HEALTHCARE QUAGMIRE
April 1993, Obese, weight ~250 pounds, age 55.
April 1993, Obese, weight 250 pounds.
Greeting agent, Tugicigalpa, Honduras.
From August 1963, 185 pounds, to April 1993, 250 pounds, is a gain of 65 pounds in 30 years. “Just a little over 2 pounds a year” is hardly noticeable. That is how it happened, a steady, slow creeping up! But it is going to get a lot worse.
Three years later my hearing failed, and I was forced to take a medical retirement at age 58. The requirement to keep my blood pressure under control was lifted. Over time I developed high blood pressure which my doctors controlled by prescribing Atenolol and Losartan. Gout was controlled with Alopurinol, and Type 2 diabetes with Metformin.
As I said on the home page, this subject deserves its own website and possibly a YouTube channel. I am far too old to carry this on and need to find others that would like to take on this project to sort out our healthcare dilemma we have fallen into.
No more photos here, just boring text. I will try to be clear on what is opinion, but the data is all documented with after-visit summaries from my primary doctor. I will begin with a major event that happened in February of 2013.
I developed severe lower back pain that continued down my left leg. They diagnosed arachnoiditis of the spine, a rare, painful neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the arachnoid mater, one of the three membranes that protect the brain and spinal cord. There is no cure, only symptomatic relief. Up to this point in life I was very active, obese, but mobile. The surgery put me into a wheelchair but took away all the pain. (To this day!)
I weighed exactly 300 pounds, was in the hospital for 6 days and rehab for 28 days. I learned to use a walker for a short distance out of the wheelchair. (Added a low dose of Citalopram to my other four prescription drugs.) Back home, instead of losing weight, I continued my terrible eating habits. On my primary care doctor’s visit, January 2020, seven years after the surgery, I hit my top weight, 340 pounds! I have made bad mistakes in life, but this was the worst and most stupid.
I was 82 years old! My doctor adjusted my prescription drugs, gave me a copy of the USDA food tree, and sent me on my way. I chose to go on a Mediterranean diet. I got down to 280 but bounced back to 300.
Another serious health event happened in late autumn 2022. Deaf in my right ear, and hard of hearing in my left ear, I woke up with a more severe loss of hearing in my left ear. It seemed to be a middle-earth problem that might resolve itself. No, an ENT doctor confirmed it was some sort of unexplained inner nerve damage and permanent. Head noise became worse. I was miserable!
Many doctors, including a few heart surgeons on the Internet promoted a ketogenic diet for weight loss. It does not tell you what to eat except that you must cut carbohydrates down to about 20 grams total per day. I started it with intermittent fasting and the weight loss in 2023 was incredible! It can be done on a vegetarian diet, but I chose to go with steak and eggs. It included some asparagus, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.
More than just losing weight on a ketogenic diet, it can reverse metabolic problems like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gout, and sleep apnea. By August of 2023 I reversed all my metabolic problems, and I've been off all five prescription drugs for over two years now. By December of 2023 I got down to 210 pounds. For all of 2024 I continued between 210 and 200 pounds and wondered in 2025 if I could get down to 185 pounds like I was when I was 25 years old. The answer is… yes!
Documented weights: 2/25/2013 300 pounds, 72 inches tall – BMI 40
Riverside Hospital (Spine Surgery) 6 days, Rehab 1 month, put me into a wheelchair.
See below, seven years to gain weight from 300 to 340. Who do I blame for that? Me alone!
The weights below are taken from MyChart, all with my primary care doctor visits.
2/25/2013 300 Riverside Hospital (Spine Surgery
1/16/2020 340 Ohio Health after visit summary.
6/17/2020 327 Ohio Health after visit summary.
12/30/2022 286 Ohio Health visit.
2/10/2023 278 Ohio Health after visit summary. (Doctor prescribed Lipitor. I refused.)
12/4/2023 210 Ohio Health after visit summary.
2/7/2024 207 Ohio Health after visit summary.
8/11/2024 204 Ohio Health after visit summary.
2/12/2025 189 Ohio Health after visit summary.
(The future? 10/1/2025 next visit with primary care doctor. Will I make 185 pounds?)
Enter the quagmire. If my results were just a freak of nature for one person it would be of little consequence to the processed food companies, the sugar companies, and especially the pharmaceutical companies. If a ketogenic diet worked for most people, it would cost them billions of dollars if not trillions! Obviously, they cannot let that happen! They have infiltrated the media and the government agencies. No one is going to fund a quality study to show that you can use diet and lifestyle change to eliminate prescription drugs. It will have to be a grassroot effort by people who have benefited from it.
My spine surgery success shows that our doctors and hospitals can fix some major problems and return us to good health. None of them are trained to help us avoid metabolic problems in the first place.
(NOTE: I was put on blood pressure meds, Atenolol and Losartan in Nevada in 2005, 18 years before I weaned them myself in 2023.)
I learned, sadly, that Medicare won’t pay hospitals and doctors if they do not follow published guidelines. That is anti-science!
August 1963, Lean, great shape, 25 years old weight 185.
(Just returned from flying around Cuba to make sure the Russians were pulling their missles out.)
Guessing. Probably winter 1953/54 Paperboy age 15.
We do not get to choose where or when we were born. For me it was Cleveland, Ohio, 1938. That seemingly arbitrary year set the decade of the fifties as pivotal in the transition from childhood to adulthood.
In 1950 I was 12 years old and in 1960 I was 22 years old. Back then we did not have Diet Coke or Pepsi, and I drank gallons of sugar water and ate thousands of candy bars. Polio was the terrifying scourge and only one of my friends was obese because he was confined to a wheelchair and could not exercise. One other friend was a little less affected by polio and could manage getting around with a walker and leg braces. He was in good shape. No one had Type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes was unheard of. Is it true that now most teenagers are at least pre-diabetic?
I the fifties we were Boy Scouts and frequently went on five-mile hikes. We all had bicycles, played touch football, sandlot baseball when we had enough people or just chased fly balls down in the outfield. We were strong and lean, as we burned off all those excess sugar calories every day.
For four years I delivered the Cleveland Press to sixty customers, six days a week. We did not have plastic wrap, and each paper had to be hand folded and placed out of the weather inside a storm door or a milk chute.