rickyp wrote:You think the observation has merit? I wasn't sure. It is perhaps a reflection of the media coverage to end of life issues like Shiavo, and I wasn't sure I wasn't over stating.

Well, Schiavo is an outlier I think but I think everybody agrees that the majority of healthcare costs are end of life costs so I think it does possible have merit.

rickyp wrote:In Canada and I think other countries the funding for health insurance now comes out of general revenues. Therefore there's no constant reminder of the cost of health care, like a seperate tax collection might have. . If taxes go up it could just be blamed on "everything" as on health care. (Although admittedly health care costs are the #1 tax driver and get a lot of media attention.
On the other hand, the concept that "we all pay for this" might make people generally more aware of over use . Whereas employees figure it doesn't really directly affect them?
So, maybe theres a contribution to the attitude .

Yes this is kind of what I was getting at. Taxes go up everybody knows it and will know part of it is because of increased healthcare cost. Whereas here, the increased costs are unseen because almost nobody know how much their employer pays for their premiums. While the increased cost perhaps do impact wages by depressing wage increases, those wages usually still increase so the premium increases are unseen.

[

rickyp wrote:In that case score another one for socialized medicine?!

Not necessarily. There are non-socialized medicine options that could work, i.e. taxing employer paid premiums as income to the employee.

This sidebar doesn't make any sense to me because most end of life care is during retirement and paid for by medicare.

Hmm.
Saying that medicare is essentially socialized health insurance?
Perhaps then its the relationship between govenrment services and taxes that seems to have gone askew?
That somehow people have forgotten that there is a relationship?
Anecdotally I'd point to things like Tea Party rejoinders at Town Hall meetings like "Get your govenrment hands off my Medicare"
And the California ballot initiatives that cut taxation efforts but the refusal to see services decline in tandem?
Or the mythical belief that "tax cuts pay for themselves" all the time.

Ray Jay wrote:This sidebar doesn't make any sense to me because most end of life care is during retirement and paid for by medicare.

This is a good point JJ. It means my supposition is complete wrong, that our beliefs/opinions formed while under the employer funded health insurance are still controlling, our taxes are not raised and medicare operates at a deficit or a combination of the three.

Since starting this thread I've noticed a lot of print and video media continuing to tout low fat diets, and continuing to single out saturated fat as the worst culprit. There's a constant flood of this kind of information in the US.

The more I think about saturated fats that whole mantra against them doesn't add up. It simply can't be the case that saturated fats are bad for you. We are made up of saturated fats, our bodies naturally burn saturated fats all the time. People report feeling quite good when they are losing weight, and ostensibly burning more saturated fat for energy.

In fact the body can utilize MCTs like are found in saturated coconut oil with almost no enzymatic processing. A near perfect fuel in terms of efficiency.

If anything carbs have to be the more unnatural food from an evolutionary perspective. Obviously we're apex predators historically and agriculture is a later adaptation.

So we're told that saturated fats are big contributors to heart disease. Yet we know Inuits didn't have that problem, they almost exclusively ate saturated fat. So the question then becomes one of causation. The same can be said of Cholesterol. Does dietary cholesterol cause morbidity, or does the bad cholesterol profile simply suggest a metabolic problem?

How does one lower high blood triglycerides (blood fats)? Most doctors will tell you to eat less sugar and flour and take fish oil. So why would eating less carbs lower triglycerides/blood fats?

Are saturated fats as bad for health as almost universally stated by public health organizations and touted by the media?

Glycation caused through elevated blood sugar levels is what makes cholesterol dangerous. In simple terms this suggests (counter-intuitively) that you might be better off with four eggs for breakfast than four pieces of toast.

WARWICK, England, May 28 (UPI) -- So-called ultra-bad cholesterol -- MGmin-low-density lipoprotein -- appears to be more likely than normal LDL to stick to artery walls, British researchers say.

Scientists at the University of Warwick in England say the super-sticky ultra-bad cholesterol is more common among those with type 2 diabetes and the elderly than among others.

Study leader Dr. Naila Rabbani, an associate professor at Warwick Medical School, says the researchers made the discovery by creating human MGmin-LDL in the laboratory, and then studying its characteristics and interactions with other important molecules in the body.

The MGmin-LDL is created by the addition of sugar to normal LDL -- glycation – making LDL smaller and denser. By changing its shape, the sugar exposes new regions on the surface of the LDL, Rabbani says.

The exposed regions are more likely to stick to artery walls, helping build fatty plaques, and as the fatty plaques grow they narrow arteries, reducing blood flow. They can rupture, triggering a blood clot that causes a heart attack or stroke, Rabbani explains.

parts of this country resemble third world countries in terms of life expectancy for black males.

Having been to Haiti, and several other 3rd world countries, as well as 49 states (I will get Hawaii soon enough), I would have to disagree with you. The reason for a low life expectancy is not due to environmental conditions, but life choices and criminal activity. Not all black male deaths are caused by this, but the curve is brought down considerably.

Neal Anderth wrote:Glycation caused through elevated blood sugar levels is what makes cholesterol dangerous. In simple terms this suggests (counter-intuitively) that you might be better off with four eggs for breakfast than four pieces of toast.

I don't suppose the possibility of one egg on one slice of toast ever entered your mind, then? That would have the advantage of containing carbs and protein and also not be quite so much.

It's not simply what you are eating, it's how much of it.

It's blood sugar in this context. And yes many people can tolerate one piece of toast. However public health in the US causes many people to believe they can't eat eggs and maintain healthy cholesterol levels. This research is showing that it's blood sugar levels and glycation as a result that makes it dangerous.

A number of strategies can work to address this, eating less carbs, eating less refined and sweet carbs, eating smaller meals more frequently rather than larger meals. Anyone with a fat mid-section would likely be better off approaching the issue from this perspective than simply relying on cholesterol lowering drugs as the primary method.

I'm not saying people can't 'tolerate' more than one piece of toast. I'm saying that a combination of a balanced diet and portion control is much more likely to give healthy results than jumping on to the last study you read and eating lots of 'x' because it came out on top.

Personally, I would say that it's not about an all-or-nothing approach. If your cholesterol levels are high, it's not a bad idea to take a dietary approach, but if drugs can help as well, it's better to do both. But I would prefer the first approach, and I don't really like the way that healthcare is going where prescribing drugs (heavily promoted by pharmaceutical companies) is seen as the only answer.

Mind you, the one strategy you didn't mention was more exercise. Now that is a good way to be healthy.

bbauska wrote:Having been to Haiti, and several other 3rd world countries, as well as 49 states (I will get Hawaii soon enough), I would have to disagree with you. The reason for a low life expectancy is not due to environmental conditions, but life choices and criminal activity. Not all black male deaths are caused by this, but the curve is brought down considerably.

I never claimed they were caused by environmental conditions. But, I would suggest that "life choices and criminal activity" is, a synonym for "environmental conditions" in many of these men's lives.
In either case, those short lives contribute to statistics like the ones cited in the first post of the thread.

danivon wrote:Mind you, the one strategy you didn't mention was more exercise. Now that is a good way to be healthy.

Many of the skinniest people I know exercise very little, especially when looking at those who are skinny throughout their lives.

I've started looking at this a bit closer and have noticed quite a few people who are active all day and are still obese. Now why would a mail carrier who walks all day be obese? I know a number of them. Exercise has benefits, but it's no magic cure for obesity.

Obesity is for the vast majority of people a metabolic problem. People without metabolic problems eat and have energy, it compels them to be active (like little kids). People who have metabolic problems are tired and eating often for them exacerbates tiredness.

If your body tends to store energy rather than burn energy you become obese. This can be compounded by the desire to eat more to have energy to burn which fails because of the tendency to store.

Now since most of us aren't taking testosterone or HGH, that leaves us with insulin as being the primary hormone regulating fat that we can influence.

For example when I was 14 I could eat a 1/2 gallon of ice cream in one setting, and I did (x2), yet I was fit as a fiddle. Now I'd feel like shit if I did that. And no amount of exercise is going to make it so I can take that kind of sugar hit now. That's why eating less carbs, eating less refined and sweet carbs, and eating smaller meals more frequently rather than larger meals is the basic approach that works for anyone with a fat mid-section.

I'd also note that exercise makes you hungry.

Obesity is for the vast majority of people a metabolic problem.

The only safe effective way to increase your maeabolic rate is to exercise....

I'd also note that exercise makes you hungry.

Weight bearing exercise increases the metabolism and increases the bodies utlization of calcium in building and repairing bones.
Thats why skinny people who don't exercise get osteoporis.

Your mail man might be an over eater, or an admirer of crappy food. Perhaps he's eatong fast food every day?

rickyp wrote:Thats why skinny people who don't exercise get osteoporis.

That's exactly what I'm saying. There's plenty of people who are skinny and don't exercise, nor pay any particular attention to their diet. I'm certainly not saying that exercise isn't useful. I'm just challenging the standard view regarding obesity.

The postman mentioned early certainly isn't lazy or suffering from a lack of physical activity. It likely has to do with his diet, not in terms of eating too much but rather eating in a manner that his metabolism can't handle.

Here's how it might happen. He eats a smallish quick breakfast and heads to work where he spends the next fours hours sorting, loading, and walking to deliver mail at a rather brisk pace. At lunch he is famished, maybe running a lower blood sugar as a result. He then eats a large lunch to accommodate his energy needs, his blood sugar jumps and his body releases insulin to stunt the oxidative stress hitting his system. This swings leaves him feeling worn out rather than refreshed. The insulin spike causes him to store fat rather than expend it all as energy.

For the naturally thin person the body regulates all of this without a problem, for someone with a creeping fat accumulation problem it isn't. High fructose cornsyrup and pastry flour can exasperate the situation, but regular breads and pastas can do it as well if too much is hitting the system at once and the body can't regulate it. Two sandwiches at once can have a totally different effect on the metabolism than one sandwich twice but spread two hours apart, even though it's that exact same amount of food.