(no subject)
Pluto no longer a planet. Poor Pluto.
Tea healthier than water." Tea, lovely tea.
19 year old girl needs to lose over half her body weight, or faces death in 10 years. This is so shocking. There are a number of things in this report that leave me just shaking my head at the stupidity of it all. 1. the widespread abuse overweight people get, leaving a horribly bitter cycle if the person is a comfort eater. 2. That this girl was allowed to get to this age, and this weight (34 stone). Has no one been paying attention? Do doctors just not care enough about obesity yet? Is it all just blamed on lazyness and seen therefore as something the person is then responsible for? Comfort eating can be as much a mental illness as anorexia - where is the help for the overeaters? 3. The sheer damage being done to her health. Even if she loses her target weight (approx. 20 stone to get her to a healthy size), surely her heart has been put under so much pressure for so long that years have been knocked off? 3. Which leads to the point - how much money is it going to cost? I've read reports (none that I can put my hands on at the moment) which state that soon the major problem for the NHS is going to be obese patients, and associated problems - exacerbated by the fact that surgery is made more complicated in very obese people. Type 2 diabetes is being seen in children - that's entirely new. The problem is acknowledged - what is going to be done? 4. From a story linked on that page: "Figures due out this week are set to show that obesity has risen by 38% in adults since 2003. The Department of Health report is expected to show that if nothing changes, a third of men will be obese by 2010, and 22% of girls and 19% of boys between the ages of two and 15 will be chronically obese." 4 years, and we're looking at 1 in 5 children being "chronically obese". How many "just" obese? Ironic, given that two years later the Olympics are going to be in Britain, when the majority of people in this country are going to be very overweight to obese.
Ack. That turned into a wee bit of a rant. I'm not a weight Nazi. I know how lucky I am - I inherited the body type on my dad's family, but all other women in my family are overweight. Even my sister who is a dietician. (She's at the lower end of the overweight scale, but she has a different body frame, etc.) I've seen how carrying extra weight can exacerbate existing medical conditions - my aunt needs a knee replacement. She has for over 10 years now. And she needs to lose weight to make it easier on her knee. Ok, so it's not me, but its close relatives. I may be lucky, and be the normal weight for my build and height, but I've seen how difficult it is to lose weight. I feel like almost I don't have the right to rant about this, or that it seems callous, but something really needs to be done.
This is such a serious problem. And let's put it in context with "the war on terror". Unfathomable amounts of money are being spent on it. Yet, as one of the comics we saw in Edinburgh (fly-by pimp - Jesus: the Guatanamo Years - excellent) said - for Al Quaida to kill as many in the West as tobacco does, given that September the 11th was the main attack, something like 27 planes would have to hijacked every day. It's maybe not the best example, for one thing it's about tobacco, but it does show that what's killing us - its no one but ourselves. It's us: polluting our environments, not being bothered to cook properly, eating fast food*, smoking, not exercising, speeding**. Statisically, terrorism is killing but a tiny percentage of the population. I'm not asking the government to rethink its foreign policy (well, I am, but this isn't the place) but look at Europe***. Yes, rates are going up there, and scarily so, but yet nowhere near the rates they are in the United States. Blindly following every aspect of American life is killing us.
*Seeing how rates have tripled in Eastern Europe since fast food was freely available - somewhat telling, don't you think?
**I could tell you a horrible story about how 2 local girls were killed, travelling in a car travelling at 120 mph, wrong side of the road, no seat belts with a driver 3 times the legal limit. I could tell you about how the two girls were mangled so badly their families weren't allowed to identify them, leading to the fact that the driver, he of the 3x legal limit identified them. I could tell you how he identified them wrongly, and the bodies had to be dug up, as they'd been put in the wrong grave. I could tell you this to show how stupidly easily lives can be thrown away. But frankly, I can't really fit this into any narrative that makes sense.
***Best example - France. This shows the rates in Europe, the "French paradox", and what some countries are doing - Finland noticing in the 70s some dangerous trends, and setting out 30 years before anyone else at trying to remedy it. Not entirely successful - problem the lack of physical activity, but obesity in children has been cut drastically.
Tea healthier than water." Tea, lovely tea.
19 year old girl needs to lose over half her body weight, or faces death in 10 years. This is so shocking. There are a number of things in this report that leave me just shaking my head at the stupidity of it all. 1. the widespread abuse overweight people get, leaving a horribly bitter cycle if the person is a comfort eater. 2. That this girl was allowed to get to this age, and this weight (34 stone). Has no one been paying attention? Do doctors just not care enough about obesity yet? Is it all just blamed on lazyness and seen therefore as something the person is then responsible for? Comfort eating can be as much a mental illness as anorexia - where is the help for the overeaters? 3. The sheer damage being done to her health. Even if she loses her target weight (approx. 20 stone to get her to a healthy size), surely her heart has been put under so much pressure for so long that years have been knocked off? 3. Which leads to the point - how much money is it going to cost? I've read reports (none that I can put my hands on at the moment) which state that soon the major problem for the NHS is going to be obese patients, and associated problems - exacerbated by the fact that surgery is made more complicated in very obese people. Type 2 diabetes is being seen in children - that's entirely new. The problem is acknowledged - what is going to be done? 4. From a story linked on that page: "Figures due out this week are set to show that obesity has risen by 38% in adults since 2003. The Department of Health report is expected to show that if nothing changes, a third of men will be obese by 2010, and 22% of girls and 19% of boys between the ages of two and 15 will be chronically obese." 4 years, and we're looking at 1 in 5 children being "chronically obese". How many "just" obese? Ironic, given that two years later the Olympics are going to be in Britain, when the majority of people in this country are going to be very overweight to obese.
Ack. That turned into a wee bit of a rant. I'm not a weight Nazi. I know how lucky I am - I inherited the body type on my dad's family, but all other women in my family are overweight. Even my sister who is a dietician. (She's at the lower end of the overweight scale, but she has a different body frame, etc.) I've seen how carrying extra weight can exacerbate existing medical conditions - my aunt needs a knee replacement. She has for over 10 years now. And she needs to lose weight to make it easier on her knee. Ok, so it's not me, but its close relatives. I may be lucky, and be the normal weight for my build and height, but I've seen how difficult it is to lose weight. I feel like almost I don't have the right to rant about this, or that it seems callous, but something really needs to be done.
This is such a serious problem. And let's put it in context with "the war on terror". Unfathomable amounts of money are being spent on it. Yet, as one of the comics we saw in Edinburgh (fly-by pimp - Jesus: the Guatanamo Years - excellent) said - for Al Quaida to kill as many in the West as tobacco does, given that September the 11th was the main attack, something like 27 planes would have to hijacked every day. It's maybe not the best example, for one thing it's about tobacco, but it does show that what's killing us - its no one but ourselves. It's us: polluting our environments, not being bothered to cook properly, eating fast food*, smoking, not exercising, speeding**. Statisically, terrorism is killing but a tiny percentage of the population. I'm not asking the government to rethink its foreign policy (well, I am, but this isn't the place) but look at Europe***. Yes, rates are going up there, and scarily so, but yet nowhere near the rates they are in the United States. Blindly following every aspect of American life is killing us.
*Seeing how rates have tripled in Eastern Europe since fast food was freely available - somewhat telling, don't you think?
**I could tell you a horrible story about how 2 local girls were killed, travelling in a car travelling at 120 mph, wrong side of the road, no seat belts with a driver 3 times the legal limit. I could tell you about how the two girls were mangled so badly their families weren't allowed to identify them, leading to the fact that the driver, he of the 3x legal limit identified them. I could tell you how he identified them wrongly, and the bodies had to be dug up, as they'd been put in the wrong grave. I could tell you this to show how stupidly easily lives can be thrown away. But frankly, I can't really fit this into any narrative that makes sense.
***Best example - France. This shows the rates in Europe, the "French paradox", and what some countries are doing - Finland noticing in the 70s some dangerous trends, and setting out 30 years before anyone else at trying to remedy it. Not entirely successful - problem the lack of physical activity, but obesity in children has been cut drastically.