On Saturday night, Brock Lesnar defeated Shane Carwin at UFC 116 in their heavyweight bout. Now I’m not an MMA fan in the slightest, so you maybe wondering why I’m writing about this. If you follow MMA, you’ll know that Lesnar has had a crazy 12 months prior to last night’s fight.
Lesnar got very ill while hunting in Manitoba in November of 2009. He sought treatment while in Canada but he famously declared that the Canadian health care system was “third-world“. Of course, he wouldn’t name the facility he went to while in Manitoba, so it’s difficult to know if he was comparing a backwoods walk-in clinic to the Mayo Clinic (which he eventually did go to). This, however, is not the main point of this post.
When Lesnar returned to the US, he was diagnosed with mono which is quite a serious illness. His MMA career was sidelined indefinitely. Further tests, however, revealed even more bad news. Lesnar had diverticulitis, which occurs when pockets form on the outside of the colon and the pockets get inflamed. His condition was so bad that some of his pockets perforated and fecal matter began leaking into his body, which was the cause of the mono. Gross and ouch!
He was due for some serious surgery to fix this but they had to wait several weeks before they could go ahead. In the intervening weeks, Lesnar changed his diet considerably. Miraculously, his change in lifestyle was enough for his body to heal itself and he did not require the surgery. Lesnar admitted that his diet was the main cause of his condition, in particular having a high protein and extremely low fiber diet. One of his quotes was:
“I’m a carnivore, you know? I’m not a big fan of PETA. I’m a member of the NRA and whatever I kill, I eat. For years, I was surviving on meat and potatoes, and when the greens came by, I just kept passing them.”
It’s really hard to comprehend how dumb of a nutritional strategy that was. This man is a professional athlete and his livelihood depended on his body being top physical form. How could he have missed out on the fact that good nutrition made for a better body? Where were any of the support staff in the WWE or UFC to help him understand what a balanced diet looked like?
It’s difficult to comprehend not having any vegetables of an appreciable amount for years. I may not love meat as much as Lesnar but I’m a big fan of steaks, ribs, roasts and such, and even I crave a salad at least one a week, if not more. How did he not get all “blocked up” down there? He must have been crapping out stone logs without any fiber. Wouldn’t that alone be a sign that he was not eating right?
I hope Lesnar’s medical problems drive home the point that everyone should attempt to have a balanced diet. I encourage everyone to have more vegetables, fruits, and high fiber items in their diet. If you don’t, you might wind up like Lesnar, with a hole in your colon.
As the resident Regional Director for Manitoba related comments on this blog I can inform that my sources identified the Brandon Regional Hospital (http://brandonhospital.com/home/index.dot) as the site he went to. Brandon is population about 35,000 so it is not really backwoods and should have been able to help him out. I won’t go into a diatribe about the MB health care system, but it is not exactly the best around. For most ordinary cases it would suffice, but if you are a millionaire not used to waiting in line for care, you would definitely run for the border, and my understanding was there were severe deficiencies in the care that anyone would expect to receive in his state given the local capabilities that may be sub-par. I believe they basically told him there was nothing they could do, which in a city of 35,000 is a bit of a worry. I would also say that Brock Lesnar’s “dickishness” (medical term) probably elevated his negative reaction to Canadian health care by a factor of 2.5 in the least.
His steady diet of steroids/HGH probably didn’t contribute to overall health either.
This appears to be quite a serious condition. I just took a look at some of his photos on Wikipedia and it looks like his illness caused all of his body hair to fall out. Also, he appears to be covered in a slippery, mucus-like substance. Lack of armpit hair and glossy discharge should have been your first indication of illness, Brock.
I should mention that anyone can be a Regional Director of Related Comments for their part of the world. Phil gets to go to an annual retreat I put on for all Regional Directors. Last year we went to Wally World and I made sandwiches for everyone (crusts cut off).