Walk: Improve your health and the planet

Bob Ewing — Two years ago, I made a two-fold pledge to lose weight and to keep my blood glucose levels in line. My doctor had just prescribed insulin injections, twice a day, and I was determined to keep the amount I needed to a minimum and hopefully, one day, no longer need the injections.



This pledge has an additional benefit — weight loss. In the past month, I have lost three pounds. This may not seem like a lot to you; however, if you want to take off weight and keep it off, your goals need to be realistic and ones you can achieve without adding undue stress to your daily life. Over the past six years, I have lost 50 pounds.

The weight loss was accomplished by eating fresh, seasonal foods and mostly by walking. I walk daily, except in extreme weather. Walking is not just my means of exercise but my principal mode of transportation. This means that I do not drive, own a car, but rely on my feet to get me from place to place.

In May, I added a daily morning work out, 15 minutes in duration, with a pair of dumbbells (weights). They only weigh two and a half pounds; however, I will increase the weight when needed.

Walking is healthy. It will help you lose weight. It is also good for the environment as the walker is not pumping any noticeable amount of fossil fuels into the environment. This may sound facetious to you but think about it for a minute, if more people left their cars at home and walked, rode a bicycle or took public transport to work, the cumulative effect of their actions could be significant. So I set an example. This is a win-win scenario, good for me and good for the environment, which is good for me and my neighbours.

The other part of my weight loss scenario is food. Avoid anything that comes in packages or cans; be sure too recycle all packing purchased when possible; canned tomatoes and cereal boxes, for example.

Composting and recycling reduce the garbage produced and both actions produce raw material that could be used to regenerate a local economy. In addition, recycling and composting reduce our impact on the earth and help build soil.

Buy products when they are in season, blueberries, strawberries, apples and am able to purchase these items from a small shop that buys from growers which are for the most part located within 100 miles of where I live. This means that the food I buy does not travel thousands of miles to get to the store but under 100, sometimes much less.

A farmer’s market recently opened in the city and I now have access to grass fed local beef and chicken and fresh vegetables.

Walking is healthy not just for the walker but for the community he or she is walking through. Good shoes and loose fitting clothing are all that is needed. Make a difference in your health and reduce your impact on the earth by making a few lifestyle changes.

Weight loss said by researchers to be tied to mood

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Carol Forsloff - Very often weight problems and depression go hand in hand, so researchers say that treating the foundation problems might help women lose weight.

In fact what research has found is that improving mood might be the link to weight loss.

This new study, which is in the November/December issue of the Journal of
General Hospital Psychiatry has looked at those having a body mass index
of 30 or more increases the risk of depression from 50 to 150 percent.

“I expect that the relationship between depression and physical activity
goes in both directions,” Gregory Simon, M.D., of Group Health Research
Institute in Seattle was quoted by Behavioral Health News. “Increased
physical activity leads to improvement in depression and improvement in
depression leads to increased physical activity. We see in our study
that they go together, but we can’t say which causes which.”

To
make this conclusion Simon and his associates examined 203 overweight
women, focusing on weight loss and depression and found that treating
the depression had a decided positive effect in weight loss.

“Most
weight loss programs do not pay enough attention to screening and
treatment of depression,” said Babak Roshanaei-Moghaddam, M.D., of the
psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at the University of
Washington in Seattle. “This study further underscores the importance of
screening for depression in such programs that can potentially lead to

both physical and psychological well-being.”

Weight loss done through stomach surgery performed through mouth

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Editor - Losing weight by mouth is an interesting concept as folks are always looking
for the perfect diet, but in this case it refers to a surgical process
to help the seriously obese.  

At the University School of California, San Diego School of Medicine,
surgeons have developed a way to reduce the stomach via mouth in a
procedure called sleeve gastrectomy.  Through this process, surgeons are able to reduce the
size of the stomach by 20 percent, leading to less caloric intake and
increased feelings of fullness, just as those more cumbersome procedures
like stomach stapling claims to do.

This does a lot for people who need to lose weight and is part of the
ever-growing medical movement to minimize invasive processes, whether
that is operations to the knee, the hip, or in this case the stomach.

“The number of options for minimally invasive weight loss surgery is rapidly
evolving,” said Santiago Horgan, MD, chief of minimally invasive surgery and director for the UCSD Center for the Treatment of Obesity.
“Our goal is to offer patients a customized long-term solution for losing weight with as few scars as possible, and if desired, no medical
devices.”

The procedure itself is said to take one hour and uses several instruments that make five small incisions in the abdomen, partially removing, then
closing the stomach.

The more invasive kind, stomach stapling, requires most people three to five weeks to recover and resume normal activities.  In this case, patients are able to return to normal very shortly, relative to invasive procedures.

Furthermore, doctors say patients are able to lose approximately 2-4 pounds per week
following surgery to remove the stomach through the mouth.

“By removing 80 percent of the stomach through the mouth we minimized
trauma to the abdomen,” said Horgan, director of the UCSD Center for the
Future of Surgery. “The absence of a large open incision reduced the
risk of hernia and greatly diminished pain for the patient. We are
getting closer to weight loss surgery with no scars.”