Open Discussion on Health Care

At dinner last night with my wife and one of her co-workers we were discussing the declining state of health in our society. There is no longer any question that most of this is due to poor health habits. We eat bad food, we eat too much of it, and we don’t exercise enough. The result is that type 2 diabetes and other related lifestyle-induced diseases are the fastest growing illnesses in the world.

I’m in favor of a national health care system of some sort. Dave’s main problem with this is covering people who don’t bother to try and keep themselves healthy. On this point, I concur, but I pointed out that we do this now. While we don’t have an actual health care plan we do have a national system. In this system anyone can use an emergency room. So now our ERs are filled with people who have minor ailments, which interfere with those who need emergency treatment.

While the above paragraph somewhat summarized to talking point of the left and right on health care, the actually issue lies elsewhere. The solution is health practice. As a nation we could easily afford to take care of those who are sick and injuries if we could get rid of the problems associated with poor eating habits and lack of exercise. We’ve done it in the past, with both alcohol and tobacco, when we realized the national impact it was having. It’s high time we begin doing the same thing with other lifestyle behaviors that are costing society.

I’m not going to cite any numbers or details yet. These are just my opening thoughts. I’d like to start formulating a plan. If we can formulate a compelling argument we can use to three or so million of us associated with Beachbody to make ourselves heard on a national level.

Part I of the plan: Food labeling

We need to make the next step in food labeling. Our current macro-nutrient profiles can hide how our foods are often devoid of phytonutrients. What we need is to have every packaged food to be given a grade by the FDA: A – F.

Then, like using Michi’s Ladder, you’d be encouraged to eat higher grade foods. Of course we’d have corporate lobbying and disputed grades but, for the most part, good foods would still be obvious. For example, maybe a good potato chip would get a C while a bad one got an F, but no potato chip could ever get better than a C because no matter how you look at it these have no place in your diet other than as an indulgence. Ditto for ice cream and most desserts. All fruits and veggies would be A or B. No sense splitting hairs here. We’ll want to do this as consumers but veggies from nutrient depleted soil are still better than the best French fry.

Next, the government only allows food stamps to pay for A and B grade foods. If we don’t allow them to be used for beer and smokes, how can we allow them to be used for Coke and Cheetoes, which are arguably worse for you? There is no way a person on assisted living should be able to be obese. Yet this demographic is now highly obese and putting a huge strain on our health care system because of it.

The insidious reason why is because their diets are mainly made up of cheap processed food. There is no logic to why processed foods should be cheaper than those that take no processing until you understand how large scale food companies operate. Most “convenient foods” are made up of many bi-products from corn and soy production. These ingredients, such as high fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin, etc, etc, should be waste products but we’ve clever found ways to not only use them in our foods, but make entire foods out of them. Oh, the wonders of what chemical flavoring agents can do with what is essentially trash.

Most of this doesn’t have much nutrient merit so we fortify with just enough cheap vitamins and stuff to label it food. Obviously, this gook will be lacking some of nature’s subtleties but, hey, if it’s crunchy, tasty, and fills us up who’s to question it? Maybe the FDA can step in here and do some good.

We may be eliminating health class in school, or having our nutrition taught to us by the soda companies, but it’s not going to take an educated person to understand that if their cupboards are filled with D and F labeled foods that they probably could eat a little better. I think this one step would end up saving our country billions of dollars in health care costs. And it’s just step one. Next time I’ll present my exercise ideas.

Obesity & Diabetes

An article appeared on the wires recently discussing the obesity epidemic and its link to the skyrocketing rate of diabetes. If you're overweight or live an unhealthy lifestyle it's a must read. I'm sure most of you reading are thinking, "well, duh". If you're not, you must be new around here. In case you missed it, here's the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081031/ap_on_he_me/med_diabetes_states

We, as many of you know, have just released a workout program that's been approved by the American Diabetic Association. It's a re-vamp of a Kathy Smith program called Project You: Type Two. The medical world has been slow to trumpet the importance lifestyle plays in regards to diabetes (not all of them, of course, just in general and in making national recommendations for lifestyle as a preventative measure). This workout is the first to be released on a national level that specifically targets this problem. The fact is that all exercise programs target the problem because all will improve you health and decrease the likelihood that you'll become obese. And, just in case some of you weren't convinced before, the link between obesity and diabetes couldn't be more related.

I've got a reasonably scary article on obesity (and what to do about it) coming out this week. If you don't get our weekly newsletters, go to this page and enter your email at the lower right corner. You'll be required to opt in but it's free and you can easily cancel anytime. Of course, you won't want to:

http://www.beachbody.com/jump.do?itemType=HOME_PAGE

If you'd like to take a closer look at Project You: Type Two, here it is

Epidemic or Crisis?

In this article, parents are now going to receive letters if their children are obese in the UK. Okay, great. That's a start. But at the bottom of the article we see that "Two thirds of adults and a third of children are either overweight or obese in the UK. The figure is predicted to rise to almost nine in 10 adults and two-thirds of children by 2050, which could cost the economy £50bn due to obesity-related ill-health."

Apparently they don't predict that the strategy will do any good. This is more than alarming. If this trend in the UK holds true world wide, I'm not sure the earth can sustain it, especially given that we may be trying to house over 10 billion people by then.

Is this an epidemic or crisis?

Pic: a half full viewpoint

The Fattening of America

Not too many days go by when I don’t ponder, to some degree, the question of why America became so fat? We’re a country blessed with advantages, technology, information, equipment, and open space. Yet we continue to expand horizontally and our health continues to plummet, even with incredible advances being made in medicine. The capitalist in me tells me to stop questioning and enjoy the job security. The humanist in me would gladly change careers in order to help the planet. My competitive American spirit is simply pissed off. When did we become the problem rather than the solution?

Nothing brings this to light more than traveling. The first time in traveled to Europe, some 30 years ago, the world was a completely different place. The difference between the USA and, pretty much, any country in Europe was apparent without leaving the airport. America was clean, modern, spiffy. Europe was old, quaint, and in need of repair. Today this has flip-flopped. American airports are over-crowded, stressful, the entire system in need of an overhaul. Conversely, European airports are now clean, modern, and spiffy.

The biggest difference though, by far, is the people. 30 years ago nobody was fat anywhere, at least not that you’d notice in a crowded place. Nowadays, American airports have become a catwalk for what our society has become. I got a text from a friend returning from a long trip to Asia. It stated, simply, “In Denver. Americans are fat.”

My recent trip abroad didn’t cite to me any improvement whatsoever. I landed on a hop to Denver and was greeted by an alarming scene. The entire airports attention seemed diverted to TV screens placed around the airport. My first thoughts were of 9/11. We’d been attacked again or, perhaps, were at war somewhere else. Certainly something major must be happening. The answer, however, shed a bit of light on our obesity problem. These people were focused on the “breaking news” over steroids in baseball.

First off, as an athlete, steroids have been around for 40 years and pretty much readily available. 30 years ago, on the trip to Europe, I knew athletes taking steroids in high school. It may be news to the general public, or our President, but this is not breaking news to athletes. And it’s not important news, or shouldn’t be, to anyone. But it is important in an allegorical sense as it perfectly identifies how we’ve become fat. We’ve become a country that lives vicariously instead of doing things ourselves. Secondly, even though we realize that the media manipulates us, we allow them to do so without a simple squawk. Thirdly, we’ve lost focus on issues that really matter to us.

Taking the third part last, another news story on the day everyone’s world was rocked because “The Rocket” may have been a cheater, was that our country was solely responsible for holding up the world summit on climate change. Now here is a subject that affects each of us every single day. Yet all we seem to care about is whether or not Barry Bonds should have an asterisk next to his records.

All this apathy towards things that really matter allows our corporations to have their way with us. We’ll work longer hours, for less money, with no health care, and no vacation plan, for little retirement, just so long as the Yankees can win another pennant. During the time Roger Clemens has been pitching, we’ve seen the discrepancy between rich on poor in our country widen to the point that we’re, statistically, a third world nation. Our minimum wage has only raised a fraction and is current half of all other first world countries. Our president told a woman who spoke of working three jobs in order to just feed her kids that her situation was “uniquely American”. We’re grown too tired, too busy, too broke, too distracted to even bother with the basic things that we know keep us healthy. When did this happen? It’s not the America I grew up in.

But the real problem isn’t George Bush, the media, or the Enron’s of the world. The problem is us. As a society, we just don’t care enough anymore about what really matters. We need to wake up and take back our lives.

And, literally, that’s all it will take. Sure, the corporate stranglehold and statistical disadvantages won’t change over night. But your health will. And no matter how broke or busy we are become no can still eat better food and find thirty minutes a day to exercise. It’s really as simple as watching less baseball.

It's A Fat World After All

Disneyland has closed down some rides to retro them for our fatter society. Scroll down for the article:

http://www.miceage.com/allutz/al100907c.htm

Like those who deny that global warming is occuring even though glaciers are disappearing world wide, there are those who believe that the obesity epidemic is nothing but some sort of political sounding board so we can keep good American food corporations from maximizing their profits. Maybe they'll wake up when they can't bring their tub o' popcorn and 64 ounce soda on their oh-so American jungle ride.

"Quite simply, the boats weren't designed to handle multiple adults weighing more than 200 pounds, and they now routinely bottom out in the shallow flume and get stuck. The Imagineers who designed the unique flume ride system for the World's Fair assumed that adult men would average 175 pounds, and adult women would average 135 pounds. Needless to say, those 1960's statistics are hopelessly out of date in today's world. This same issue creates similar problems on the drops at Pirates of the Caribbean, or even on the older dark rides like Pinocchio or Alice In Wonderland as the more heavily loaded cars try to keep up their pace throughout the ride. But at it's a small world, the weight related problems happen more frequently."

More On Why We Should Stop Being Fat

It's not all about how you look...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly twice as many U.S. adults are obese compared to European, a key factor leading Americans to suffer more often from cancer, diabetes and other chronic ailments, a study released on Tuesday found.

Treatment of these and other chronic diseases adds between $100 billion and $150 billion to the annual health care tab in the United States, according to the report comparing U.S. and European health published online in the journal Health Affairs.

The United States spends significantly more per capita than any European country on health care, about $2 trillion annually, or 16 percent of the gross domestic product. While the big discrepancy has been linked to higher U.S. prices for medical treatment, the report said a sicker population may also be a factor.

"We expected to see differences between disease prevalence in the United States and Europe, but the extent of the differences is surprising," said Ken Thorpe, professor of public health at Emory University and a study co-author. "It is possible that we spend more on health care because we are, indeed, less healthy."

A key factor in many chronic illnesses is obesity and smoking. About 33 percent of Americans are obese, compared with 17 percent in 10 European countries reviewed. More than half of Americans are former or current smokers, compared with about 43 percent in the European sample.

While Americans appeared to be on the whole sicker than adults in other industrialized countries, the study said more aggressive preventive care could help explain the results for some illnesses.

For example, the study found 12.2 percent of Americans are diagnosed with cancer, more than twice that of Europe. But that is likely due in part to more screening here, the study said.

Interactive Obesity Map Since 1985

Even with all of the info and available help we now have this trend continues to rise at an alarming rate. Scary stuff.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/fit.nation/obesity.map/

Scary Study

At least I shouldn't be out of work anytime soon...

Study: 75% of U.S. overweight by 2015 if current trends continue

An analysis of 20 studies indicates 75% of U.S. adults will be overweight and 41% obese by 2015, if people keep gaining weight at the current rate. Results showed each age group is getting heavier, and researchers fear obesity could eventually become the leading preventable cause of death in the country. Reuters (7/18)