Canada has been struggling to keep up with a significant increase in obesity related illnesses in recent years. This problem is causing a great deal of financial strain on the healthcare system that was nationalized some decades ago therein. Recent information as of 2008 indicates that roughly 4.2 million Canadian adults are now obese. This is over 17% of the entire population residing in Canada, and represents a serious public health risk. Many people are thinking about weight loss surgery to tackle these problems, but there are many risks to this sort of treatment. Even if Canada’s obesity rate is about half the US’s by proportion to their population, it’s still a serious problem that’s harming their healthcare system and straining their resources. Many provincial governments, however, are now offering to cover weight loss surgeries (such as bariatric treatments) in the hopes it will help people control their weight gain.
Most provinces of Canada, for example, think of obesity as a disease. Treatment for obesity, as a natural result, is going to be considered to be a necessary thing to treat patients. Things such as lap band surgery or gastric bypass are very common and typically covered by insurance as mandatory by the health system. Not every single location will cover these treatments, and these methods are not always the most reliable at producing significant bodily changes that last. Research on patient outcomes years after such surgeries are not universally positive. Many people actually (well over 70%) fail to even achieve long term success even after such an expensive and dangerous procedure. Still, this does offer one of the more effective long term weight loss treatments, though it is very invasive and costly.
Insurance and Medicare Payments for Obesity Surgery
When and if your insurance, or Medicare wind up paying for your surgery, you will often be waiting a long time to get into your doctor to have it done. It can even take several years before a doctor has time to do so. In Canada, this is a serious problem, much worse than state side. The Ministry of Health in Ontario for example will pay for gastric bypass, but tries to actually send them to private weight loss facilities instead to cut down on backlogs. It’s not always possible to do this and varies considerably. In the USA, typically you can choose your doctor (so long as he’s willing to accept government issued insurances) and they will complete the surgery. Most private insurance policies in the USA do not cover obesity related surgeries, though in some circumstances they do. Demand for this procedure is high, and only specialists are able to do it, so typically the costs out of pocket can run into the tens of thousands.
Today more than ever in history, obesity is impacting our nations and our livelihoods. If you want to go the weight loss surgery route, you will often find support from insurance, the government or otherwise. However, do realize that this isn’t just a quick fix, you need to make real wholesale changes in your diet as well. Many people who go through these surgeries fail to achieve long term weight loss results. It may seem incredible that someone could reduce the size of their stomach by 95% and still gain weight, but it’s possible if people force themselves to eat foods that are poor quality and unhealthy. The goal here is to cut down on your hunger so that you can sustain a healthier lifestyle. This is a drastic step as well, you should try other proven obesity treatments as often as possible prior to diving into something invasive like lap band surgery. It’s very important to consider all of your options and start out with other proven methods like HCG or Garcinia or similar first.
The original protocol (and the modern approach) mandate three phases: loading, very low calorie diet, and maintenance phases. They do vary depending on the diet you choose to work with, as the more modern protocols allow for more leeway in what foods can be eaten and if exercise can be done on the diet. The loading and maintenance phases are basically the same universally.
New research has actually found that coffee beans, if they are unroasted, possess many unique and beneficial antioxidants and minerals. During the roasting process, much of this is lost due to the temperatures involved, but as it turns out the natural beans are much more healthy for people to consume. Green coffee beans cannot really be used for drinks, however, as they don’t work the same way. The roasting process frees up much of the caffeine and oils allowing them to seep through into water during brewing. Green coffee doesn’t have this happen as the extract is not able to be brewed in this manner, and the antioxidants are preserved without roasting. It’s just not possible to eat green coffee itself as it’s unpalatable.
Farming was only developed some 10,000 years ago. Prior to that humans lived in groups of hunter-gatherers and were specifically as “scavenger” type of species. Certain types of whole grains, for example, are really not very good for us as a result. Many parts of the Paleo diet recommend a completely gluten-free daily intake as well as this is what is most natural. Beyond wheat, things like corn, barley, millet, rye, rice and oats are not permitted on the diet. You also wouldn’t be permitted to eat anything that’s made from these ingredients as well. A more natural thing that our ancestors had access to was food they could gather from plants, which includes hanging fruits, berries, other types of natural fruits that haven’t been cultivated and changed for centuries.
A majority benefit of the Mediterranean diet or the Paleo diet is the ability it has to offset a person’s insulin resistance, and can actually prevent diabetes. A person can develop diabetes through weight gain as well as excess sugar within your diet. However, if you cut out many of these foods not only will you lose weight but you will also achieve fantastic health benefits as well. These diets can even cut a person’s risks of heart disease, stroke or kidney failure. By eating healthy fats, proteins and fewer calories each day a person builds up their pancreatic health which helps them avoid many of these bad symptoms that often accompany diabetes. There’s even many studies that indicates a person’s risk of developing this disease later in life drops considerably if a person is on such a diet regimen. If you have high levels of blood sugar a lot, even if you’re not diabetic, your body responds by making excessive amounts of insulin. This has many negative long term results, such as sclerosis of the arteries in many patients.
After putting considerable effort into exercise or dieting, you look back on how you achieved it. You probably felt motivated looking in the mirror every day and weighing yourself. However, these things are temporary. When you hate something about yourself, it’s easy to change it with strong motivation to do so. Once you achieve the results, however, that hatred goes away as does your motivation. How is it that you cannot stay that way? Well it’s no surprise when your primary motivation disappears.
The unfortunate reality of losing weight on any method, whether it’s been shown to work in studies or not, is that it takes some sacrifice. Individual sacrifices were minimized as best as possible on the HCG diet (at least at the time it was formed), though the modern method makes some key changes that make it even easier to stick to. However, regardless of the method used, the protocol is broken down into 3 phases to maximize the success of the user, and make the results stick.
There are a lot of natural weight loss methods, but most of them have never been tested clinically and proven to work. The African mango weight loss program uses a natural extract of a plant that has been shown to work in numerous studies at creating weight loss. Unlike Garcinia Cambogia, African Mango appears to be entirely appetite suppressing in its impact on the bottle. This extract comes from the family Irvingia Gabonensis, but is used orally to help treat obesity. This is now one of the most popular weight loss treatments in the world, both because of the fantastic results it offers without changing the person’s diet, but also because of its natural, side effect free nature.
As always, it’s advisable to discuss with a doctor before trying any new method of weight loss out for yourself. However, there are definitely methods out there which provide rapid weight loss naturally, without all of the health risks with prescription treatments. Though many are aware of the HCG diet program, this method does offer rapid weight loss, usually 20 to 30 pounds per month for most users. This is around 10 times higher than use with phentermine or other prescriptions. Additionally, HCG is completely natural and works well in nearly all users. However, the talk of the weight loss community is not HCG, nor is it diet or exercise, it’s Garcinia Cambogia. This natural weight loss aid has found huge support among physicians and researchers as studies have clearly shown it to be a powerful metabolic booster. Most users will lose the same high levels of weight as HCG, but they need only slightly modify their diet. Garcinia uses an extract from the Cambogia family of fruits, which have been clearly shown in numerous studies to not only boost metabolism and decrease appetite, but generate weight loss through a unique mechanism. This works so well, that many personalities have picked up on its use, including Doctor Oz on his television show.