WHAT COST BEAUTY????

So I was watcing Good Morning America (ABC) this morning - totally shocked me too - and they had a story about a new "treatment" for "controlling" the "appetite hormone" ...

I know, that's a LOT of quotation marks ... but there was just no other way of doing this story.

A study ... a very limited study ... of only 10 patients ... see! ... described this new proceedure .. 

Okay - let's say ... this gives a whole new meaning to "heart burn" ...

Okay - proceedure first, then my rant ... or just jump down to the rant ... I've been ranting about this ever since I was a teenager, so, nothing new ... 

PROCEDURE

Okay ... first they fill the bottom half of the stomach with WATER ... yup that's it, just water ... to protect the lower lining.
Then they put an instrument into your stomach ... I assume like they do a GI tube ...
Then they proceed to BURN the uppermost LINING OF YOUR STOMACH!!!!!

OMG!!!!

The doctor they interviewed said that on average, people who had this done wound up losing 7% of their body weight ... 
The side-effects immediately after having it done included:
Nausea
Gas Pain
Loss of Apetite

But it could also lead to:
Ulcers
Stomach Bleed
(and another one which I'm blocking out)

RANT

Here we go!!!

Hello - the woman that they interviewed weighted 183 pounds ... they showed photos of her - Before and After - she did NOT look that overweight at all.

When did our conception of "beauty" begin to include crap like this???

I don't even know where to begin with this - there's so much ...

First - 10 people????
That's not a "study" ... that's a "clique" ... a study has several groups - well at least 2, one of which is a "control" group where nothing is done but they think something was done ...
Like when they test a new drug - some people in the study take the drug, others get a placebo (sugar capsels usually) and they then compare the subjects to each other for a certain amount of time ... record any side-effects noticed, compare those, and so one and so forth.  Its very methodical ... its repeatable, for the most part ... and it's fairly effective ...
This is a group of 10 people who let some medical students practice on them.

I thought gastric bypass was radical ... but this is ... HORRID ... this is like Dr. Joseph Mengele would have done, only these doctors at least knock the patient out first, he wouldn't have.

This is ... OMG ... this is upsetting me so much ... you see - gastric bypass USED TO BE done for those who where MORBIDLY OBESE - those people who were so large that they couldn't get off the couch to get to the bathroom ... those who if they sneezed, might have had a cardiac event (aka heart attack) ... we're talking bigger than "Fluffy" size (hopefully you know the comedian) ...
But then skinnier people learned about it ... and the specialists (let's not get me going on some of them) and hospitals (there's another issue) started learning that these procedures brought in a LOT of money ... 
Don't believe me?
Look at how much money was lost during the lock-down at hospitals because such operations had o be sopped -- a lot of hospitals nearly shut down ... and, yes, some actually did!

At first when I heard the story ... they kept talking about an "appetite hormone" and I thought ... still messing with them hormones, huh? - I am not a fan of messing with anything your body does naturally ... any how - I watched with interest - I didn't know a persons appetite was triggered by a hormone ...

Then they started talking about BURING THE INSIDE OF YOUR STOMACH ... 

Whoa!  That is so NOT hormonal!!!

They are changing the STRUCTURE of a body part and then calling it a "cure" and throwing the label "hormone" on it to make it "socially acceptable" ... I'm beginning to hate them quotation marks, but there's no other way to do this ...

In order for this to work ... they would have to say that the hormone is released when something in the stomach triggers it - be that food, liquid, stomach acid, or lack of any of those.
But that's NOT the way appetite works ...
It might be how HUNGER works, but not Appetite.

Hunger is when your BODY calls for food - when your stomach churns ... when your blood sugar drops, but that's taking it to extremes ...
Appetite is linked to what you BRAIN determines ... your appetite is triggered when you look at a cake and think "I'm Hungry" ... it is totally triggered by the way your mind has been conditioned - many people tie food to emotions .... they are happy, they eat ... they're stressed, they eat ... they're sad, they eat ... they're bored, they eat ... they feel lonely, they eat ... 
Cravings are something totally different than this ... cravings occur on a spur of the moment ... usually having only a little of what you are craving will satisfy it, and its done ... usually ... there is a mental health condition where people crave items unhealthy for them - they even made a tv show about it, yuck ... We have all had that one kid in school who ate paper, or bugs, or styrofoam - this is WORSE than that and yes, there are worse things than that.

I just don't understand why we strive to stay, or become again, like we were when we were 21 years old!
I mean, think about it ...
There's a reason people are so attractive when they are so young -- propagation of the species!!!  It's a Survival of the Fitest type of thing ... and it used to be that it varied from century to century ...
Then in the 60's it got locked in on the Waif look (Twiggy started it) and that's where its been ever since.

It has helped to develope eating disorders ...
Self mutilation ...
Pills addiction ...
Death

My mom had this issue, really ... she didn't start putting on weight until her 4th pregnancy ... she blamed it on "liver pills" which the doctor had prescribed for her ...
Nevermind the fact that she was 28 years old!!!

I remember in the 70's my mother buying Dexatrim at the Kmart ... I asked her what those were, she simply said they were to help her get ready for my brother's wedding ...
But I knew she had been taking them for a while.
And this was before they started putting "eat sensibly, get exercise" on diet products ...
An entire generation of people didn't even realize they were taking DRUGS!!!
Well, it helped to contribute to her stroke ... and she stopped ... and found out - my dad LOVED her no matter what shape she was in!!!!!

And maybe that's the whole point of it all ...

We have forgotten what LOVE actually is ... and we stop thinking about it when we turn 21 years old -- aka young and stupid -- and so that's why we try to get back to there ...

And doctors like this don't help matters at all!!!

Let people be ... unless they are having actual health issues - leave them be!!

There is nothing wrong with extra wrinkles ... grey/gray hair ... no hair ... saggy skin ... stretch marks ... glasses ... etc.

There are somethings which MUST be taken care of ... eye surgeries such as fixing a retina, catacracts, cornea replacement - but not lasix, unless your eyes are so bad that they can no longer make lenses for them (been there, still didn't get lasix) ... 
Things like breaking broken bones, especially if they are compounded fractures, have to be done ... birth defects such as cleft palates, have to be done ... tumors/cancer has to be done (I know, not all tumors are cancerous) ...
Removing a birthmark is NOT generally necessary, but depending on where it is, it could be a mental health issue (think Gorbachev here, I'm betting he wished he could have gotten rid of it once he started losing his hair)

All I'm saying .. is ...

this is NOT A HORMONE TREATMENT!!!!

So stop calling it that!!

Nor is this a STUDY .... its a group of individuals who were so desperate they let you experiment upon them.

Makes me shudder to think about it.