Members of the American Medical Association (AMA) met last week in Chicago and voted to consider obesity as a disease, despite opposition from the Council on Science and Public Health, an AMA advisory board. Yes, you heard right.
Obesity is now considered, in America, to be a disease the same way that heart disease, cancer and osteoarthritis are considered diseases.
The technical definition of disease is, “a condition of the living animal or plant body or one or more of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms.”
So what are the distinguishing signs and symptoms that make obesity a disease? Perhaps one’s inability to walk 50 feet without losing breath? Or maybe the AMA is thinking that sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance are symptoms of the obesity disease?
The answer is not clear. What is clear is that in a vote that took less than fifteen minutes, 78 million adults and 12 million children in our country are now “sick.” Among these people now classified as diseased are celebrities such as Aretha Franklin, BB King, Oprah Winfrey, politicians Al Gore and Newt Gingrich and famous athletes John Kruk and Charles Barkley. In fact, we all now have friends and or family members that qualify as diseased.
But…. is this right?
Health experts including physicians, chiropractors, nutritionists and the like know that declaring obesity as a disease is a serious mistake. Obesity is clearly not a disease but a symptom itself of a body way out of balance.
It is surely a risk factor for such conditions as diabetes, heart diseases, hypertension, stroke and some cancers. However, it is clearly out of line to all of the sudden declare that everyone who is overweight is sick, and everyone who is normal weight is well. Today, many are asking why the AMA would make such a bold move.
One answer rests in the fact that being obese is clearly correlated with a number of serious health problems. Some of these problems are risk factors for diseases such as sleep apnea and hypertension. Other conditions are, in fact, classified as diseases in their own right, including cancer and stroke.
Of course, we would be remiss not to mention the financial implications of naming obesity as a disease. This ruling will truly encourage health care payers, such as private insurance and the federal government, to pay for anti-obesity services that would include weight loss programs and counseling.
However, like most things in our westernized medical system, it seems absurd to spend billions of dollars opening up blocked arteries when half the amount could be spent on preventing obesity to begin with. America now spends in excess of over $150 billion per year to treat obese people, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
In addition, it costs 42 percent more to care for an obese person than an average sized person. Focusing on diet and lifestyle seems to be a more sane and less costly approach to the matter; however, this is not the way we do things in America.
Some medical experts fear that classifying obesity as a disease may even cause some overweight people to give up on losing weight themselves and elect instead for risky surgery or dangerous drugs.
Defining Obesity
Another catching point with the new label is the fact that defining obesity is difficult. If you use body mass index as a ruling, obesity starts with a BMI of 30. Moderately obese is 30-35, severely obese is 35-40 and very severely obese is over 40. However, obesity is not so much about weight as it is about body fat.
Some people have a very high BMI but are very fit while others with a low BMI are in critical shape. A better assessment of health is waist circumference. For men a waist size greater than 40 spells trouble while for women, it is 35.
These measurements give a good indication of the amount of dangerous visceral fat around the waist. A large amount of visceral fat is generally an indicator of high blood pressure, blood glucose and elevated bad cholesterol.
What Will Happen?
Only time will tell how the medical community and insurance industry will react to the latest declaration made by the AMA. Suffice it to say, the impact of such a decision will be far reaching, affecting both the obese and the non-obese.
Just remember, we are far better off taking a preventative stance when it comes to our health, no matter what is going on around us. If you are in the process of getting healthy, don’t ever give up!
-The Alternative Daily
Sources:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-definition/abdominal-obesity/
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50149630n
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/concerns-emerge-over-calling-obesity-a-disease
