Bad health habits cause avoidable diseases & HUGE health care costs….
Today's post: Thursday, 8-30-2007
“How we set up to pay for our ballooning health care & medical costs is both irrelevant & insoluble if five to ten times more people are getting sick than should be doing so. And, this is now the case.”
Virtually no sane & unstressed people volunteer to die early.
And, if you were to ask for people who are interested in taking a lethal dose of rat poison or who are at all interested in getting an obnoxious, disabling, or fatal disease, you would find no takers.
Incredibly, by the way they eat; don’t exercise; & fail to manage their health risks, most Americans today are doing just exactly those things.
It was recently announced that the percent of Americans who are really fat is continuing to go up.
Depending on the state, between 17.6 % in Colorado, the median of about 24.4 %, & 30.6 % in Mississippi – or an average of roughly one out of four Americans is now really fat.
(Obese is the medical term for people with a BMI of 30.0 or higher. Very few people (who are very heavily muscled) are not really fat at that level. And, many people who don’t exercise are really fat at a lower number. But it’s a pretty accurate gauge for most people.)
The effects of being that fat -- and the bad health practices that cause it -- also produce or help cause diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, other cardiovascular problems, many cancers, & early mental decline.
So, our health care costs are going through the roof already. And, the productivity of our workforce is less than it easily could be, so there’s less income to pay for the added & unnecessary health care costs.
Worse, in the near term, the baby boomers are about to began entering their 60’s in huge numbers. And, even in people who follow good health practices, these disease become much more likely after age 60. In people who don’t follow good health practices, almost everyone begins to get these diseases.
The day the obesity statistics were announced in the San Jose Mercury News (& across the country) they quoted Jeffrey Levi, the executive director of the Trust for America’s Health as saying this:
“…every candidate for president talks about health care reform and controlling health care costs, if we don’t home in on this issue, none of their proposals are going to be affordable.”
I totally agree with him & wrote almost the same comment several days before I read his comment. I wrote:
“How we set up to pay for our ballooning health care & medical costs is both irrelevant & insoluble if five to ten times more people are getting sick than should be doing so. And, this is now the case.”
How can this be fixed?
1. Virtually all soft drinks & foods made with refined grains; foods made with any high fructose corn syrup; those made with ANY hydrogenated vegetable oils, whether partially hydrogenated or fully hydrogenated; many of the foods made with added sugar; & beef and poultry or farmed fish that has been mostly or totally grain fed tend to make people fat and sick.
Many of the Americans who are the fat people in this study eat very little else. Ouch !!
These foods are not as painful or fast as rat poison; but they kill you and make you sick about as well if you ingest them long enough.
And, much of this kind of food & drink is cheap today. So poor people & young people in their formative years tend to eat it.
Half of all food today is eaten away from home. Most fast food & a good bit of restaurant food is this kind of health harming food. And, employers today tend to have vending machines that make this kind of food available and serve these kinds of foods at company functions.
Why not make it a serious federal crime to put any hydrogenated vegetable oil or high fructose corn syrup in any foods or drinks anywhere in this country?
Why not tax all foods made with sugar or refined grains by having fifty percent of their purchase price fund government health care & disease prevention programs?
Why not tax all soft drinks by having 80 percent of their purchase price fund government health care & disease prevention programs? (Diet soft drinks harm health as much as regular soft drinks according to recent research.)
2. If people really knew how much exercise did FOR them and how much NOT exercising did to them, almost everyone who isn’t quite sick or disabled would do regular exercise.
About a quarter of all Americans get NO exercise at all. And another quarter gets too little to support good health and avoiding obesity.
Why not make it a requirement that to receive any federal funds or state funds from any state all K through 12 schools and all organizations that accredit K through 12 schools must have all of their able bodied students in some kind of exercise program?
(These programs can be individualized & managed by computer over the web. They don’t all have to be in group PE classes. This has already been done successfully in Minnesota.)
Why not have a federal tax on any company that doesn’t have a program to encourage its employees to exercise & to make it easier for their employees to do?
(People who get enough regular exercise either avoid getting fat or stop being fat or stay healthy even if they are still somewhat fat. And, they get far fewer of these avoidable diseases—including cancer--according to research I’ve seen reported.)
3. Despite having only about 20 percent of Americans who smoke or a bit more, if no one smoked, about half the cardiovascular diseases of all kinds & about half of the cancers would no longer happen.
(And, that doesn’t even count the deaths, burn injuries, property damage, & avoidable health care costs caused by fires that wouldn’t have happened it the people who caused them didn’t smoke.)
Why not make it a federal law that any kind of company from a corner gas station or convenience store to a cigarette company that sells cigarettes or other tobacco products in this country at all has to pay an extra ten percent penalty on top of its existing federal income tax bill?
What can you do as an individual?
A. You can ask any presidential candidate you can reach:
Do they support disease prevention efforts like these?
Do they know such efforts could cut the number of people getting these avoidable diseases by at least 80 percent?
What else will they do as president to make this reduction happen?
B. You can follow good health practices yourself.
1. You can stop ingesting the foods listed above as disease causing & eat the foods we listed in our last blog on Tuesday, 8-28-2007 as being low in glycemic load instead.
2. You can do regular exercise every week on at least three to five days including two sessions of strength training.
&
3. You can not smoke yourself & avoid second hand smoke.
C. You can teach your own children to follow good health practices.
David Ludwig has a superb book called, Ending the Food Fight, that can be very helpful for parents of kids who are old enough to make their own decisions but who are following bad health practices now.
D. Lastly, since most employers want to cut health care costs, if your company does things that sabotage good health practices, consider letting your employer know it would save them money to do things differently.
You may not be in a position to or work in a company where you can access your CEO or work in one that has a Wellness Director.
But, if you can, it’s well worth doing.
If you can’t, wish me luck in my efforts to do it for you.
One of my personal goals is to have nearly every company in the United States to promote good health practices and to stop helping to support harmful ones.
Today's post: Thursday, 8-30-2007
“How we set up to pay for our ballooning health care & medical costs is both irrelevant & insoluble if five to ten times more people are getting sick than should be doing so. And, this is now the case.”
Virtually no sane & unstressed people volunteer to die early.
And, if you were to ask for people who are interested in taking a lethal dose of rat poison or who are at all interested in getting an obnoxious, disabling, or fatal disease, you would find no takers.
Incredibly, by the way they eat; don’t exercise; & fail to manage their health risks, most Americans today are doing just exactly those things.
It was recently announced that the percent of Americans who are really fat is continuing to go up.
Depending on the state, between 17.6 % in Colorado, the median of about 24.4 %, & 30.6 % in Mississippi – or an average of roughly one out of four Americans is now really fat.
(Obese is the medical term for people with a BMI of 30.0 or higher. Very few people (who are very heavily muscled) are not really fat at that level. And, many people who don’t exercise are really fat at a lower number. But it’s a pretty accurate gauge for most people.)
The effects of being that fat -- and the bad health practices that cause it -- also produce or help cause diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, other cardiovascular problems, many cancers, & early mental decline.
So, our health care costs are going through the roof already. And, the productivity of our workforce is less than it easily could be, so there’s less income to pay for the added & unnecessary health care costs.
Worse, in the near term, the baby boomers are about to began entering their 60’s in huge numbers. And, even in people who follow good health practices, these disease become much more likely after age 60. In people who don’t follow good health practices, almost everyone begins to get these diseases.
The day the obesity statistics were announced in the San Jose Mercury News (& across the country) they quoted Jeffrey Levi, the executive director of the Trust for America’s Health as saying this:
“…every candidate for president talks about health care reform and controlling health care costs, if we don’t home in on this issue, none of their proposals are going to be affordable.”
I totally agree with him & wrote almost the same comment several days before I read his comment. I wrote:
“How we set up to pay for our ballooning health care & medical costs is both irrelevant & insoluble if five to ten times more people are getting sick than should be doing so. And, this is now the case.”
How can this be fixed?
1. Virtually all soft drinks & foods made with refined grains; foods made with any high fructose corn syrup; those made with ANY hydrogenated vegetable oils, whether partially hydrogenated or fully hydrogenated; many of the foods made with added sugar; & beef and poultry or farmed fish that has been mostly or totally grain fed tend to make people fat and sick.
Many of the Americans who are the fat people in this study eat very little else. Ouch !!
These foods are not as painful or fast as rat poison; but they kill you and make you sick about as well if you ingest them long enough.
And, much of this kind of food & drink is cheap today. So poor people & young people in their formative years tend to eat it.
Half of all food today is eaten away from home. Most fast food & a good bit of restaurant food is this kind of health harming food. And, employers today tend to have vending machines that make this kind of food available and serve these kinds of foods at company functions.
Why not make it a serious federal crime to put any hydrogenated vegetable oil or high fructose corn syrup in any foods or drinks anywhere in this country?
Why not tax all foods made with sugar or refined grains by having fifty percent of their purchase price fund government health care & disease prevention programs?
Why not tax all soft drinks by having 80 percent of their purchase price fund government health care & disease prevention programs? (Diet soft drinks harm health as much as regular soft drinks according to recent research.)
2. If people really knew how much exercise did FOR them and how much NOT exercising did to them, almost everyone who isn’t quite sick or disabled would do regular exercise.
About a quarter of all Americans get NO exercise at all. And another quarter gets too little to support good health and avoiding obesity.
Why not make it a requirement that to receive any federal funds or state funds from any state all K through 12 schools and all organizations that accredit K through 12 schools must have all of their able bodied students in some kind of exercise program?
(These programs can be individualized & managed by computer over the web. They don’t all have to be in group PE classes. This has already been done successfully in Minnesota.)
Why not have a federal tax on any company that doesn’t have a program to encourage its employees to exercise & to make it easier for their employees to do?
(People who get enough regular exercise either avoid getting fat or stop being fat or stay healthy even if they are still somewhat fat. And, they get far fewer of these avoidable diseases—including cancer--according to research I’ve seen reported.)
3. Despite having only about 20 percent of Americans who smoke or a bit more, if no one smoked, about half the cardiovascular diseases of all kinds & about half of the cancers would no longer happen.
(And, that doesn’t even count the deaths, burn injuries, property damage, & avoidable health care costs caused by fires that wouldn’t have happened it the people who caused them didn’t smoke.)
Why not make it a federal law that any kind of company from a corner gas station or convenience store to a cigarette company that sells cigarettes or other tobacco products in this country at all has to pay an extra ten percent penalty on top of its existing federal income tax bill?
What can you do as an individual?
A. You can ask any presidential candidate you can reach:
Do they support disease prevention efforts like these?
Do they know such efforts could cut the number of people getting these avoidable diseases by at least 80 percent?
What else will they do as president to make this reduction happen?
B. You can follow good health practices yourself.
1. You can stop ingesting the foods listed above as disease causing & eat the foods we listed in our last blog on Tuesday, 8-28-2007 as being low in glycemic load instead.
2. You can do regular exercise every week on at least three to five days including two sessions of strength training.
&
3. You can not smoke yourself & avoid second hand smoke.
C. You can teach your own children to follow good health practices.
David Ludwig has a superb book called, Ending the Food Fight, that can be very helpful for parents of kids who are old enough to make their own decisions but who are following bad health practices now.
D. Lastly, since most employers want to cut health care costs, if your company does things that sabotage good health practices, consider letting your employer know it would save them money to do things differently.
You may not be in a position to or work in a company where you can access your CEO or work in one that has a Wellness Director.
But, if you can, it’s well worth doing.
If you can’t, wish me luck in my efforts to do it for you.
One of my personal goals is to have nearly every company in the United States to promote good health practices and to stop helping to support harmful ones.
Labels: fat loss, health care costs, health care policy, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, smoking, smoking cessation, trans fats, transfats
posted by David at 2:03 PM
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