Fat people are just greedy, says ill-informed, foolish BMA chief

Fat people are just greedy, says BMA chief - Telegraph

Extract:

"The head of the British Medical Association has sparked a row after claiming that fat people are simply greedy.

Dr Hamish Meldrum was reported yesterday as saying doctors over-medicalise the condition.

Obesity experts rounded on him saying his remarks were unhelpful and anachronistic.

Latest thinking suggests that genetics could be responsible for between 30 per cent to 70 per cent of cases.

Dr Meldrum said an obsession with labels may be stopping overweight people from tackling their problems. He said: "We are saying 'This patient has a hyper-appetite problem' rather than 'They are just greedy'.""

It is, of course, prejudiced, ignorant doctors like Dr Meldrum who are responsible for the continuing growth in the incidence of obesity. - Rather than doctors over-medicalising the condition, they over-simplify it as Dr Meldrum has done. - Doctors and their retinues are certainly responsible for most cases of obesity and many of the health problems (and consequent early deaths) that obesity brings in its wake - high blood pressure, enlarged heart, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, type 2 diabetes, many cancers, vascular dementias, and many, many more. This is because of their constantly reiterated, incorrect, counter-productive and damaging insistence that obesity is caused by over-eating and/or taking too little exercise and that the way to reduce obesity is to eat fewer calories than your body requires. This advice is not supported by evidence and has never been subjected to clinical trials.

Clearly, obesity is, in the main, an iatrogenic disease. It is caused not by overeating, but by fluid retention, and can easily be reduced by reducing salt/sodium intake.

Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 BMJ article for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by ill-informed 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See Guardian article for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

Contributing to the increase in obesity we have the widespread prescribing of steroids and HRT and other drugs which cause weight gain, and the failure of doctors to adhere to the protocols connected with the prescribing and monitoring of steroids. But pre-eminent, in my opinion, is the catastrophically damaging calorie-reduction advice that continues to be given despite such a wealth of evidence that it is bad advice.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

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Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

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and Associated health conditions

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