Tackling obesity

[Trotsky]

You're thoughts? What do you think is the best approach? Medical intervention such as gastric-band surgery/gastric bypass and drugs such as CB-1 antagonists, Lipase inhibitors and 5-HT reup inhibs or proper education regarding diet.

Obesity is getting seriously out of hand. The loss of productivity to the world economy is huge, the cost of state healthcare (such as the NHS) and private medical insurance is going through the roof, mostly being funded by non-obese people. The pressure obesity and obesity cause illnesses are putting state and private medical care under is becoming too much to deal with.

If you go down the route of medical intervention, what do you do about patient compliance (the biggest hurdle in all anti-obesity drugs going through clinical trials)? If you go through the education route, again what do you do about patient compliance?

[Chancellor]

Quote by: Trotsky You're thoughts? What do you think is the best approach? Medical intervention such as gastric-band surgery/gastric bypass and drugs such as CB-1 antagonists, Lipase inhibitors and 5-HT reup inhibs or proper education regarding diet. Obesity is getting seriously out of hand. The loss of productivity to the world economy is huge, the cost of state healthcare (such as the NHS) and private medical insurance is going through the roof, mostly being funded by non-obese people. The pressure obesity and obesity cause illnesses are putting state and private medical care under is becoming too much to deal with. If you go down the route of medical intervention, what do you do about patient compliance (the biggest hurdle in all anti-obesity drugs going through clinical trials)? If you go through the education route, again what do you do about patient compliance?

Why should obesity be tackled at all? If people want to consume more calories than they burn, that's their business. Now, for those who gain weight because of other issues, e.g. hypothyroidism or medications, then deal with those.

[Trotsky]

Quote by: Chancellor Why should obesity be tackled at all? If people want to consume more calories than they burn, that's their business. Now, for those who gain weight because of other issues, e.g. hypothyroidism or medications, then deal with those.

How is it just their business? Loss of productivity, increased medical costs, increased taxes etc etc etc.

[Compugasm]

Quote by: Trotsky You're thoughts? What do you think is the best approach?

Don't eat so much, fatty!

[Chancellor]

Quote by: Trotsky How is it just their business?

Their bodies are their responsibility.

Loss of productivity

Code for "we can't get as much work out of him as we can get out of the skinny people we coerce into doing more and more work without increasing their pay and benefits."

, increased medical costs,

Nonsense! Show me how it costs more to treat a fat person's diabetes than it does to treat a skinny person's diabetes (and you must stick to only treating the diabetes).

increased taxes etc etc etc.

So, being obese somehow magically forces the government to raise taxes, eh?

[Muckraker]

Eat less. Move more.

How much research grant money gets routed my way for solving the problem?

[JaneDoe321]

Well... putting aside the "should we..."

I think that for maximum effectiveness, we need...

a) increased physical activity in our youth. Many schools have completely cut recess in order to cram more rote memorization down kids' throats so they can pass the ridiculously overhyped standardized tests which have been bloated outside all normal standards of use thanks to No Child Left Standing.. err.. I mean Behind.

b) better access to affordable healthy foods. "Poverty foods" have not changed substatively since the middle ages. Heavy starch (fillers...), little quality protein, little fresh vegetables. However, the "poor" by and large do not labor in the fields from dawn to dusk performing back breaking labor, so this diet is especially nasty. IN addition, public nutrition classes advise people *AGAINST* buying organic food (or even quality fresh food), encouraging prepackaged foods instead as it will "stretch your budget". Yes, and your waistline...

c) rethinking the way we design/redesign our communities (ie "increased activity in our youth AND non-youth...). It is unsafe/highly impractical for kids to play outside in many communities. It's not even safe to walk your dog. I live in a college town and even here, where mass transit is better than I've seen in urban areas like Dallas or New Orleans, many of the residential areas do not have sidewalks. Ever try walking with your kids with no sidewalks? Ye gads.... Far better to keep your kids inside with their video game consoles (not to mention it's easier to keep tabs on a zombified kid with fast thumb reflexes....). I think we need to focus on more (safe) parks, walking trails, etc.

For a start, anyway............

[thedude]

Nonsense! Show me how it costs more to treat a fat person's diabetes than it does to treat a skinny person's diabetes (and you must stick to only treating the diabetes).

Show me a skinny eleven year old with diabetes. Give me a random sampling of a hundred "skinny" people and a hundred obese people and we can see where massive rates of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc. rear their ugly little heads.

As far as "tackling" obesity I think the only viable and democratic means is through education. A national paradigm must shift. Suing McDonalds is not the solution.

As far as strains on health-care, I'm not so sure. Sure, the uninsured obese are driving up health costs, but at the same time obesity is single-handedly funding vast sectors of the pharmaceutical and health markets.

[LadiesMan217]

Why should obesity be tackled at all? If people want to consume more calories than they burn, that's their business. Now, for those who gain weight because of other issues, e.g. hypothyroidism or medications, then deal with those.

Very good, I can sympathize with someone who is obese due to medical conditions out of their control but if it is because you are obese because you just eat unhealthy food and don't exercise then it is your fault that you are fat and your fault that you have all the medical problems that go along with it, and I'll be damned if I am taxed for a universal healthcare system that I will never need for problems associated with obesity because I eat right and exercise while obese people drain it. Social programs like this always have the healthy, the wealthy, or the productive people foot the bill for those who don't take responsibility for their health or their financial situations, and that isn't right. Sorry for going off topic.

[Trotsky]

Quote by: Chancellor Nonsense! Show me how it costs more to treat a fat person's diabetes than it does to treat a skinny person's diabetes (and you must stick to only treating the diabetes). So, being obese somehow magically forces the government to raise taxes, eh?

Skinny people are statistically less likely to develop type II diabetes mellitus than obese people, high fat diets increase the amount of free fatty acid in the body, free fatty acids inihibit insulin activity through a negative feed-back loop thus desensitising tissues to insulin (inhibition of the phosphorylation of of IRS-1) thus causing type II diabetes mellitus. Now seeing as fat people are more likely to get t2dm it's a logical progression to say that it costs more to treat them. Also it's not some magical increase, private medical insurance is rising at an alarming rate in order to pay for the costs of treating obesity related illnesses, in a lot of cases obese people can no longer get medical insurance hence the added pressure on state medical services, hence the increase in taxes.

Not exactly difficult now is it.

[Trotsky]

Quote by: LadiesMan217 Very good, I can sympathize with someone who is obese due to medical conditions out of their control but if it is because you are obese because you just eat unhealthy food and don't exercise then it is your fault that you are fat and your fault that you have all the medical problems that go along with it, and I'll be damned if I am taxed for a universal healthcare system that I will never need for problems associated with obesity because I eat right and exercise while obese people drain it. Social programs like this always have the healthy, the wealthy, or the productive people foot the bill for those who don't take responsibility for their health or their financial situations, and that isn't right. Sorry for going off topic.

It's not going off topic, it's very much on topic. My question is how do you deal with it. Medical intervention is not that expensive, but it relys on patient compliance to be effective, proper education about diet etc in schools, again requires patient compliance to be effective.
I work in the the pharma industry, currently working on t2dm. I can see the benefits etc but I'm not convinced it's the way to go, the patient is always the weakest link.

[Trotsky]

Quote by: thedude but at the same time obesity is single-handedly funding vast sectors of the pharmaceutical and health markets.

It's not though, pharma having being throwing money hand over fist at the area for about 15 years, if you crack it the potential in the market is enormous (pardon the pun). It has yet to be cracked.

[Anmon]

put the fork down fatty, simple really.
Tie their hands behind their backs, if they want to eat that much, then make the creatures work for it.
They would shed a few kilos just wrestling the food out of their fridges and cuboards and opening it with their teeth.
At the candy bar at my local Hoyts cinema megaplex, you can stock up what you need yourself like in a supermarket, then take it to the checkout.
As I was getting my stuff, I noticed two fat white chicks shoving popcorn as fast as they could into their piggy faces, and slurping huge cokes.
Then they were going to the lolly dispensers and helping themselves to that as well.
I paid for my stuff and moved to a table nearby to observe this comedy.
Finally after ten minutes of unabated gorging (I kid not) they filled their giant popcorn buckets and mega cokes up to the brims, grabbed a choctop each and moved to the checkout.
This style of help yourself candy bars, is going to be the cause of obesity expolding even further in the selfish indulgent loving west.
The upside I guess, is that when our screwed up societys inevitably collapse and food shortages hit everyone, we can hunt these guys down to keep us going for a while, until old style farming is re established.

[Domino]

I'm sure there's some cheap, effective way to tun fat into ethanol.

[Anmon]

lol there will be plenty of uses for the fat slow ones after society collapses, but they will definitely be used as a ready food source, that cant hide well or move fast, and theres millions of them.
Up grunter up!

[Kamehameha34]

I'm against the concept of a mandatory NHS altogether, anyway.

People's health should be their own business. Everyone should own their burdens.

No one can make you un-fat other than yourself. I was obese for most of my life up until about 8 months ago, then I dropped 45 pounds because I didn't want to be fat anymore. My parents would constantly intimidate me about the looming dangers of childhood diabetes and of the blood pressure problems in our family, but in the end I did it for myself.

What I suggest, is to let the fatties eat themself into their health problems, and clear out the gene pool. Fit parents are more likely to raise fit children.

Sounds cruel, but it's the same process that resulted in humans in the first place.

[Chancellor]

Quote by: Trotsky Skinny people are statistically less likely to develop type II diabetes mellitus than obese people,

Of course, if you had actually read what I wrote instead of presuming to interpret what I wrote, you would have said that I didn't specify what type of diabetes it was (Type II is not the only type). And I don't give a rat's behind about statistics (I agree with Mark Twain on that one: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics"). Just stick to what was written.

high fat diets increase the amount of free fatty acid in the body, free fatty acids inihibit insulin activity through a negative feed-back loop thus desensitising tissues to insulin (inhibition of the phosphorylation of of IRS-1) thus causing type II diabetes mellitus. Now seeing as fat people are more likely to get t2dm it's a logical progression to say that it costs more to treat them.

So what if fat people are more likely to get one type of diabetes. It does NOT logically follow that it costs more to treat fat people with that type of diabetes than skinny people with that type of diabetes. You must show the fat actually causing the increase in cost in order to rightly say that it costs more to treat fat people with that condition.

Also it's not some magical increase, private medical insurance is rising at an alarming rate in order to pay for the costs of treating obesity related illnesses, in a lot of cases obese people can no longer get medical insurance hence the added pressure on state medical services, hence the increase in taxes.

The cost of medical insurance is rising because insurance companies want to make more money and can get away with it. You have not proven that people's fat is somehow magically causing the cost of healthcare to rise. You have not proven that any illness has ever been directly caused solely by an individual weighing more than some arbitrary number.

[Chancellor]

Quote by: thedude Show me a skinny eleven year old with diabetes.

You'd only consider it anecdotal evidence anyway. Now, how about this: NLH - Genetic Conditions - 30 April 2004 - Drug treatment for newborn diabetes

As far as "tackling" obesity I think the only viable and democratic means is through education. A national paradigm must shift. Suing McDonalds is not the solution.

Why must obesity even be tackled? Who the hell are you or anyone else to dictate how much someone must weigh?

As far as strains on health-care, I'm not so sure. Sure, the uninsured obese are driving up health costs, but at the same time obesity is single-handedly funding vast sectors of the pharmaceutical and health markets.

Oh, so now it's "uninsured obese" that are driving up health costs. So, I guess uninsured skinny people don't drive up health costs for the care they receive?

[Chancellor]

Quote by: Anmon lol there will be plenty of uses for the fat slow ones after society collapses, but they will definitely be used as a ready food source, that cant hide well or move fast, and theres millions of them. Up grunter up!

No, too much fat (the meat is the muscles). They could be used for lamp oil, though, the way whale blubber is used by eskimos.

[Thanatos]

1. Elect a homicidal dictator.

Forced labor really burns off the pounds. I suggest locking food criminals in gigantic hamster wheels, thereby solving the energy crunch as well.

2. Nuke America's bread basket.

Would you like potassium iodide pills with that?

3. Run out of oil.

Gee, who knew farming with oxen instead of tractors was so hard?

4. Global warming.

Idaho, home of the Famous Cacti.

5. Exercise.

Actually, now that I think about it, nuking the bread basket sounds like a really good idea.

Face it. The culture is what's sick and the government can't do much. They can give us healthier food by cleaning up the corruption of the FDA so we don't get quite as sick from pigging out, but that's about it that's within their scope.