Weight of the Nation

This is a public service announcement instead of a cooking post. I am in medical school now and will be a part of the generation of doctors who will be treating that 17% of children who are obese now, when they are adolescents and adults. This is a problem that affects us all because the fate of many of those children is to end up chronic health conditions like Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, and various other conditions that are linked to being overweight and obese. Health care costs in the United States will only continue to rise, if more and more of our population is affected by these diseases. Think of these chronic conditions in terms of their worst case scenarios: unmanaged type 2 diabetes can lead to kidney failure and the need for dialysis OR to decreased blood flow and innervation in the extremities and eventually limb amputation. Hypertension can lead to a heart attack, stroke and just like type 2 diabetes, it can lead to kidney failure.

I know that I'm using scare tactics by presenting what are considered "normal" health conditions in these dire terms.  I call them normal because we all know someone with hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, etc. Since I've started medical school, I have seen patients who have pushed their bodies to the brink both out of ignorance of what it means to have these chronic conditions and/or inability to treat and manage them due to lack of access to health care.  The statistics of childhood obesity are especially pertinent to me as I attend medical school in Texas, where the CDC estimates that 15-20% of children here are obese.

The desire to write this post, was sparked by reading a this Frank Bruni article that linked to the upcoming HBO documentary: Weight of the Nation.  Watch the trailer here and if you're feeling like a community organizer, apply to host a screening and HBO might send you a copy of the 4 part series. The documentary is a collaboration of HBO and the Institute of Medicine, in association with the Centers for Disease Control, Kaiser Permanente, the National Institutes of Health, and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. I know it's just a documentary, and it takes more action than watching a film to change the trend of obesity.  However,  I think a collaboration between HBO and these health organizations signals magnitude of the obesity problem in America. It's not just health-care workers and your mother telling you that you're getting fat, it's HBO!  

So watch the trailer and try to catch the documentary in May if you have HBO. It  is supposed to be screened other places online, so I will try to post the links when I find them.