The AMA has just declared “OBESITY” as a disease.
I wish that meant they are taking this seriously, developing a plan to look at the causes and using their considerable clout to make preventive changes but I doubt it.
By declaring obesity a disease, they are opening the door for new drugs. Yes wouldn’t we all like a pill to make us thin while eating mass quantities of crap food and sitting on our behinds? Unfortunately all drugs have considerable side effects and obesity drugs will be no different. So while they may help us shed a few pounds, it won’t help if they cause constipation, leg numbness, sexual dysfunction, hives, indigestion and of course the ever present warning of death.
So what is the answer?
If there were one cause, the answer would be simple and we wouldn’t have 72,000 programs with about a 2% success rate. If we are going to have a non-bankrupt country, we must look at this issue from a different perspective because what we are doing now is not working. We must take a multi-faceted approach with some responsibility lying on our individual shoulders, some on corporate shoulders, some on government shoulders and some on our educational system’s shoulders. Without a united system of optimal, integrated health, I think we will be stuck with the 2% success rate and a very sick country.
