Posted on 02/16/2010 8:23:20 AM PST by Badabing Badablonde
HOUSTON One callous question turned Brittany Caesar into a medical pioneer: Why do you eat so much? Its not normal.
At that moment, she was in the Campbell Middle School cafeteria, sitting down to her usual lunch: two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a Coke. She knew she weighed too much. Her whole family weighed too much. But her world revolved around food, and she could not imagine any other existence.
Food was my best friend, she said. It was always there for me. Somehow, her classmates taunt, back in 2003, wounded her in a way the usual fat jokes never had. She fled to the bathroom and wept, vowing to lose weight. Her salvation did not arrive until more than a year later when, at age 14, doctors at Texas Childrens Hospital performed a gastric bypass that left her stomach the size of an egg. On the day of surgery, she weighed 404 pounds.
Ms. Caesar, now 20 years old and 175 pounds, was the first teenager to undergo a gastric bypass at Texas Childrens, but more quickly followed. Today, it maintains one of the busiest bariatric practices for adolescents in the country, performing one or two bypasses each month. Although the procedure is still considered experimental for children, it is fast becoming the next front in the battle against pediatric obesity.
I honestly believe that in 5 to 10 years youll see as many children getting weight-loss procedures as adults, said Dr. Evan Nadler, co-director of the Obesity Institute at Childrens National Medical Center in Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
*shrug* pretty hard to stop eating when you are surrounded by food and are HUNGRY.
Anything but CHANGE THE BEHAVIOR.
She’s not eating from hunger....she’s eating that much out of habit.
There is NO SELF CONTOL being taught.
Most likely the parents are MIA.
BTW, where is the kid getting the money to eat like a glutton? Parents? Hmmmm?
That would be difficult if as the young woman said “food is my best friend”.
She was eating for “comfort”. It was a habit, not because her stomach was “empty”. The surgery is not necessary (but can “force” reduced eating).
There are other ways to impose dieting.
And it wasn’t just how much she ate but what she ate so much of.
“Food was my best friend..It was always there for me”.
So sad.Having to surgically alter bodies that haven’t even finished growing yet,because of something totally preventable.
She probably has major issues and soothes herself with FOOD. Food is often a COMFORT for those with “issues”. This is NO normal for a girl in middle school to be acting out like this, but as USUAL, NEVER ADDRESS THE ROOT ISSUE.
Yup ...
Excerpt:
Food was my best friend, she said. It was always there for me. Somehow, her classmates taunt, back in 2003, wounded her in a way the usual fat jokes never had. She fled to the bathroom and wept, vowing to lose weight. Her salvation did not arrive until more than a year later when, at age 14, doctors at Texas Childrens Hospital performed a gastric bypass that left her stomach the size of an egg. On the day of surgery, she weighed 404 pounds.
Agreed. Too sad.
Yet surgery that causes a sense of fullness allowed her to drop 225 lbs, while growing up from a 14 year-old to an adult.
Goodness. Gastric bypass is a life changing procedure (outside of the weight loss) as I understand it; special meds and strange eating procedures. Parents send your kids outside to play instead of in front of the tv/computer and give them water to drink rather than sugary drinks. Obesity problem solved and no EXPENSIVE surgery.
Expensive and dangerous.
Behavior is one of the keys, Gastric Bypass is a tool, not a cure all, for those who have the capability of losing the weight but have problems keeping it off, then Bypass may be a good option.
If someone has been struggling with their weight for more than a decade and they are putting real effort into losing the weight then Bypass is a good option, for children, not so much unless the case is extreme. Also bypass affects how certain vitamins are absorbed and could lead to dangerous deficiencies in growing bodies.
I know someone who lost 100+ lbs and to do so she had to micro-manage everything she ate and everything she did in her life. She was walking 3+ miles a day and consuming only good food and only 1,600-1,800 calories per day and was still 100+ lbs overweight after losing 100lbs. She would sometimes cry herself to sleep at night due to hunger pains. After a years of having to literally torture herself to get any sort of result she was close to giving up. She was a good candidate for gastric bypass.
A lot of the times parents have issues also. A lot of times I’ve seen very caring parents frustrated because they aren’t in control of their own bodies, and upset because they know they are passing the problems down.
And of course there is always the genetic component. I’ve met several women in my life now that have hormonal and/or thyroid problems, and see their children growing in the same way.
So rather than have her and her parents sit with dieticians and psychologists who can teach her to read and separate hunger signals from her emotions, the elective was invasive surgery to manipulate the stomach so nausea and vomiting are reactions to normal eating?
True ... but for where it is a medical problem, they can take their thyroid meidication to help. For the other situations it’s like a nasty family recipe that keeps being handed down by example.
I know a few women who have had it as a last resort, and its not the slam-dunk everyone believes it to be. It takes alot of discipline to follow the post-surgery diet, and alot of patience and self control over a lng period of time. I question if a teenager or pre-teen is up to the challenge.
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