Never Without A Mouthful

A new report in the most recent issue of the Canadian Journey of Surgery points out some unfortunate statistics about Canadian society. A study by Dr. Nicolas Christou, professor of surgery at McGill, director of its bariatric surgery program at its health centre, renders a 'conservative estimate' of the number of Canadians who fit into the morbidly obese category and who might be eligible for surgery at between 600,000 to 1.2-million.

Now that's a staggering number of people who qualify as morbidly obese, whose state of health has been imperilled by their choices in life. To the extent that they acquire additional conditions such as diabetes, sleep apnea, heart disease, high blood pressure and deep-vein thrombosis. All of these conditions, following on obesity are a direct threat to health and longevity. And aren't these self-imposed slights to one's health?

After all, we are all imbued with free will. We make decisions that may benefit us or do us ill. And those who choose to forage unceasingly, eat without respite, consume fat-laden, sugar-filled fast-foods with scant nutritional value but surfeit with calories, and who further choose not to unduly tax themselves physically, preferring to live sedentarily unwholesome lives have made a choice to become what they have.

The author of the study bemoans and bewails the long wait times for bariatric surgery; approximately five years. And recounts a growing death rate among people awaiting surgery. The average age of people who have died awaiting surgery was judged to be 46. Some on the waiting list died of secondary conditions related to their obesity. A 33-year-old was cited as having died of multiple organ failure due to complications from diabetes.

Other patients on the waiting list died of asthmatic attacks, cardiac arrest, blood clots in the lungs, and heart attack. Studies out of France suggest that 50% of patients given gastric bands had to be re-operated on because the original procedure proved to be unsuccessful. One in four patients given referral to the bariatric program in Edmonton, for example, is considered a reasonable surgery candidate.

Individuals who for one reason or another aren't deemed to be good candidates because they can't commit to making the necessary lifestyle changes won't be accepted. There must be follow up with these procedures to ensure that these patients stay on their diets. These are adults, whose health has been compromised by neglect and deliberate satiation of unhealthy foods, who cannot be relied upon to observe life-saving diets following surgery.

One patient awaiting imminent surgery is a 34-year-old father of two, who weighs in at 400 pounds. When he was in Grade 11, he weighted 285 pounds. He suffers from sleep apnea, knee and back problems. Little wonder. "It's kind of ironic" he says, "that I try and get more active to lose weight and I end up hurting myself instead." Well, too little, too late. Eat less, eat more healthily, exercise yourself reasonably.

This man claims that bariatric surgery "can make my life better, my family's and society's, because it means I'll be less of a burden on the health system". The idiocy of it all. Canada's universal health care system pays to undo the damage that a short lifetime of abuse inflicts on lazy and self-absorbed people who feel entitled to have the public purse rescue them from their own stupidity.

And he sees nothing amiss in the fact that his choices are responsible for his pathetic health condition. Rather he's smug about his entitlements, and speaks of society's responsibility to permit him a 'better life' than the one he has obliged himself to inherit.

Inane and moronic.