From: caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX)
Subject: Re: Adiposity 101
Organization: Omen Technology INC, Portland Rain Forest
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 12:29:26 GMT

In article <18128@pitt.UUCP> geb@cs.pitt.edu (Gordon Banks) writes:
>In article <1993Jan12.114207.17814@omen.UUCP> caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX) writes:
>
>>>So if you're so smart, why ain't you thin?  Sorry, I couldn't pass
>>
>>If you professional diet wonks are so smart, why isn't your cure
>>rate better than chiropractic?
>>
>
>What's a professional diet wonk?  I've been on a lot of diets,
>but I don't think that is what you meant.  I'm not cured, but
>at least I have achieved a measure of control.

"Professional diet wonk" is a phrase, inspired by Rush Limbaugh, designed
to get a rise out of Gordon Banks.  I did not mean it to refer to the
sketchy, incomplete, anecdotal, and sometimes contradictory personal
observations of certain individuals' personal weight cycling histories.
Rather, it refers to dogmatic statements about the etiology of human
obesity and to treatments that often are less useful than the quack
nostrums sold at medicine shows.

>>The RU-486 and CoPP treatments completely reversed the subjects'
>>obesity.  Timed bromocriptine seems to work wonders.
>
>Didn't seem to on our friend Steve Dyer.


Gordon, for your patients' sake I hope you study their
histories, symptoms, and the relevant medical literature more
carefully than you have on this subject.  Given the information
in the paper by Meier et al and Steve's stated dosage schedule
there should be no surprise about the lack of results.

Keep in mind timed bromocriptine doesn't have to show anything
like its preliminary results to be a quantum leap improvement
over the current dark ages of obesity treatment.

>>The issue is, is dieting sufficiently safe and effective for all
>>subgroups of fat people that America should continue to spend
>>$30+ billion/yr on it while sandbagging the development and
>>deployment of superior alternatives?
>
>I don't understand the "sandbagging".  What evidence do you have
>of any sandbagging?  Is all the dieting worth the money?  Probably
>not.  I agree that most people can't get it to work for them.

If the public were correctly educated about the causes and
non-cures of obesity, the current situation where $30+
billion/yr is wasted on weight loss quackery while legitimate
obesity research limps along at one thousandth of that rate
simply would not be tolerated.

Evidence of sandbagging?  Last weekend a major study (12866 men)
linking diet cycling with bad health outcomes was read at a meeting
of the American Heart Association. From the Associaed Press:
           The study is the latest of several reports that
           suggest that "yo-yo dieting" -- repeatedly losing and
           gaining weight -- is riskier than keeping weight
           steady, researchers said Saturday.  The results led
           to the controversial suggestion at an American Heart
           Association meeting that people should stop trying to
           reach an ideal weight and simply lose whatever they
           can realistically keep off.  "I propose that smaller
           but well maintained weight losses will be a more
           beneficial factor ...  than larger but poorly
           maintained weight losses," said Kelly D.  Brownell of
           Yale University, a leading obesity researcher.  "It's
           really quite a new concept," Brownell said.  "It goes
           against the medical orthodoxy which says you're
           either at the ideal weight or you're not." Brownell's
           suggestion was warmly received at the American Heart
           Association's conference on heart disease prevention.
           "It's sort of facing reality," said Dr.  W.  Virgil
           Brown, past president of the American Heart
           Association.  "We have been culprits in the case he's
           making, setting unrealistic goals for everybody,"
           Brown said.

Now this strikes me as being more important than the paper
on the 10 "diet resisters" put out by the diet mavens at St Luke's. 
The hit piece was on CNN and network newscasts for almost a full day,
but this latest information on diet cycling never appeared on CNN or
the networks as far as I could tell.  Apparently the media is in no
condition to risk alienating a major source of advertising revenue.

-- 
Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX          ...!tektronix!reed!omen!caf 
Author of YMODEM, ZMODEM, Professional-YAM, ZCOMM, and DSZ
  Omen Technology Inc    "The High Reliability Software"
17505-V NW Sauvie IS RD   Portland OR 97231   503-621-3406