Medical costs out of control?

[MorningStar]

However, for LDS, with access to our welfare assistance - I really do not see any excuse at all for anyone to eat unhealthy foods. If they cannot afford proper food - there is means and help.

The Traveler

Have you ever needed welfare assistance from the church?

[Guest]

However, for LDS, with access to our welfare assistance - I really do not see any excuse at all for anyone to eat unhealthy foods. If they cannot afford proper food - there is means and help.

If I started living off of what I can get from the bishop's storehouse- things like pudding mix, canned fruit, potatoes, rice, wheat, etc.- I would definitely gain a lot of weight and my health would suffer.

[MorningStar]

If I started living off of what I can get from the bishop's storehouse- things like pudding mix, canned fruit, potatoes, rice, wheat, etc.- I would definitely gain a lot of weight and my health would suffer.

They do have produce, but if you're doing a two week order and everyone in your house is supposed to have 5 servings of fruits and veggies every day, it's not humanly possible to fit it in the average refrigerator and a lot of it won't survive that long.

And don't forget the Jell-O.

[BadWolf]

While we dove into the well proven correlation of being poor and either grossly over or underweight... There are also the other common causes of 30+ pounds of weight gain that preclude being on a rigorous exercise program for most (but not all).

- Pregnancy (should new moms have no healthcare while pregnant and that first year of life?)

- High Risk Pregnancy (wheee... Bedrest )

- Injury (particularly knee and back injuries, but increasingly amputees as well)

- Medical Injury (aka postoperative)

- Medical Genetic (congrntial heart problems, pulmonary problems, thyroid, etc.)

- Medical Illness/Infection (pneumonia, staph, etc.)

- Medical Disease (cancer, liver, kidney, heck... Pick an organ)

- Medication (steroids for asthma, antidepressants, etc.)

- Primary caregiver of child with severe medical needs (if you've never spent 6mo in the hospital with a sick child... It's murder on your waistline. Most parents either drop or gain 50 pounds, depending on how their body reacts to the daily stress/ fear of your child dying).

- Grief (death of your child, spouse, etc.)

- Depression & other neurotical issues

- Genetic predisposition towards endomorphism (Polynesian, Linebacker types, etc.)

- Athletes (wait a sec, right? Athletes, due to dense musculoskeletal systems for rigorous use, by numbers only -aka what an insurance co would look at... Are almost all 'overweight'. Models weigh significantly less than ballerinas. 350lb linebacker v 350lb computer guy. And athletes usually sit out a couple months a year due to sustaining injuries.)

... The list goes on.

There's a psychological self defense concept called "Blame" or "You & I"

How it works is like this:

YOU slipped because you were careless.

I slipped, because even though I'm very careful, I stepped on an icy patch."

YOU'RE fat because you're lazy or ignorant

I'M fat because my child is in the hospital dying / I have a knee injury and can't walk for 6mo/ my thyroxine is off / the asthma meds I'm taking have a side effect of 40lbs weight gain / I'm working 3 jobs in order to pay rent/ I run 20mi a week, and work out everyday for 4 hours, but my ancestors are Vikings...this is just how Im built / I had to choose between Suma cum Laude and the gym / my husband died and I fell into a depression for several months/ I eat the free breakfast and lunch ar school (bagels and cream cheese and mac n cheese) every day, I tried to kill myself, I used to be anorexic, I have a heart condition from getting scarlet fever as a child, I stepped on an IED...

So... Numbers wise... YEP, being overweight is CORRELATIONALLY linked to more healthcare costs. But in school in the anti-bigot class (nickname, it was technically called Medical Ethics Qtr 2 :'Ethics in healthcare: Removing commonly held medical professional to patient bias)... One of the MANY parts was about 'fat people'. (Another I put down on the bottom of this page). One exact topic being the correlation between health needs and overweight people. THE CORRELATION is there, but rarely the cause. Instead, we learned that more often than not, being overweight is a SYMPTOM of something else... And that our job was in part to look for those medical needs. Telling an anorexic in recovery to work out is as dangerous as telling a person with a congenital heart defect to work out (plus all the stuff above, med, psych, etc.).

I'm making up this stat (instead of looking it up), but my RECOLLECTION is that the percent of people who are obese with no direct cause (aka cause = laziness or ignorance) is apx 8%. The rest have true and discernable cause that may or may not be addressable.

So a thing to keep in mind is that someone who is fat may BE so (better than average chance) because of a pre-existing medical cause).

<grin> PART of that class, btw., included people who have priests come perform blessings!!!

[Backroads]

Wow. Poor people are fat because they are stupid and they cant be bothered to learn to eat better than their fat culture?

Way to insult and perpetuate stereotypes.

Not a direct response, but a thought inspired by yours: There is something to be said about a lack of education on nutrition. Some weeks ago I was reading about some specific people in Europe having health/weight problems, and these people admitted to simply not knowing how to eat healthy. Which shocked me as "impossible!" but then again, I also grew up with the food groups and later the food pyramid as part of my education. I do understand this education isn't always spread equally about.

Speaking specifically of the city in which I grew up, there were health & weight problems in the inner city area, which did tend to be a poorer area, and the city believed a contributer to the problems was lack of access to actual groceries. One of my ward members opened up a grocery store for some years that did pretty well.

But, yes, a total stereotype doesn't fit well.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Backroads

[Vort]

Not a direct response, but a thought inspired by yours:

The thought anne inspired in me is that she ought to take the time to read and understand before responding.

[MorningStar]

I don't understand a person not knowing how to eat healthy, but I do understand not having transportation to get to a grocery store. I don't know how a person would get through school not knowing that fruits and vegetables are good for you and junk food is not.

[Backroads]

I don't understand a person not knowing how to eat healthy, but I do understand not having transportation to get to a grocery store. I don't know how a person would get through school not knowing that fruits and vegetables are good for you and junk food is not.

My sister's old elementary [inner city] school had a specific program where the kids had a daily snack (besides lunch) that provided different fruits and vegetables, all part of a healthy eating-education program. That school zone did happen to have be fortunate to have a grocery store near by so parents were reduced to fast food and convenience store foods.

As for Europe, it made me wonder if some of those countries DON'T have the healthy eating education programs in public schools that we have.

[MorningStar]

I know a district nearby that does the same thing. They have a fruit and veggie grant. Our school has snack time, but they typically have fishy crackers or whatever else parents bring.

[Guest]

I don't understand a person not knowing how to eat healthy, but I do understand not having transportation to get to a grocery store. I don't know how a person would get through school not knowing that fruits and vegetables are good for you and junk food is not.

Sure, "fruits and vegetables are good for you" may be common knowledge. But there are lots of people who think fast food french fries is a vegetable.

[Guest]

I know a district nearby that does the same thing. They have a fruit and veggie grant. Our school has snack time, but they typically have fishy crackers or whatever else parents bring.

My kid attends a Montessori School. Each classroom has its own garden. The kids plant and harvest fruits and veggies and wildflowers in their own gardens. In my kid's garden, they have leaf lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, blackberries, watermelon, rose bush, and jasmine, among other ornamental things. They have two tortoise pets in the classroom who spend the morning in the garden and comes back inside the classroom in the afternoon.

Now, they are ready to harvest the lettuce so they have a Food Challenge project where the kids who like lettuce work with kids who don't like lettuce to share what they like about lettuce, how to prepare the lettuce so it tastes good, etc.

Cool, huh?

[Misshalfway]

That IS really cool, Anatess.

I don't have a garden, but I really want one. I'm not a green thumb and the whole business rather intimidates me. But I'm truly a wannabe.

[PrinceofLight2000]

Are medical costs ridiculous? Absolutely. I just had a bypass done on my popliteal artery because I have early onset popliteal entrapment syndrome in one of my legs, and it resulted in a blood clot. The whole thing cost $120,000. You read that right. Thank God for insurance, and I hope I don't have to get another one of these.

[BadWolf]

Sure, "fruits and vegetables are good for you" may be common knowledge. But there are lots of people who think fast food french fries is a vegetable.

<grin> I'm going to put on my devils advocate hat for just a moment (aka totally geek out for a minute):

Not all fruits & veg ARE good for you, and not all fast food is bad.

- Fruits are loaded in sugar, and are essentially desserts / empty calories in most cases. One of the first things a nutritionist I'm pals with does when dealing with obese kids is to ban all fruits from their diets for 6 mo. (She says her average 8yo client is eating 2000-10,000 calories in fruit each day. Not including juices. Straight fruit. A few bananas, a couple apples, some grapes, avo slices, tomatoes...A couple hundred calories per banana Start adding up FAST ) So many people think "fruit is good for you" that they let their kids have total access to as much fruit as they want. Which results in many cases in massive sugar overload (type 2 diabetes in kids is partially linked to sugar rich diets: fruits count in the well known "simple carb". Fructose is a VERY simple sugar)

- Babies and young children (5 and under) need high fat diets for myelinization of the nerves and neural development. Studies are currently ongoing looking at the impact of restricting fats, as well as quitting formula & breast milk early (aka starting solids at 6mo) and putting children on an adult diet (low fat / high fiber) in the OBESITY sphere. The prelim correlations are outta sight. The restricting nutrients pre-menses is very documented by now, but the low fat/high sugar diets most American kids are on is pretty mindblowing. Sure it's pretty obvious that if they're eating 5,000 calories a day in fructose alone, that's not good... But creating the deficit in fats triggering a system wide altering of physiology (slowed metabolisms, calorie hoarding, fat redistribution, lethargy, high blood fat levels, increased cholesterol levels -made by the body, not ingested- is pretty mindblowing. In general its healthier for a 2yo to have fries instead of apples. Because they have radically different nutritional needs than teens/adults.

- Jumping out of that sphere... For us grown folk: best sick food on the planet? McDonalds. The same uber processed quality that makes it bad for us when healthy makes it PERFECT convalescent food when ill.

- Cancer patients need to avoid antioxidants (and certain other key nutrients) like the plague.

LOL... Like I said, this just me being a geek. My son learned most of this in preschool (so Montessori), in no small part because they had someone with type 1 diabetes in class (so the whole class worked out the sugar content of fruits, veg, bread, etc.(, as well as a chemo kid in class.

Now that he's in public k12 though... He's gotten in trouble for saying that fruit/veg isn't healthy for everyone. In fact, I got a call home at one point... Because he wouldn't admit that fruit is healthy for diabetics because of vitamins (which they can get elsewhere without having to jack up their insulin levels to accomudate for the sugar overload)..

So some schools teach fruit veg is healthy!!!

[BadWolf]

I just wish they'd teach moderation in all things. Instead of these wild pendulum swings.

[jayanna]

off topic, maybe. I have been doing so great this year on my diet. I have been doing weight watchers and lost a lot of weight. I eat loads of veggies, avoid starches, stopped drinking whole milk and fruit juice, gave up desserts and eat little meat at all. I take a chewable multivitamin. Once I got my weight down quite a bit, I started walking for excercise.

For those of you who don't know, I've have sick sinus syndrome treated with medication and two sinus node adjustments so far over the last decade or so. When it began I ran about 7-8 miles/daily about 4 times a week. I weighed about 115 lbs. People told me it started because of my lack of faith. It was about the same time I was baptized.

So I gained weight when I quit running. Yes, I had to quit running. Face and pavement just don't mix. About 10 lbs a year. People started assuming (and would tell me quite boldly) that the reason I was unhealthy and had heart trouble was because I was overweight. They told me they believed I was not keeping the word of wisdom correctly, that I was not obedient enough, they even said that they felt sorry for my husband (who is very good looking and quite fit).

This year I started weight watchers, and walking, and doing all of those things that my naysayers have been down on me about all this time. I have lost weight and people are telling me how great I look. I have never been so unhealthy. I've been miserable for a little over a month now. I have had to wear my ambulatory monitor again, bloodwork twice, ultrasound, had to quit walking, lost half of my hair, changed my meds all up. Ugh. I have appointments with specialists, and most recently I have found out that I suddenly have a mass on my thyroid (that has been checked once a year for the last 10), which would explain why I almost passed out conducting music in primary on fast Sunday this month I guess, oh and the hair loss...probably... and the exhaustion...and insomnia (so I have plenty of time to stay up at night thinking about it and doubting myself as I wait for my next appointment with another specialist weee.)

My cardiologist told me that I didn't fat my way into this, and I can't skinny my way out. I wish he could tell my ward so they would leave me alone. I've probably had about thirty people tell me they guess my heart is doing so much better now that I've lost all that weight. I tell them, well, no, it's worse than ever actually, thanks. I figure this is what I get for caving into someone else's vanity. If someone else vomits out their judgement on my health I might just have to bludgeon them to death out of self defense.

I went to see my Bishop, upset and feeling downtrodden. He said that I'm doing great on the path of righteousness. (ok so I didn't tell him about the bludgeoning, and I won't bludgeon him anyway) He said that I'm going through this so that someone else could learn and grow from this experience. Whoever it is is killing me.

But I look great, which means I'm a good person, right?

Next time you see a fat person, just leave them alone. Next time you see a sick person, just ask them how you can help. Otherwise just work on yourself. Please.

[Wingnut]

- Babies and young children (5 and under) need high fat diets for myelinization of the nerves and neural development.

I totally read that as "barbies."