Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
March 2010
Pound by pound, fat is changing the way government works. Economists predict that costly chronic diseases will soon drop Medicare into the red even as politicians seek ways to push every American into a similar program.
More than a third of American adults are 30 pounds or more overweight. The fat burden affects our transportation; airlines spend millions of dollars per year for the extra fuel that it takes to get chunky bodies up to altitude and keep them there. The car that hauls around an obese family gets poorer gas mileage. Do you think that your congressperson, deliberating about carbon offsets, is aware of the fat factor?
Part of the increase in health care costs is for hospital beds, MRI machines and toilets that can accommodate morbidly obese patients, those who weigh a hundred pounds or more than nature intended. Back injury resulting from moving obese patients is so common among nurses and other healthcare personnel that hoists are necessary to assist them.
Universal healthcare may be months, years or decades away but whenever it arrives it won't solve these problems. Our medical system has an enormous flaw: we direct resources against diseases that should never have arisen and whose common denominator is our toxic-obesogenic lifestyle. More than 90 percent of heart disease is preventable; coronary artery disease was almost entirely absent a century ago. The same is true of stroke. Cancer is the second leading cause of death but more than half of it is caused by smoking and poor eating habits. Type 2 diabetes was rare among adults at the beginning of the 20th century and it simply did not exist in children. It is our fastest-growing, entirely preventable disease. Its victims endure blindness, kidney failure and amputations while waiting to die of heart disease or stroke. When children acquire the disease they develop these complications early in its course.
Politicians ought to concentrate on prevention, not prescription. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and osteoporosis begin before conception and the risk intensifies in the womb and during childhood. Education on lifestyle issues should begin in the obstetrician's office, continue through the school years and be reinforced in middle age. As long as our elected representatives ignore the root causes of chronic disease they will continue to chase a mirage. The nation will overcome this problem only when it applies adequate resources to health care instead of disease care.
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.