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Health In Our Society

Saturday, June 14, 2008

As an American most of us share the good and the bad issues that happens in our society. One major sin most American’s share is the sin of gluttony. I will admit I have committed this sin more than once. In recent years the Center of Disease Control (CDC) has named Obesity to be a disease. I am mentioning this because I am getting ready to get married to a beautify woman that is studying to be a physician. What does that mean for a chump like myself? She will yell at me twice as much not only for the normal male stupidity, woman get mad at us for, but know she will get on me for my health. I will be the first to say I have it coming.

Let me provide some background of my college years and eating habits. When I was in college I went from a BMI of 25 to a BMI of 31, or you can say I went from a medically ideal weight to obese. Between going to the bars drinking and eating Philly Cheese Steak every weekend did a whole lot to my body after coming out of the US Navy. I will admit the cheese steak was really good, but I had to give it up senior year since it attributed to really bad acid reflex and my fiancée told me, well, it will kill me. Granted the juice of the phili, leaked onto my coat and caused a button whole to be clogged within a few minutes of eating it (Steph likes to make an analogy of that being like my arteries). In my mind I still say it was somewhat worth it (Stephanie did not see it that way). After going to the doctor after graduating and being diagnosed with GRED, I can see that I was not only sinning but killing myself slowly. According the American Medical Association the U.S. Surgeon General said

“Richard Carmona, MD called it[Obesity] the greatest threat to public health today. It kills more Americans every year than AIDS, all cancers and all accidents combined. And it’s causing problems in children that were unthinkable 20 years ago. That is why the American Medical Association (AMA) is working to halt the spread of obesity.

Leaders in the field of preventive health, pediatrics, family practice, nutrition and more, convened at AMA headquarters in Chicago for the first meeting of the AMA Working Group on Managing Childhood Obesity. Their goal: to develop a set of strategies to help physicians more effectively work with families, youth-serving organizations, school health professionals, public health organizations and community groups to reduce overweight and obesity and to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in childhood obesity.”

Today I am losing weight slowly I am currently at a BMI of 30. It is to be hoped that by the end of the year I will be around a BMI of 27-28. As Americans we need to look at the problems of an overweight society. Economically it is hurting everyone with healthcare cost expanding and increasingly people not having healthcare it is hurting our bodies individually and everyone’s pocketbooks. I listen to a lot of political radio and catholic radio on my going to and from work everyday and I notice the health argument.

One side of people say it is there freedom that the government should leave them alone and we should not pay for other people’s healthcare. In the other side of the ring are people that say we should pay for all healthcare because it is too much for the individual to pay. I tend to stand in the middle of both extremes as I will explain.

We as Catholics and Americans need to take more responsibilities for our own actions. As Catholics we know that Gluttony is a sin, and basically Any kind of overindulgence is a sin. Is obesity our fault completely? I say it is and it is not. If you go to the supermarket to by food people in our country buy tons of meat and other fatty foods instead of a balance diet. Even when you try to eat healthy ( not going to bust the bank by buying natural or organic foods) foods have additives that may cause a slew of health issues. Just look up the problems associated with any artificial sweeters or High Fructose Corn Syrup. Our government should force agencies such as the FDA to monitor our food more closely and force companies not to use these chemicals or processed additives to make a product cheaper. Food in our country is too cheap. Yes, I said it too cheap. As cheap it is an other reason we have an obesity problem. In the end we should have the government regulate more and provide some form of hybrid healthcare that is not completely universal by not private neither. I will not go into by specific idea since that is not the focus of this blog entry. I will say we as Americans and Catholics need to think when we enter the confessional. Have we committed the sin of Gluttony? Is this a sin that we leave out or forget when we enter a confessional? I hope who ever reads this will consider many problems in our culture by being an overweight society. It effects everything in our body both mentally and physically. I will close with an article about obesity that I found on the CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/ .