I subscribe to Byron Richard’s newsletter, and his article and quote of this CDC study makes me realize as a nation we need to wake up and start doing something about this.  They did a study on causes of preventable deaths, and their conclusions were:

Smoking and high blood pressure, which both have effective interventions, are responsible for the largest number of deaths in the US. Other dietary, lifestyle, and metabolic risk factors for chronic diseases also cause a substantial number of deaths in the US.

It broke down to the top causes were Smoking, high blood pressure, physical inactivity, high salt intake, low omega 3 fatty acids in our diet, and high trans fats were the highest causes.  1 in 6 were from smoking and high blood pressure, 1 in 10 were from dietary and/or lack of exercise.  This is really scary news, because these deaths could have been prevented by simple changes in lifestyles.

I admit, I’m plump.  On my dad’s side of the family, most of my relatives are short and stout.  On my mother’s side, I’ve had great aunts get legs amputated from complications of diabetes.  So when my sugar started raising, but still in the normal range, I started changing my eating habits.  I’ve managed to reverse the trend, as my last blood test my overall sugar was down.   I’m also working out and slowly losing the extra weight.   My entire family has high cholesterol, and when I found mine high too, I went back to being a vegetarian and taking supplements and dropped my cholesterol over 100 points into the normal range… all without taking expensive and can have serious side effects statin drugs.

Its tough, I sit on my butt all day working on websites, so I have a pretty sedentary job.  There just isn’t a good way to exercise and type on a computer, lol.  But after buying a Wii, I look forward to working out every day and having it kick my butt.

What’s sad is, I remember as a kid playing outdoors alot in the summer.  We didn’t have video games, we built forts in the backyard.  Now adays, our youth is heavier than ever, and basic nutrition and working out isn’t emphasied in our school system.

And I’m all for a national health care plan, being self insured and paying high rates for crappy coverage, it can’t come soon enough.  But reading this, as a nation should we take on the burden of paying for people’s habits and lifestyle choices that cause untold $$ to be spent on health care?  There just isn’t a good answer.

So after your read my rant, get up.  Take a walk.  Do some jumping jacks, dance to a song on the radio.  Just get moving for a bit, and reverse the trend in this country.  Ok, nuff rant, back to the porn now.