SYDNEY (Xinhua) — Australian scientists believe ” brown fat,” a wondrous tissue that burns energy to generate heat, could help people fight obesity, local media reported on Monday.
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WELLINGTON (Xinhua) – Middle-aged women who wolf down their meals are much more likely to be overweight or obese than women who eat slower, New Zealand research has found.
In what they claimed to be the first such nationwide study anywhere, Otago University researchers analyzed the relationship between self-reported speed of eating and body mass index (BMI) in more than 1,500 New Zealand women aged 40 to 50, an age group known to be at high risk of weight gain.
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A study released today in the public health journal Health Affairs detailed the financial impact of obesity on the United States health care system from 1998 to 2006. The buzz of health care reform has led many to try and figure out where the money could come from. Taxing? Hopefully not. Getting rid of insurance fraud and abuse? Potentially, but that would only be about a 3% savings. Decreasing physician salaries and hospital budgets? Counterproductive. Ah ha! Reseachers discovered that obesity since 1998 has led to nearly $40 billion dollars in health care spending. This includes perscription drug costs, which topped out at $7 billion. The group estimates that with the incidence of obesity rising, costs will most likely have reached $147 billion dollars by 2008 (these studies have to be done in retrospect, as the data analysis is not possible until the year is over, and trends are typically seen over more than one year).
The most disconcerting part of their paper is when they show that in 1998, half of the $78.5 billion of medical spending due to obesity was paid for by Medicaid and Medicare. If that is the case, then the researchers are correct in pointing out that a key to health care reform is going to have to focus on obesity. It is calculated in this study that in the years between 1998 and 2006, the rate of obesity in the United States increased by 37%. That’s 25.1% of our population.
The analysis found in this paper is not an attempt to attack obese people, but to illuminate how the medical problems caused by obesity are draining our health care system of its money. Obesity is associated with some of the most expensive medical conditions possible: type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and cancer. Obesity is not just a problem of weight gain; it is a problem of causing the body to divert to its worst state of being, often leading to more than one if not all of those conditions mentioned. We must avoid playing the blame game, and treat this issue as one of general concern both for the health care of our population, and the economic welfare of our population. This study tells me that obesity has to be a center of change in our country. Employers should provide incentives for losing weight and staying healthy, and obesity must be treated early in childhood. I don’t know about you, but next time you think that obesity is a topic that can’t be addressed because of stigma, remember this: $147 billion dollars in 2008.
Studies in Michigan released last week warn that obesity may exacerbate typical effects of the swine flu, leading to a much more dangerous manifestation of the virus. Although media attention has waned the last month or so, the number of swine flu cases around the world has continued to increase. The total number of cases (as reported by the Center for Disease Control) has increased to more than 37,000 and the total number of deaths so far number 211. The speed at which the virus is moving is still precariously fast, although in many parts of the United States, the incidence of swine flu is finally slowing down. This is most likely due to the superior health care that the United States has to offer, as well as the extreme efforts that the public has been urged to take as far as prevention and treatment go.
Of the cases seen in Michigan, the research group noted that 9 out of the 10 patients to become sick with the swine flu in Michigan were obese or morbidly obese. Three of them died. Now, please do not get too excited about this in any way. I am not too impressed. Obesity (and especially extreme obesity) is perhaps medicine’s newest and most profound obstacle. Obesity leads to a seemingly infinite amount of risk factors for any condition or disease. Patients who are obese tend to have hypertension, are more likely to have asthma and other respiratory issues, and in more simple words, are just not as good at fending off germs. The body is not meant to be obese, and although the term is now quite difficult to define, using my own good judgment I am using obese to mean any unnatural state of being caused by excess adipose tissue. I’m not blaming individual people quite yet, but I am saying that to publish a study claiming that obesity is a risk factor in swine flu is like saying that overeating is a risk factor for obesity.
In addition to this study being relatively obvious, keep in mind that only ten patients were involved. This is not what I would call a large sample size (no pub intended). There are so many other factors involved in the epidemiology of the swine flu that to see a trend with ten patients is pushing it. Just because you see A and B does not mean that A caused B (although we all wish we could have gotten a publication out of claiming this).
