Fighting The Good Fight

Or, Just Can't Wait For Lap Banding

Case History: 17 y/o girl comes in with her mother to get a "different" OC because of heavy bleeding. She is not sexually active. There is an 800# gorilla in the room with us - it's her weight, which is 254# on about a 5'4" frame.

No one discusses this nor does anyone seem to want to. I guess she and her mother are simply going to wait until she can no longer rise from a chair, and will then agitate for Medicaid coverage of an anti-fat surgical procedure.

Perhaps as physicians, we should tell our sons and daughters to go into bariatric surgery, which may become the new model for plastic surgery. There doesn’t seem to be any financial incentive in obesity prevention.

Norway seems to have a good approach to obesity prevention, but they're so socialized and heavily taxed it's doubtful any "free" country could adopt their methods. The UK, with its vaunted national health scheme, is fighting the same losing battle as we are in the US. See BBC News. While at that site, click on the link regarding obesity bankrupting the National Health Service.

If we wait until kids are 10 or 12 y/old and then start teaching good health and the maintenance thereof, we have probably lost the battle. Have we already lost it as a country, and are ready to raise the white flag? Norway excepted, are there any geopolitical units out there with success stories?

Here and elsewhere enough has been spent just talking about obesity, with little doing and no obvious sustainable programs being developed, to equal the GDP of several small countries combined. Conference after conference after ......

Alternative Financial Advice To Children: Let’s tell our offspring to get jobs working for organizations that pay zillions of dollars to people just for talking about a problem. That may be slightly more honest than recommending that they go into politics.