July 28th, 2011
A 22-stone ex-policeman who was refused a gastric bypass operation because his body mass index was not high enough has lost his Court of Appeal battle to get his local authority to pay for the surgery.
62 year old Tom Condliff became obese after the cocktail of drugs taken to treat his long term diabetes made him pile on the pounds.
After a multitude of unsuccessful endeavours to lose weight by other means, Mr Condliff eventually applied for a gastric bypass operation but was later told he did not qualify for treatment because his body mass index of 43 was not enough under his North Staffordshire Primary Care Trust’s rules.
NHS guidelines in England and Wales recommend that patients be considered for surgery if they have a BMI of over 40, or lower if they are affected by other serious medical conditions.
However, in North Staffordshire only patients with a body mass index above 50 qualify for weight loss surgery and thus Mr...
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July 25th, 2011
In a bid to save £20 billion over the next four years, the NHS have ruled that obese patients and smokers must attempt to lose weight or quit smoking independently before being considered for surgery.
Doctors from 50 surgeries in the Hertfordshire area are to turn away obese patients and smokers seeking a routine hip or knee replacement surgery, until they have sought help from a weight management or smoking cessation scheme
These restrictions came into play around eight weeks ago and are soon to be extended to cover all routine surgery over the next few months.
After Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans to give the bulk of the NHS budget to GPs instead of managers, the move has inspired other doctors up and down the UK to consider the introduction of similar rules themselves.
Smokers who refuse to make an effort to give up cigarettes will not be banned completely from having surgery but instead of a direct referral to hospital...
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July 21st, 2011
51 year old Kerry Down knew she had to take drastic measures after having a heart attack at the age of 51.
Weighing in at 15 stone Kerry and her 17 stone daughter Amy had tried dieting together numerous times but had very little success in their endeavours. However, after Kerry had a heart attack back in march, both she and her 29 year old daughter Amy had found the motivation they needed to become a healthy weight.
The mother and daughter pair decided to try a different approach to weight loss and booked themselves in for a series of sessions with a Portsmouth hypnotherapy clinic specialising in gastric band hypnotherapy.
Kerry said that she had already booked herself in for a hypnotherapy consultation session when she told Amy, who also decided that it was time to sort her diet out for good.
“We’d talked about possibly having gastric surgery before, but it was too expensive. This seemed like a good cheaper alternative, so I thought I would give it a...
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July 18th, 2011
Researchers from the University of Aberdeen have revealed that westerners could be genetically programmed to eat more fatty foods and drink more alcohol than those living in the east.
According to the scientists involved in the study there is a genetic switch which regulates appetite and thirst in humans. Dr Alasdair MacKenzie who led the study, revealed that this switch controls the areas of the brain which allow us to select which foods we want to eat and if it is turned on too strongly, we are more likely to crave both fatty foods and alcohol.
He added: “The fact that the weaker switch is found more frequently in Asians compared to Europeans suggests they are less inclined to select such options.”
MacKenzie also said that the results allow us a look into early European life when brewing and dairy produce were essential sources of calories throughout the winter months, during which a preference for foods which were higher in fat...
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July 14th, 2011
According to figures from the Royal College of General Practitioners, the number of males suffering from eating disorders is increasing.
Though it is true that a larger proportion of eating disorder sufferers are female, the charity beat estimates that of the 1.6 million sufferers in the UK, one in every five are male.
Because the Department of Health only keeps records of hospital admissions and not the exact amount of sufferers there are in England, it is difficult to judge the exact scale of the problem. However, NHS hospital admission figures for England show that during the past 10 years, the number of male sufferers admitted to hospital has increased by 66 per cent.
As it stands, men of a low weight who visit the doctors may find that they are wrongly diagnosed with depression as the majority of diagnosis methods for eating disorders are based around females. In response to these findings the Royal College of General Practitioners are...
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July 11th, 2011
Back in February Hypnotherapy Directory covered the story of former police officer Tom Condliff taking his primary care trust to court for denying him a gastric bypass operation. Today, Condliff will return to court in a bid to overturn the High Court Ruling rejecting his request.
62 year old Condliff saw his weight spiral out of control after he began taking a complex cocktail of medication to treat his diabetes.
Despite the drugs pushing his weight to 22 stone and his body mass index to 43, this was not enough for him to qualify for the gastric bypass operation, which could not only help weight loss but also to reduce and improve his diabetes symptoms.
62 year old Condliff has become obese as a result of the drugs he has taken to treat his diabetes, but has been told by his local NHS trust that he is not overweight enough to qualify for the surgery.
In the first case of it’s kind, Condliff appealed against the decision, stating...
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