Obsessive Devotion To Physical Perfection

Looking good and being healthy is what most of us strive for – within reason for most of us. But are we becoming just a little bit obsessive and a tad self indulgent? I’ve just read an interesting, yet (I found) disturbing article “Fat fighting, Los Angeles style” by BBC News Correspondent in LA – David Willis – about a procedure that goes by the name of lipodissolve. The treatment is apparently almost doable in the lunch-break and is being hailed as “the new Botox” and new miracle cure for getting rid of the flab of your body i.e. love handles.

The treatment entails being injected into the ‘plump’ fat area you want removed with a chemical named PCDC – which is some sort of soya bean extract that breaks down the unwanted fat. Once the patient has gone through a series of soya bean extract injection treatments done at intervals of several weeks – apparently the treated flab disappears as if by magic.

Although Cosmetic surgeons are calling this treatment a “miracle cure,” and small wonder, as this will have clinics popping up all over the place quicker than you can say ‘money’ – yet it has been banned in several countries including Great Britain and has not yet been given approval by the regulatory authorities in the US.

Unlike the normal way of losing the unwanted fat, this new treatment produces results in short order – after only a few days, so virtually anyone that can afford the price of the treatments (unknown to me – but sounds expensive) can just go along and get it done during their lunchbreak as a treatment takes only fifteen minutes. So you can see the cash potential for clinics in this will go much the same way as the botox treatment, which very quickly became popular if you remember.

The disturbing part for me is that according to David’s article – no one know’s (including the surgeons) where the ‘flab’ disappears to and as he rightly puts it:

Did it somehow find its way to the kidneys and thence into the urine? Or meander into the liver only to be metabolised? Or somehow wriggle into the muscles only to be burned up?
Nobody who carried out the procedure seemed to know.

“There’s a lot of basic science that still needs to be done,” Dr Kinney told me. “The danger is that instead of going out looking more beautiful the patient goes out maimed or disfigured.”

I’m a bit flabbergasted, especially as there are apparent and visual side-effects for some who’ve had the treatment – small wonder that this product hasn’t yet been approved. What are people thinking? You be the judge – would you do it even though this treatment hasn’t been tested? Read the full story here and then come back and let me know what you think.