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Big pharma must get their money at all cost
The report with the meta analysis concerning statins came out a few months ago and is still sending shock waves throughout the medical community. Most doctors will never about the trend and never change their course.
Nowhere does the ADA ever talk about prevention or cure of type 2 diabetes...only the treatment
Up until 2019 or so .they told diabetics to go ahead and eat all the carbs you want..just cover them with increased insulin..which is irresponsible and has had deadly consequences for many.
Yeah..shame on them.
Yes, no, and maybe. I've traded one set of problems for another. My knees are shot but that's par for the course for someone my age.
The worst problem I have is that I've lost two inches of height, most of it from my spine being compacted by carrying around 450 extra pounds for all those years. The imaging of my back makes the problem obvious, even to an untrained eye. The spine looks like one long, curved bone with small, evenly spaced cracks.
The orthopedic surgeons who have seen the imaging, two of them, have said the same thing. "There's nothing I can do to help that; nothing anybody can do.". All they can do is prescribe anti-inflammatory meds. Make no mistake, Meloxicam has been a miracle drug for me, relieving the debilitating back spasms that once destroyed my quality of life.
But I'm in a losing war. The outside of my right leg is already dead; you could stab me in the thigh with a screwdriver and I would feel it, I suppose, but there would be little pain. The nerves are already crushed up at my spine. When this process reaches its conclusion, I'll be immobile.
Lately I've been exploring exercises, stretches, and manipulations that put my spine in traction. It's been a fruitful exercise and I feel I've added years to my functional lifetime.
So I'm cautiously optimistic regarding the amount of time I can remain functional...but I also know that I'll eventually be faced with some very tough decisions.
Cholesterol itself is just a number but I don't know what Dr your're going to that has to calculate the ratio. The numbers are already calculated by the lab. Even if they did have to do it themselves it's probably one of the easiest calculations they have to do. And most statins are part of a regimen that Dr's are trying to control. Diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia.....
Statins aren't a miracle drug. I don't know if the manufacturers are claiming reducing sudden cardiac death with their product. Our Dr's don't say it's a way to prevent sudden cardiac death. It's part of a system to try to reduce cardiovascular and/or peripheral vascular disease progression. Ideally changing diet and exercise habits would help reduce that but the reality for most people is that they don't have the resolve of Ben and some others here that have taken it upon themselves to try to reverse or change things in their lives to be healthier. And you are stuck with your genetics.
Not sure why you say statins are a sham. Are they for everyone? No. Can they reduce bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol? Yes. Can they have side effects? Yes. But so can anything you ingest or are exposed to in our environment.
I'll admit I no longer keep up with literature in my area of specialty. But my Dr's do and I trust them when it come to these matters.
I think I had another point to make but I didn't have to work today so I started partaking in the vodak early.
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Baby if I can make it through the power of prayer so can you I got a line to the father I'm praying for you my friend.
My left knee is dead right foot cramped daily but I'm like you old coot we keep pushing and we will persevere and survive my brother
This has been the key to the last 85 pounds I've lost.
We outta have a former fat guys meet n shoot.
The date's on it.That post pic must have been a while back, you still had hair
And I still have the hair. I just shave it every day.
I'm still a fat guy, morbidly so by most definitions. To go to a "former fat guy" meet, I need to lose at least 65 more pounds, preferably more.
I'm a diabetic who needs to avoid sugar. My lipid panel numbers are really good.
Translation: Living on BBQ brisket might be the healthiest diet I could adopt.
Axxe55
Retiretgtshit stirrer
My doctor told me to cut down on red meat, and eat more chicken, fish and vegetables!I'm a diabetic who needs to avoid sugar. My lipid panel numbers are really good.
Translation: Living on BBQ brisket might be the healthiest diet I could adopt.
Looks like BBQ brisket just became a luxury food for me.
This is a very abbreviated version. It may be as long as my typical giant posts from several years ago but, believe me, when it comes to this subject, I'm only hitting the high points.
1. How did I get there?
I was always hungry. I don't know why. Perhaps something about my body was damaged owing to the fact that I was so incredibly ill early in life. I had most of the childhood diseases and they were always bad. I had pneumonia 4 (or was it 5?) times before I was 9. According to my sister, until I was about 9 years old, the entire family was always worried about whether or not I'd survive another month. Pictures of me from the first 7 or 8 years of my life show a walking skeleton. You could count my ribs from across the street.
For whatever reason, until a time not too many years ago, I was hungry all the time. And I wasn't just hungry; I mean I was ravenously hungry. Starving. Desperate for food, 24/7/365, even after stuffing myself at Thanksgiving or any other time. Very often, I intellectually knew I was full. Sometimes I could feel the pain of an overstuffed stomach but, even then, the sensation of incredible hunger never went away.
2. What did I weigh?
I've decided I weighed 650 pounds.
Let me explain why I phrase it that way.
650 pounds is the number I've settled on. 30 years ago, there were no electronic scales in my doctor's offices. They were all balance beam scales that went up to 250 kilos, or just over 550 pounds. Whenever I set the scales to 550 pounds and stepped gently onto the scale, the beam would whack against its stop so hard I thought it would break. Nurses who took me back to see doctors never even bothered to weigh me, it was so obvious that I was bigger than what the scales could handle.
After I got down to 500 pounds or so, I started experimenting with setting the wrong weight on the scale. If I adjusted the scale to be 100 pounds too light, it would smack the beam against its stop pretty hard but nothing like it did when I was at my top weight. I'm satisfied that, at my biggest, I weighed more than 100 pounds above the capacity of the scale.
So I know for sure I weighed at least 650 pounds. In my heart of hearts, I believe I was somewhere well over 700 but I won't make that claim since I've got to be conservative if I'm to be believed. Thus, since I know I'm being truthful when I say I weighed at least 650 pounds, I can skip explaining all this stuff to every person who ever takes a medical history. I just say "I used to weigh 650 pounds" and leave it at that.
As an aside, maybe there's a weight calculator somewhere out there to back me up. I was 6 feet tall, wore 74" pants with elastic panels, and had a pear-shaped physique. The estimating tools I've seen all require more measurements than that, including things like thigh circumference and/or knee height and/or neck circumference. Anyone who cares to look might find more than I did, though.
3. What changed?
I had a significant emotional event that changed my behavior. One day I sat on the toilet, upright, and realized that when I glanced down, I could not see my knees.
That shook me to the core. Being that big around was deeply shocking.
4. How did I start losing weight?
Losing the first 200+ pounds was easy. I stopped drinking a minimum of 3 12-packs of Coca-Cola every day.
I didn't do much exercise. I started a walking program but I was just too heavy. I tore the plantar fascia on the bottoms of both my feet, a very painful episode. I used a walker around the house but was too embarrassed to use it in public where I relied on a cane. Actually, I mostly relied on just getting to my seat and staying in it for the entirety of my workdays and I kept that up until I eventually healed.
As I got lighter, I tried several diets and several regimens of light exercise. None of it really stuck but, with lots of ups and downs, I eventually got down to 330 pounds. For many years, my weight seemed to float, completely without any relationship to my food intake or exercise level, between 330 and 380 pounds. Occasionally I would starve myself for weeks and get down to 320 but the hunger would be too great and I'd put all the weight back on in short order.
I plateaued at that level for nearly a decade. It was during that time I was diagnosed as a diabetic.
6. How did I break through the 330-pound plateau?
Eventually, I got tired of it. I determined to break through that plateau. I joined a gym, hired a trainer, and got serious. I spent 18 solid months exercising at least an hour a day, at least 6 days per week. I sweated on cardio machines and picked up tons of weights. I got much stronger and felt much better. The shape of my body only changed a little; I lost something like 2 inches off my waist.
But I lost absolutely no weight.
During this period, I started taking Victoza for my diabetes. That drug is known to suppress appetite in many people. It worked for me. The difference didn't seem dramatic at the time but, in hindsight, it was. I was still hungry all the time but not ravenously so.
So I really, truly busted my ass in the gym for 18 solid months while consuming fewer calories of better quality food. Yet after all that sweat and denial, I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
In disgust, I quit working out. I also quit watching my diet. I was pissed at all of existence for my failure and, for a while, self-destructively decided to just no longer care.
Six weeks after I stopped trying, 55 pounds fell off like I had dropped a suitcase. It only took a few weeks and I was down to 275, all while eating like a pig and not exercising. Go figure.
7. And the next 30 pounds?
About that time, Ozempic came out. It's in the same class of drugs as Victoza but it's roughly like doubling the dose of Victoza. (No, I don't know why my endo couldn't just double the dose of Victoza.) I went on Ozempic and went right back off. The horrific nausea and projectile vomiting were more than I could stand. My endo asked me to try again, working up more slowly to a full dose. After a few months, I settled down to where I am now - slightly nauseous almost all the time but not enough to make me throw up.
The benefit of working through all that is that my hunger is now somewhere close to what I assume healthy people experience. With a little effort, I can get by on one good meal per day, keeping it low in sugar/carbs/etc. A full keto diet didn't work; the constipation was more than I could withstand. But I'm definitely eating better food in lower quantities and being more satisfied than has been the case in the last 50 years. (I'm 62, btw.)
Yes, I still drink a coke about once a day but it's nowhere near the addiction levels I once had and I find I often skip a day without even noticing it. So...this is eating like a normal person, right? I sure hope so.
8. What's next?
My intent is to continue taking my diabetes meds, eating one meal per day, and avoiding as much sugar as is convenient for me to avoid.
I go to the gym every day and have done so for a long time. In the future, I intend to stop half-assing my workouts and do more aerobic work. The single health indicator that bugs me the most is my resting heart rate that's always at about 100 bpm. I want to lower that.
I will continue to pay zero attention to my weight, just letting my doc weigh me 3 or 4 times a year.
If I get down to a reasonably healthy weight, (say, ~170 pounds) and keep my a1C in the normal range for a year, then I'll start transitioning off my too-expensive meds.
Those are promises I'm making to myself and I'm going to try to keep them. There will be failures but they'll be temporary, just like all the failures in my past.
But my first next step is definitely to send my belt back to Beltman to get it shortened. It's recently become about 4 inches too big.
Ben the resting heart rate at 100 is somewhat caused by the ozempic/victoza class of drugs. Mine was the same and that's what t hgt e doc told me.This is a very abbreviated version. It may be as long as my typical giant posts from several years ago but, believe me, when it comes to this subject, I'm only hitting the high points.
1. How did I get there?
I was always hungry. I don't know why. Perhaps something about my body was damaged owing to the fact that I was so incredibly ill early in life. I had most of the childhood diseases and they were always bad. I had pneumonia 4 (or was it 5?) times before I was 9. According to my sister, until I was about 9 years old, the entire family was always worried about whether or not I'd survive another month. Pictures of me from the first 7 or 8 years of my life show a walking skeleton. You could count my ribs from across the street.
For whatever reason, until a time not too many years ago, I was hungry all the time. And I wasn't just hungry; I mean I was ravenously hungry. Starving. Desperate for food, 24/7/365, even after stuffing myself at Thanksgiving or any other time. Very often, I intellectually knew I was full. I could feel it in my stomach. But the sensation of incredible hunger never went away.
2. What did I weigh?
I've decided I weighed 650 pounds.
Let me explain why I phrase it that way.
650 pounds is the number I've settled on. 30 years ago, there were no electronic scales in my doctor's offices. They were all balance beam scales that went up to 250 kilos, or just over 550 pounds. Whenever I set the scales to 550 pounds and stepped gently onto the scale, the beam would whack against its stop so hard I thought it would break. Nurses who took me back to see doctors never even bothered to weigh me, it was so obvious that I was bigger than what the scales could handle.
After I got down to 500 pounds or so, I started experimenting with setting the wrong weight on the scale. If I adjusted the scale to be 100 pounds too light, it would smack the beam against its stop pretty hard but nothing like it did when I was at my top weight. I was satisfied that, at my biggest, I weighed more than 100 pounds above the capacity of the scale.
So I know for sure I weighed at least 650 pounds. In my heart of hearts, I believe I was somewhere well over 700 but I won't make that claim since I've got to be conservative if I'm to be believed. Thus, since I know I'm being truthful when I say I weighed at least 650 pounds, I can skip explaining all this stuff to every person who ever takes a medical history. I just say "I used to weigh 650" and leave it at that.
As an aside, maybe there's a weight calculator somewhere out there to back me up. I was 6 feet tall, wore 74" pants with elastic panels, and had a pear-shaped physique. The estimating tools I've seen all require more measurements than that, including things like thigh circumference and/or knee height and/or neck circumference. Anyone who cares to look might find more than I did, though.
3. What changed?
I had a significant emotional event that changed my behavior. One day I sat on the toilet, upright, and realized that when I glanced down, I could not see my knees.
That shook me to the core. Being that big around was deeply shocking.
4. How did I start losing weight?
Losing the first 200+ pounds was easy. I stopped drinking a minimum of 3 12-packs of Coca-Cola every day.
I didn't do much exercise. I started a walking program but I was just too heavy. I tore the plantar fascia on the bottoms of both my feet, a very painful episode. I used a walker around the house but was too embarrassed to use it in public where I relied on a cane. Actually, I mostly relied on just getting to my seat and staying in it for the entirety of my workdays and I kept that up until I eventually healed.
As I got lighter, I tried several diets and several regimens of light exercise. None of it really stuck but, with lots of ups and downs, I eventually got down to 330 pounds. For many years, my weight seemed to float, completely without any relationship to my food intake or exercise level, between 330 and 380 pounds. Occasionally I would starve myself for weeks and get down to 320 but the hunger would be too great and I'd put all the weight back on in short order.
I plateaued at that level for nearly a decade. It was during that time I was diagnosed as a diabetic.
6. How did I break through the 330-pound plateau?
Eventually, I got tired of it. I determined to break through that plateau. I joined a gym, hired a trainer, and got serious. I spent 18 solid months exercising at least an hour a day, at least 6 days per week. I sweated on cardio machines and picked up tons of weights. I got much stronger and felt much better. The shape of my body only changed a little; I lost something like 2 inches off my waist.
But I lost absolutely no weight.
During this period, I started taking Victoza for my diabetes. That drug is known to suppress appetite in many people. It worked for me. The difference didn't seem dramatic at the time but, in hindsight, it was. I was still hungry all the time but not ravenously so.
So I really, truly busted my ass in the gym for 18 solid months while consuming fewer calories of better quality food. Yet after all that sweat and denial, I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
In disgust, I quit working out. I also quit watching my diet. I was pissed at all of existence for my failure and, for a while, self-destructively decided to just no longer care.
Six weeks after I stopped trying, 55 pounds fell off like I had dropped a suitcase. It only took a few weeks and I was down to 275, all while eating like a pig and not exercising. Go figure.
7. And the next 30 pounds?
About that time, Ozempic came out. It's in the same class of drugs as Victoza but it's roughly like doubling the dose of Victoza. (No, I don't know why my endo couldn't just double the dose of Victoza.) I went on Ozempic and went right back off. The horrific nausea and projectile vomiting were more than I could stand. My endo asked me to try again, working up more slowly to a full dose. After a few months, I settled down to where I am now - slightly nauseous almost all the time but not enough to make me throw up.
The benefit of working through all that is that my hunger is now somewhere close to what I assume healthy people experience. With a little effort, I can get by on one good meal per day, keeping it low in sugar/carbs/etc. A full keto diet didn't work; the constipation was more than I could withstand. But I'm definitely eating better food in lower quantities and being more satisfied than has been the case in the last 50 years. (I'm 62, btw.)
Yes, I still drink a coke about once a day but it's nowhere near the addiction levels I once had and I find I often skip a day without even noticing it. So...this is eating like a normal person, right? I sure hope so.
8. What's next?
My intent is to continue taking my diabetes meds, eating one meal per day, and avoiding as much sugar as is convenient for me to avoid.
I go to the gym every day and have done so for a long time. In the future, I intend to stop half-assing my workouts and do more aerobic work. The single health indicator that bugs me the most is my resting heart rate that's always at about 100 bpm. I want to lower that.
I will continue to pay zero attention to my weight, just letting my doc weigh me 3 or 4 times a year.
If I get down to a reasonably healthy weight, (say, ~170 pounds) and keep my a1C in the normal range for a year, then I'll start transitioning off my too-expensive meds.
Those are promises I'm making to myself and I'm going to try to keep them. There will be failures but they'll be temporary, just like all the failures in my past.
But my first next step is definitely to send my belt back to Beltman to get it shortened. It's recently become about 4 inches too big.
I take credivol that's lowers that to low to mid 80s.
Oh, I have a drawer full of too big belts. Trophies. Except for the huge 511 belt
I cant find it
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