Re: Bariatric surgery is not a cure (because WE say so!)

Susan <susan@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 9/16/2011 8:04 PM, Chris Malcolm wrote:

I'm sure it can't have escaped your notice that the reason I'm trying
to lose weight is to see if getting rid of all visceral adipose tissue
including fatty liver might result in curing my diabetes? Ozgirl's
experience has encouraged me in that idea. So I certainly don't deny
the possibility of cure.

Are you seriously buying that simple minded conclusion, ignoring every
single other thing that changes, especially for women, in ten years
during midlife???

No, not buying it. But considering the weight loss idea worth while
trying. My guess is that it probably won't work, in the sense of
cure. But there are so many benefits that follow from restricted
energy diets and losing spare fat, especially in the middle region,
that I do hope to find it of general good benefit anyway. I'm sure
getting lighter will help my bad hip to last longer, for example :-)

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Ozgirl's success is a female
phenomenon which I couldn't replicate. But I have another reason for
trying serious weight loss. One of the factors in the development of
T2 diabetes seems to be a persistent liver malfunction -- doesn't shut
down glucose production when insulin rises.

Over the decades I've noticed several interesting claims of supposedly
chronic liver malfunctions of diverse kinds being cured, or at least
greatly improved, by losing liver mass through a restricted energy
diet and then allowing it to regenerate. The idea is that the liver
apoptosis is selective, and cleans out the malfunctioning cells,
leaving a healthy core.

Even if all that specualtion is bollocks, there is the evolutionary
argument which suggests that humans are adapted to cycling between
feast and famine and might well require that faculty to be exercised
now and then to keep all the regulatory system in good tune. You don't
necessarily have to literally cycle between them on a bicycle like Gys
:-)

So there's quite a lot of different suggestive straws in the wind
pointing to the benefits of losing a lot of weight. What have I got to
lose? Several pounds of unwanted blubber! :-)

Incidentally only a few more pounds to go and I'll be lighter than I
have been for at least thirty years.

--
Chris Malcolm
.

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