January 17, 2006

• Obesity Week

  Some glib person decided it would be more politic to call it “Healthy
  Weight Week,” but every one of the several-a-day radio magazine or
  call-in shows I have been hearing on the subject this week has used the
  word, “obesity,” at least five times as frequently as that phrase,
  “healthy weight.”  Some of the speakers pay lip service to the
  positive spin by talking about the advantages in maintaining a
  “healthy” weight, but every one of them frames those “benefits” in
  negative terms such as avoiding diabetes and heart disease.  They
  say that obesity now outweighs smoking as the greatest risk factor for
  fatal disease.

  I have been subjected to an endless auditory parade of ignorance. 
  The callers call in hoping to have their understandable ignorance
  relieved by the “experts” and “authorities,” and often what they get is
  evasion, obfuscation, misinformation or more ignorance. 
  Personally I feel it is better to know that you’re ignorant than to
  think you got the straight skinny from an expert, when in fact what you
  got was bullshit.  I can’t help wondering how the caller to Talk of the Nation
  felt when, at the end of a show early this week, she asked the
  government expert from NIH what he thought of the glycemic index and he
  stammered momentarily and then mentioned the laboratory test they use
  to diagnose diabetes and went on to say that they don’t use the
  “glycemic index” for such diagnoses.

  Well, duh!  This is just a little quirk of mine, I suppose, but I
  would prefer to hear an honest confession of ignorance than such
  self-serving tap dancing.  I hope one of this dude’s underlings
  clued him in, but the bureaucracy being what it is I think it far more
  likely that several of the underlings just had a good laugh in the
  break room at the boss’s expense. The glycemic index isn’t a diagnostic
  tool.  I’m sure the caller knew that, and was either testing the
  government baboon or was sincerely seeking some information. 

  “Glycemic index” is a way of expressing how effective a given food
  substance is at raising blood sugar.  The “old school” of fat
  doctors either haven’t familiarized themselves with it or don’t
  “believe in” it, or both.  As far as they are concerned weight
  gain or loss depends entirely on how many calories you absorb versus
  how many calories you burn.  It’s the one-size-fits-all diet
  approach, and every one of their patients who fails is assumed to have
  cheated on the diet or exercise or lied in reporting them.  Until
  this week, I had thought that this theory was thoroughly discredited,
  but like the idea that the earth was flat and the sun traveled from one
  edge to the other each day before going to bed for the night, the idea
  hangs on and many fat doctors haven’t learned anything about the
  neurochemistry of hunger and appetite or the relative glycemic
  qualities of various types of calories.

  This damned disease I have, myalgic encephalomyelopathy / chronic
  fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome, has as one of its effects (Is it a
  sign or symptom?) fluctuating body weight.  At various times I
  have dropped between fifty and ninety pounds in a few months without
  any effort on my part to restrict calories or to exercise.  I
  didn’t change how much I eat
  or my activity level.  All that changed in some of those events
  was my taste in foods, and in one case I deliberately cut out sugar and
  several foods to which I am allergic and was addicted.  I’d start
  eating and drinking a different range of foods, and the weight would
  melt away.  Weight gain, for more “normal” people, is just as
  inexplicable and unpredictable by the old caloric model, but makes
  sense to some extent when viewed from the neurochemical and glycemic
  perspective.

  Not every one of the authorities being interviewed about America’s fat
  epidemic this week has been an ignorant and reactionary baboon.  I
  have learned a few things that have helped fill in some of the blanks,
  explaining, for example, why I hit a plateau after losing about 20% of
  my body weight when I kicked the sugar addiction, and then started
  slowly gaining some of that weight back.  It’s the “set point,” or
  settling point, the body’s tendency to seek equilibrium and “recover”
  what it has “lost.”  Sometimes, the body-mind split is a real
  drag.  Other times, though, I just view it as a challenge, another
  obstacle to overcome, another puzzle to unravel.

  ---

  AUGUSTINE VOLCANO UPDATE

  The first pic was taken four days ago by Annjannette Petree.  It
  shows the eruption cloud, presumably colored by a setting sun.
  

  Yesterday’s flyover by the Alaska Volcano Observatory showed the new lava dome and a cloud of steam lit by the glow from within.
  

  Then, this morning around 8 AM there was a new explosive eruption and
  there are currently ashfall advisories for the Kenai Peninsula. 
  In case you’re wondering, that’s a couple of hundred miles from
  here.  Unless the wind shifts again, we’re okay.  We are not
  completely out of water yet.  However, given the uncertain
  weather, a forecast for deeper cold (It’s already in the teens below
  zero.) and possible ashfall, we are loading up the car right now for a
  trip to the spring.

  ---

  Lynda
  Plettner, an Iditarod musher who lives between here and where Greyfox
  lives, had a catastrophic illness and was forced to drop out of the
  Knik 200 sled dog race last weekend.  I have known Lynda for about
  twenty years.  I know by sight most of the competitive mushers,
  especially the ones who live around here.  Lynda is one of a small
  number of them who also knows me by sight.  We met while I was
  working the summer fairs and festivals when Doug was little.

  She thought it was food poisoning, but it turned out to be a bowel
  obstruction.  Thanks to the race veterinarians, help from her race
  competitors, and a med-evac helicopter, Lynda survived.  As long
  as I have known her, she has worked hard and creatively to sustain
  herself and her dogs.  She has many friends and fans, but no big,
  deep-pockets sponsorship.  Now, having no insurance, she is tens
  of thousands of dollars in debt.  She plans to hold a fundraiser
  when she’s out of the hospital, and her friends have established a fund
  for her in our local credit union.

  You can read the details and learn how you can help at adn.com.

  • 5:13 pm
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