Brain Surgery

I am home and settling back into my normal routine after being on vacation last week.  Our vacation had some unexpected turns, but we adjusted as needed and had a good week.  One of the things I enjoy about being away is that we are forced to unplug - at least temporarily.  Without a steady stream of information from the internet, it's amazing how peaceful things are ;-).  Coming home and getting caught up on the news is always a bit of a mixed bag - and there is a lot of health-related news that is quite unsettling.

An article posted yesterday made me catch my breath, then shake my head and just vent for a few minutes. 

Doctors at a hospital in Pennsylvania conducted a small study of 10 patients with progressive type 2 diabetes and compression of the medulla oblongata, a portion of the brain located on the lower half of the brainstem that controls pancreatic function.  The surgeon who helped to develop the surgery reasoned that decompressing the nerve in the medulla oblongata, which controls the function of the pancreas, could ease the effects of type 2 diabetes.

Researchers followed the patients — who were not allowed to make any changes to their diet, weight or level of activity — for one year after undergoing microvascular decompression procedures. Seven of the ten patients had better glucose control as a result of the surgery. Those patients were able to decrease their medication dosage, and one was able to cease taking medication altogether.

Unbelievable . . . risky BRAIN SURGERY in an effort to help control diabetes . . . Does anybody else find this frightening?  Take Shape for Life/Medifast has been proven to help diabetics often reduce or eliminate their diabetic medication, and this reduction often begins very quickly.  I know that my own blood sugar levels returned to normal within a couple of weeks after starting on the program and I've worked with a number of diabetics who have had similar results (including my mom who, at 81, manages her diabetes very well and seldom needs any insulin because she lost 40 pounds on this program and eat six small meals a day).

Americans are looking for solutions that don't require changing their habits.  If a surgery or a pill or some procedure can possibly do it for us, we'll line up and literally risk our lives.  I just read about a woman who had a new kind of bariatric surgery where the surgeon removed most of her stomach by going through her mouth.  The article said that the woman was 5'4" and weighed almost 200 pounds.  To my best estimation, she needed to lose about 60 pounds to reach a healthy weight, but opted to have 80% of her stomach removed as her way of losing the weight.

I'm not criticizing her, or anyone else, who's opted for weight loss surgery because I was considering it myself and would have most likely pursued it a little over three years ago if my insurance covered it.  Because I would have incurred the entire cost myself, I decided to try Take Shape for Life/Medifast for four weeks before risking our financial future.  Obviously I'm thankful that I did, and I'm thankful that my insurance didn't pay for surgery.  I am just concerned that so many people are desperate enough to risk surgery to help them lose weight or manage their diabetes, but they aren't desperate enough to be willing to change their daily habits. 

I've said repeatedly that the food part of this program is the easy part - it's the head and heart part that are difficult.  We definitely need to fix our brains when it comes to how we related to food, but the fixing our brains need will never be accomplished by a surgeon's knife.   As we make the choices we need to make, we will not only improve our health (including diabetes!), we will also be rewiring our brains.  That's how lasting change happens - one choice at a time.  Choose wisely :-)