Learn the facts: Can Diet Pills keep you Lean?

Yes, amazing is it not? Despite the fact that the fitness industry is booming?there are obviously still significant problems in America with people loosing weight and being able to keep it off. Pills alone are obviously not the answer. There are documented facts that state that more than half of American adults are unable to lose excess fat, in spite of their exercise and diet efforts.

Federal officials have, based on these facts, recently declared that obesity is a national epidemic. More than 60 percent of American adults overweight, and 30 percent of all Americans are considered obese?according to the ?Journal of the American Medical Association.?

Why? We as a country are literally bombarded with health and fitness marketing every day, and diet fads and healthy eating plans have never been more popular! So despite what the label might say, non-FDA approved dietary supplements may be a total waste of your money.

Facts: Deception in weight loss advertisements promise unachievable goals: Billions of dollars worth of advertisements for dietary supplements and diet and exercise services in America more often than not, include misleading and quite overly exaggerated promises of rapid and effortless weight loss. This deception is not only devastating and costly to the people who fall for it?but the lies keep America in this trend of tendencies towards obesity.

In order to survive the diet industry needs you to fail at your attempts to loose weight: Dieting is business just like any other, and of course there is an enormous interest in this business to maintain and excel in financial gain. Making sure that this happens, the pills you take religiously will have to fail?so that you will constantly be trying new ones. Even if you use dietary supplements in combination with diet and exercise and you are losing weight, you will continue to take them, because you believe that they are part of working for you.

The people who sell them, who intentionally keep you in the dark write most of the information you can find out about diet pills. This means that even if you wanted to research a product you would only get the information they want to give you?falsified information.

There are in fact diet pills out there that can do some good. But it is better to discuss which ones you should take with a nutritionist or look for information on products that is unbiased.

Anne Clarke writes numerous articles for websites on gardening, parenting, fashion, and home decor. Her background includes teaching and gardening. For more of her articles on fur boots and fashion please visit Brazilian Bikinis and Swimwear.

Gastric Bypass: Remembering Surgery 6 Years Later

September 13, 1999

Do you remember where you were six years ago today?

I do. It was the day I underwent gastric bypass surgery ? a day that changed my life forever.

I don?t recall much about that day. I remember feeling embarrassed lying on the preparation table, my enormous belly exposed to be cleansed antiseptically. I remember feeling frightened, but calm with a total acceptance that gastric bypass surgery was the best decision for me. I remember the anesthesiologist, a beautiful woman, not very old and not very big.

Then I went to sleep.

I woke up puking violently, an unpleasant reaction to anesthesia. I didn?t have my glasses so things were blurry, particularly the flowers from my husband. And I can remember a push-button device that helped me sleep. Later that night I realized I was not yet smaller. In fact my stomach was bloated and sore. In my drug induced vagueness I became convinced the surgeon had mistakenly done the wrong operation because I was getting bigger, not smaller.

The day after surgery my surgeon visited me, taught me to drink tiny sips of water, patted my hand and told me I was going to do just fine. I remember walking around the hospital hallway. I remember a female nurse bathing me. I remember a very good-looking male nurse ? he didn?t bathe me. Rats! I remember drinking some nasty liquid chalk and getting an x-ray to confirm my stomach had been whacked, stapled and bypassed. I remember the super-sized wheel chair and being embarrassed that it fit just fine.

I remember being discharged from the hospital to spend the next several days in a hotel room because we had traveled a great distance for my ?last resort? surgery. I watched ?Mame? on TBS several times. The sofa at the hotel was scratchy. My husband and I went on ?outings? each day, little drives around a strange town. He emptied my surgical drain for me. I thought it was disgusting.

One week after surgery we went to Sea World where I wept in profound disbelief at the great whales circling the pool and performing flawlessly for a bite of fish. Being from out-of-town, we sat in the ?Splash Zone?. Turns out those warnings are for a reason. The great swimming mammal whacked his tail and we were drenched!

On Thursday of the second week Leslie, the darling nurse and counselor herself a WLS patient, removed my drain. We could go home. She asked me the four rules and I repeated them to her. She told me, ?Take advantage of this window of opportunity. Learn everything you can. If you don?t learn early to follow the rules and take care of yourself you can regain this weight.?

Starry eyed and hopeful we packed ourselves in the car and headed for home. Almost 1,500 miles later we pulled into the driveway of home sweet home. My fabulous husband said to me, ?Welcome to your new life ? You Have Arrived.?

Kaye Bailey ? 2005 - All Rights Reserved

An award winning journalist and former newspaper editor Kaye Bailey brings expertise in writing and personal experience with gastric bypass surgery to EzineArticles.com. Having spent most of her life overweight Ms. Bailey is strongly empathetic toward the obese, particularly overweight children. This compassion compelled her to found the website http://www.livingafterwls.com, a fast-growing resource of information, understanding and support for the weight loss surgery community.

The LivingAfterWLS.com site is complimented with daily blog. The blog, http://livingafterwls.blogspot.com offers readers the chance to comment or leave feedback about fresh content added daily. This site contains success stories and recipes, general information and WLS inspired topics. Complementing the site is a monthly newsletter titled ?You Have Arrived? available exclusively to people who subscribe through the website or the blog.

Understanding the Medical Insurance Review Process Five Key Steps in Medical Insurance Reviews

Medical insurance reviews provide results in a timely fashion. Filing a medical claim can be a lengthy process prone to miscommunication and breakdowns in the chain of paperwork. Bringing in an independent review organization can tap into deep reservoirs of medical expertise. The review on this level can determine an objective approval or denial of an insurance claim. The denial will be based on medical fact, however and not on anecdotal evidence.

The Five Key Steps in Medical Insurance Review

The following steps illustrate how a medical claim is reviewed.

?A patient is prescribed a treatment for a condition or injury. The medical opinion of the attending physician along with related charts and information may be submitted or requested in order to request coverage of the insurance claim.

?Medical and physician resources are provided the medical information and asked to review the treatment and prescribed recommendations.

?The medical specialist assigned to the case will provide an unbiased opinion with regard to the treatment.

?An insurance expert reviews the terms of the patient?s coverage as offered by the insurance company. They will offer an unbiased determination with regard to whether the patient is covered for the treatment in question.

?Finally, the two opinions are combined to return an objective recommendation for approval or denial.

On Time Decisions

This process allows for healthcare decisions to be made in a timely and expert fashion. The resource is invaluable for all aspects of the healthcare profession. Patients will receive approval for vital treatment that may be otherwise rejected by a large insurance company that handles its own medical reviews internally and without expert sources.

Anecdotal evidence is never used to deny a claim or pay for an unnecessary treatment. The use of third-party experts and medical specialists provides claim managers with the verification and authentication needed to do not only the right thing, but also the best thing. The medical insurance review process removes the factor of uncertainty that claim managers may face in a world of rising medical costs, complex specialization and treatments.

Avoids Ill-Informed Approvals and Denials

Healthcare costs skyrocket in an atmosphere where a claim manager must err on the side of caution to either pay for unnecessary treatment or deny one that is necessary. Without using an independent review organization, the insurance company may lack the resources to make a decision in a timely fashion.

As illustrated by the five key steps of the review process, experts from both sides of the equation are consulted. Complicated medical technology combined with equally complicated insurance policies and terms can make for a morass of misunderstanding without the right types of expertise. The process also reduces the amount of frustration felt by claim managers, patients and physicians by filtering the claims through the right hands to get the right advice and interpretations.

Fiscal Responsibility

The more approvals of unnecessary treatments, the higher insurance costs will soar. The medical insurance review process allows a claim manager to make an informed decision and eliminate unnecessary treatments. Patients and physicians rely on insurance coverage to underwrite potential treatments for a multitude of conditions.

An insurance expert understands the complex terminology of a coverage policy. Specialized physicians understand the nature of illness and treatment. The combination of expertise improves the process of treatment review and coverage approval. That means no lengthy waits for vital services and no funding for unnecessary ones.

This process has a dramatic impact in reversing the trend of rising healthcare claim costs. By dramatically reducing these riding costs, an insurance company can save money for their consumers, their shareholders and the healthcare community.