September 2006
CRACKING THE FAT CODE
GENERAL METABOLIC DYSFUNCTION
Obesity is just another symptom of being unhealthy, of general metabolic dysfunction. It's just one of the many tips of a very large body system dysfunction iceberg.
The others? - headaches, tiredness, poor sleep, sleep apnoea, cardiac insufficiency, depression, colds and flu, diabetes, cancer, low libido, elevated blood pressure, inflammatory conditions, rashes, infertility ... the list goes on and on.
If you have a burning desire to become healthier and get back closer to your ideal weight, eat less of the food your body doesn't need, eat more of the food your body does need, exercise regularly and vigorously, go to support meetings and stay focused. You'll become healthier. The weight will look after itself.
THE MATHS EXAMS
Click here it you'd like to have a look at the maths exams I referred to last week. Check out how smart you are.
When you've finished click through to the answers page.
SCIENCE WEEK
I had a few replies to last week's newsletter.
50% accused me of science bashing.
The other 50% told me how dumb they felt at school because they were no good at maths.
Certainly I'm critical of junk science. But I'm the son of invention. I'm living off the fruits of science.
But I just don't seem to have the electrical connections to understand how things mathematical and scientific work. I'm leaving it to others.
To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.
Last week I spent an hour up in Sydney with 2,500 of the world's smartest fat code crackers wandering through the trade exhibition of the 10th International Congress on Obesity.
The Pharmaceutical Association had a stand. They reckon they've cracked the fat code. Obesity is now officially a disease, apparently caused by a lack of some kind of pharmaceutical!
Surely the last place you'd go if you were overweight would be the chemists.
THE GREASING
The drug companies were out in force. They reckon they've cracked the code. In fact they were the biggest sponsors of the Conference.
The drug companies just love hanging around medicos, academic medicos, pseudo medicos, quasi medicos and wishful medicos. They attract them like flies around horse manure. They pull their strings and ply them with the red and white stuff in the full knowledge that sooner or later the doctors will do the right thing and dash off scripts for tablets that cost less than a zac to make and sell for brick. This is yet another example of the greasing of the wheels of perpetual motion.
Here's a list of the drug company sponsors:
- Sanofi Aventis
- Abbott - 'a promise of life'
- Roche - makers of Zenical
- Merck Sharp & Dohme
- Novartis
- Roquette - who as well as being in the drug game are one of
Europe's pre-eminent distributors of glucose syrups and
starches.
I notice from the conference program that crack Australian fat code cracker, President of the Asia Oceania Association for the Study of Obesity, Professor Ian Caterson presented a paper on 'Excess weight, high blood pressure and the benefits of weight loss with Zenical'. At least you know which side of his bread's buttered!
The Dieticians Association had a stand but I'll continue to discount their advice while they're still nestling up to the junk food industry and while the low bar for the Glycemic index high junp is set at 55.
SAM KEKOVICH CRACKS FAT CODE
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Unless I missed it I don't think the Apple and Pear Corporation or the vegetable growers had a stand, in fact there were no fresh food stands touting for more customers. I looked for the Sam Kekovich stand, but even though Meat and Livestock Australia was a sponsor, as was the Danish Meat Association, there wasn't a cutlet or a lamb's fry in sight. |
Click here and give it a chance to load up |
JEAN NIDETCH CRACKS FAT CODE IN 1961
I don't know whether I came down in the last shower or what, but if the fat code has already been cracked, why do we need more research?
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I'm not sure why, but Weight Watchers and a few other slimming organisations had exhibition stands.
Despite cracking the fat code years ago the opinions of these people are not highly sought after by crack fat researchers. Too simple. Not scientific enough.
Latter day students of the science of fat wouldn't even know who Weight Watchers was, let alone extol their virtues to an increasingly adipose population. The serious money has had it's head turned toward more lucrative fields. |
Jean Nidetch cracked the fat code in 1961. |
If you have a burning desire to become healthier and get back closer to your ideal weight,
- eat less of the food your body doesn't need. Don't buy, don't eat!
- buy and eat more of the food your body does need,
- exercise regularly and vigorously,
- if you have an over-eating problem, go and get some counselling. Search for the underlying cause of your need to keep stuffing yourself with food that's not good for you.
- stay focused and disciplined. Go to support meetings.
It will take some effort.
The effect? You'll become healthier. The weight will look after itself.
This is not rocket science. We don't need more research, more papers more swanning around the world to conferences. Click here to view the list of papers we recommend you read.
It won't cost the Government a penny.
If you don't have a burning desire to become healthier no-one can help you.
Here's a selection of Weight Watcher's founder, Jean Nidetch's most quotable quotes.
'That was me, Jean Nidetch in 1961 - 241 pounds of big bones on a large frame, suffering from glandular heredity, making promises in the bathtub and breaking them in the kitchen.'
'Most people who are overweight don't eat enough, of the right food at the right time.'
Your stomach doesn't know it's your birthday.'
And now for the understatement: 'My little private club became an industry.'
Want some books to read? Click here for the ones I recommend.
MORE JUNK SCIENCE
One of the definitions of junk science is ignoring the bleeding obvious. Another is complicating the simple. Yet another is doing the same research over and over again, research for research's sake, research to score more brown points, justify your existence, snag the next grant, swan off to the next conference. Another example of perpetual motion.
The sheltered workshops encourage this sort of thing, egging their staff on to keep writing, publishing and presenting papers, wringing every last ounce out of a bit of a research data. An example of this is the AusDiab study which spawned an absolute orgy of irrelevant paper writing.
As far as I can tell, the more money that's been spent on fat research the fatter people have become. There's a direct correlation. I doubt that we need more research, just more action - personal action, in the kitchen, out on the street, in the gym, on the sportsfield, the court, and the playground and in the pool.
Now there's an idea; place gym and Weight Watchers et al memberships on the PBS. To create a zero sum situation, gradually roll back the subsidies on junk pharmaceuticals.
SACRE BLUR
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Paul Zimmet, Director of the crack International Diabetes Institute and Chairman of the International Obesity Congress wrote in last weekend's Australian that 'Obesity is the biggest public health hurdle of the century.'
Is it? Who said?
Pandora's box was definitely opened up on the day that being overweight changed in status from being a private responsibility to a public responsibility.
I think I missed this one. Must have sneaked in under the radar.
Blur that distinction and you open the floodgates to massive amounts of public money being poured into the medical industry, the genie pops out of the bottle and the brown-corduroy-trouser and leather-elbow-patch set start running amok. |
Fat code proves tough nut for International Diabetes Institute to crack. Still searching for the code. People getting fatter. More money needed to finance the hunt. |
This is modern science at work. First get a PhD, that's the entry fee. Then think of a problem. Put together a committee with a couple of crack researchers on it to beef up your chance of getting a grant.
Having got the grant, conduct a survey or measure something, run the data through a stats program and irregardless of the result, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, bingo, another paper pops out of the research pipeline.
Money successfully acquitted. Smiles all round.
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Crack researchers happy, present papers at International Conferences on your behalf. Everyone's reputation bolstered, CV's enhanced. ARC and NH&MRC both happy, Vice Chancellor happy, bread put on everyone's table for another six months. Next grant application already in pipeline.
Project completed according to standard international project protocol guidelines. |
 Wear a black suit, act sombre and fold hands at launchings. |
No change in either private behaviour or public policy.
Main recommendation? More research needed.
NOVARTIS CRACKS FAT CODE WITH CHOCOLATE BAR
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The Novartis drug company was there giving away samples of their Optifast confectionery bars. They've obviously cracked the fat code. Eat chocolate bars and be slim. Now all they need to do is get someone to subsidize them. |
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The 70gm bars contain 820 kilojoules. At 1200 Kj/100 grams and containing 14% milk chocolate you couldn't say this was exactly slimming food. By way of comparison, you could eat three quarters of a kilogram of carrots for the same energy value or 100 grams of chops.
You just about have to roll your eyes right through to the back of your head to think you were doing your slimming program a good turn by eating a chocolate bar. And they're not cheap. $19.95 for a six pack.
I just checked downstairs with the junk food people and you can buy 20, 55gm Cherry Ripes for the same price, so the people at Novartis who do the pricing of the confectionery bars have learned a trick or two from their mates in the pharmaceutical division.
Or you can get almost the same number of kilojoules from a 220 gm can of baked beans, which will set you back 99c. Or next time you feel hungry, down a 415 gm can of Home Brand tomato soup - 61c for 480 Kj.
NEW MEDICAL TREATMENT
Now that obesity is officially a disease it won't be long before confectionery bars are officially registered as a medical treatment and Bob's your uncle, they'll turn up on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
When it's all boiled down the meal replacement bar is just another manufactured, junk food.
If that's the case, how come the International Obesity Conference organisers allows a junk food manufacturer to get their foot in the door? The short answer, money. The stuff's made by a drug company and sold at chemists and the sponsorship means another airfare for another serial paper presenter.
THE FUNNEL TRICK
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But the drug companies just love greasing the wheels at any forum with even a remote connection to the medical industry.
And they love the kudos they get from being involved in blue chip health studies. The list of sponsors of the AusDiab study reads like the roll call at a Medicines Australia AGM.
The high priests of medical research love them back in return and suck up to them because they've got bags of dough for more junk research; dough wheedled out of the pockets of mug taxpayers left, right and centre.
This is the pharmaceutical variant of the funnel trick. In Australia, probably something like $4,000,000,000 of public money goes down the funnel each year into the pharmaceutical black hole, with plenty left over to grease a few elbows. |
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Conference organisers love them because they're a soft touch for a sponsorship and they can swan themselves and their mates around the world living it up in flash pubs while the health of the community gets worse. Backs are patted, bellies tickled, noses browned and every one goes away with a warm feeling in their pants.
PERVERSION
The drug companies pervert the course of good health, suckering the medical industry, governments and their customers. You know something's wrong when its 'conventional' to swallow a pill and 'alternative' to take a few vitamins, meditate and go for a run. Just a dreadful, abominable perversion of the course of good health. Read more about it.
THE LIFE SCRIPT
The fitness industry are smarter, that's why they stayed away. Why waste your time. You don't sell more treadmills or signup more people for aquarobics classes at academic gabfests.
In fact there was no-one there spruiking fitness programs except for the people on the Department of Health's stand where they were promoting their well-meaning but limp-wristed Life Scripts program. I suppose the Department of Health chipped in money for the Congress so they had to put on a show of some sort.
How can the Life Scripts program work energetically when the doctors in this country find it beneath their dignity to actually measure how fit their customers are and don't have a clue how to prescribe them an exercise program? The Life Scripts program contains neither a fitness test nor an exercise prescription that includes a recommended dosage.
Let's face it, the lifestyle prescription stands head and shoulder above all other prescriptions for keeping yourself fit and healthy.
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Click here and go to the aerabyte website. If you can get 1000 aerabytes in the next seven days, report back! |
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NOT ONLY BUT ALSO
A few months ago I fronted up to the International Diabetes Institute (IDI) on the grounds of what I think was once the Caulfield Military Hospital, of which in the early 1920's one Captain Robert Henley* was the commanding officer. The Director of the IDI, Paul Zimmet was the Chairman of the International Congress on Obesity.
I introduced them to the Aerabyte exercise prescription concept which involves prescribing not only duration but also effort, rated against heart rate. After all, what medical person in their right mind would prescribe any medication without taking into account dosage and how much was to be administered over a period of time.
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I also introduced them to the 20m run measure of aerobic fitness.
I don't thing they're interested in this stuff. It's easier to wrap a tape measure around someone's waist, prick their finger, draw blood and send it off to the pathologist than it is to measure how fit they are. |
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Same as there weren't interested enough to measure how fit people were in the 'landmark' AusDiab study.
THE EXERCISE SPECIALISTS
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If you haven't yet cracked the fat code go to your local gym. They've cracked it. They know all about it. They'll help you. Just look at them. They're the exercise specialists. Just because they don't wear a white coat and drape a stethoscope around their neck doesn't mean their not specialists.
The only thing they can't do for you is the exercise. |
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INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR THE STUDY OF OBESITY
So what went on at the conference. Well, not much because it's run by the International Association for the Study of Obesity. The fat code is still safely hidden away. According to their blurb, the IASO is the self-styled leading global professional organisation concerned with the study of obesity, operating in more than 50 countries around the world.
You betcha. The study of obesity has become an industry in it's own right, the IASO a legend in it's own lunchtime.
It's not an organisation of people mad keen about running programs that support people in their quest to trim down, an organisation where people get their hands dirty, or get a sweat up. They're the bishops of the fat sciences, not the parish priests out on the track, down at the pool, in the gym or the confession box.
In February next year the quest-for-the-elusive-fat-cracking-code gravy train swings on to the Sheraton Grand Walkerhill Hotel in Seoul for the 4th Asia-Oceania Conference on Obesity. Joining the code crackers will be the usual suspects, Abbott, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, Lily, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, greasing the funnel.
Put in for a grant, pack your penguin gear and/or your feather boa and get ready to live it up at the fat code crackers ball**. From the look of the program it's the same old same old.
THE BODY DYSFUNCTION ICEBERG
Obesity is just another symptom of being unhealthy, of general metabolic dysfunction. It's just one of the many tips of a very large body system dysfunction iceberg. The others? - headaches, tiredness, poor sleep, sleep apnoea, cardiac insufficiency, depression, colds and flu, diabetes, cancer, low libido, elevated blood pressure, inflammatory conditions, rashes, infertility ... the list goes on and on.
As for the fat gurus, the focus on obesity deflects attention away from the primary cause of metabolic dysfunction, lack of exercise. More funnel tricks. As is the case with most body system dysfunctions the cause of the problem is rarely at the site where the problem is manifest.
My Mum used to say 'Look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.' With respect to obesity, 'Look after the exercise and the pounds will take care of themselves.'
(If you want to know your standing in the metabolic dysfunction stakes, complete the Mind and Body Profile of the Health and Fitness Checkup. Just the 20m run will give you a fair idea.)
If the aim was to get thin at all costs without getting healthier you'd defeat the whole purpose of the exercise.
If you want to get thinner first set the goal of becoming healthier then go to someone who knows something about getting healthier, preferably someone whose fit and healthy, who's trimmed off themselves and who will support you while you do the same thing. Go to Weight Watchers. You'll be following in the footsteps of the 37 million who went before you.
JOHN HOWARD CRACKS FAT CODE AT KIRRIBILI
If you do the things that thin people do you stand a real chance of being closer to your ideal weight.
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One of them is John Howard. His recipe
- Walk briskly for 40 minutes before breakfast. - Eat three square meals a day - don't eat between meals.
I read he does his pressups too, that's a very good idea.
Plus he doesn't look like a booze artist to me and he doesn't look like he puts his hand in the chip, cookie and confectionery jars very often. In fact he's on record saying he doesn't eat between meals. I think that's a key element of the fat-cracking jigsaw. |
John Howard, strides on at Kirribili |
ANGELO SICILIANO CRACKS FAT CODE IN CIRCA 1918
Knowledge about the fat code has been around for donkey's years.
Angelo Siciliana cracked the code after some lout kicked sand in his face at the beach. He turned his knowledge into one of the most successful mail order businesses in the world.
The name doesn't ring a bell? - click here.
CHESTY BOND CRACKS FAT CODE IN 1938
Chesty worked it out in the 30's. He still looks in good shape to me.
Forgot what Chesty looks like, click here.
In the mean time stay tuned, highly tuned and next time you get the urge to spend a week sitting on your backside being Power Pointed to death, take a week off, rent a house near the sea, go on a detox and exercise before each meal.
Regards
John Miller
PS
* Last week I went to see Doreen, Robert Henley's daughter, who at 90 is still in pretty good shape and can still remember those halcyon days as a little girl playing in the grounds of the Caulfield Repat.
Robert Henley still has, I believe, the distinction of being the oldest person to make his debut in Melbourne District Cricket. In 1924, at the age of 40 he played his first game for Carlton in the team captained by Billy Woodfull. His highest score that year was 54, so he was no slouch. One of his team mates was a bloke by the name of Warne!
PPS
Apropos of last week's newsletter, apparently readers aren't all that interested in maths. I only received two requests to forward the exam papers, one being from Lisa Woodhead, one of Doreen's seven grand daughters.
Click here to catch a photo of Lisa and her husband Ian, and my very first grandchild, the little fella, Jackson Woodhead.
If sporting prowess comes through the dam, the little fella has good prospects in the hitting, throwing and catching department.
**THE FAT CODE CRACKER'S BALL
I'll be down to get you in a Taxi, Honey
You better be ready about half past eight
Now dearie, don't be late
I want to be there when the band starts playing
Remember when we get there, Honey
The two-steps, I'm goin' to have 'em all
Goin' to dance out both my shoes
When they play the "Jelly Roll Blues"
Tomorrow night at the fat code cracker's Ball...