Marshall Editions
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 A slow and steady weight loss (about 2 lb a week is normal) in people who are overweight is appropriate, but rapid weight loss should be avoided as this can precipitate gallstones.
Surgery: Gallstones that are symptomatic are treated surgically by a cholecystectomy (removal of the gall bladder). The operation generally requires a short recovery period, particularly when performed through a laparascope. This involves inserting a | scope into the abdomen and operating through it rather than cutting through the abdominal wall. |
| Weight loss should be considered if you are overweight.
Medications: A class of drugs that blocks acid in the stomach, known as H2 receptor antagonists, is used to treat heartburn. It includes medications such as cimetidine, ranitidine, and famotidine. Proton pump inhibitors such as omeprazole and lansoprazole also reduce gastric acid secretion and tend to be more effective than the H2 blockers.
Surgery: Surgery to correct acid reflux is rare and is reserved for very severe cases with complications. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 I had an uncle who was the quintessential businessman, president of a family-owned beer company, who was overweight and suffered from GERD for many years until he died recently of esophageal cancer. Well, times have changed. Nowadays everyone from the Wall Street tycoon to the overprogrammed suburban soccer mom can suffer from ulcers and GERD. In fact, 350,000 Americans develop ulcers every year, and 3,000 die from them.
Aside from behavior and stress, ulcers can also be caused by an infection with H. pylori bacteria. |
Bill Sardi
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 Being overweight (postmenopausal women)
• Alcohol consumption (even moderate consumption is troublesome)
• Red meat consumption
• Lack of whole grains in the diet
• Diets containing corn oil (omega-6 oils) rather than fish oil or flax oil (omega-3 oils)
• Overconsumption of fatty foods
• Smoking tobacco
• Lack of sunshine (vitamin D)
• Environmental carcinogens
Source: J Womens Health 12: 183-92, 2003; Nutrition & Cancer 44:23-34, 2002; Cancer Causes Control 13: 883-93, 2002
Weight and cancer
Postmenopausal women who carry excess weight (who weigh more than 175 pounds) are at a 2. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| The most important thing you can do for your joint pain if you are overweight is to lose weight. Also sports injuries early in life have a tendency to spur osteoarthritis in later life. Based on this information you should think twice about pushing kids, especially reluctant ones, onto the playing field. In spite of popular myths to the contrary, there is no evidence that sports like running increase the risk for osteoarthritis.
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that causes chronic inflammation of the joints in people both young and old. |
Marshall Editions
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| Factors that may contribute to the development of this disease include a genetic predisposition, being overweight, and previous damage to the joints through injury.
Rheumatoid arthritis affects the tissue connecting bones and joints, and is one of the most debilitating forms of arthritis. Pain in the joints almost always begins in the hands, especially in the knuckles, and often occurs in both hands simultaneously. The most obvious areas of damage are to the joints, but it can affect the whole body and in particular the fingers, wrists, elbows, and knees. |
C. W. Randolph, M.D.
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 Nevertheless, for the overweight woman or man with a preexisting condition of estrogen dominance, eating too much soy can compound an underlying hormone imbalance. Also, nutritional researchers have identified that in some cases soy products act as a potent antithyroid agent, suppressing thyroid function and causing or worsening hypothyroidism. Because soy products have the potential to be counterproductive to efforts to eliminate estrogen dominance, we recommend eliminating all soy products and other phytoestrogens from your diet. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
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 Being overweight is another risk factor, as is wearing hosiery that cuts off the circulation.
Large Leg Veins
While spider veins are small, red, or purplish, varicose veins are large, your feet too long. As with spider veins, they can also be a telltale sign that you're wearing socks or stockings that are too tight. It's not unusual for a person to have both spider veins and varicose veins. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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 At a time when we're bombarded with sad news about overweight, unmotivated, and underachieving adolescents, this example offers real hope. In the first chapter, I'll take you to Naperville. It is the spark that inspired me to write this book. on a slight swell of land west of Chicago stands a brick building, Naperville Central High School, which harbors in its basement a low-ceilinged, windowless room crowded with treadmills and stationary bikes. The old cafeteria—its capacity long dwarfed by enrollment numbers—now serves as the school's "cardio room." It is 7:10 a.m. |
| Indeed, studies suggest that simply getting on the scale every morning improves the likelihood that someone who's overweight will shed pounds. But Lawler and Zientarski's ambitions extend far beyond concerns about their students' body mass index.
"I tell people it's not my job as a PE teacher to make kids fit," Zientarski says. "My job is to make them know all of the things they need to know to keep themselves fit. Exercise in itself is not fun. It's work. So if you can make them understand it, show them the benefits — that's a radical transformation. Especially for us coaches. |
| When he turned fifty, he realized he was twenty pounds overweight, and he decided to go on a diet and start running. Before long, he began losing weight, and he noticed some dramatic side effects: he became less critical — of himself and of others—and less of a grouch. His wife and his children picked up on the shift and wanted to spend more time with him, which made him feel good and further improved his attitude. Bill had never had depression, per se, but there was no doubt he felt more passionate about life once he got into an exercise routine. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Cause daddy's overweight, too.)
Poor health is an enormous burden for society
Even though some individuals and corporations may get financially rich by selling this junk to families, the bottom line is that we're all worse off when we raise unhealthy children in society. Why? Because the future cost of treating disease -- not to mention the loss of lifetime productivity -- is jaw-droppingly HUGE. It's enough to bankrupt our nation, which is, coincidentally, what seems likely to happen in due course. No democracy has ever survived its citizens losing their health. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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| Evidence of this is everywhere: 65 percent of our nation's adults are overweight or obese, and 10 percent of the population has type 2 diabetes, a preventable and ruinous disease that stems from inactivity and poor nutrition. Once an affliction almost exclusively of the middle-aged, it's now becoming an epidemic among children. We're literally killing ourselves, and it's a problem throughout the developed world, not merely a province of the supersize lifestyle in the United States. |
C. W. Randolph, M.D.
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| If you have been ten pounds overweight for a year or more, you are most likely caught in the cycle of increasing estrogen dominance. As described in Chapter 1, high estrogen levels cause you to develop more fatty tissue in your body, which in turn produces more estrogen in your body.
Question 3: Do You Have Symptoms of Estrogen Dominance?
Weight gain is only one symptom of an underlying hormone imbalance. Because hormone receptors are located throughout the body and in the brain, estrogen dominance can manifest in a host of physical, emotional, and mental ailments. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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| Simply being overweight doubles the chances of developing dementia, and if we factor in high blood pressure and high cholesterol—symptoms that often come along with obesity—the risk increases sixfold. When people retire, they figure they deserve a break after working their whole lives, and they start piling on the food. But what they don't realize is that having dessert with every meal is no treat. Exercise, naturally, counteracts obesity on two fronts: it burns calories, and it reduces appetite.
4. It elevates your stress threshold. |
C. W. Randolph, M.D.
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| When she first came in at age thirty-nine, she was twenty-five pounds overweight and experiencing constant headaches, fatigue, and bloating. After following the three-step plan for just a month, her symptoms went away. She lost all the excess weight in four months and, by continuing on the plan, kept those pounds off. Then, when she was fifty-one years old, Pam was back in the office for her annual exam, and she wasn't happy.
"What has happened to your bio-identical progesterone cream?" she asked. |
| We Americans are aging, we are constantly exposed to environmental estrogens, and too many of us are overweight.
3
Unfortunately, because the pharmaceutical industry has created so much marketing hype about a woman's need for estrogen replacement as a fountain-of-youth treatment for menopause, most medical practitioners and healthcare consumers are misinformed and/or confused. The consequence for millions of people is that the very real condition of estrogen dominance is often overlooked or, worse, misdiagnosed and mistreated. For instance, consider the case of a woman I'll call Sylvia. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
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| However, it's unclear whether putting on weight later in life is more harmful for women than being overweight for many years.
SUDDEN OR UNEXPLAINED WEIGHT CHANGE
Seeing the numbers on our bathroom scales dipping can be a welcome sign of success in our battle against the bulge. But any sudden and unintended shift in weight—in either direction—is a sure sign that something is seriously wrong.
Of course, rapid, self-induced weight loss can signal an eating disorder, such as anorexia or bulimia. |
| They're the most common noncancerous soft-tissue tumor in adults and are most prevalent among women and overweight people. If they change size or appearance, however, they may be cancerous.
A lump on the nape of your neck can be also be a sign of a sebaceous cyst (aka epidermal, epidermoid, or keratin cyst). Sebaceous cysts are also soft, movable, and painless. (See Chapter 9.) But unlike lipomas, they usually have an indentation or dark spot in the middle. |
| Indeed, being overweight and snoring often go hand in hand.
But snoring can be more than a noisy nuisance or caused by a behavior that you can change; it can signal a number of medical conditions, some more serious than others. Snoring may simply be a sign of nasal congestion from a cold or allergy, or it may signal a nasal blockage from a deviated nasal septum
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Michelangelo was left with a permanently disfigured nose after a fistfight. A fellow Florentine art student, Pietro Torigiano, was so jealous of the young artist's talent that he punched him in the nose. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| However, if you are overweight, you can lose excess weight by eating healthfully for your height, age, and activity level. For moderately active women this is between 1,800 and 2,000 calories a day, and for moderately active men it's between 2,000 and 2,400 calories a day. That is certainly not restrictive, but for overeaters, getting back to a normal eating level does take some getting used to. You should derive less than 35% of your total calories from fat and less than 10% from saturated fat. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Honeybees that continue to take the drug for more than one month begin to experience significant weight gain, and many are being diagnosed with a new disease called, Honeybesity. "Overweight honeybees don't fly very well," explained Adrew Apis, a honeybee researcher working at the University of Missouri, Columbia. "Even if they make it out to the flower and collect some pollen, they sort of crash land back in the hive like a damaged fighter jet on an aircraft carrier, spilling their pollen granules all over the inside of the hive and getting their wings stuck in the honey. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It's very hard to become overweight consuming the foods I list on the health side. You can pig out on just about everything I list over here -- berries, vegetables and even nuts, although that's something I wouldn't consume pounds of a day. You can eat large, large quantities of these foods, and my guess is, if you're overweight, you'll probably lose weight, even consuming as much as you can handle.
The challenge is not trying to individualize it; the challenge is speaking the truth about foods. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 You might say that we already know how to do that: two thirds of the people in the United States are overweight and one third are considered clinically obese. Obviously we've mastered this topic.
But I challenge that. I think even though we do tend to be overweight and obese as a nation, very few people are aware of how they actually got there. There's not a great deal of awareness of the steps it takes to actually add excess body fat. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 This was, of course, because I was overweight. You probably know, if you've been overweight, that you can be very sensitive to people's perceptions of you. So, I set a calendar date about six months in advance for an event where I would see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a long time. Then I decided I would have a whole new body by the time I showed up at that event in six months.
For you, this could be a family reunion, a school reunion or just getting together with old friends. |
Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D.
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 INDICATIONS
Preparations of Bladderwrack are used for disease of the thyroid, obesity, overweight, arteriosclerosis and digestive disorders.
The effectiveness for the claimed applications is not verified.
PRECAUTIONS AND ADVERSE REACTIONS
Dosages above 150 g iodide/day carry with them the danger of induction or worsening of a hyperthyroidism. For that reason, the drug should no longer be administered, due to its variable iodide content (0.03 - 1%). Allergic reactions have • been known to occur. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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 When the patient is overweight and requires pain management, I often try topiramate (Topamax) or zonisamide (Zonegran). These antiepileptics have more side effects than the other ones; one of these is slight nausea, which helps reduce food intake and thus can lead to weight loss. But sometimes other side effects, like more fatigue and brain fog, limit the usefulness of these drugs.
Step 4. This step starts with a painkiller called tramadol (Ultram). When used on top of the antiepileptics, it can often reduce FM-induced pain to tolerable levels. |
| Many snorers stop snoring when they shift from their backs to their sides. But overweight people are more comfortable sleeping on their backs. To teach yourself to sleep on your side, you can try a snore-ball. Sew a pocket onto the back of a T-shirt and insert half a tennis ball into the pocket. When you lie on your back wearing the T-shirt, the snore-ball will feel uncomfortable, causing you to roll over onto your side.
Other treatments require seeing a specialist. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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| Among one entire class of sophomores, only 3 percent were overweight, versus the national average of 30 percent. What's more surprising—stunning—is that the program has also turned those students into some of the smartest in the nation. In 1999 Naperville's eighth graders were among some 230,000 students from around the world who took an international standards test called TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), which evaluates knowledge of math and science. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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| Its worst form is sleep apnea, an illness primarily of overweight, middle-aged men. Women are, in fact, protected from sleep apnea while they are menstruating. But after the age of fifty, with the loss of the protective reproductive hormones and the resulting gain in weight, rates in women approach those in men.
Sleep apnea is characterized by very loud snoring with occasional periods when the person not only stops snoring, but stops breathing altogether. If you are this person's bedmate, this can be very disturbing. You wonder if your bedmate is going to wake up. |
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