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Chain saw massacre!!!!

Blog Last Activity 8 years ago 364 views 11 comments

Bear with me on this...


 


So you take a chainsaw and you cut off the leg mid-thigh of a morbidly obese person and then do the same thing to a perfectly fit person that works out regularly - and compare the two limb afterwards.  Take the limbs and turn them so that you look down the length of the cut end at the cross section.  What you see in the morbidly obese person is that the limb is predominately adipose fat tissue with very little striated muscle.  By very little, we're talking less than 10%.  In the fit person, however, the limb may be as much as 95% muscle with little to no fat.  You say well tell us something we didn't know...


 


Fine i will.


 


Turns out that sugars circulate in the blood in the form of glucose.  Fat tissue does not have glycoprotein receptors on their surface that take in sugar out of the blood for its metabolism.  Muscle cells do, however.  The sugary blood circulates through the body and passes right on by the fat tissue without doing anything.  In the case of a morbidly obese diabetic, the small amount of striated muscle tissue in the body is inadequate to account for all this glucose and the body becomes overwhelmed by it.  The body produces insulin, a hormone that tells the muscle cells and the liver to take up these sugars so that the body doesn't go into what is called diabetic ketoacidosis, which can lean to coma and death if intervention is not taken.  The problem with the morbidly obese is there isn't very much muscle there for insulin to work on, so people become what is called "insulin resistant".  In these people, other classes of medications are needed, such as metformin, etc. that rely on other pathways to process and eliminate the overload of sugars, such as flushing it out the kidneys.  This isn't so great, however.


 


Insulin whips the muscle cells to absorb absorb absorb!  They absorb more than they really want to.  Big hearty muscle fibers can probably tolerate this in the short and long run, but the tiny cells that make up the lining of micro arteries that nourish nerve fibers, organs, the eyes, brain, etc. become choked with the sugar load.  Sugars act like glue in these structures, plugging them up.  The result is that morbidly obese diabetics have a staggering amount or peripheral neuropathy, retinopathy, peripheral vascular disease, coronary artery disease, renal failure and stroke.  In fact, diabetes is by far the number one cause of blindness, kidney failure (dialysis), limb amputation, stoke, and heart attack.  The number two cause of these situations isn't even close.  Diabetes is an absolute killer, much more scary than the chainsaw scenario I startled people with at the beginning of this conversation.


 


What can you do?  Everyone on the planet needs to do resistance training and increase muscle.  You cannot allow your percentage body fat to become overwhelming.  Simply put, you need to lift weights and stay fit, its as simple as that.  A combination of upper and lower body weight training twice a week, with a third day per week for cardio is the optimal.   For those that are already morbidly obese, a combination of weight training and cardio, perhaps considering gastric bypass surgery, can be an option.  Turns out that morbidly obese diabetics that undergo gastric bypass surgery are no longer diabetic on post operative day 1 after the surgery.  Its that impressive.


 


Anyways, sorry for all this.  Maybe there is one person out there that read this and something clicks in them that leads to healthy modifications that can go a long ways toward preventing them from becoming diabetic.  In others, maybe they pass along the heads up and explain the dangers of diabetes to them.  Good luck!

Comments

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darkknightreturns
8 years ago

watch what you eat, how much you consume, lessen starches such as breads, pasta, potatoes, and exercise. I'm diabetic and believe me it's no fun.

austinpscottt
8 years ago

cant stand the site of blood, even readingabout itismaking me feel queasy

8 years ago

Nutrasweet - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame. I've read that nutrasweet literally changes the bacterial flora in the gut, this flora constituting one of, if not the most important components of the human immune system. The new gut bacteria causes you to crave sweets and has been shown to dramatically increase one's risk of becoming diabetic and cause indirect but significant weight gain. In laboratory studies, they took one group of mice and fed it nutrasweet foods, and another with regular sugar foods. All else was the same, including the amount and kind of foods they were fed. The nurtasweet mice showed much different bacterial flora in the gut, and higher levels of diabetes as compared to the control. They then took a third group of normal mice and inoculated their guts with the bacterial flora from the nutrasweet mice and these mice also became diabetic. In my opinion, which isn't much i know, its worth it to completely 100% stop all consumption of artificial sweeteners and instead switch to regular sugar (not high fructose corn syrup tho). Discontinue all sodas and sweet drinks and instead just drink water. Again, just MHO.

8 years ago

problems I will never have to worry about ^.^

8 years ago

Actually, I found all of this information facinating and educational. In another day/age I think I would have been involved in the medical field. I didn't know about artificial sweetners tricking the body either....I drink a lot of water, but with a squirt of water enhancer which contains splenda. I think I'll go back to just plain water. Thx for all of the info Joel and my best to u in ur med studies. (((hugz))) :D

gm4yngr
8 years ago

I hope that you're talking about using an electric chain saw (powered by solar or wind power), because gas-powered chain saws pollute the air!

8 years ago

(As, or else I've got my eye on you as a potential (or secret) chain-saw user?! Hope not.)

8 years ago

I must remember you are in med school, and this probably emerged in your thoughts & research as the result of more cadaver-explorations?

8 years ago

I accept your apology accepted. Dont do it again.

8 years ago

So... Walk more and eat a decent diet? Most of the world can manage that.

mophead2009
8 years ago

i read this out of cuosity thought WTF - actually its interesting hmm