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The conversation we had to have (apparently)

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So tonight my physio told me that I needed to lose weight.  There is a whole lot more context that I’ll share in a moment, but to say I was disappointed is putting it simply.

My physio has returned from an 8 day conference at the AIS where he spoke to a specialist in Gluteus Medius Tendonitis about his (my physio’s) patients (me included).  No doubt there were other discussions with other specialists, but one message seems to have been given to my physio by this specialist… and that is that overweight people with this condition will struggle to resolve/heal it while they remain overweight, as the extra weight will aggravate the condition.

So tonight, the first time I’ve seen my physio in 3 weeks (as I started a clinical pilates thing that I’d been doing on my own), he suggests to me that I should lose weight.  In his favour, he was genuinely uncomfortable about saying everything he did, the fact that I didn’t look impressed to be told this most likely added to his discomfort (which I’m so not sorry for).  He did say that being overweight leads to death (well cancers and heart attacks apparently – and why yes my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine and I don’t have a family history of cancer), very, very quickly, before moving onto the fact that extra weight puts extra stress on my tendons and so we can perform maintenance on my tendonitis, and it may heal but it will take significantly longer.  He then recommended (in his favour again) that I see a dietician and discuss with them what I do and don’t eat (tonight’s dinner – stir fried vegetables and chilli marinated tofu, with satay sauce, served with rice), and perhaps have a meal plan developed – utilising my GP to get a referral so that it will be partly covered by Medicare.  And that he’d be happy to talk to me more about it if I wanted him to.

He finished the whole thing off with, “There I’ve said it”.

I spent the next 5 minutes (while he was poking at my back – where a lot of the conversation had also occurred), wondering if I was going to quit this physio and given I have a basic understanding of what I need to do to deal with my back and my tendinitis and whether I should take that elsewhere and maintain myself.  Then I thought about Greta Christina’s weightloss (problematic framing aside) and how she decided to lose weight to stop her knee(s?) from hurting so that she could continue the activities that she wanted to do.  I then thought of another friend of mine whose medication induced weight gain has resulted in a nerve being pinched (I think) in her thigh so it waivers between almost numb tingling and painful tingling, and her medical professionals who have told her that the only solution is for her to lose weight (which is resulting in fun medication adjustments).

So I can sleep without waking up in pain (several times a night), so I can sit cross-legged on the floor/bed/couch, so I can do yoga and Body Balance properly (I can’t do any hip flexion exercises), so I don’t stand up stiff and limping until I’ve walked it out, so I can have sex without paying for it for a few days afterwards, and so I don’t sit in a chair feeling my hip/s ache, do I attempt to lose weight to possibly speed up the process of healing my hips and taking the pressure off them so I am not aggravating the condition or do I just keep doing the exercises hoping that it will get better on it’s own? (nice complex sentence, sorry).

My partners will support me in any decision I make – which is lovely of them, and they tell me that I’m gorgeous, sexy, wonderful, beautiful and lovely now (not in some potential future state).  I could attempt to lose the 10kgs that being on steroids last year (briefly but oh how the weight stuck around) put on, and see where I go from there – whether the pain is less and my ability to move improves.  It won’t be easy (in fact it will suck immensely), but is it the best thing for my body right now?

I currently feel a bit let down by my body, which isn’t fair on it I know.  It does a lot for me, and puts up with all the things I want it to do.  I spent the weekend being depressed about clothes shopping being too goddamn hard because fat people are hard to make clothes for, including spending bits of Sunday in tears because it all sucked so much.  Hearing today that being fat is also aggravating a painful condition that I want treated and healed was not the news I was after.

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food

Fructose

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It’s been a while since I blogged… the whole moving house, having house dramas, Christmas, New Year and desperately searching for work has not helped at all. I have a large number of topics to write on stashed away, and today am going to write on Frutose, and why it is bad for you.

This post was insprired, partly, by meloukhia’s excellent blog, and by her recent post on Bad Science Reporting. meloukhia’s post was specifically relating to bad science journalism and how misreported this study was, however I find the study interesting from my own experiences.

I have Fructose Malabsorption, this is a condition in which my body has enormous difficulty in processing foods that are high in fructose such as apples, pears, mangos, and melons and foods high in fructan such as onions, wheat, legumes, and cabbage. I can no longer eat dried fruit, drink fruit juice or have dishes containing tomato paste (or any concentrated form of fruit). To quote Wikipedia:

“Fructose malabsorption … is a digestive disorder of the small intestine in which the fructose carrier in enterocytes is deficient. This problem results in the concentration of fructose in the entire intestine to be increased. Fructose malabsorption is found in approximately 30-40% of the population of Central Europe, with about half of the affected individuals exhibiting symptoms.”

Basically if I consume foods high in fructose I face intense stomach cramps and diarrhoea for up to 3 days after the consumption of food. This isn’t a condition I’ve had my whole life, this is something that has gradually gotten worse over the past 5 years. But that happens… bodies sometimes, for reasons we don’t understand, decide that they are intolerant or allergic to something after repeated exposure.

Oh… and have a look at the foods I cannot eat… This makes eating out difficult – onion is typically in EVERYTHING, and it is very hard to know if something contains tomato paste… so I typically avoid everything tomato-y when eating out these days.

Anyway… so fructose is bad for me. Fructose is also bad for those with irritable bowel syndrome as discussed by Shepherd and Gibson (2006). In fact many of the symptoms described in that paper match how I feel… and I really need to see a dietician to find out what I can and cannot eat so I stop inadvertently eating foods I shouldn’t.

Anyway… back to the recent study on fructose and it being bad for you. There is a good report here about the study, including a comment from one of the authors of the study. Basically it found that the members of the study who had a high fructose diet gained extra abdominal fat… quoting from the article linked to above:

“…unlike glucose, some of which passes through the liver and is then excreted, 100% of fructose that’s consumed is taken up by the liver. This is turn leads to increased fat deposition in the abdominal cavity and increased blood levels of triglycerides—both of which are risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.”

I’m actually interested in a lot more of these studies. As someone who struggles to identify what I can and cannot eat if fructose becomes something that must be more clearly reported on in food and medications, then my life is going to be much easier. Right now I avoid everything with apples, juice (no more sorbet), pears, and high fructose corn syrup (thankfully not highly used in Australia), and I am attempting to cut down on wheat consumption – and I bake goddamnit… what am I supposed to bake with when I cannot consume wheat?

Fructose malabsorption can be a debilitating condition at times, I feel exhausted and weak when it is really bad. Once I have a settled diet, I will have all the energy I need and more, hopefully.

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