What thighs lose, belly finds

I don’t believe in quick fixes and if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not. I believe that hard work and perseverance will prevail, and good wins over bad. I also believe in Karma.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone having cosmetic surgery if that’s what they want to do. But to think it is a replacement for a healthy diet and regular exercise, well that’s just not very realistic is it?  This was a very interesting article regarding liposuction. Personally, the thought of having this type of procedure literally makes me nauseous, but then I have never been faced with the dilemma of "saddlebags", so perhaps if I were, I might have a different opinion on this. 

It's really something to give careful thought to if you are considering the cost and pain of this. Will you make changes afterward? Or will you end up with fat somewhere else?

By the way, this is NOT my butt!

By Gina Kolata

New York Times

The woman's hips bulged in unsightly saddlebags. Then she had liposuction and, presto, those saddlebags disappeared.

Photo after photo on plastic surgery websites make liposuction look easy, its results transformative. It has become the most popular plastic surgery, with more than 450,000 operations a year, each costing a few thousand dollars.

But does the fat come back? And if it does, where does it show up?

Until now, no one knew. But a new study, led by Drs. Teri Hernandez and Robert Eckel of the University of Colorado, has answered those questions. And what he found is not good news.

In the study, the researchers randomly assigned non-obese women to have liposuction on their protuberant thighs and lower abdomen or to refrain from having the procedure, serving as controls. 

The result, published in the latest issue of Obesity, was that fat came back after it was suctioned out. It took a year, but it all returned. But it did not reappear in the women's thighs. Instead, Eckel said, "it was redistributed upstairs," mostly in the upper abdomen, but also around the shoulders and triceps of the arms.

Dr. Felmont Eaves III, a plastic surgeon in Charlotte, N.C., and president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, said the study was "very well done," and the results were surprising. He said he would mention it to his patients in the context of other information on liposuction.

The finding raises questions about plastic surgery. Liposuction has been around since 1974 and is heavily advertised. Why did it take so long for anyone to do this study?

Maybe it's because such a study is very difficult, said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine. It takes a team of researchers, and money. Fat must be measured precisely, with scans.

And surgery, said Jonathan Moreno, an ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the field, is not like other areas of medicine.

"A lot of it has to do with the culture of surgery, which is literally hands-on," he said. Surgeons, he added, often feel a connection to patients that makes it difficult to agree to trials that involve randomizing them.