Wednesday 5 November 2014

Hypothalamic Obesity

Things have been rather eerie lately. Turning a corner and walking into some unseen land that has uncannily familiar themes.

I've found it strangely chastening to read experiences I know many can relate to outside the straitjacketing imposition of the 'obesity' narrative. Like, this is what we are not hearing, despite never hearing anything but "obesity, obesity, obesity."

The haunting feeling partly comes from the suffering of children. It feels a little like gatecrashing someone else's crisis. Reporting the shock of fellow feeling and identification feels like I'm subverting their desperate situations to my own purpose. These stories are undoubtedly worth reading in and of themselves. 

It started by reading an article by Robert Lustig-yep the sugar is poison and responsible for teh "obesity epidemic" guy. It's about something called "Hypothalamic Obesity." Things got a bit too real in a different way, when I also tripped over a parent blogging of her young daughter's experience with this condition.

I don't doubt many others will relate to some of it too, despite not having had hyperphagic mayhem having a prize fight in your brain. I'm sure despair in the face of upward gain, in the face of trying so hard to prevent and reverse weight will strike a chord with many. 

Hypothalamic obesity is when a tumour on the hypothalamus-an endocrinal gland located on the underside of the brain-is removed and this trauma to the hypothalamus provokes aggressive and speedy weight gain and fatness. We're talking relentless weekly if not daily gain.

The difference between this 'obesity' and common or garden kind is, it's accepted as real. It has a distinct and objectively observable trigger or starting point, so though it wouldn't be impossible to deny, it would be harder to.

It cannot be cast as an elective choice of the individual and that its accompanying hyperphagia-heightened and/or excessive hunger signalling, is an actual imbalance in the body, rather than subject to being twisted into such as "food addiction", emotional disturbance, neurosis etc.,

There is an insistence that this hypothalamic obesity [HyOb] is marked out from other 'obesity' by being resistant to weight loss diet and exercise. Now anyone in tune with reality will note that this is not only unconvincing on its face its not true in reality either.  

It's marked by its trigger-tumour removal (occasionally the tumour itself) and speed of gain. That speed is probably a sign of what makes it even more intractable that just being fat. The hyperphagia that accompanies it isn't felt to be commensurate with fuelling such speed of gain. The body is storing energy at a high rate.

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