You'd think that would be a reasonable request. Concerned mother who's been following the rules since 2007 wants further inquiry, resolution and probably reassurance from specialists. Unsurprisingly, beyond the usual diet and exercise. Nothing doing. Ms Johnson and Falicia were referred by the child's paediatrician to the ironically named Children's Mercy Hospital. Where they offered her succinct but utterly useless white coat fat phobia.
They believed Falicia was eating too much and that her mother could stop it. Trans. we have nothing and we're going to make someone else feel bad about that. I have to commend the mother on her calm approach, it's a priceless gift for her daughter.
The hospital effectively failed child and mother. Refusing to do any blood work-though Falicia has had plenty and has been well monitored-to try and find a cause once and for all. Now the story becomes odd as next day, the mother was met by Missouri's child services. The hospital had apparently "hotlined" her claiming her daughter had a disease called "blout"(?)
Something that doesn't appear to exist in humans.
Either way, they'd effectively refused to investigate. A later one showed the child's blood sugar and cholesterol to be in the acceptable range.
The point of this sorry little tale is we cannot get beyond ELDM even for the sake of the children. What's worse of course is that this hypothesis is unfalsifiable. Once accused it is virtually impossible to refute. Which is supposed to take it outside the realms of evidenced based.
[I'm so diplomatic today!]
Even if that assumption has validity, you're not out of the woods. Excuse the usual inflammatory reporting here, it is unpleasant.
Now it's clear seven year old Jessica has both the issue of speedy weight gain/high weight and dysfunctional appetite and hunger signals-which simply aren't switching off despite being responded to. That is incidentally, how we all eat. We respond to our hunger and appetite signals, that's what they are for. If there are too many, or they're constant and unresponsive to eating, that is what needs to be addressed. If only to relieve perpetual torment.
If you haven't experienced this, do not imagine the rubbish you hear about 'food addiction' or binge eating describes this properly, or just how unbearable it is. It is some kind of imbalance in the brain and/or nervous system.
Jessica was taken into a paediatric hospital and put on a strict calorie controlled diet and exercise programme. Under the aegis of child services.
Here's a follow up to that intervention at an 'obesity' clinic.
So problem solved.
Except it isn't. All that happened is one symptom has been removed-weight. Though relieving the weight on her body. It also leaves behind 20 pounds of loose skin-which she will be operated on to remove. It is assumed that's a product of weight loss after the stretch of higher weight. It's more a sign of the shock low energy weight loss dieting is to the system. Making it an apt metaphor. What has shrunk the body has left the underlying equation the same. Just taking up less space, within its larger creation.
Leaving the poor person to do a whole lot of teeth gritting. Forcing herself to exercise 5 days a week, forcing herself to eat less and to not eat certain things. Walking through a ceaseless mental forest of an ever present urge.
Her malfunctioning high appetite and hunger are left intact. How to convey this, ever tried to stay up all night? Ever get to the point where it becomes excruciating to remain awake and it's second by second effort of concentration and will? Imagine feeling an urge that strong all. the. time.
Would you deem that 'addiction'? No, it's an actual imperative to do something, not a deficiency. A basic visceral urge like, a phobia-which isn't a normal fear, but sometimes kind of worse and more pressing.
Addiction is a craving for something your body lacks. Not drugs, but the pleasure or reward chemicals your body reduced the function of, when they were being taken in an artificial or outside source habitually. To stop you overdosing. People want the drugs because their system isn't recovering.
The reasons behind seeing this malfunction as 'addiction' are why poor Jessica has nothing but some pills-yet another junked up child courtesy of 'healthcare'- to try and battle through a constant pressure. It's the kind of pain that doesn't hurt like a cut, but that takes you to the edge of your emotional endurance nonetheless.
That's why she cries out. You can see what her mother was responding to. Luckily the people at the clinic remained strong and set her straight, by the admirable 'discipline' of not giving a shit.
I cringe at the thought that these kinds of pills will do anything to deal with the problem. You can cheat neuroses like depression to some degree, but not a mechanical failing like this. Where real understanding i.e. science is required.
This is why I get angry, because children like these get caught up by this mindless zombie cult of the obesity void. They should have been able to depend on us grown ups getting our act together by now, instead they have to inherit this fiasco. What has to happen, what do these children have to go through, before it is enough?
By now, there should have been major investigation into how to switch these signals down. If they had, Jessica and others like her would never have reached the point she did.
By now there should have been a thorough mapping out of how human metabolism functions.
If the desire to help was there it would have produced something by now. To do that you have to recognize what you don't have. Many eyes are stuck on the magic bullet legend. But it's the caring for people, continually trying to meet their needs, that has so often given medicine direction and ideas.
Without that there's what? The hatred of fat adults, is one thing, but transferring that to children is unconscionable. The indulgence ought to be put aside for them. But the health establishment simply will not. Instead of reporting parents to child services, they should be reporting "obesity science" to some authority for being uselessly irrelevant and out of touch with actual needs.
Look at what other fields have achieved in the time wasted on one punitive, ineffectual strategy. How long will this go on?
In my case, which wasn't as serious as Jessica's appears to be. I was lucky to stumble upon an answer by mistake. After I took up meditation and other calming techniques for symptoms of anxiety that were threatening to overwhelm me.
I do not extrapolate for the heck of it, but I'm pretty sure this strongly suggests that it is possible to find some predictable, repeatable, in other words scientific way to reduce excess hunger and appetite signals significantly. Without drugs.This is systemic imbalance, not acquired habit. It is not caused by food. It is the mechanics of the nervous system and it's affect on metabolism. There is hope, there are answers.
But only if science actually bothers to look.
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