‘World’s fattest man’ to undergo life-saving treatment

Juan Pedro weighs a staggering 1,102 lbs and is billed as the World’s Fattest Man. Screen Grab from Youtube/BOOM

A 32-year-old Mexican who’s been billed as the “world’s fattest man” alive has entered a hospital specializing in surgical solutions to obesity.

Weighing an astonishing 78 stone (1,102 lbs), Juan Pedro will finally have the chance to shed some pounds after being bed-ridden for the last six years due to his massive frame.

Pedro has been living with his mother and has insufficient resources to buy the prescribed food and medicines to keep his weight down.

“I never knew what was happening to me,” he described his dire situation in a Telegraph report. “My body just followed its own path without any control whatsoever. I tried to diet day after day, but nothing worked and I became desperate. Finally, my body suffered a bad reaction and I was in a coma for a while, waking up in bed from where I haven’t moved since.”

Doctors attributed Pedro’s severe weight problem to two types of diabetes,  thyroid problems, hypertension and liquid in his lungs.

“His hypothyroidism has done terrible damage to his organism, slowing processes down and causing his body to store rather than burn off what he ingests,” explained Dr José Castañeda, the director the Gastric Bypass Mexico hospital in Guadalajara.

His case has been described as severe, and Dr. Castañeda said he is most probably alive because of his relatively youthful age.

“It’s impossible for the human body to cope with the pathologies Juan Pedro suffers from over a prolonged period, but I think we are just in time,” he said, adding that Pedro would need at least six months of treatment to stabilize his body before gastric bypass surgery could be undertaken.

Screengrab from YouTube/BOOM

Pedro is grateful to finally receive medical treatment, but his years of being confined in his bed has left him depressed.

“This is no life; the worst sentence you can give a human being is to make a prison of his own body,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pedro’s mother, María de Jesús Salas, said Pedro was overweight as a boy, but had an active lifestyle, including playing the guitar, singing in a choir and kicking a football around.

“He was a good cumbia dancer and had two or three girlfriends,” she said, recalling his son’s childhood.

Mexico has an obesity rate of 32 percent among adults, according to a 2014 study of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries.  Khristian Ibarrola/rga