Obesity Is The New Tobacco

I should just stop reading. Having an opinion is not related to the quality of education. In my randomized, placebo controlled study of literati and illiterati, there was no statistical significance between groups. And being unintelligent is very zen... knowing you don't know is the first step to knowing you do know what you don't know... or something like that. Mr. Miagi started Danielsan on chopsticks right after that and I got hungry. Sorry. I get easily distracted.

So this blog is supposed to be about obesity. RIGHT! A study released by the Mayo clinic studied rates of weight loss in gastric bypass patients over the age of 60...

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, in Scottsdale, Ariz., compared the outcomes of 110 people younger than 60 years of age who underwent the popular weight-loss surgery, to those of 20 patients older than 60.

Both groups experienced a significant decrease in obesity-related diseases, including high blood pressure and diabetes, the researchers report in the February issue of Archives of Surgery. Both sets of patients also cut their overall use of medications by approximately half following their surgeries.

However, younger patients tended to experience slightly greater weight loss. According to the researchers, 10 months after the surgery younger patients lost an average of about 97 pounds, while patients in the over-60 group dropped an average of about 86 pounds.

Based on the findings, the Mayo investigators conclude that "patients of advanced age can safely undergo gastric bypass with operative results nearly identical to those of younger patients."

So now you all know that I don't know what I do know or unknow knowing or know unknow, or Anton Apollo Ohno, so I feel comfortable sharing my deep insights:

• Isn't the easiest way to bypass the gastric system to not eat the food in the first place? I mean are people really complaining about the cost of healthcare when they afford a $25,000 procedure to keep themselves from eating the entire bag of pork rinds? Uneaten, even pork rinds are low in fat and calories!
• Is it me or have my elders decided to stop saving their money for heirs? I was kinda looking forward to gold-plating my toilet with that...Maybe its just a shift in the culture... all we can really is spend time or money. So whereas before we got their money 'cuz grammy died early, or now we get grammy for another 20 years, but no money. Hmm... so much for having our cake and eating it too. Our aging elders are averaging a cholesterol med, an antihypertensive with or with a water pill, and then specializing to any number of malady maintainers... allergies, depression managers, cox-2's, all of which are good things. They improve the quality of life. That is an ostensible purpose of living, or so I thought. But this obesity procedure cuts on the razor's edge for me. Twenty-five g's is the downpayment on a house for anew generation of family... a college endowment. A cruise with the fam and memories for a lifetime? Now that technology allows so many marvels, someone has to decide whether or not they want to pay for it. Sixty year olds were having a $25k surgery to live another 12-15 years on average? I guess quality matters.

What it looks like to the cynical bystander is the harvest of the old and profit laden. These folks spent a lifetime working and saving, and experiencing life and now see that they have more money than time. Fortunately the economy's cockles are warmed when a right fat geezer is tossed on the bonfire of our vanity. Nip/tuck, take meds to seem a little less crazy, pills for erections you might break a hip using, the list is impressive. And you can't take it with you... the money that is. You can take the fat. After they embalm you, it'll have a longer shelflife than Twinkies!

• I know people who have had gastric bypass and its helped them change their lives. That's cool. Radically improved lives. The people who have found these procedures are effective and relatively safe (safer than heart attacks, gout, strokes, all-you-can-eat rib tips). But what is obese? Ok, I'm thinking if you're 100lbs, you might really have a problem. Shockingly, much less. I am obese! I am obese? Huh? How is that possible?

According to the American Obesity Association, if you fat ass is a BMI of 30, congratulation we're brothers in fat. Here's the chart:

BMI:	25	30	35	40
Height (inches)	Body Weight (pounds)
4’10”	119	143	167	191
5’0”	128	153	179	204
5’2”	136	164	191	218
5’4”	145	174	204	232
5’6”	155	186	216	247
5’8”	164	197	230	262
5’10”	174	207	243	278
6’0”	184	221	258	294
6’2”	202	233	272	311
6’4”	205	246	287	328

I am 6'2" and 245. I bench 300lbs, and work out 6-10 hours a week. Ok... I know I should drop a couple, but OBESE? Jabba was obese. I might have been 205 out of college some years ago, but I recall only being able to afford rice and potatoes. I could be a healthy guy at 20 pounds less, but not 40. I'd look hungry. Or like an amputee.

I sense a nationalized moment coming to save me from myself, or the costs other people have to spend on my fat ass when we socialize healthcare.

• Lastly, my big-brother-black-helicopter-area-51 inner conspiracy theorist fears Fat being the new Tobacco. I first laughed at the thought, but there's too much logic in the similarity to tobacco... a person's personal choice, peripheral impact on those around them, evil purveyors of vice preying mindlessly on the mindless... After a Brave New Diet (The Huxley Diet), what could be next? Mindless purveyors of health and wellness products because we don't really need them if we live of bark and roots? Hedonists? While I generally fear isms, hedonism is nice. Its added a layer of comfortable experience between me and the harsh 6 packs of my youth.

So I've rambled but the million dollar question is this: Is it better to burn out (on doughnuts, beer, and ribs) or fade away (after 200 years of near 3rd world privation)? I honestly don't know or I don't think I know if I know... but the thought makes me hungry.

Note: This was written in 2006. Since that blog I'd ballooned another 20 lbs, then due to an extended illness and subsequent surgery, dropped 60 lbs. The point? Today I weight 198lbs... Do I seem different? Yes. Healthier. Back feels better. Blood pressure is good... cholesterol is now normal.. Amazing what happens. This blog cracks me up now in retrospect.

A Hope For Curing MS?

New hope appeared today in the search for a cure to MS. Researchers noticed the plaques that develop on the myelin sheath protecting the nerve have consistent properties. Some may be potentially regenerative. I don't feel like repeating it all for you so, if you want that level of scientific detail, its here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=38705&nfid=crss otherwise, you're probably already wondering if there's a point. There is. And its all over the place. I am having a hard time coming to the point, honestly, but its all about hope.

I think I was about 6 when my mother was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. There was no way I could pronounce it. Seemed cruel. My mom was sick, and they said she'd never get better, might die, and when someone wants to know why my world is caving in, I'd blurt out 'sklwreosis'. They probably thought my problems were the result of a cleft palate. This was a very slow period of my life. Single mother hauling us around to all sorts of doctors. Martocci was the neurologist. We'd be in that office all the time, my sister and I. We had to sit in the waiting room and be quiet. Forever. Magazines like TIME and BusinessWeek. We were used to fighting, it was the form of entertainment we knew best with each other, but had it on good authority we'd both get skewered if we made a scene. We were there a lot. I never knew why. And other doctors too. No one knew what was wrong for a long time. She just got more and more weak. Pop theories. Meds that made things worse. Then her vision blurred. Then started to spin.

The doctor did talk to me once. I remember his breath; a weird grown-up coffee smell. He said that mom's disease is very serious, but there is a cure right around the corner. Right around the corner. MS is a very important disease because they think its a virus. If you can stop this virus, you may be able to stop others. It'll be the first major disease cured. I decided I would be a neurologist so I could be the guy who found her cure. I told her. She cried. I was filled with hope.

I couldn't keep MS and MD straight in my head. I watched Jerry Lewis, thinking my mom would end up like those guys. It was horrifying. The reality of MS is actually no less sobering, I just didn't know it. But I'd watch the money roll in thinking it was going to a cure for my mom. When Eventually it dawned on me the D was for Dystrophy, so I did MS readathons and read books like each page might be the next cure for my mom. Other kids had remote control cars and comic books. I had a microscope and studied onion peels thinking the cure to her disease lie within its cells.. I was filled with hope.

She was up and down. Remissions, attacks, remissions, attacks. Blind, crippled, bedridden, then normal. Then all over again. No one knew for how long. Or if it would last forever. Or something vital would get stifled. There was hope, but that cure wasn't right around the corner anymore. It had been 10 years. I was a teenager. They had no real treatment. Just steriods. Lots and lots of steroids. Moonface, thin skin, rediculous appetite. Water retention. And still disabled. They had all sorts of trials they wanted to put her into. "Experimental" treatments. I remember one involving a hyperbaric chamber that looked like a coffin they'd lock her in and pump it with pressurized air. What was that about? She was claustrophobic. No dice. I was glad. Primitive though it was, there was at least some treatment. There was some hope.

I went to college, graduated, settled. She was in good general health. Suprisingly. Just frail. Harder to move. My sister had 3 kids several years earlier and she could pick them all up, play with them, and even watched them. She couldn't hold my kids. Was unable to watch them. It was too much. I couldn't blame her, but it was sad. I was too late. There probably wasn't any hope. This disease's cure isn't around any corner. I am better off thinking it is what it is. Medical school? I changed my mind. Hope is for suckers.

But this discovery... it means that unlike most current conventional therapy which is suppressive, this understanding of the role of oligodenrocyte precursor cells may actually repair the damage which already exists. REPAIR. Make the blind see. The lame walk. I want to believe this. I want to think its around the corner. Now I wonder if I did go to med school if it would be around the corner... no. That's stupid and arrogant. I want so much to believe in this. I want to believe...

But pragmatism is a bitch. There is a long list of urban myths debunked in my lifetime, paradises lost. The Easter Bunny (I was actually relieved about that one... a little creepy about the thought of a giant rabbit loose in my home), Santa, various and sundry religious dogma, its a list that makes you agree with John Lennon... and Ferris Bueller. But just before I go put on my Morrissey cds and start shopping for goth gear, I stop the tantrum. Hope is not this moment, it is the next, don't I want to hope?

I want to. Really do. I just keep thinking about the definition of insanity. Regardless of the state of my mental vacillation, someone will or won't figure this out. It will or won't be in time to help in my mom's case. She'd be the person who'd tell me that it would be more important for someone younger to have it first. So I just don't know. This therapy is a new hope. I just don't know if I have the energy anymore to believe in it.

Want

Sometimes observation happens in the most unusual circumstances. I am not a litterati... more like illiterati. Though raised by a wordsmith, I do not consider myself one any more than Romulus and Remus are wolves. But every once in a while I'll bump into a word that I thought I knew and stupify on how I missed the rest of the meaning. Lately this is happening more and more. It probably looks like a petit mal seizure, or maybe an old computer getting jammed with a huge file to process. And I would expect this sort of thing if I was one of the many English as a Second Language people. There, that second language might just help color in the understanding of your own. That's not me. If anything, I might be illiterate in a couple languages, but not enough to dare conversation in unless pressed by dire circumstance... anyway I digress.

So in this place I call home there are all these houses that are tucked away from the madness of the urban center. The houses all look alike, are well appointed, and are generally full of people who want more stuff to put in them. I'm not saying they're bad people. They are people, and people are people; products of their choices. It is apparent from the upgraded flooring, landscaping, electronics, and cars that they want more. Somehow in the story of the American this came to be the story everyone wanted... the immigrant who comes off the boat with nothing and achieves success and comfort.

That story is so much more interesting when you look at the struggle, the rise, the learning that comes for the road. Its the destination that's a let down once you've finished the trip. Somehow I think about my ancestors and their immigrant roots and can't imagine their success defined by underground sprinkling and a three car garage. They had so little and came to find their decendents with so much.

But I am still restless. I don't want any more. I am sorry I ever did. Feel stupid for ever buying a new car when a used one would have been fine, or for buying DVD movies I still haven't watched, or for making people who know and love me feel like they need to buy me something to prove it. I have more than enough. Too much. This stuff is collecting like cholesterol in my veins. I don't want it. But I did.

And that's when I started thinking about want. All these years its been 'I want a '. I remember when all I ever wanted was a 10 speed bike. Then I got it and all I ever wanted was a stereo-cassette player- the kind with TWO tape decks... and those funny lights that blinked when music played. It seems so funny now, because they are so utterly useless to me now, like in the movie The Jerk:

Navin R. Johnson: And that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that's all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair.
[walking outside]

And then it becomes apparent to me that want is not just a desire to possess, its a personal deficiency. A self imposed void. That I lack because I choose to want. That I deny my own perfect nature in order to seek something that 'complete's me, like a paddle game. Or an ashtray. Or bamboo hardwood floors. Or a 3rd garage stall to hold all that crap I bought that I can't throw away. The story of Eden lives anew when I think about the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Funny, just one blog ago I was ripping it. Shows you what I know... only that I don't. Well, Snow White's a nice story too. Also has fruit in it if that's important to you in a tale. Sorry... I digress. It just that our want has made us wanton.

Now my sainted ancestors, forebearers of a distant age, those people for whom I am the pinnacle of their existential lineage, those whose manifest decendent has it all, is no less content than they were before they left their respective motherlands. The journey of a thousand years. A battle against privation, war, racism, only to end up with the same want, neatly appointed in the suburbs, where I want a riding lawn mower. It would complete me... until I get a satellite dish. Or a paddle game...

Mice Like Ecstacy Too!

Ripped from the headlines... ok, buried in the obscure health pages:

Researchers in Italy found that an ecstasy-linked dampening of the rats' brain activity lasted long after the rodents were given the drug if they also exposed to music of 95 decibels, the maximum noise intensity permitted by law in Italian nightclubs.

If the rats weren't exposed to loud music, the drug's effects wore off within a day.

During the experiment, the team at the Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro monitored the rats' electrocortical activity (EcoG spectrum) using electrodes placed on the rodents' skulls. The EcoG spectrum was recorded from 60 minutes before the rats were given ecstasy and the music began, then again for up to five days after the music had been turned off.

Without music, a low dose (3mg/kg) of ecstasy did not modify the rats' brain activity any more than a dose of saline solution. However, loud music prompted significant changes in the brain activity of rats who received a low dose of the drug.

A high dose (6mg/kg) of ecstasy alone caused a reduction in the rats' brain activity and that effect was enhanced when loud music was played and lasted for up to five days. The brain activity of rats that received a high dose of the drug but were not exposed to loud music returned to normal within a day.

Rats that received saline solution and were exposed to loud music showed no changes in brain activity.

Conclusions? Well as a guy who reads science journals for a living, I have many thoughts:

• What music do rodents prefer in the club? Me? Does it vary geographically? These are Italian mice... so are we talking Bochelli or Moby? Somebody help me out with a list here...
  
• How much does it suck to be the saline mouse?
  
• Did the E mice tease the saline mice, or did they try to love them?
  
• Was the hangover different after it wore off after 5 days, or after 1 with low music?
  
• Where did they find all those tiny little Seuss hats?

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D-Day

Some weird accident of cosmic symmetry has my wife's family near perfectly aligned with my own. Her brother and I have birthdays a day apart. My wife and sister a week a part. My mother and mother-in-law, at the beginning and end of the same month, and our fathers on the very same day. It is known as D-Day. Two gifts send different directions on the same day. Different styles of paternal care, different expressions of love. That day is coming up. Its time to start considering how to gift and thank people who have done so much, even when they may not fully understand what it is they've done.

Understanding is based on experience and context, and I started my life with lots of experience in fatherhood. Everyone had a chance to do it, and after taking a brief turn, they seemed to disappear. Maybe that sounds like hyperbole, but when men pop up and disappear in your life just when you're trying to figure how to be like them, you have to observe quickly. So D-Day is kind of an unofficial father's day to me... to all the guys who took a turn in line, for better or worse, they've framed my experience of what it is and isn't to be a man.

My genetic donor, whom my mother originally married and divorced was a sore spot for years. He just disappeared. Gave up his rights to me, and I never saw or heard from him again. He's recently reappeared now, but at the time, I felt disposable, useless. It was a burden to care for kids as a single parent, and while I didn't understand that, I did understand that I was a burden. Its not what my mother meant, its just how it came off. She was dealing with a lot: two kids, a new business, and an emerging neurologial disease no one would diagnose for years. I blamed the guy who was missing for the problems that arose in his absence. Angrily, I referred to him as my mistake, my Faux Pa.

The next guy was a rebound marriage who frankly couldn't manage his temper, especially around me. I remember the beatings more than anything else in that part of my life, and for the arbitrary things that caused them. Taking the last piece of bacon, using too much toilet paper, dropping rocks from an overpass... ok so I had that one coming to me. They were a blur of anger, from the lashes many whippings. They seemed to never end. Until finally they did. And I came home from school one day with my mother to see that our home was completely devoid of possessions. Everything was gone. The furniture, the silverware, the TV and stereo... the checkbook. It was all gone. I thought we were robbed. He was just moving on.

And then the sickess set in. My mother got more and more weak, light headed, dizzy. She started seeing doctors who started telling her she had diabetes, hyperglycemia, and a million other things. It turns out she had multiple sclerosis. I remember moving in with my grandparents for a while after she had vertigo for a few weeks. My sister and I were in elementary school and were trying to do things for ourselves. Must have been laughable. We all lived under the stable roof of my grandfather while things sorted out. As horrible as it probably seemed to onlookers, it was a great time in my life. I was surrounded by the people I loved. And my mother was sick, unable to really look around at anything for fear of worsening the spins, but we'd sit and talk, or read stories to her. It was great. Like a really, really long sleep-over. I'd play with legos under the pull-out bed in a fort, with blankets draped over the side while mom was above, listening to my aunt read her The Hobbit. Things were good, for me. Not for her. She continued to worsen. They told me they didn't know what was wrong. People quietly whispered things to each other there like "what will we do with them if she dies?". I was more than a little nervous.

Eventually she stabilized enough to go back to her own home and we lived in a state of care between two worlds. I was angry at all these other dads for not being there and making someone else stand in. How silly... rescue is rescue. Oh well. Eventually mom's physical therapist put her up to a blind date. It was almost quite literally a blind date, as she was in a wheelchair and had only partial vision. Some guy she knew was returned from Vietnam, and having finally finished college on the GI bill, was trying to catch up on a life others got to have while he was stuck in a jungle somewhere. What a catch... crippled blind mother of two... I can only imagine her trepidation. It was a date that changed my life.

They met and fell in love. A thing I cannot possibly imagine. I see my mother, and I love her too, but it was a big, big thing to take on. This group of floundering people. I remember trying so hard to impress him, and still being afraid of him, thinking he might have a bad temper like some of them, or just leave when he felt like it. I did a magic show for him. I was maybe 5. My sister wrote letters to him almost daily, asking him to check a box yes or no if he would like to 'spand the nite'. We wanted so much to be wanted, and knew it was a lot to ask. And oddly, unbelievably, this guy actually wanted all of that. It is a gift for which I can never offer enough thanks. He changed my life. He was there. And has been.

But oddly it got harder to be there for him as I got older. Maybe he just didn't know what the job duties were anymore. Things are oddly strained sometimes. We want an ease for which we cannot find. But my appreciation cannot be lessened. I've already sainted him.

The other D I picked up with my marriage, and what a trip that was. He was a banker and all I knew was how very serious and proper he was. Or that's my impression. When I finally came to the home to meet him and Lisa's family for the first time, I was greeted at the door by her ancient grandmother who, in her excitement, bit me in the chest. Still reeling from an energetic toothing, I was introduced to her parents seconds later as: "This is Scott... he has a tattoo!" I wanted to die. But they've been wonderful family. As a father, he's another layer of support I never imagined. Always there, and whereas my father always knew how to frame a thought (he was an editor for many years), my father in law was born with the innate knowledge of the innerworkings of things. Nothing goes unfixed in my home now when he visits. A fabulous symbiosis, since most things in my home are breaking!

I have much to be thankful for on this day, as much for the people who left the void, as for those that helped fill it. Its a world that my children will never know, except through far-away tales of loss and abandonment, where the good guy gets his girls and lives happily ever after.

Post Birthday Notes: 2006

Yesterday's birthday was fun! Wow. That's a thing I didn't expect. I don't mean to say the people I spent time with aren't a good time... They're great. I don't know what I mean I guess.

There wasn't much expectation to this, and that helps. After childhood, there isn't a lot of hoopla. I cleaned the house, so one of the the allergic guests wouldn't asphyxiate from pet dander. That's a good host sort of thing to do... But steam cleaning carpets sucks. I spent time doing all this stuff to get ready that when someone called or emailed, IM'd to say happy birthday, I was genuinely suprised.

I don't know what to expect from any day into which I awaken, but a birthday casts a sense of expectation. Like there's stuff. I am supposed to do, or others should do. A cake, candles, singing. Whatever. Honestly I can't figure out for the life of me why we do that. Does everyone like cake? Its all right, I guess. I wouldn't pick it. Singing? *Ack!* One of my few allergies includes musicals... I get hives from people spontaneously breaking into song to show affection or make a point. Honestly I thought everyone felt embarrassed when that happened. Been to Applebees or some flair chain restaurant when they sing to you? They don't like it, you don't like it... Everyone does it because its the formula. No thanks.

So this was the best way to spend a day! Lisa spent some time in the kitchen making all Lebanese food. It was the best. Spinach pies in phyllo, grape leaves, hummus and my favorite wine of all time: Chateau Musar! Five people came over and brought at least a bottle of wine with them. About a case total. We drank 7 of the 10 over the course of the night.

The ruse was to discuss a book, which we do every month between digression and digestion, and rub and rub at the most diatomaciously earthy topics. We talked about Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins. A damn funny book, but with really big ideas poking out in all directions. And the questions started coming out: "Is the rule more important than the thing it was made to protect? Without it, can you risk the change that will ensue?" It sounds easier in that format, but when its an article of religious faith, foreign policy, sexual preference, suddenly it became a lot more fun to talk about and harder to make consistent. We all got drunk on wonder, wine, and good company.

I love a world full of questions without answers. I used to feel like an idiot as a kid when I didn't know everything. When I finally digested some huge bolus of information, I learned my questions became more general and less specific and living for the insight between my eyes, I tried to fill in gaps in the things observed around me. A curious living.

So to spend time with people drunk on wonder was sublime. I didn't want songs and cake, trinkets and cardstock words written by unknown people. This was a real moment. The conversations, the IM, the wishes and thoughts. The food. And the all those spirited genies we uncorked from Lebanon, Argentena, and Spain. I couldn't have wished for anything more.

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Thoughts on Corporate Business Functions on Valentine's Day

Current mood: content Honey, I got plans for Valentine's day and you won't believe it! I have reservations at the Grand Hotel! Sounds romantic... I know, but you're not invited. I'll be rooming with a 52 year old man named Terry."

A corporate valentine to my wife. I proposed to her on a cold Valentine's Day 13 years ago. Its a date I don't like missing. One of the few I get, frankly, but these guys pay the bills. That's not romantic, but its love.

So I went to the conference at the fancy hotel, oddly in my own little midwest town. Overnight stays a requirement due to the fullness of the schedule. I had four hours of materials to present on materials I could not yet read, on a laptop not yet returned from the helpdesk control group out of India. And my beautiful wife, at home outnumbered 3:1 by half ferrel children while I get mints on my pillow, valet parking, and room service for 3 days. Yeah, I felt some guilt.

Work meetings finished at 5, I went to the gym til 7, when attendance at a dinner program was required. I walked the downtown streets alone in a sea of coupled lovers, strolling arm in arm or in hansom cab. So alone. The people at the dinner were so nice. Like me, we had forsaken our loves in order to demonstrate our dedication to supporting them. But the emptiness in my heart grew as my time droned on. Introduction after introduction. Anecdotes. Old humor for new people. They like it. Its a shell. They stare stupidly at the outside and never know the person beneath it. You can know what someone does, yet nothing about them and that is who I am there. Frankly to so many, many people. And the one person who knows me, intimately, who sees through the zen bullshit and the scientific trivia, the one I love so dearly, was only 20 minutes away.

So I decided to hell with the rubber chicken dinner with it open bar of pallid, low-end alcohols. I wanted the comfort of mutual appreciation, that companionship and communion. I went home and loved her until the moment I had to leave again.