Blow to Obesity Fight as Weight Loss Drug Meridia Withdrawn
The fight against the rising tide of obesity took another step backwards today as the promising weight loss drug Meridia was withdrawn from sale in the United States over health concerns associated with its use.
The drugs companies have spent billions of dollars on long, painstaking research into finding that magic bullet that will cure the nation's rising obesity epidemic.
No Magic Bullet Yet
Yet to date only a small handful of weight loss drugs remain available for patients and of those, only one is licensed for long term use and the damning evidence suggests that none are really effective in reducing people's weight.
It seems that the search for a cure to America's growing fat population problem is no further ahead than it was 20 years ago as a startling two thirds of the population are now overweight with a third of that number being clinically obese. The Obesity Society expressed their frustration at the lack of effective pharmaceutical intervention and called for more research to be undertaken into finding drugs that will curb the problem.
But experts counter this by saying that drugs are not necessarily the answer to the problem and education into the basic means of weight maintenance needs to be made more effective in getting people to eat more healthily and exercise more often. But this advice seems to fall upon deaf ears as diets tend to fail many people who lack the discipline to stick to them and then turn to drugs or even surgery as their means of salvation.
The sad fact is that if only these people spent less time watching television or playing computer games and more time exercising, getting fresh air into their lungs and being mindful of what they are eating, there would not even be a national weight problem.
There wasn't a problem 50 years ago before the epidemic of fast food restaurants and processed, ready to eat foods grew up and are now overwhelming the population with advertisements to buy these foods, nor were there computer games and television was not watched so much. People spent more time outdoors and were far more active than today and they didn't need pills to do the job that their own bodies are designed to do when they're used properly.
Modern Health-Impacting Toxins
Remember also that nowadays, most food sold in stores in packets, cans or jars is processed and made from ingredients that are either genetically modified or exposed to a lot of chemicals and especially the herbicide, glyphosate (Roundup). There is plenty of discussion about this and other agricultural chemicals sprayed on crops and how they adversely affect the health of anyone ingesting foods that have been exposed to them.
If you dismiss that as it's just about crops (vegetables), don't think you can get away from those chemicals by eating a meat diet. That meat comes from animals that are fed on those toxin-laced foodstuffs and to make things worse, those animals are routinely injected with hormones, antibiotics and other medications to make them grow faster and produce more meat while being fed grains and ″feed″ that contain animal protein (from the waste product of other animals that were also fed on the same toxic food).
The only way to get meat that is approaching a healthy state is to get it direct from an organic farmer that allows his animals to graze on grass. The same goes for dairy.
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Posted on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 in News | 0 Comments