Читать книгу The Obesity Code Cookbook - Jason Fung - Страница 12

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introduction

carrying was more than an aesthetic issue—it was largely responsible for

the development of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, dramat-

ically increasing the risk of heart attacks, stroke, cancer, kidney disease,

blindness, amputations, and nerve damage, among other problems. Obe-

sity was not some peripheral topic of medicine. I was realizing that it

was central to most of the diseases I was encountering as a physician—

and I knew almost nothing about it.

As a kidney specialist, what I did know was that the most common

cause of kidney failure, by far, was type 2 diabetes. And I treated patients

with diabetes exactly as I had been trained to—the only way I knew how—

with drugs like insulin and procedures like dialysis.

From experience, I knew that insulin would cause weight gain. Actu-

ally, everybody knew insulin caused weight gain. Patients were rightly

concerned. “Doctor,” they would say, “you’ve always told me to lose

weight. But the insulin you gave me makes me gain so much weight.

How is this helpful?” For a long time, I didn’t have a good answer for

them, because the truth was, it wasn’t helpful.

Under my care, my patients were just not getting healthier. I was sim-

ply holding their hands as they deteriorated. They were unable to lose

weight. Their type 2 diabetes progressed. Their kidney disease grew more

serious. The drugs, surgeries, and procedures weren’t doing any good.

Why?

The root cause of the entire problem was the weight. Their obesity

was causing metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, which then caused

all their other health problems. Yet almost the entire system of modern

medicine, with its pharmacopoeia, with its nanotechnology, with all the

genetic wizardry, was focused myopically on the end problems.

Nobody was treating the root cause. Even if we treated their kidney

disease with dialysis, patients were still left with their obesity, type 2

diabetes, and every other obesity-related complication. We needed to treat

obesity. Instead, we were trying to treat the problems caused by obesity

rather than obesity itself. This was the way that I, and virtually every