There is no reason that you should be interested in anything that I have to say.  You don't know me or my motivation behind this website.  I wouldn't blame you because I don't trust anyone that I don't know.  However, I felt it was my duty as a human being to tell my story.

 

In 2004 I weighed 240 pounds.  I couldn't walk up a flight of steps without being winded.  I slept ten hours a night and I had little or no energy.  I had the beginnings of a problem with my heart.  I had a echocardiogram done and the results were frightening.  The cardiologist said that the back wall of my heart was beginning to thicken.  He said that it was a result of unchecked hyperstension and a result of my obesity.  Why didn't anyone tell me this could happen?  Not one doctor had ever said anything to me about my weight.

 

However in July of 2004 I decided that I needed a new primary physician.  I wandered into the office of a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.  What in the world is a Osteopath?  Sounded like a witch doctor to me, but I was there so what could it hurt?

 

The first thing out of his mouth was "we've got to do something about that weight."  Well, this was a first.  I asked him what I could do.  I had been this way for so long I didn't know any other way to be.  He advised me to focus on exercise more than my diet.  With the focus off of diet, how could I ever lose any weight?  Isn't that what so many weight loss programs are based on; diet?

 

He advised me to begin walking twenty minutes a day five days a week.  Let me tell you, when you are as out of shape as I was twenty minutes seems like an entire day, but I stuck with it.  When I went back the next time he began to explain to me the advantages of exercise and how it could transform your body as well as your mind.  I still wasn't convinced but I told him I would try.  You've got to understand that this guy was pencil thin and looked like he was all of fourteen.  However, he had something that I had never seen; he cared about me. 

 

To make a very long story short, it's taken exactly a year but I'm fifty pounds thinner and physically I'm a different person.  I will never weigh 130 and I will never look like I'm twenty five again.  I don't have abs of steel and I certainly don't have buns of steel.  But I have so much more than a pencil thin body.  I can walk ten miles without being tired.  I can walk up seven flights of steps before I begin to get winded.  Instead of needing ten hours of sleep I do great on seven. 

 

The physicain and I have cut short our relationship of Doctor and patient.  We have created a new relationship; that of teacher and student. I'm fourty nine years old and I never thought I would ever reach this stage in my life.  My physician has now become my mentor.  We are beginning to give workshops around the city.  He is helping me through some of my major projects in graduate school.  All of this happend because a physician focused on prevention and maintenance rather than simply diagnosing and treating a symptom.

 

I'm a avid supporter of the doctor - patient relationship.  If treated properly this can be the most intimate of relationships.  My doctor turned friend knows more about me that most people.  Who better to counsel me about my health. 

 

Sadly, he isn't reimbursed by my insurance company for prevention.  He is only reimbursed to "treat" a disease.  However, I am so fortunate to have stumbled upon someone that could think outside of the box.

 

I don't claim to have all of the answers.  I only know that if the public is presented with a problem that, maybe, together we can find a solution.  There are no enemies, only a good system gone terribly wrong.