obesity treatments in canada and the $9 billion problem
experts say many of the costs associated with obesity are a result of the health care system’s failure to properly provide obesity treatments in canada.
dr. glenn gaesser is on the phone from arizona state university in phoenix, where the professor, exercise physiologist and author of big fat lies: the truth about your weight and health, is known for challenging the hand-wringing over obesity .
he and others argue that it’s time to dispense with the notion that excess body fat, in and of itself, is risky and that the only “cure” to avert an untimely death is weight loss. instead, the focus should be on fitness — specifically, cardiorespiratory, or aerobic, fitness. as gaesser and steven blair, a professor emeritus at the university of south carolina, write in medicine & science in sports & exercise , the fitness of the cardiovasuclar system, lungs and muscles is a more powerful predictor of disease and death than obesity. it can also be improved, significantly, with exercise.
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a 2014 meta-analysis of nearly 93,000 people backs up the fit-fat hypothesis. it found that fit people — whether normal weight, overweight or obese — had similar survival rates. the unfit, by contrast, had twice the risk of dying from any cause during follow-up.
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according to a 2015 study published in the american journal of public health , the annual probability of a person with obesity attaining a “normal” body weight was roughly one in 210 for men and one in 124 for women over nine years of follow-up. the odds increased to one in 1,290 for men and one in 677 for women with “morbid” obesity, meaning a bmi of 40 or higher.
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one 2016 study using u.s. national health data , for example, found the risk of dying was lower for overweight than normal weight adults, even after adjusting for smoking and pre-existing diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma and kidney disease.
a study published in october found that while people who remained obese throughout their adult life had the highest risk of a premature death, remaining overweight throughout adulthood had a “very modest, or null association.”
some problems require much greater fat loss. “a four-percent weight loss would not get you anything if you have sleep apnea — you would need 10 or 15 per cent,” sharma says. one recent study published in the european respiratory journal found that fatty tissue builds up in the lungs of people living with overweight or obesity, which could explain why they’re more likely to suffer from wheezing and asthma.
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