
* Amount possibly overstated slightly due to the author’s frustration.