Fat Shaming And Scare-Mongering

Fat Shaming And Scare-Mongering

So the other day I was on a visit to a friend working at a large (lets leave it unnamed) famous corporate hospital where I was waiting in the reception while my friend was busy with a patient in one of the consultation rooms – professional courtesy requiring that you did not disturb a man who is busy earning his living and just by happenstance I managed to overhear what seemed to be a doctor couple counseling a patient in one of the adjacent consult rooms – telling him candid stuff like “you are too over weight, don’t you know that obesity kills?” and such stuff. While I waited for the hither though unseen patient to exit out of the consult room curious as I was to see such a morbidly obese patient on the verge of getting a coronary, I was shocked to see a pretty normal looking guy in his mid thirties with a mild paunch walk out of that room with a dazed expression clutching a bunch of sheets full of tests to be taken. I was shocked to say the least and I couldn’t wait to discuss this with my friend in the privacy of his consult room. But he was largely dismissive of my concerns with “it’s just the practice around here to get people to sign up for regular screening programs”. By then I was seriously wondering whether I too should sign up for one of their screening programs since I was way too over weight compared to the guy who had just come out of the adjacent cubicle. In fact if I had even accidentally popped my head into the other consult room- the doc’s there would have taken one look at me and immediately admitted me into the ICU for a heart surgery. I guess I am just exaggerating here or maybe not.

The thing is, ever since- for the last six months or so- I moved out of doing cosmetic surgery and into working with a surgical oncology group doing facial reconstruction for cancer patients I have achieved a far better perspective of life and my profession than what I used to believe in my younger days. Treating real patients with real diseases- life threatening diseases made me realize the kind of stress I was dealing with in my past practice- suppressing it with sweet words directed at clients who were never satisfied and always wanted more –even if they (or their husbands/parents) were paying for it through their noses. I feel such mental relief that I don’t have to think anymore naughty thoughts about paying clients like “madamji,  all that botoxing and firming of your upper back and arms to fit you into that sleevless, backless, strapless dress is still not going to change the bitch you are basically”. I wish I had never thought of such things but once the thoughts came in I wish I could have detoxed them earlier from my consciousness. Pardon if I sound like an asshole but I am, again, detoxing here.

Anyway to get back to the topic in question- dealing with death, real death row patients just living out their lives raises uncomfortable questions in my mind about the practice of the medical profession to use scare mongering and even death mongering to make a living. Haven’t we all – basically all doctors including me, been guilty of saying at some point or the other of “oh, you are over weight? You are obese? You have diabetes? You have hypertension (high BP)? You are going to die- you are going to have an heart attack you are going to have a stroke or you are going to have a so-and-so” just to get a patient to agree to some test or treatment which we feel that they may hesitate to commit to? Even though we may justify it as being in the patients best interests surely we alone know the truth if it really was for the benefit of the patient or if it was a tight month with a lot of unpaid bills piling up for us. I am not pointing fingers but just throwing up some hard truths here.

Besides, the worst culprits in such scenarios are not even the doctors themselves who know when not to talk too much but the support staff - especially in the corporate hospitals who prime the patients with fear before unleashing the doctor on the frightened patients. Naturally people who cannot make the distinction between causal and casual take association studies seriously enough to believe that they are going to die soon and hence sign up for whatever unwanted treatment fads the corporate hospital is pushing currently. At least when I was practicing cosmetic treatments the most I could do was appeal to people’s vanity “I can make you look as young as your daughter, madam, so that on her wedding night people will wonder who the actual bride is” and such marketing spiels. But people who throw words like heart attacks, strokes and deaths so casually frighten even me into believing that a little bit of weight around the waist and you are a walking corpse who doesn’t know it yet. Seriously dudes (fellow docs?) do we have to resort to this level to make a living? Why don’t we tell those corporate receptionist/front office types where they get off and stop scaring our patients? After all the real judge of people’s lives are they themselves and if they do feel they don’t mind, who are we to predict death for them?  After all we live in India- a place where death is a constant companion- your building may collapse on your head any day you sit relaxed at home, a rich young brat may plough his jaguar into you any minute on the road and even the police may do an encounter death on you if they don’t find anyone else to fill their caseloads by the end of the month- shit happens in India naturally so why add to it by scaring people?

All I am saying is lets advice and counsel our patients to our hearts content but lets do it in a postive way stressing on the benefits of healthy living and being fit. Lets not use the threat of impending death to make patients take notice/care oftheir own health. After all if it for their benefit shouldn’t they invest in it? As someone once said, the truth shall let you free- so lets all tell the truth and hope our patients take care of themselves because they want to and not because they are afraid. Lets trust our patients to make the right decision for themselves, ok?

Killing With Kindness

Killing With Kindness

I am sorry to say this Mr.So-and-so but i think your wife wants to kill you. Nothing else explains what you just told me.

But doctor I don’t understand, why should she?

How would i know? Have you recently insured yourself for a large amount?

No doctor, nothing like that.

So does she hate you for any reason at all? Have you had an affair with anyone? Like her sister for instance?

No doctor, that is not my weakness at all. I don’t go much for women.

Yes i understand from what you told me that eating well is your weakness (even if you just stuff food inside you mindlessly). So can you think of any reason, any reason at all, that your wife wants you dead?

No doctor I can’t think of a single reason why she wants me to die. But are you sure that I will die if I continue like this?

I am damn sure of it... there can be no other possible explanation to it based on what you yourself told me. Well let me summarize the facts for you again and let’s see if i got it correctly.

You are already overweight and obese and have no time to exercise. But every day  when you sit down to dinner and your wife makes Dosas for you, you don’t know the number of Dosas you eat, you don’t bother to count them but you keep eating as many of them as your wife keeps putting on your plate- which she does continuously telling you that you need your strength.

And if by a miraculous attack of conscience halfway through you get up and refuse to eat anymore- telling her the doctor advised you to control your diet, then your wife fights with you or bursts into tears and forces you to eat all the dosas she has made, right?

That means there is only possible answer- your wife wants to stuff you enough to make sure you get diabetes, kidney failure, hypertension, cholesterol, heart attack and die pretty soon- that is why she keeps giving you hot, hot dosas straight from the stove, what else can explain her behavior and your over eating?

Any other explanations people?

Eat Shit And Lose Weight ?

Eat Shit, Lose Weight.

Believe me, I am not shitting you

                                                 

The internet serves a wholesome purpose in sharing a lot of vital and hard to get information to us in real time. Careful use of the net helps us to gain a lot of knowledge. But there are some real bloopers floating around the net in the name of science and it is actually hard to identify what’s real and what’s just plain old bull shit.

Talking of shit, reminds me of a rat shit thing I read just yesterday- a breaking news scientific paper on Science magazine which was being amped all over the internet- about how good bacteria from a thin persons stomach would cure obesity if given to a fat person. Intrigued, I went beyond the title and read the full article (as befitting my training as a BS deductor) only to see that it was a rat study and not a human study like the headlines subtly implied. The researchers had taken the fecal droppings (in plain words- rat shit) of a thin rat and fed it to a fat rat, an obese rat as they call it in the paper. This wholesome diet seems to have disagreed with the fat rat for on eating it he seems to have dropped a whole lot of weight which result the researchers immediately attributed to the beneficial effects of the shit, errr the bacteria in the shit from the thin rats stomach which must have shown the fat rats stomach bacteria how to digest the, errrr fat.

Anyway that’s what the researchers say inside the main body of the article unlike in the headlines where they scream in a bold font "New cure found for obesity". But personally I feel that though the result of the study is borderline believable, the reason for the weight loss might be something else entirely when you think about it. The fat rat that was being fed the fecal droppings of the thin rat must have developed an aversion to food and starved like our size zero models who just sniff at food when hungry. If you are a foodie of any sort, you can’t help but sympathize with that fat rat cant you?  I mean, made to eat something like that daily, is it any wonder he lost weight? And now as a follow up to the study, the researchers are planning to do human trials too.  Oh yeah, Eat shit (someone else's) and lose weight must be a very popular slogan to recruit people for the study. I can’t imagine a whole lot of people lining up to take that cure. Not even our desperate size zero models. They would rather starve wouldn’t they?  

Its a whole lot of crap, ain't it?

 

 Anyway the point of this post is to stress the point that medical news on the Internet is often highly hyped but factually incorrect. But a lot of people who see those screaming headlines go onto believe that the damn thing actually works. Very few take the time to read through the whole article to find out what it really says. Even if they do, they can’t understand the scientific jargon and the statistical magic tricks to make sense of the truth beyond the headlines. Besides most medical journals are pay-per-view only and never allow you to read the full thing- they just show you the sensational headlines and leave you to make your own interpretations. Often there is a very vast difference between what the title of an article says and what the real conclusion hidden inside the article says. And  even doctors find it difficult to interpret the real truth from the raw data included in the tables section like an afterthought- which is the only way to check whether a thing really works or the authors are just Bull S'ing you.

So even if the shit for food theory actually works, I don’t see much of a future for any shit-cure pills. What about you dear reader? Care to share your views? That is if you are still reading this post after all those shitty idioms I used above.