Things to Read

Some cool things you may have missed:

Meowser at Fatfu on fatergories:

[N]ot everyone has the same shot at permanent thinness, at least not the kind that is associated with the kind of vim and vigor that people typically pursue thinness for.  […] That’s how I came up with my “fatergories” theory — specifically, that there are four basic categories of people in the world when it comes to weight.

Shannon at Nudemuse on doctor shopping:

I asked if the lifelong health issues that I am really concerned with right now would be altered if I lost weight now as opposed to the times I have been far thinner in the past?

Silence….

I rephrased and asked if a condition that never improved with weightloss as a factor in the past would somehow magically transform into an “obesity” related illness and thus be “cured” by weightloss.

I pressed and the answer was no.

At one point I asked if basically no matter what my actual issues and concerns are if the first treatment is weightloss she said yes. I said thank you for your time and hung up.

The New York Times has an interesting piece on how a hospital can have a cesarean rate less than half the American average:

• Vaginal births are attended by nurse midwives, not doctors.
• Personnel are on salary, so no profit motive in cesareans.
• Less interventions in general, including fewer inductions.
• Federal malpractice insurance means freedom from private insurer’s bans on trying a vaginal birth after a cesarean if all other standards of care are met.
• Doctors live near the hospital and so are “on call” even when they’re at home.  So there isn’t a “must do cesareans before people go home” time limit.

Where is this?  Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation in Arizona, run by the Navajo Nation and financed partly by the Indian Health Service.   The hospital’s statistics also show they have higher proportions of obese and diabetic mothers than the population at large, too.