Tuesday, April 12, 2016

J IS FOR JENNY CRAIG

     I'll be the first to admit that there were some pretty bizarre forms of medical treatment in the 16th century (just wait until you get to my post for R).  But although we of the 21st century might not agree with our 16th century peers about the causes of obesity, most of the recommended remedies would strike us as quite familiar.
     In early human history, it was virtually impossible for anyone to be overweight.  Having to hunt for one's food required a tremendous amount of physical activity, and food itself often came in the form of large animals fully capable of killing and eating you first. 


     But eventually, based on the urgent need of ensuring an adequate food supply, humans learned both to farm crops and to domesticate food animals, and the activity of getting your next meal became much less fraught with peril.   In fact, people got so good at producing food for themselves that eventually most societies had a comfortable abundance (at least for those who could afford it).  Simultaneously, lifestyles were becoming more sedentary, and by Roman times, physicians were treating excess weight as a public health problem.  What treatments did they suggest?  For the most part, exercise and a healthy diet.
      Since the time of Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.), through the 16th century, and for at least 100 years after it, most people believed that good health was maintained by a proper balancing of the four humors in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.  Obesity, like many other physical ailments, resulted from an imbalance in the system, and the goal was to figure out ways to rebalance.
     The Roman physician Galen (A.D. 131-201?), whose theories governed medical practice up to and throughout the Middle Ages, described his treatment for obesity as follows:
           
               I have made any sufficiently stout patient moderately thin in a short time,
               by compelling him to do rapid running, then wiping off his perspiration
               with very soft or very rough muslin, and then massaging him maximally
               with restoratives, and after such massage leading him to the bath after
               which I give him nourishment immediately but bid him rest for a while
               or do nothing to which he was accustomed, then lead him to a second
               bath and then give him abundant food of little nourishment so as to
               fill him up but distribute little of it to the entire body.
 
     Similarly, Avicenna (A.D. 980-1037), a highly influential physician of the Arab world, wrote:

               The regimen which will reduce obesity.  Produce a rapid descent of the
                food from the stomach and intestines, in order to prevent completion
                of absorption by the mesentery.  Take food which is bulky but feebly
                nutritious.  Take the bath before food, often.  Hard exercise...
 
     The early 16th century marked the beginning of the so-called Age of Science, during which people began to use hypothesis and experiment as methods to discovering solutions.  Antonio di Paolo Benivieni (1443-1502) was the author of a pathology textbook published posthumously in 1507, in which he provided the first known pathological descriptions (case studies) of obese individuals, as well as discussions of treatments.
     Luigi Cornaro (1467-1566) was an Italian layman who published a short book, Discourses on a Sober Life, in 1558 describing his own struggles to conquer obesity and his eventual success.  He made no secret of what he believed to be the cause of his excess weight; his book began, "O wretched, miserable Italy!  Does not thou plainly see that gluttony deprives us of more soul years than either war or the plague itself could have done?"  Cornaro came from a wealthy Venetian family and had freely indulged himself in food and drink until about the age of 40, when his health problems began to catch up with him.  He consulted with his doctor, who advised him to eat only wholesome foods, and only in small quantities.  Cornaro immediately followed this advice and lost all of his excess weight, and his health problems all disappeared.  He became a zealot for healthy living, published his book at age 80, and lived to see the fourth edition published when he was 99.
      But, as we know in the 21st century and as physicians probably knew in the 16th, prescribing diet and exercise to counteract obesity doesn't always work.


15 comments:

  1. Out blog hopping from North Carolina for the #Challenge. Obvious how much work you have put in to participating. Congratulations on these interesting posts. My theme this year is hotels and inns, If you have time or interest, come join me for some arm chair travel.

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  2. The problem today is the chemicals used by food manufacturers and the reliance they've managed to make us all to their products. It's changed the human body. I hope we can stop this. I think it's happening but not because the manufacturers want it too!

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    1. I could not agree more, Yolanda. The kind of food we end up eating in the "developed" world has so much more to do with the dictates of corporate greed than with the nutritive needs of our bodies.

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  3. it has always been a problem of life style, follow yogic routine

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    1. Consumers are of course partly to blame, but not as much as the marketers who know exactly what they're doing to public health and don't care.

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  4. The level of obesity today is alarming and is causing all sorts of health problems. Junk food has a lot to answer for and so does human greed.

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  5. So I need to balance my yellow and black bile. That's what I've been doing wrong all this time.

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    1. Exactly! Don't you just hate when that happens? If we could all balance out our four humors, the world would be an infinitely better place!

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  6. An interesting post. It is quite amazing how food has evolved (and not for the better). It's as if our taste buds have been manipulated through time. Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Oh, Nicola, it's not AS IF our taste buds have been manipulated!! All you have to do is read about how food conglomerates scientifically design junk food with just the right proportions of fats, sugar and salt to activate an addiction response in our brains. We are indeed being used like puppets.

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  7. Truly that advice sounds very modern. I don't know why, I'm kind of susprise :-)

    @JazzFeathers
    The Old Shelter - Jazz Age Jazz

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  8. Truly that advice sounds very modern. I don't know why, I'm kind of susprise :-)

    @JazzFeathers
    The Old Shelter - Jazz Age Jazz

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  9. Amazing who would have thought obesity existed so many years ago...


    @mysilverstreaks from
    Storiesandmore

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