In a world filled with wars on terror, terror alert-levels and terrorist-videos threatening the next wave of attacks on civilization, it’s hard to believe there could be anything more dangerous than the evil we know as terrorism. But experts at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit, an annual conference of experts from various fields, which is being held in Sydney this year, think that lifestyle diseases like obesity and heart disease are even more dangerous than terrorism:

“Ever since September 11, we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public,” [US professor of health law, Lawrence] Gostin told AFP later.
“While we’ve been focusing so much attention on that, we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s killing millions of people around the world, and we’re devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”[Yahoo News]

The biggest concern of most of the experts at the conference seems to be the apparent lack of importance awarded to issues like health, fitness and the rise in prevalence of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Case in point: nothing about these issues has been mentioned during the lengthy campaign speeches by the contenders for the U.S. presidency. Sure, healthcare is a hot topic during debates, but a crucial component - prevention by proactive focus on fitness - is sadly lacking.

As the experts rightly point out, certain “high profile” diseases like AIDS and the “in the news” syndromes like SARS capture the limelight in the press and media, but good-old-fashioned conditions are ignored:

Like terrorism, some passing health threats get major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world’s deaths, the meeting was told.
“It is true that new and re-emerging health threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism and climate change are dramatic and emotive,” said Stig Pramming, the Oxford group’s executive director.
“However, it is preventable chronic disease that will send health systems and economies to the wall.”

It’s time to get back to basics, I think.
I know I’ve said this many times before, but I’ll say it again:
“Prevention is the cure.”

Related Posts:

• FitnessMantra Weekend: “Obesity Is Not Rocket Science - It’s A Lot More Complex”
• FitnessMantra Weekend: Mild Exercise Could Cure Tiredness And Fatigue
• Be overweight during midlife and have fewer years to live?

Yes, you read that right: Lean and healthy people who, unsurprisingly, tend to outlive their unhealthy, obese, smoking counterparts are a bigger burden on the healthcare system when their systems finally begin to give way with age!

Brief pause while you take that in and try to figure out exactly what this means!

In a research article titled “Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure” (Full Study: PDF, 666KB), Dutch scientists headed by Pieter H. M. van Baal investigate the cost aspects of preventing obesity:

The objective of this study was to estimate the annual and lifetime medical costs attributable to obesity, to compare those to similar costs attributable to smoking, and to discuss the implications for prevention.

Based on the costs of treating various illnesses in the Netherlands, the study focussed on three groups of people: lean and non-smoking people, obese people and people who smoke. By age 20, the healthy group had about 64 more years to live, while the obese had 60 and the smokers just 57. Consequently, the total “Expected Lifetime Healthcare Costs” of the healthy group were 236000 euros, while they were 195000 euros for the obese and a relatively lower 172000 euros for the smokers. These results, the study concludes, show that reducing obesity does not necessarily save the healthcare system monetarily.

Of course, there are several things iffy about this study and an LA Times article describes a few of them. Think about a few of these arguments in favor of reducing obesity:

1. Quality of life: During their already reduced life-span the obese suffer from untold consequential problems due to being overweight: skeletal issues like joint and knee problems, strokes, heart-attacks (even if they do recover from these) and so on. Simple tasks like moving around or performing household chores become more difficult for the obese. I am not even going to go into the social, mental and public aspects of being obese (inability to participate in certain activities, negative bias at the work-place, perception among peers …). All of these would fall under the quality of life (or lack thereof) that an obese individual would endure during his or her life-time: reason enough to stay fit, you would think.
2. Contributions by those who live longer: It would be difficult to put a price on the cultural, social and economical contributions that are lost when people die prematurely (whatever may be the reason). Another aspect of this reasoning is the additional cost endured by survivors to take care of dependents (older or younger). People who live longer also add to the Gross National Product and, as LA Times points out, pay more taxes too. These factors have all ben conveniently left out in the study
3. Life-disruptions during the important years: Don’t get me wrong. I definitely am not suggesting that much older people are not important. But you will certainly agree with me when I say that a person makes the largest contributions during the “peak-years” of 20-60. Of course, many people are productive even beyond that age-range and, if anything, it only strengthens my argument. Reducing obesity and reducing life-disruptive illnesses during the best years of a person’s life, I am sure you would agree, is so much more important than worrying about health-care costs that would occur much later in life as a consequence of living longer. And remember, those who are productive beyond the age-range I mentioned would most certainly be fit to be able to pull that off!

To the study’s credit, I am glad it ends with saying that it is not always about the money:

A remaining and most important question is whether prevention should be cost-saving in order to be attractive. Obviously, the answer is that it need not be cost-saving: like other forms of care it ‘‘merely’’ needs to be cost-effective. ‘‘The aim of health care is not to save money but to save people from preventable suffering and death. Any potential savings on health care costs would be icing on the cake”

“We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity,” van Baal said. “But they should do it for the right reasons.”

My take? There are no wrong reasons to prevent obesity. What say you?

Related Posts:

• The cost and benefit of eating healthful foods
• Why should you care whether other people are healthy or not?
• Affordable and Healthful Foods