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Adobe Walls Wellness |
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Doctor Recommended Alternative Care for Obesity Scroll down below the TABLE for in depth discussion and related Categories.
"If it were easy, there would be no overweight people.” No one decides to be over 20% heavier than their ideal weight which by definition is the disorder called obesity. But if you are 20% over your normal ideal weight then you may be classified as obese and be at risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. All four of these conditions may be related and occur together and are known as Metabolic Syndrome. Those with this cluster of disorders are at risk of a shorter life span! If you are overweight or obese you should be under the care of healthcare professionals. Life Threatening Obesity is life threatening and disabling and involves the whole person. Correcting obesity requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Obesity is thought to be part of several related diseases processes called Metabolic Syndrome and includes other disorders like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol and triglycerides, and disorders of bones and joints. Helping you manage this disorder can be complex. Obesity needs to be treated with care, because you are important. We recommend a personalized evaluation, discussion and treatment plan at Adobe Walls Wellness Clinic or through the health care professional of your choice. Whole body care is needed and may include prescription medications to help you manage your weight as you seek total body healing. What’s SO BAD About Being Obese? In the past twenty years, the world has seen an unprecedented increase in incidence of obesity. “This change has involved both sexes, all age ranges and various ethnic groups. Obesity is definitely associated with a relative increase in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, various cancers, respiratory disorders in sleep, gallbladder disease and osteoarthritis. It has negative effects on a variety of other conditions such as pregnancy complications, menstrual disorders, psychological disorders and urinary incontinence.” Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc. 2005;116:103-11. “Obesity is the cause of most U.S. liver damage. The risk is fourfold greater.” Family Practice News. July 1. 2004. Vol. 34, No. 13. “In 2003, obesity related medical expenses reached $75 billion (in the U.S.). ‘It’s alarming to see that (obesity) is linked to five leading causes of death and disability,’ Mary Massey-Douglas, program manager for the Oklahoma Physical Activity and Nutrition Program for the Ok Dept of Health. Obesity and diabetes are related and nearly 800,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed each year and of the 20.8 million Americans currently living with the disease, the majority have the preventable Type II.” Oklahoma Gazette. March 15, 2006. The Problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in the U.S. about 1 of every four adults is obese. Around 60 million Americans suffer from Metabolic Disorder which is a cluster of disorders which includes obesity, high blood pressure (130/85 mmHg or higher), Type II diabetes (the body can’t control blood sugar), high triglycerides, and high bad LDL cholesterol. More shocking is the fact that today’s children may have shorter life expectancy and be less healthy than their parents! (U.S. Surgeon General, 2004.) Today, Type II diabetes, which is associated with obesity, is no longer referred to as adult onset diabetes, since children as young as 10 are being diagnosed with the disorder. We are teaching our children to be fat. Children can eat half of their caloric need for the whole day in one meal. The number of children between 6 and 19 considered obese has at least tripled since the 1960’s. Oklahoma Gazette, March 15, 2006. According to a 2001 article from the Journal of Education the “average child in the U.S. will watch nearly 10,000 commercials touting food or beverages a year. There is clear evidence for television viewing as a cause for obesity,” Massey-Douglass, program manager for OK Physical Activity and Nutrition Program. We must turn off the TV or change the programming. Adolescent obesity can affect how a child feels about himself and can even affect fertility and ability to have children. It will be easier to address these issues now, than to mend ruined lives and pay healthcare costs in years to come. With an increase in obesity and other metabolic syndrome disorders in the elderly, we will see an increased illness, disability at a younger age, reduction in mobility, decreased quality of life and increased mortality. The elderly are at great risk, because age related disorders cause a decrease in absorption of nutrients. Often, poor diets fail to supply the increased need for nutrients. The elderly are often isolated and sedentary which leads to obesity. Pubmed.gov review of J Am Geriatr Soc 2006. Obesity is an epidemic that must be dealt with! The Cause Way we Eat*What We Eat*Inactivity The food we eat and lack of exercise leads to obesity. Sounds simple. We just trim back what we are eating and get more exercise. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. “It turns out that mammalian energy balance is controlled by an amazingly complex network of interacting feed back mechanisms that involve the hypothalamus, the brain stem, higher brain centers and the periphery, the stomach, gut, liver, thyroid and adipose tissue,” writes Dr Annette Markus, PhD, associate editor of Nature Neuroscience. CNS News. Oct 2005. Vol. 7 No.10. Scientists may find that we can blame obesity on genes, brain chemistry, lack of exercise, or the body’s complex network of feedback systems. The facts are that when people supply the body with the right proportion of healthy nutrients in relation to the appropriate energy expenditure from physical exertion, they don’t normally become obese. How do we explain the fact that millions of Americans who have trouble maintaining their healthy weight or physique have “dieted”, but failed to keep pounds off. It is clear that the more often a person tries fad yo-yo diets, the more likely a person is to damage their body. Something has gone wrong. The questions are how does the body and brain normally regulate food intake to maintain health and what has gone wrong to alter that? How does what we eat affect how we maintain weight? How does the way we eat affect that balance? How much can we blame on our genes and how much on our brain? How much on our inactivity? Let’s take a look. There evidence that we can avoid being obese, if we moderate our food intake and get enough of the right exercise. The percentage of people able to do just that has stayed the same until about 20 years ago. What we eat: “We live in a toxic environment,” says Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. “Bad food is cheap, heavily promoted, and engineered to taste good. Healthy food is hard to get, not promoted, and expensive.” National Geographic. August 2004. Foods we eat are no longer as nutritious, because they are over processed, grown in soil depleted of nutrients, genetically modified and been replaced with chemicals. A good discussion can be found in Burton Goldberg’s 2002 edition of Alternative Medicine published by Celestial Arts, Berkeley, California. The body can not handle amount of refined sugar, salt, saturated fats, harmful food additives and synthetic substances. The way we eat: We eat too much of the wrong thing, too fast, at the wrong time and in the wrong places. We eat gargantuan, Super Sized, Jumbo, Larger-than-Texas food proportions. “We each ate 1,775 pounds of food in 2000.” National Geographic. August 2004. Some of those foods are not even digestible. Food eaten in haste in a setting that is too loud, filled with distractions, or stressful can lead to sensory overload and poor digestion. Digestion starts as we chew our food. Chewing slowly in a stress free setting aids digestion. Digesting properly means more energy, better sleep and better absorption of nutrients from the intestines. Gone is the family dinner table, the center of the home. An overview of a 1904 article in JAMA, relates, “Pawlow’s classical experiments on gastric secretions in dogs led him to some important conclusions on this subject. One of them is that (nutritious) food eaten without relish and without appetite… may remain for hours in the stomach undigested. The same result often follows when food is eaten while the mind is diverted to other things, especially in the case of anger, anxiety, preoccupation, etc. The psychological factor in this important function is not to be forgotten.” JAMA. 1904;42:654-655 quoted in the March 3, 2004 JAMA. Vol.291, No.9, pg. 1144. Eating right before you lay down to sleep can interfere with sleep and the many restorative processes that take place as you sleep INACTIVITY: Lack physical exertion. What if the answer to preventing obesity is as simple as increased physical activity? Then you can start making investments in fitness by weight training and stretching or by finding something active and doing it. Why not encourage more outside and indoors activities and provide more activity centers that are public, private and corporate based? Health insurance, corporations and the government could give incentives or breaks for good health choices and lifestyles. Schools and local municipalities could provide more rappelling towers, jungle gyms, dancing, bowling, golf and tennis courts, swimming pools, martial arts, walking trails, sidewalks and cycling lanes. Seek vitality! See AWW discussion of the dynamics of fitness through physical exercise for more information. Research highlighted in National Geographic, August 2004 noted that two states out West, Colorado and Utah, have the lowest rates of obesity in the U.S. Perhaps this is because the people there tend to be “outdoorsy” (Texan for outside and active), “western” (rugged, used to putting up with the elements) and eat healthy food. What To Do Eat Right*Be Active*Think Differently Obesity is thought to be preventable by eating right, being active and thinking right. Most people who are overweight have not been successful in balancing these disciplines. Treating obesity is harder. The disorder is complex and not easily understood. This disorder may be caused by genetic predisposition, a toxic environment, conditioned behavior, illness, nutrient deficiencies, poor food choices or a metabolic set point gone awry. There is no magic pill that makes up for the dysfunction or abuse of our bodies. There are specific things that can be done to prevent obesity and reduce obesity. The answer is simple, but few like it and until recently fewer still have taken necessary steps to implement it. Many have tried to lose weight by extreme diets that reduce the intake of their normal (nutrient deficient, toxic food) diet without supplying the right nutrients needed for health. This causes more problems for the body in the long run. The body of the overweight person may actually be starving for food, because they lack vital nutrients. Some researchers think that each time people diet by extreme calorie or nutrient restriction the metabolic baseline maybe reset at a lower threshold so the body starts storing more fat with less of an impulse in order to avoid its perceived starvation. This causes the body to gain back the original weight plus some. Likewise, it could be that the overweight person simply has a stronger impulse to eat than the thin person or that the impulse to eat does not shut off or the thin person has a weaker impulse to eat. Recently, it has become evident that fat tissue itself secretes substances that may be involved in causing obesity and the other Metabolic Syndrome disorders. Endokrynol Pol. 2006 Sep-Oct;57(1):15-24. Other scientists are studying the results of inflammatory processes and insulin resistance. Regardless of the reason, the obese person needs help from a healthcare professional. The goal is to bring health to the body while reducing weight! That brings us back to treating the whole person by eating right, being active, thinking differently and treating the disease processes. The trick is to supply essential nutrients fairly consistently day after day and burn off calories by building muscle and decreasing fat reserves. 1. EAT RIGHT: The right foods include Wholesome Whole Foods and Nutrient-Rich Supplements. That is not hard. Think about it. If you don’t buy processed food for meals at home and only make good food choices when out to eat then you won’t expose yourself to nutrient devoid food. Think about it, pure water and supplements are essential nutrients your body needs to function optimally. They aren’t full of useless calories, filled with refined sugar or laced with toxins. Supplements aren’t toxic, synthetic, hormone pumped or fat saturated. Fiber is inexpensive and available in healthy foods and supplements. Once the body gets the fiber it needs, especially insoluble fiber, it is better able to regulate blood sugar, promote emptying of the intestines, allow proper intestinal bacteria, regulate cholesterol and delay foods in the digestive tract to enhance absorption of nutrients, control weight and the feeling of being full *See AWW Category-Whole Food Diet.
. 2. BE ACTIVE The Goal is to win the fight against obesity. Winning is living well with zest, endowed with life and energy! 3. THINK DIFFERENTLY Think purposefully. The purpose is to be as healthy as you can be and live with a sense of vitality. You must come to realize that YOU are responsible for your own health. It is easy to start investing in yourself once you realize the goal is your wellness-body, mind, spirit. Many fail to take meaningful action, because they don’t have the facts, they don’t know where to start or what to do to treat the whole person. Often, people are not well and aren’t consistently encouraged or motivated. People may act like the classic story of the frog on the stove in the pan of water. The frog does not pay attention to the ever increasing water temperature as it creeps up, a degree at a time, until it is boiling and it is too late to jump out. We have not noticed that we have been in the pan of inactivity and overindulgence and have eaten ourselves sick. Quit assuming it is too hard. A person must adopt the ‘want to’, “Sure. I’m in.” or at least the “Ok. Give me 5 things to do today.” attitude. Get out of the pan and off the stove! *See AWW Categories Brain Health,Depression/Anxiety Mood Health Support/St. John's Wort You Can Help In The Fight Against Obesity Epidemic! It is evident that changes need to be made across the board. Adults need to be patrons at restaurants that serve reasonable portions of healthy foods. Parents must take responsibility to change the family’s lifestyle. Turn off the TV. Lobby to suspend advertising that targets children to eat unhealthy food. See that school systems remove sugar and empty calorie foods from school venders. School food should come from organic whole grain, fresh fruits, low processed vegetables, hormone free meats and healthy drinks. Stress physical fitness that everyone can participate in, not just competitive sports. Offer more sports and extracurricular activities that encourage movement for all ages. Parents and educational institutions must start educating children and adults how to take care of their bodies. Healthcare must concentrate on treating the whole person, not the symptom. Prevention should be stressed at all levels for a healthier America, for reduced healthcare costs and future of our children. GET INVOLVED! Invest in your tomorrows-today, so you will be healthy enough to enjoy them. Eat Less-Eat Right-Supplement Often! SOUTHWEST HEALTH and ADOBE WALLS PEACE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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