Second Opinion

I don’t know what to think of the latest news out on weight loss.  If you take it at face value, there isn’t much other than western drugs to help you lose weight.  The article which appeared in the latest Medscape Week In Review, and  it went through a number of supplements which are touted as weight loss aids.  The authors of the article suggested that eating fewer calories and exercising more was “not only hard work, but also may also be a source of embarrassment.”  I guess this means that the only way to lose weight is to take something!

Perhaps I’m really from another planet.  Perhaps I don’t understand the most fundamental things in life.  But reading that sentence made me want to scream WAIT A MINUTE!!!  STOP RIGHT THERE!!  When did hard work become out of reach for Americans? I know we like our conveniences, but believe me, we DO work hard!  Very, very hard, in fact.  Consider the fact that the whole of France seems to get the month of August off - yes, that’s right - the month of August - I’d say that Americans can be considered hard working.

But there are 2 things we love beyond reason:  gasoline and snacks.  We don’t just eat because we’re hungry, we eat because that chunk of dough has been fried first and then covered with sugar!  Wow!  And who doesn’t love the dilemma of what toppings to put on the hamburger or hot dog?  You can’t tell me that we’re going to stop at one topping.  Or not put that melted cheese on top of those fries.  That would be positively un-American!  And then, to make it all seem simpler, we’ll get into our $25,000 car and drive the 4 blocks to get the $7 fast food meal with diet coke.  Walk?  Are you serious?  It’s FOUR blocks!!

But we become convinced that if we cut out carbs, and take those pills or capsules, we’ll get skinny again.

Believe that one, and I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in buying.  The only things I know of that interfere with the calories in/calories out equation are medications and hormones.  People taking certain meds might have a harder time losing weight.  Women going through menopause might have a harder time losing weight.  Other than that, the equation is really very simple.  How many calories are you taking in?  How many are you burning?  If the first number is bigger than the second, you’re going to gain weight.  If it’s smaller, you’ll lose it.  Period.   End of story.

But then you read articles like the one in Medscape, and it’s easy to become convinced that drugs are the only certainty.  Every single supplement seems to fail.  But do they?  I’m skeptical of the studies that are cited.  The samples are small.  And they cite one study for each of the supplements.  Does one study make for convincing evidence?

You decide.  Here’s the link:  The Skinny on Weight Loss 

Good news for chocolate lovers!  The latest study shows that cocoa and not tea, lowers blood pressure.  We all know we love our chocolate, and there have been all kinds of studies showing this and that health benefit - especially from dark chocolate.  Now it seems that cocoa is a health food drink.  Well, yippppeeeee, is all I can say!  My only question is this:  How about the marshmallow on top?  Are there studies showing the health benefits of marshmallows?

To read the latest report, click on the following link:

Cocoa, But Not Tea, Lowers Blood Pressure 

The news is a bumpy road, isn’t it?  One year, the FDA will approve of something, and several years later it will vote against it.  We are told that something is safe.  Then we are told that well, no, it’s not really safe.  In fact, if you believed us the last time we opined about it, then you might be at risk for an early death.  Makes it kind of difficult to know what to believe.

Now they’ve decided that even after you quit, you still have a higher risk of developing breast cancer if you took both estrogen and progestin as hormone replacement therapy.  For some reason, I’m not surprised.  It’s the same kind of thing that goes on with birth control.  Women have this problem, you see.  We want to control our reproductive choices, and we want to stay young.  In both cases, hormones are involved.  And once we start tweaking our hormones, we start elevating our risk for various cancers.  The problem is both medical and social.  In order to control our reproductive choices, women will often choose some form of a pill.  Some of them allow a woman to have a period every month.  Some will shut down the menstrual cycle for 3 months.  The latter have recently been shown to elevate the risk of stroke.

And then there’s the whole issue of post-menopausal beauty.  What woman wants to look old?  Most of us feel younger than what the mirror tells us.  We are often youthful well past the end of our monthly cycles.  With hormone replacement therapy, we were offered the Cinderella option:  You can dress up!  You can shine!  The Prince will fall in love with you!  Isn’t this the role we women learned to want with all our hearts when we were little girls?  Isn’t this what society holds out for us as the prize?  It certainly wasn’t supposed to include  having problems with sleep or having hot flashes!

But of course, come midnight, that clock will chime.  And that golden coach drawn by beautiful white horses will turn into a pumpkin again.  And those fairy tale dreams of extended youth will come to an end if we wind up with cancer.  We will undergo chemo and radiation.  We will lose our hair and our appetite.  And perhaps our lives.

There’s so much money to be made in pharmaceuticals.  It boggles the mind.  It’s just heartbreaking to realize that the fortunes made often come at the cost of so many lives.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know that the pharmaceutical industry has also saved many lives.  But it has also cost many of them, too.  I wonder if anyone has ever done a cost/benefit analysis of this whole industry to determine if we’re running in the red or the black?

To read the full story of post HRT breast cancer risks, click here.