I have been accusing health experts and NHS of not really doing much to stem the tide of obesity, but it seems that this is not right.
More news on the biggest health threat to society came out yesterday when it was revealed that rates of surgery had rocketed.
It seeems that things like gastric banding and stomach stapling have been on the rise and the NHS is keeping busy trying to sort out the mess with surgery.
It's important to bear in mind that these are quite complicated operations, they carry risks and are only recommended for the most severely overweight people. Most importantly, according to the guidelines, they should only be used as a last resort when every other attempt to loose weight has been tried and has not been successful.
It's a sobering indication of where we now are with obesity that these last resort operations are becoming commonplace and it begs the question - what else, if anything is there to fall back on if all this fails?
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
The (almost) Good News About Smoking!
Good news about smoking is like finding an invisible needle in a haystack. But a story from Sweden suggests that if it's a toss up between being overweight and smoking, the smoker might be better off.
It's a really sad day for obesity when it's getting so bad that it's racing ahead of smoking in the bad health stakes.
It's a really sad day for obesity when it's getting so bad that it's racing ahead of smoking in the bad health stakes.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Sugar Sickness is Not So Sweet
The predictions of an explosion in obesity and weight-related diseases are coming home to roost alarmingly fast. And inspite of the fact that every day now brings with it some new slant on obesity, today's news on diabetes was high on most news agendas.
The warnigns and predictions have been going on for the best part of a decade and by now seem to trip off the tongue, obesity leads to heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, metabolic syndrome, lots of other things and even if you just get one of these,it leads to complications in its own right that are particularly nasty.
But now it's happening and the diabetes explosion which the experts predicted is here-the red line has shot up the chart. Already the health charities are shaking their heads.
I should add here that we are talking about type II Diabetes, not the sort you get because of a genetic predisposition but the sort that can be brought on by the type of lifestlye you lead. Type II is totally avoidable and is being seen in younger and younger children.
A further problem for people struggling with their weight is that once they have this type of condition, it has complications which are likely to affect their ability to keep healthy and lose weight, so they get locked into a vicious downward spiral.
With nothing on the horizon to effectively halt, let alone reverse, the creeping tide of obesity, we will have to wait to see what the Government comes up with next.
The warnigns and predictions have been going on for the best part of a decade and by now seem to trip off the tongue, obesity leads to heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, metabolic syndrome, lots of other things and even if you just get one of these,it leads to complications in its own right that are particularly nasty.
But now it's happening and the diabetes explosion which the experts predicted is here-the red line has shot up the chart. Already the health charities are shaking their heads.
I should add here that we are talking about type II Diabetes, not the sort you get because of a genetic predisposition but the sort that can be brought on by the type of lifestlye you lead. Type II is totally avoidable and is being seen in younger and younger children.
A further problem for people struggling with their weight is that once they have this type of condition, it has complications which are likely to affect their ability to keep healthy and lose weight, so they get locked into a vicious downward spiral.
With nothing on the horizon to effectively halt, let alone reverse, the creeping tide of obesity, we will have to wait to see what the Government comes up with next.
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Groundhog Day for Supersize Chocolate Bars
The Government is going to take action. Chocolate bars will be shrunk along with bumper sized packets of crisps and other must-have snacks that you can buy on the hoof from petrol stations, vending machines and local shops.
Health Minister Alan Johnson has spoken. What he said roughly translated, was that when people buy a huge Mars bar, they scoff the lot. This is due to the pressure of 'waste not, want not' or should that be 'waist not, want not'.
It is part of the Change4Life campaign, which is only happening in England but presumably shrinking choc bars will have an impact in all corners of the UK and people filling up at a service station in Glasgow, will only be able to buy the same size Twix as some one in Plymouth.
Anyway this is all a premable and I should maybe be revising my opinion of the UK Government which has come under fire for fiddling while Britain expanded but I'm certainly not going to be downsizing my criticism as I can reveal: NOT ONLY is the idea of making bars of choc smaller an old one, BUT ALSO, it came from the very people who Mr Johnson is about to take to task over the matter.
This story was carried on the BBC website in 2004. You have to ask the question, why is the Health Minister asking the food and drink industry to do something it did four years ago? Are the bars not small enough yet?
Or maybe it just didn't work, it was more lip service from a multi-billion pound industry and Mr Johnson has to say something to keep the confectionary industry sweet, rather than ruffle any wrappers.
Health Minister Alan Johnson has spoken. What he said roughly translated, was that when people buy a huge Mars bar, they scoff the lot. This is due to the pressure of 'waste not, want not' or should that be 'waist not, want not'.
It is part of the Change4Life campaign, which is only happening in England but presumably shrinking choc bars will have an impact in all corners of the UK and people filling up at a service station in Glasgow, will only be able to buy the same size Twix as some one in Plymouth.
Anyway this is all a premable and I should maybe be revising my opinion of the UK Government which has come under fire for fiddling while Britain expanded but I'm certainly not going to be downsizing my criticism as I can reveal: NOT ONLY is the idea of making bars of choc smaller an old one, BUT ALSO, it came from the very people who Mr Johnson is about to take to task over the matter.
This story was carried on the BBC website in 2004. You have to ask the question, why is the Health Minister asking the food and drink industry to do something it did four years ago? Are the bars not small enough yet?
Or maybe it just didn't work, it was more lip service from a multi-billion pound industry and Mr Johnson has to say something to keep the confectionary industry sweet, rather than ruffle any wrappers.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Good Habits Last a Lifetime - Bad Habits Cost Lives
Obesity causes cancer, especially in the young, according to experts on child health, featured today in various media outlets and the BBC. The experts are saying that by 2012, 1 million children in England will be obese-more will be overweight and that means over 1 million will be at risk from cancer.
As we all know, the war against smoking has been won and health officials are now seeing the positive benefits of this in terms of less heart disease and hopefully lower rates of cancer caused by cigarettes.
All this would mean less strain on the health service but it all looks like it's going to come unstuck if governments around the world don't sort out the obesity problems. The benefits gained and the advances made are all likely to be wiped out by the negative effects of obesity.
One of the Uk's top professors used World Cancer Day to speak out about parental complacency over child obesity but it seems the message is not getting through.
Many people don't understand the link between excess weight and cancer but it seems that abdomininal fat causes hormonal changes which can trigger breast and prostate cancer. Fat can also wipe out the good chemicals in the body which help fight cancer.
And it all comes down to diet, especially in childhood. If you feed your kids high fat, energy dense, salty processed food and allow them high calorie fizzy drinks with no fresh fruit and veg, you are likely to be shortening their life. Good habits are formed in childhood and last a lifetime, bad eating and activity habits will also last a lifetime-a signifcantly shorter lifetime.
As we all know, the war against smoking has been won and health officials are now seeing the positive benefits of this in terms of less heart disease and hopefully lower rates of cancer caused by cigarettes.
All this would mean less strain on the health service but it all looks like it's going to come unstuck if governments around the world don't sort out the obesity problems. The benefits gained and the advances made are all likely to be wiped out by the negative effects of obesity.
One of the Uk's top professors used World Cancer Day to speak out about parental complacency over child obesity but it seems the message is not getting through.
Many people don't understand the link between excess weight and cancer but it seems that abdomininal fat causes hormonal changes which can trigger breast and prostate cancer. Fat can also wipe out the good chemicals in the body which help fight cancer.
And it all comes down to diet, especially in childhood. If you feed your kids high fat, energy dense, salty processed food and allow them high calorie fizzy drinks with no fresh fruit and veg, you are likely to be shortening their life. Good habits are formed in childhood and last a lifetime, bad eating and activity habits will also last a lifetime-a signifcantly shorter lifetime.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Gok Wan Weighs Into Child Obesity Debate
I had always thought of Gok Wan as being a proto-type Channel 4 TV presenter, who'd arrived on our screens from some kind of top-secret factory churning out edgy and attractive individuals from spare parts. Not that I'd paid him much attention before, sure he's personable and disarming enough, but I always thought he'd fade from view after the novelty of getting women to strip off and be damned had worn off.
So it was a big suprise to me that he was previously a huge, gorging teen who weighed an incredible 21 stone. If you dwell on those figures, you will work out that Gok could have weighed as much as three other teens and twice as much as most adults. Today with his trademark glasses, impecable grooming and what can only be described as snake hips, it's impossible to think of Gok other than a fast rising celebrity and I think he was a great choice to present "Too Fat Too Young". I think Channel 4 also showed wisdom in including obesity in their series, the Great British Food Fight.
Inspired and eye-opening as this was, I'm not sure that Gok found what he was looking for and he was also maddeningly vague about the way he lost almost half of his body weight which just seemed to drop off in a matter of months.
I think we need to see more of him in this role and I hope he's working on another series of programmes concentrating on how obese young people can turn their lives around by taking control of their weight. I'm not confident that this will happen though, as programme makers require a quick beginning, middle and happy end all in the course of a half hour programme and the obesity crisis will take a lot longer than that to sort out.
So it was a big suprise to me that he was previously a huge, gorging teen who weighed an incredible 21 stone. If you dwell on those figures, you will work out that Gok could have weighed as much as three other teens and twice as much as most adults. Today with his trademark glasses, impecable grooming and what can only be described as snake hips, it's impossible to think of Gok other than a fast rising celebrity and I think he was a great choice to present "Too Fat Too Young". I think Channel 4 also showed wisdom in including obesity in their series, the Great British Food Fight.
Inspired and eye-opening as this was, I'm not sure that Gok found what he was looking for and he was also maddeningly vague about the way he lost almost half of his body weight which just seemed to drop off in a matter of months.
I think we need to see more of him in this role and I hope he's working on another series of programmes concentrating on how obese young people can turn their lives around by taking control of their weight. I'm not confident that this will happen though, as programme makers require a quick beginning, middle and happy end all in the course of a half hour programme and the obesity crisis will take a lot longer than that to sort out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
