Does Childhood Obesity Equal Neglect?

In a world where every minute of the day is jam-packed with rushing from home to school and school to work and work to school and school to extracurricular activities, it is no wonder that parents are feeling the squeeze of where a lot of us are failing.  Our children's diets are suffering in a tremendous way which leads to things we would never wish on our children:  diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, bone and joint problems, social and psychological problems, and poor self-esteem.  Today, childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years according to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the National Center for Health Statistics.

There are immediate and long-term health effects.  Long-term effects are things like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, cancer, and osteoarthritis.  One study called the Bogalusa Heart Study showed that children who became obese as early as age 2 were more likely to be obese as adults.

In Britain, news was just released claiming that parents of an obese child were arrested for neglect.  Has this gone too far?  

If we spend our days putting priority on "getting somewhere" and not what goes into our bodies, we are missing a vital part of what we should prioritize.  Health.  

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” - Hippocrates

Should a parent be responsible for training up a child on how to be healthy?  Absolutely!  But, where we fail as a society, in America at least, is that our culture is driven around maximizing every second for work and productivity and not health.  We rush about to and fro and forget about healthy foods.  It takes too long to prepare.  McDonald's is so much faster.  Drive-thrus are so much faster.  Our hospital cafeterias are filled with the same foods that would send a patient to the cath lab over time due to the high cholesterol and high fat/sugar.  We have a society problem more than a parenting problem though the children suffering with obesity is a big symptom.

Coca-Cola Commits to Obesity Reduction

[embedplusvideo height="298" width="480" standard="http://www.youtube.com/v/zybnaPqzJ6s?fs=1" vars="ytid=zybnaPqzJ6s&width=480&height=298&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=" id="ep6358" /] All the while trying to fight the ban in NYC on giant servings.

Read more:  Obesity Epidemic in America

Just Take Care of Yourself

Sitting in the waiting room of a pain clinic is more uncomfortable to me than seeing a cop's blue lights in my rear view mirror. Not only is it fairly evident that people in my area do not take care of themselves, I wonder why in the heck do I have to visit this place every six months or so? I have a very shoddy lower lumbar. The rest of my back is great, but for some reason God saw it fit for me to have some crappy genetics coupled with a severe love of running. I use the word severe because it is no secret that eventually most runners will have joint problems, and a severe love so great that it is worth the pain is nuts. There, I said it. I like to run. Even when it hurts. So I use radio frequency lesioning (RFL) to burn the nerves (they grow back) so I don't feel the pain in my lower back.

I watched a woman roll into the waiting room this morning still dressed in pajamas. She looked to be around 400 lbs, and I wonder, how have we allowed ourselves to get to the point where a donut or ten is worth being on a ton of medicine? How can we look in the mirror every day and know we are slowly poisoning ourselves? I'm preaching to the choir here because my diet is crap. Another patient limped in. He hadn't taken care of himself. I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb. This is a good thing.

These pain clinic docs would be out of a job if people took care of themselves!

A good friend of mine sent me this link: Why You Should Not Go to Medical School. Basically it really settled some things that my subconscious mind already knew. Although my dad wanted me to be a doctor, he had no idea what kind of life that would entail. It would mean telling someone to lose that weight so you could get off all the pain and hypertension meds. It would mean knowing that most wouldn't give a rats' ass and keep on stuffing their face with processed sugary foods contributing to diabetes and the like. I'm glad I didn't go to medical school. I'm not so sure I'm glad I chose pharmacy, but I seem to be pretty good at it.

Too Stupid to Be Free?

Do politicians really feel that passing laws to change the SIZES of soft drinks will actually combat the obesity problem faced in the US? British researchers have been arguing that overpopulation discussions shouldn't be limited to head counts but should also factor in the weight of people. America is GUILTY of being a part of the heaviest nations in the country. New York City and now Cambridge, MA is starting the political process of passing laws that demonstrate that we as consumers know less about what's good for us. North America has 6% of the world's population, but guess what? We have 34% of world biomass due to obesity. Obesity equals money and a drain on the entire health system. I believe that corporations could start changing things at work. Since we are a country at work, including a lot of women, we could start changing the menus at cafeterias. We could start changing the menus at fast food restaurants. The problem I have with the idea of government mandating this is the argument that is essential to more or less government. Does government know better than me when it comes to decisions about my health? Does government believe that it can decide for me? This is a loss of freedom, but at the rate things are going, it's obvious that the freedoms Americans have been allowed to enjoy (eating a large fry at McDonald's and a supersize coke, for example) might be taken away in the future.

For example, where I work, there is a salad bar, but the main food is pretty unhealthy. The portion sizes given could easily feed 2-3 people. This is in a hospital. Just upstairs from this cafeteria, cardiac bypasses are being performed to try to correct the very result of the damage caused by genetics and more often our diets. Irony at best. I'm guilty. Believe me, I struggle with my own weight being about 5'7" and around 150 lbs today is a little too much weight for my frame. I know that my IBW is 133 lbs. This means that I am 17 lbs overweight. Seriously. I believe it, too. Yes, I look thin to some, I suppose, but that is because of what I'm compared to. If the majority of Americans are overweight and obese, well there you go.

So basically, if the entire world was as heavy as we are, that would be equivalent to an extra 1,000,000,000 people.

Put less in your mouth. Move. PLEASE. Please before government mandates it. Though, at this point while sitting in Panera and blogging and seeing the people around me -- maybe it's time we lose a little freedom for the common good of people.

Maybe we are too stupid to be free.

I guess

5 Reasons Why You Should Take Up Running

I finished my last half marathon on Saturday at 2:13.  I am still on the quest to break the two hour mark.  I know that if I actually trained for a race, I would probably be a lot faster.  I still show up at the starting line in the early hours of the morning with all the other runners and beat my body into submission.

Why do I run?

I remember one of the first exercises running years and years ago.  Let us flash back to about 1988.  I was in ninth grade and on the basketball team.  We didn't win a single game that season, but I do remember running.  Lots and lots of running and the reason why was because we NEVER won a game.  I loved running.  Back then I was the fastest on the team.  I was small.  Fast.  Couldn't shoot a basket to save my life but I could almost fly.

I remember running with my dad and sprinting.  Freedom.

I did a little jaunt in college with the cross country team.  I was the slowest.

What ended up happening is that running became something more than I ever thought, and when it was almost taken from my life due to chronic back pain (degenerative disc disease and facet arthropathy with spondylosis).  During the time of the most pain, I could not run.  During that time, I was quite depressed about it.

So you can imagine, the joy I feel when I run today.  Radio frequency lesioning (RFL) found me, and I'm back to running again.  It's different though.  Now when I run, there is an elation that I did not experience before.  There was a moment Saturday when I was running through a shaded area.  The trees were shading the road very heavily and there were tiny flowers floating through the air landing in front of me.  Very ethereal.  I'm just saying the appreciating is way above what it could ever have been otherwise.

1.  I run because I can.

2.  I run because I want my heart and lungs to be stronger.

3.  I run because I desperately need ME time.  I can't pull out my iPhone and fill every void moment with texting or tweeting.  It's a time that I completely check out.

4.  I run because I do some of my best thinking while running.  Have a problem at work?  I tend to work through them mentally.

5.  I run because the runner's high exists, and it is truly better than any drug.

I have had runs that absolutely sucked.  Just keep trying.  Just put one foot in front of the other.

It will change your life!