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How the World's Heaviest Man Lost It All
- darawk 10y agoWhy the fuck was the NHS paying for this guy's food? That is unbelievable.
- sgift 10y agoBecause he was sick and the NHS pays for sick people.
- laichzeit0 10y agoAll 20,000 calories worth of sick food? To put it in perspective: A horse eats approximately 15,000 calories a day. A strongman eats about 10,000.
- misnome 10y ago> To put it in perspective To put it in perspective, the NHS still operates on need (and thus compassion), not headline-convenience or those for whom mob rule determine "deserves it".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Chris2048 10y agoThis guy needs 20k calories? isn't it, thusly, more compassionate to not give him that much food? The mob, in this case, pays for the NHS, it's entirely driven by who deserves it.
- MichaelBurge 10y agoFat cells do replicate when they reach capacity. It's possible that he might need 2x or 3x the regular amount just to maintain them. If you cut calories, the fat cells might starve the rest of the body. I'm not sure how he gets to needing 10x, though.
- laichzeit0 10y agoI'm not a dietician but ketosis sounds like the perfect diet for him. Let him eat nothing but fat and protein so his body starts using all those fat cells as energy.
- kolinko 10y agoNHS could've delivered him limited amount of food. He definitely didn't need this much.
- IanCal 10y ago> All 20,000 calories worth of sick food? No. The only point in the article where it says the NHS was paying for his food was when he was in a care facility, and there will have been a single charge for the room, staff and food. At this point he was also spending all his money on food.
- frozenport 10y agoDid it also make him sick?
- test1235 10y agoExactly that. The doctors and nurses of the NHS will have evaluated this man and in their professional opinion deemed him to be in need of help. It wasn't like they just came across a hungry guy and just kept feeding him because he asked for food. People are far too quick to jump to outrage, like the whole world is out to make life hard for them and them alone.
- darawk 10y agoYa, that's fine. But you don't need to pay for 20,000 calories of food.
- pasta 10y ago1000 pound = 454 kilograms
- to3m 10y agoAlso, 71.5 stone for UK readers (nobody seems to have heard of this unit elsewhere, but it's the standard Imperial unit for human body weight)
- _archon_ 10y ago1 stone is 14 pounds. I had commented earlier about stone being a unit of mass; this twinged my mind and I looked it up. Turns out I was conflating "stone" with "slug".
- nefitty 10y agoThis poor guy got the brunt of life's tragedies. How many of us will ever suffer the extremes he's endured? I propose we take his story as one of hope and endurance. We're all much stronger than we know...
- b6 10y agoStuff like this resonates a lot with me, because I'm interested in Buddhism, and Buddhism is very concerned with suffering, and how people deal with it. Maybe we don't like to think it's so, but things like this could happen to anyone. It's set and setting. Combine a certain mindset, and suffering, and an environment that supports a certain unwise way of dealing with that suffering, and stuff like this happens. Maybe your thing wouldn't be eating. Maybe it'd be heroin. From the Buddhist perspective, it's the same thing -- doing something unwise to get away from pain, even if it traps you in a local minimum. This is why I meditate, and why I encourage others to try it enough to get what it's about. If you can get some kind of distance from your pain, to see it as just feelings that shouldn't be confused for oneself, you can be sort of like a firefighter, putting out suffering in yourself, helping to extinguish suffering in others, and never ever fanning the flames. I think it's easy to ridicule this guy because we wouldn't destroy ourselves in the same way. But ask yourself whether you might be a certain unlucky one-two combo away from feeling so desolate that you just want the pain to stop and don't really care how.
- kenshi 10y agoI would upvote your comment multiple times if I could - compassion is something that I see expressed all too rarely online. I remember reading an interview with a psychologist who worked at a clinic dealing with videogames addiction in the FT Weekend magazine many years ago. He said almost all addiction is rooted in trying to escape pain or suffering. For a lot of the patients addicted to videogames it was an escape from loneliness and other problems.
- colmvp 10y agoI recently finished "Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked", which I thought was an important read given my role in designing apps and products. One argument the author makes is that generally it's not that people merely lack willpower, it’s that “there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.” And you could certainly extend that to food. I'm reminded of one of my very intelligent friends in school who practically disappeared one year from all social activity and academics... because he got addicted to WoW. I have a very addictive personality with regards to games, especially RPG's/adventures, and have refused to ever play WoW because of the fear of addiction. As much as I love computer games, I also recognize that video gaming have irrevocably resulted in stunting my social and personal development. I don't blame video games so much as recognize my vulnerability to gaming. Just like how alcoholics can't just have a sip, well neither can I. I know that if I play even a simple game like Hearthstone, I'll go down a rabbit hole that will take months to crawl out of. I'll stop doing certain regular activities, like studying, seeing friends, pursuing my long-term career, exercising, meditating, etc. We talk about substance abuse and deride the addicts, but we also have a growing number of people who have behavioral addictions to their smartphone, games, news websites, e-mail, social media. These addictions can arise when a person can’t resist a behavior, which, despite addressing a deep psychological need in the short-term, produces significant harm in the long-term. Deep gaming sessions for me tended to correlate with a certain unhappiness, specifically loneliness, and lack of fulfillment in my life. For one of my friends, gaming is a drug that placates the fact that for years, he has hated his job and has had issues finding a new one.
- dingo_bat 10y agoQuite an absurd story. I'm amazed at the lengths the NHS will go, without assessing if their actions are causing more harm than good to the patient.
- donquichotte 10y agoI don't quite understand why this is being downvoted so much. The man appears to have had an addiction problem, maybe a treatment similar to the ones used to treat opioid addicts might have been more useful than building a house for him and giving him access to unlimited amounts of food.
- aaron695 10y agoCompassionate countries give people access to their drug of choice and a safe place to use it while encouraging them to quit. > and giving him access to unlimited amounts of food. I've seen no evidence of this anyway. This seems made up? Was he not just spending his pension (that many people get) in a totally legal way?
- nerdponx 10y agoI have experienced food addiction. It does not work like that.
- aaron695 10y ago> maybe a treatment similar to the ones used to treat opioid addicts This would have made it illegal for over consumption of food, illegal for supplying to much and eventually arrest if you did not comply. You would have been offered treatment, but like opioid abuse it would be far from perfect. I'm not sure it's a better world this way.
- scrollaway 10y agoHow about this paragraph then? > After turning him down several times for gastric bypass, the government eventually decided that paying for it might ultimately be cheaper than covering his existing expenses. It's messed up that someone like him was ever turned down. I want to see the circumstances and reasoning behind that.
- im3w1l 10y agoI'm just wondering why no one intervened. Why was he allowed to gain weight in prison? Why was he left isolated in an old persons home? Why was he allowed to gain weight there? Why wasn't he given psychological help there or something?
- kbart 10y agoI thought similarly too. It was clear that he was addicted to food, why we don't provide same (maybe even forceful) treatment for such people as we do for drug addicts or alcoholics? Government paying >100k$/year to support person's addiction is beyond my comprehension.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI've often thought the same - especially with folks that are obese enough to be bedridden. It takes a network of folks enabling the person. But then again, I realize the vast majority of them probably feel powerless to help. I have no explanation for him not being given a caseworker to manage some of this stuff. It just seems cruel not to consistently offer these things, especially when he was clearly a threat to himself. I realize they can't force, but it should have been offered multiple times in my opinion. I'm sure some of it is the view that he did it to himself. It is a lifestyle and a moral misgiving that he allowed himself to do that, and folks tend to throw those folks to the side. It is quite unfortunate.
- elberto34 10y agoI wonder if he will keep the weight off. Most morbidly obese people regain it.
- ygra 10y agoEven with bariatric surgery? Diets would require a lifestyle change to be made consciously and keeping that without falling back to old behaviour. Surgery kinda enforces that, though.
- elberto34 10y agothe surgery makes it hard to eat a lot of food at once, but patients over many years adapt by eating smaller amounts continuously, and then the stomach pouch also expands and the small intestine becomes better at absorbing calories...this results in some and sometimes all original weight returning
- SketchySeaBeast 10y agoLife, uh, finds a way.
- throwanem 10y agoThe bariatric surgery should help with that, and slightly ruthless as it may seem to say, odds are the various comorbidities that've outlasted their cause will shorten his remaining life enough to make it unlikely he'll pick back up a significant fraction.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoConsidering all things: His life has greatly improved and he's enjoying the mobility he has. He enjoys food still - and enjoys that he has some control. The surgery gave him a way to learn that control.He also understands that gaining it back might kill him - and he regained a will to live some time back. These things make it more likely that he'll keep much of it off. The biggest kicker, however, is that he's still likely not getting psychological care (it costs money) and loneliness is a huge issue. If these outweigh the above, it might not work out.
- reddytowns 10y agoThis really rubs me the wrong way. It's society's tolerance of this sort of thing which causes suffering. In a sane society, this man who provides no value to society wouldn't be fed, and washed and otherwise cared for at the expense of everyone else. If he didn't get so many benefits which allow him to be that way, he would have no choice but to get up and fix his own problems. Instead, the man had to suffer for years, and have dangerous surgery performed on him, which even though successful, didn't ultimately leave him unharmed (people with gastric bypass surgery have plenty of side effects to deal with, being unable to process food properly). Ridicule and disdain would maybe have saved him from his life of misery. Even if he did end up suiciding, it would save others who may be tempted to fall into the same situation as he did.
- DanHulton 10y agoYou are making a whole lot of assumptions there with really nothing to back it up. At best you come off as uninformed, but frankly you just sound cruel.
- reddytowns 10y agoIt's not cruel to think of other people's lives besides of this broken individual. I'm not suggesting taking the money and putting it in my pocket, just distributing it more rationally, so it can do the most good.
- cko 10y agoRidicule and disdain would likely have caused more pain, which he would have tried to escape from - with food. The article already mentioned tabloids and I'm sure having no companionship were already negative feedback mechanisms. As an example, people will downvote you for your comment, but that will not change your views.
- reddytowns 10y agoBeing punished shouldn't change one's views. One's behavior, though, usually does change. Besides which, I don't hold magic internet points to have very much value. Neither should you (I assume you do, since you imply losing "karma" is punishment.)
- JPLeRouzic 10y agoHi, I have a question, probably a stupid question: His cells have the same size as ours, so when he was weighting 1000 pounds, he must have something like 5 times the amount of cells of a "normal" person. Where went those cells when he lost weight? Some of them (mostly skin) have been removed chirurgically as usually done in similar cases, but do you have any insight for cells in internal organs? (edited)
- jclos 10y agoIt's not a stupid question at all. Here is my layman understanding of it: fat cells actually don't have the same size, they get larger or smaller as the effect of caloric surplus or deficit. You can create new fat cells (something called hyperplasia) in some extreme cases of obesity, which probably happened in this guy's case, but that's in addition to the growing fat cells themselves. Nature has a short news on the topic here: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080505/full/news.2008.800.html http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080505/full/news.2008.800.ht...
- zzzzzzzza 10y agoYou are a fascist. You are proposing to let the "useless" (people whom you deem useless) die. Perhaps consider moderating your position. Ridicule and disdain never "saved" anyone from their "life of misery". Misery is relative. All people suffer; should we let a famous poet die at 88 by taking their medication/insurance from them because they are old and no longer produce poetry, and despite them explicitly expressing the desire to continue living?
- reddytowns 10y agoPlease note that I meant this man shouldn't be fed, as in him in particular. Not that everyone who is suffering shouldn't be helped. I do wish that family took more of the burden of helping their relatives then society as a whole. If the person being given charity had to face those that were giving it, I think it would help both parties.
- dang 10y ago> You are a fascist. Please don't make the thread worse with name-calling, regardless of how wrong someone else is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867050 and marked it off-topic.
- Eerie 10y ago>In a sane society, this man who provides no value to society You shit-posting on HN provides no value to society either. Now, will you please step into the compost machine, or should we force you inside?
- dang 10y agoPlease don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread even worse. This was particularly nasty. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867050 and marked it off-topic.