Health Update

by Mylene Mendoza-Dayrit

More than any part of the body, the midsection is the most common problem of men and women especially as they age. While gravity’s pull seems to be stronger as years pass, resulting in sagging arms and breasts, the walls of the gut seem to collapse, resulting in protrusions and bulges. Now come two doctors who’ve taken it as their mission to explain in simple and even humorous and engaging ways why many of us struggle with managing our waistlines. They go by the dictum, “Knowledge is power.” They want to empower readers by allowing them to understand how the body stores and burns fat for successful and long-term waist and weight management. Released only last year, the book YOU on a Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management is already on the bestsellers’ list. Honestly, it is easy to overlook this book as the cover doesn’t stand out. While National Book Store sent me a copy for my comments, it stared at me for weeks until I chanced upon the authors Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Minutes after watching the show, the nuggets of information animatedly shared by Dr. Oz while showing props of body organs captivated me enough to grab the book and uncover the secrets to waist management. As the title implies, the authors’ main message is that you should focus on achieving and maintaining a healthy waistline, for this is a better indication of health than your weight. A bigger waistline than ideal (less than 32 for women and 35 for men) means an abnormal fat storage that increases one’s medical risks for a lot of diseases. Testimonials were featured showing how the YOU doctors helped changed their daily eating and exercise routines. Both women interviewed claim that the changes were minor and easy to stick to. Both remarkably lost a lot of inches from their midsections. The regimen they followed is outlined in the latter part of the book after the medical pair first explain the dynamics of how food is processed and stored. Dr. Oz is the vice-chairman of surgery and professor of cardiac surgery at Columbia University. His research interests include heart replacement surgery, minimally invasive cardiac surgery, complementary medicine, and health care policy. Dr. Mike Roizen is the chairman of the Anesthesiology Division, Critical Care Medicine and Pain Management at the Cleveland Clinic as well as the founder and chair of the Scientific Advisory Board or Real Age (I featured before a website www.realage.com where you can take a test and, depending on your lifestyle, it will compute your “real” age instead of chronological age). (more…)