In April, Dr. Sears flew to Monterrey, Mexico, to check on the progress Manuel Uribe as well as to do some additional filming for Discovery Channel on Manuel’s weight loss journey.
To his surprise, he found out the Discovery Channel had previously flown in two surgeons from Texas to try to convince Manuel, who was once dubbed the fattest man alive, to have gastric bypass surgery.
“I told the Discovery Channel crew that being confined to his bed is not because of his weight, but because of the large lymphedemas on his legs,” Dr. Sears said. “I told them that if the lymphedemas were surgically removed, they’d come right back like a weed when you cut off the top without pulling the root.”
Lymphedemas are exceptionally large collections of fluid induced by removal of the nearby lymph nodes. The development of such lymphedemas is commonly seen in breast cancer patients whose lymph nodes are removed and has nothing to do with one’s weight. In Manuel’s situation, the loss of the necessary lymph nodes to drain his legs was a consequence of two poorly executed surgeries by his former Mexican surgeons, Dr. Sears said.
Dr. Sears told Manuel some of unstated problems with gastric bypass surgery: 25 percent of the patients regain their weight within five years, another 20 percent of patients develop neurological problems, such as depression and suicide, and the most weight you can expect to lose is about one-third of your starting weight. Even if the surgery works perfectly, the patient will need numerous cosmetic follow-up surgeries.
Manuel has already lost more weight (more than 400 pounds) than anyone in the history of medicine (including weight loss induced by gastric bypass surgery), Dr. Sears said, simply by following the Zone Diet coupled with high-dose fish oil.
Dr. Sears explained to the Discovery Channel crew that even if Manuel weighed 200 pounds, he would still not be able to walk because of the size of the lymphedemas on his legs but also felt confident that the new, high-strength version of his Cellular Serum may be the solution to reduce the inflammation in the lymphedemas as well as to increase the water flow to drain them. Since Dr. Sears had only one capsule with him, he gave a demonstration to Manuel on a small area of inflammation on one of the lymphedemas. Within 30 seconds, the heat of the inflammation in that small area had disappeared. Although it may take gallons of the new Cellular Serum to complete and maintain the reduction of the lymphedemas, if it can be accomplished, it would be considered a medical miracle, Dr. Sears said, looking forward to the experiment.
After hearing all this, Manuel was then asked by the Discovery Channel producer if he would like to consider gastric bypass surgery? His response was: “I’ll stick with my team,” he said, pointing to Drs. Silvia and Gustavo Orozco, Dr. Sears’ Mexican partners, who have been treating Manuel on biweekly basis for the past 2 ½ years.
Dr. Sears noted that the primary reason why people do gastric bypass surgery is because they can’t control their appetite. This is not the case with Manuel because he is faithfully following the Zone Diet coupled with about 20 grams of EPA and DHA per day. His current diet consists of 21 blocks or about 2,000 calories per day. This is broken up into six three-block meals and a three-block Zone Shake as a snack in the late evening.
For breakfast he may have scrambled egg whites Mexican style, strawberries, grapefruit and guacamole; lunch might be a tuna salad with avocado and cucumber, grapefruit and vegetables; and for dinner, chicken fajitas and vegetables. In fact, Manuel’s biggest problem is not lack of appetite control, but eating all the food he is supposed to eat. This dramatic improvement in appetite control is still another reason why gastric bypass makes no sense for Manuel, Dr. Sears said.
Everyone on Manuel’s team remains ecstatic about Manuel’s excellent health (the real journalistic story) and his amazingly good spirits. But they and Manuel also know that this is a long-term project to demonstrate that the correct diet is the way to overcome obesity, not using short-cuts like gastric bypass surgery, that often create more problems than they solve.
View the entire Manuel Uribe Story