A gentleman who proclaimed that he lived to eat shaved off 10 kg and a tumour. Are we really what we eat?

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Good evening, doctor saab!” Jayesh bhai walked in with his wife. The couple were in their mid-fifties and seemed pretty jovial. He had a round face that sat atop an even rounder torso. The buttons of his bright yellow shirt were struggling to keep its two halves together. Through two of those buttons, his navel was his third eye, staring me in the face. Sensing my unwavering gaze from his centre of mystical enlightenment, his wife remarked, “He loves to eat,” which I acknowledged, because I do too. “And I love to cook for him,” she continued dotingly.

It was of little concern to them that Jayesh bhai had a brain tumour. “I was having headaches and my GP suggested I do an MRI. He said he had heard you at a lecture where you mentioned that people with headaches should get an MRI,” he explained. I peered through the scan to note it was a craniopharyngioma—a benign tumour with a malignant pronunciation. It was arising from the pituitary stalk and pressing against his hypothalamus—the control centre for hunger and satiety besides a myriad other functions such as regulating hormones, body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, thirst, mood, sleep and sex drive.

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He had no issues with any of the other functions, he clarified, and his wife confirmed. The weight he was putting on had been simplistically attributed to his love for food. I explained to........

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