A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called How Loving My Body Saved My Life about the bad reaction I had to my very last diet, the Atkins diet. One of the comments I got made me laugh. They could not believe that doing Atkins' induction would cause arrhythmias. And I obviously consumed too much coffee or caffeine pills. Because as a fat person, it is generally assumed we do not know our own bodies. I often refer to this as the victimization mentality. I have mentioned my theory before in this blog how fat people are either villains or victims. Obviously I was too stupid to know the difference between caffeine jitters and and something wrong with my heart. But I did do something stupid at the time and it wasn't drinking coffee (caffeine was no-no on Atkins, btw) and that wasn't listening to my body.
Speaking of not listening to your body, I previously wrote about deaths from the Lapband in California in regards to ads that made the lapband sound like a ssimple and easy surgery (and has so far killed about five people). Katie Hodges from CA has a petition up for better Regulations for Lap Band Surgery Centers.
State Senator Curren Price Jr. (D-Inglewood) has proposed a bill which would give these private accreditation agencies new authority to stop unsafe centers from jumping from one agency to another with no documentation of their poor safety record. The state medical board would be obligated to document unsafe centers and this information would be available to the public.
I suggest you all sign her petition and if you live in California, email or write Governor Jerry Brown.
And about another Governor, Chris Christie. I am not a fan but I don't care if he's fat. This article points out:
...Christie handled the issue with deft humor, pointing out that the fact he’s fat isn’t exactly a secret, and mocking Corzine in return for being desperate enough to make an issue of it.
If you attack someone by how they look, you lose the argument. It means you have run out of ideas.
Oh you very much CAN have arrhythmias with diets like Atkins, or in my case Dukan. I've done Atkins before, and never had any dramas. But Dukan gave me arrhythmias, to the point that my boss made me go down to the site medical centre. They did a simple EKG-like thing, and determined that I was going to the hospital, STAT. At the hospital they took a very detailed history, took bloods and fluids, hooked me up with about 3000 sticky electrodes, and finally determined that I was in fact not having a heart attack, no was I on the brink of death (because you know, the moment they saw it was a FAT woman, people were planning on what to wear to my funeral...)
As it turns out, my zero carb diet was the culprit, and I was advised to go home, eat some vegies and maybe some fruit, chill out and relax, and see what happened. If the arhythmias continued through the night and into the next morning I was to report back to the hospital at first light.
I went home, had a small amount of mixed vegies, and an apple, and within 45 minutes the arhythmias had comepltely ceased.
I have deprived my body of carbs, like completely totally literally and thoroughly deprived it, and the result was that my heart ws not happy about that.
That ended my involvement with no-to-low carb diets. I figure if doing that for 6 days was enough to cause my heart to skip and jump and flutter and everything thing else it was doing, then what would happen to it long term, and what would it do to my other organs? No, I just couldn't see the sense in pursuing thin in that way.
Naturally, when you're fat, you have ZERO credibility. You can't possibly have any sense, nor can you tell the truth. You consistantly lie to not only everyone around you but yourself as well. You're lazy, unmotivated, slovenly, unkempt, stupid, and otherwise unsuitable to live. OF COURSE your arrhythmias were a figment of your imagination--there's nothing in your head but fat.
(I hope my sarcasm and utter disgust toward people who simply can not accept that fat people are still people and have no less worth simply because they have more body.)
Posted by: Kirsten | October 04, 2011 at 07:38 AM
The symptoms you describe make complete sense to me - I was anorexic in my teens and early twenties, and I remember the terrifying way that my heart used to thump, especially when I woke up and was trying to get out of bed. I think it's not necessarily about the low carb thing, but about having very low blood sugar - when I started recovering I started thinking of it as my heart was trying to pump more blood around because it was trying to get more sugar into my depleted cells. The same way your heart rate goes up when you breathe fast and it needs to move oxygen and carbon dioxide through you faster.
Posted by: Liz | October 04, 2011 at 10:32 AM
Signed and signed.
I stand foursquare against the use of WLS... but more than that, I support the right of people to go into medical facilities reasonably secure in the knowledge that they are in good hands.
Nobody deserves to but put unsuspectingly into the hands of quacks, no matter how much I may not approve of the procedure they are undergoing.
You know, sort of like I don't think I'm likely ever to head in for plastic surgery, but that doesn't mean I want people getting nose jobs and breast implants to suffer needlessly, let alone die.
Safety records are important. It ought to be a no-brainer to take them into consideration when deciding whether or not to allow people to perform surgery on the human body.
Posted by: Twistie | October 04, 2011 at 04:12 PM
100% signed. Also, this was a great blog about Christie, in case you haven't seen it: http://red3.blogspot.com/2011/09/all-fat-bodies-are-made-into-public.html
Posted by: Jen | October 05, 2011 at 04:18 PM