FACTS ABOUT ABDOMINAL OBESITY

(RECTIFICATION & TREATMENT)

When man used to live in natural environment and did his daily chores naturally, he had little diseases, and had wonderful physique and well-working organs. Bertrand Russell has somewhere said that man’s physique shows that its body is created for much struggle. As a testimony he alluded to the primitive style of living that was by hunting game for food and tilling earth for sowing foods. Thus the supply of food was sparing, and getting of it quite ‘strugglesome’. There were never ample foods, and were also consumed in natural forms. These facts of life kept them agile and their bodies streamlined. Now in modern living we have fine foods and ever-new products of bakeries and culinary establishments, coupled with slothful living which has played havocs with our body shapes. The most suffering part is middle body, that is, our tummies that keep on protruding and becoming freely obese. Hence the flourishing business of Gyms, and ever-new nostrums of unfounded prescriptions of drugs and teas for slimming. 

Abdominal prominence is not alike in all individuals, nor do they have only one cause. So we can’t prescribe or invent a universal panacea for all cases. You have to individualize every case in its own peculiar scenario. There are myriad reasons and numerous causes for the abdominal obesity, according to its shape and topical configuration vis-à-vis the spinal column and its curves.

The problem is multi-faceted and should be determined in all clarity. Then only you will come to know what is curable and what in not; what medicine can tackle and what definitive measures, in the form of exercises and regimentation can rectify abnormal bulge or shapes.

1. There are Pot Bellies, inverted saucer like bellies (Calc.Carb.), simply protruding on a narrow and sometimes broader base.
2. There are Flap Bellies, broad and flexible, hanging loose bellies., which are very prone to assume the fomous shape of Pendulous Belly, ( Sepia, Kali.c., Plat., Lyco., etc.)
3. There are Hard, Protruding Bellies, without much sagging, as in Calc.c., Chel., Kali.c., and Graph.  Calc.c. is seldom pendulous.
4. Flat, Obese Bellies, with heavy Loins and Broad Pelvis, and mostly flat hips.
5. There are bellies that seem to be fat and enlarged through clothes but really are not enlarged when you check them. They have deep hollowing curve in the lumbar spine, as with pregnant mothers during last months of pregnancy.

To more clearly visualize the abdominal shapes, I’ve coined a term: Umbilical Eye.  This term will guide one to properly understand and diagnose the shape and individualize the cause.

1. If in an enlarged abdomen the umbilicus is deep-set, vortex-like, with visually unfathomable base or bottom, it is mostly and simply a fat belly.
2. If the umbilicus is shallow or flattened, with quite visible base, it is mostly owing to the laxness of abdominal muscles, but more from the outward pressure from sagging and flatulent intestines, or both.

Now we come to the umbilical eye with its various angles of ‘gaze’.

1. In a normal belly the umbilical is straight and horizontal looking, making no angle with horizontal tangent. The abdomen is fairly fat with strong and loosely-tight muscles, and minimum of distension. This is the true young plump belly without any flaw. With age the umbilical eye can droop, maximum from 5 to 10 degree, if the person preserves his/her health.
2. If the droop increases from 25 to 60 degrees with the horizontal tangent, it would mean that the muscles of the abdomen are getting lax, with sagging shape, advancing to become pendulous ultimately. But if with this drooping the umbilicus preserves, more or less, its depth, then the abdomen is sufficiently fat. But if the umbilicus has also been flattened, then the muscles are lax and deficient in required fat.
3. This impression of drooping is unbecomingly heightened if, at the same time, the stomach or epigastrium is distended. In such cases the hypochondrium become so roundly protruding that the patient himself cannot visualize his umbilicus directly, except in a mirror. This is a sort of pot-belly configuration. 
4. If the umbilicus is rather ‘uplooking’, then it can mean that either the spread of fat is uneven, with more accumulation in the hypogastrium, or there is some pathology in the pelvic region, as tumors or cysts, which ultrasound can confirm.
5. The sideways gaze of the umbilicus means that the side opposite to the angle of gaze has some abnormality or pathology, which can be determined by palpation or clinical investigation. 
6. There are heavy and fat trunks with thin thighs and legs; that is the Ammonium Mure constitution.
7. There are people with very lean face, from which you surmise that they might be very lean and skinny people, but on physical examination you find them quite the opposite: well-built plump thighs and legs. This is the Sepia and Lyco. constitutions, especially Sepia. In health Sepia is lean face with well-built lower body. With advancing age, after multiple pregnancies, her abdomen will start sagging towards making it ‘pendulous’. I have seldom seen Calcarea  abdomen advancing to become pendulous. (Other remedies for pendulous abdomen are: Podo., Nat.c. and Plat.)

I’ve found a very interesting monograph on the shape of bellies vis-à-vis the shape and placement of umbilicus. Dr. Gerhard Reibman, is a Burlin psychologist. His monograph is entitled: Centred: Understanding Yourself Through Your Navel.   

In it, he reckons that there are six different types of navel. He claims that each one has a specific personality type and a specific life expectancy associated with it. It’s easy to be skeptical of something as naïve and easy. It can be compared and equated with phrenology (that is, diagnosing character type by feeling the shape and  lumps and bumps on a person’s skull).

Types of Gerhard Reibman’s Navels:  with their Character Types and Life-Expectancy:

• A horizontal navel (spreading sideways across your tummy), you’re likely to be highly emotional, live for only 68 years.
• A vertical navel: that runs up and down your belly, you’ll magically be generous, self-confident and emotionally stable. Somehow, this means that your life expectancy will be around 75 years.
• An outie Navel, or protruding belly button, is claimed to be optimistic and enthusiastic and will live for 72 years. 
• A concave, bowl-shaped navel will be gentle, loving, cautious, delicate, sensitive and rather prone to worrying. Presumably, this worry will take a toll on their health, so they’ll have the shortest life expectancy of all – only 65 years.
• A person with a navel that’s off-centre is supposed to be fun-loving and to have wide emotional swings. They’re expected to live for only 70 years.
• The evenly shaped and circular navel:  the final (and luckiest) type of navel. The person of this beautiful navel is modest and even tempered and has a quiet, retiring personality—and as a result will live for 81 years.

“Now, as we all know, anything to do with the human body always turns out to be more complicated than you first thought. How long will you live if your navel fits more than one of the six categories? Easy, according to Gerhard Reibmann – just add the number of years together and divide by the total number of categories to work out your personal life expectancy.

“The average life expectancy in Australia is 83.2 years for women and 77.2 for men. I guess that a lot of Australian women must have navels that are rounder than round.”

This was an interesting interlude or digression; now we come to our subject of how to manage the obesity and shapelessness of the abdomen.

EXERCISES

Whether an enlarged belly can be improved by exercise, I’m positive about it. The best candidates can be determined by finding out the index of difference by measuring the abdomen when it is inflated, and when fully squeezed or drawn in. If the difference is three or more than three inches, the prospect is good, as it shows good elasticity of the abdominal muscles; which means that they can be toned up by exercise, and thus can lose their laxness.

The best exercise which I prescribe, with some nutritional measures, is WALKING. Make a regular program of brisk walking, twice a day, with stomach totally squeezed or drawn in. And do ‘Inflating-and-Drawing in’ exercise of the abdomen, with rapid sequence, when sitting idle at home or in the office. And people who can play must play badminton sort of games, daily in the evening or morning.

There is another effective exercise to increase the tonicity of the abdominal musculature. Lie down on the back on some tough but comfortable bed. Inflate the hypogastrium, and try to move this wave of ‘inflation’ upward to the hypochondrium by undulating the muscles of the abdomen, physically and also imaginatively, and then try to push this wave downward behind all the intestines towards hypogastrium. This is one cycle. Repeat it for many times, till you feel tired. [A slight modification in this exercise can make one overcome constipation. Lying in the same posture, think of creating a wave in the ileo-cecal region, at the beginning of the colon, and push this wave upward, by forcefully undulating your abdominal muscles, and at the same time thinking that you are thereby pushing the contents of the large intestine forward and onward, then across the hypochondrium to the splenic-flexure and then down to the rectum. Repeat it rapidly and vigorously (and imaginatively) to create the peristaltic movements in the rectum. Keep it up to make it more efficacious day by day. This exercise can be done even by sitting on a chair or on the commode. In fact some people find it more effective by doing it in sitting position.]

Pendulous bellies are seldom reduced by exercises; so also the Bellies with lot of Stretch-marks. It is the plumpness and little fat in pendulous bellies that keep them presentable to witness. If you take out all the fat from them, they will become wrinkly and ugly, like an empty used bag. Fat is the material for modeling and moulding. God perhaps invented fat for sculpturing figures. But the fat to become unseemly, in the form of obesity, is the curse of civilization, especially in the context of modern living.

Civilization is never a curse. Civilization is man’s destiny. It is only the blind distancing from nature that brings curse. Obesity is one of that; brought on by over-automation, leading to sloth, and compulsive indulgence in matters of palate and taste. 

It has been my mission in life to see people in shape, and help them attain shapely bodies. A flat belly is not a female belly. Flat and muscular belly is totally masculine. Man’s belly on a female trunk is quite unseemly and disgraceful; but female’s belly on a man’s trunk does not look so awry or uncomely. Western women’s infatuation with flat bellies is a foolish passion. To see a flat-bellied male together with a flat-bellied female seems to be a homosexual affair. Woman’s belly is always (or should always be) curvaceous and with soft undulations, and every wave pointing to the vortex of umbilicus (the famous Belly-Button).  Enchantment and adoration of female umbilicus is universal. In India this infatuation has reached the level idolatry.  One of the great poets of the Indo-Pak Sub-Continent, Joan Alia, says:

A shallow cup of umbilicus is not my seeking

            Tell me o’damsels, who among you possesses the vortex!