Heart Health

Obesity or corpulence, is malnutrition more prevalent in developed countries. This health condition is like a spider’s web. Once you’re obese, you’re at risk of a variety of other health conditions, mental and physical.

It causes type 2 diabetes, heart diseases, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, depression etc. This is the sad cost of obesity. This translates to health care expenditures that are directly and indirectly caused by obesity.

In the United States, an estimated cost of obesity is 12% of the national health care budget, studied by the World Watch Institute and the World Bank. In a 1999 Lewin Group study commissioned by the American Obesity Association, the direct health care cost of obesity reached $102.2 billion. It shows a rise from 5.7% of the national health care budget directed to obesity (from a 1994 study) to the 9.8% of health expenses from the 1999 Lewin… Read More…

Obesity is a growing problem in our country and it seems that the smarter we get and the more technological and scientific advances we make, the worse the problem becomes. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

What is being done to prevent obesity? Clearly not enough. More than 65% of Americans are now considered overweight or obese. Many diseases that are leading killers in our society are preventable. That is correct. I am talking about diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and even certain types of cancer. The medical community has convinced the general public that treatments for these diseases are readily available instead of focusing on the prevention of them. Why? Because these treatments are what put money into the healthcare system, not the prevention of the disease itself.

One of the most startling statistics of all – 70% of all… Read More…

Americans are deeply unhappy with the country’s health care programs and costs. And rightly so. As one author observed, “A recent survey showed that only 17 percent of respondents in the United States were content with their health-care system . . . Why the discontent? The superficial reasons are simple enough to describe: the system is hugely expensive, very bureaucratic, and extremely patchy. The expenses first: U.S. health care costs a third more, per person, than that of the closest rival, superrich Switzerland, and twice what many European countries spend. The United States government alone spends more per person than the combination of public and private expenditure in Britain, despite the fact that the British government provides free health care for all residents.”

The United States pays more for health care per capita than any other industrialized nation — and even then, Medicare is not a comprehensive,… Read More…

PERSONAL FITNESS TRAINING-THE POSITIVE IMPACT ON RISING DOMESTIC HEALTH CARE COSTS

By Rob Rayburn, Personal Fitness Trainer

There are a growing number of grave concerns that we as a people face in the US and abroad on a daily basis; none more pressing than the rising cost of health care in America and the world. The incoming administration led by President-Elect Obama has pledged to make health care accessible to all Americans in his first term as our president. Our healthcare system is a mess, there is no doubt, and providing health care for all the uninsured is a noble and ambitious undertaking, to be sure. I’m not sure at this point how effective the President-Elect’s proposed plan will be.

There is a palpable anxiety building over this issue with the uninsured asking, “What can we do?” The silver lining here is that we don’t have… Read More…