Comments by "Dennis Young" (@dennisyoung4631) on "How One Drug Could Break America’s Health Care System" video.

@dannydaw59 “… in some areas.”
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@randibgood true. Some people - perhaps 5% of the population - have a rather unpleasant choice: Either be severely overweight, or adopt a diet and exercise program that causes equally severe side effects. I’m speaking of needing to restrict one’s calorie intake to anorexic levels AND perform substantial amounts of exercise, e.g. two or more hours each day, such as walking 5+ miles a day AND half an hour or more every day of mild weight training. The side effects included a lowered body temperature, e.g. 95.8 F; resting heart rate of fifty; severe constipation, which required large doses of stool softeners daily; extreme insomnia, with two hours a day of sleep or less; a measured (in a hospital setting) resting metabolism of 1180 calories per day; and slowly falling blood pressure. The exercise required resulted in being in constant pain - pain severe enough to need prescriptions. Yes, I am hypothyroid as well. I have a number of other health problems, most of which started in childhood - including chronic pancreatitis, which started then with a tendency toward hypoglycemia attacks.
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Depends on how much less, too. Most people would manage with cutting their intake by perhaps a third. MOST people. There’s a small percentage of the population that would need to go much further to achieve meaningful results, e.g. if you have hypothyroidism that’s not being “aggressively” treated, but rather begrudgingly - as well as other health issues that can cause overeating. Say you need to eat under a thousand calories a day more or less permanently, unless you camp out in the gym/swimming pool. (You can eat a little more then.) Oh, and then you do well to sleep more than 3 hours a day, too. You’ll want to secure stool softeners in bulk. (Yes, even if you eat plenty of veggies.) Your metabolism follows your food intake down, down, down, until your body temperature is 95.8, your resting heart rate gets dangerously low, your blood pressure starts falling, such that you can get off some blood pressure meds…. All of these symptoms are those of Clinical Anorexia. Note that I’ve done the above in the past, so it’s not hypothetical. It’s simply what is required in some cases. It’s not much of a life, and the side effects of a drastic weight loss regime - needed by some people to achieve substantial weight loss - aren’t much better than those of being severely overweight. If you cannot “rejoin the human race” due to things you were born with - then is it worth it???
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@freethebirds3578 That is especially true in the short term. Do you live in, or near, one of these so-called “food deserts” I’ve heard about? (Simple curiosity. I believe your price figures. I’ve had to give up almost all processed foods due to chronic pancreatitis and gluten intolerance - too much fat, too much gluten (severe fatigue, diarrhea, nausea) and sugar (extreme insomnia, blood sugar instabilities.). Makes it really hard to prepare food on a limited “income” - and I’m terrible at cooking.)
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This is due to the extreme Social Darwinism so many people believe, at least in part. The reality is that under such conditions, or related ones, one must be prepared to live a life where the only things that matter are calorie-restriction and exercise - which in my case means becoming a clinical anorexic!
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