Not a Lean Year for Health News

Although SARS grabbed the global headlines this year by ruthlessly claiming hundreds of lives in Asia and Canada, the year's most troubling health-care news in the United States was actually staring most people in the face: More Americans than ever are so overweight that they are putting their lives at risk.

That was the conclusion of the annual summary of the nation's health from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The numbers show that while people are living longer, they are carrying around more baggage with them. Almost one in three (31 percent) of the population is now obese, double the rate of the late 1970s. Among children, those who are overweight more than doubled, from 7 percent to 15 percent. Not surprisingly, one in seven American adults, or 29 million, now suffer from diabetes or are well on their way toward the blood sugar disease.

Is it any wonder? A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association leaves little doubt as to the root cause of the expanding problem: "Between 1977 and 1996, food portion sizes increased both inside and outside the home for all (food) categories except pizza," it says.

Obesity might have been the top health story in 2003, if only for the sheer number of persons affected by it. But it was by no means the only health story with long-range consequences.

The viral respiratory disease from Asia known as SARS caused havoc both in terms of health and economics in some of the two dozen countries it ravaged. The image of street crowds and travelers wearing surgical masks in Beijing, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Singapore and even Toronto is a lingering hallmark of the deadly disease, which sickened more than 8,000 people and killed 774 in a seven-month span.

Health policy was also in the forefront of the news as Congress shook off years of contentious debate to narrowly pass a radical enlargement of the Medicare program. For the first time, the elderly will get a prescription-drug benefit. The move came as federal regulators scrambled to find a way to deal with the growing tendency of Americans to buy drugs on the Internet and from Canada, where they are cheaper.

No such simple answer exists for women considering hormone replacement therapy. Studies seem to indicate the drugs used in women who are menopausal are OK, but only in the short term. The analysis follows a well-publicized 2002 study that was halted after menopausal and postmenopausal women taking a combination estrogen and progestin therapy recorded an increased risk of breast cancer, strokes and blood clots. That left many women, who had been told to continue such therapy for life, confused and scared.

Meanwhile, there was some clarification about an age-old concern for the 1.5 million Americans with peanut allergies. It turns out the peanut is not to blame. Rather, it is an abnormal response of the person's immune system, British researchers found. What's more, there was news of an experimental medication, called TNX-901, which raised the amount of peanuts that would have to be eaten to trigger an allergic response.

And in the final hours of the year, the agency moved to ban ephedra, the herbal weight-loss supplement linked to more than 150 deaths. The announcement was greeted with criticism for not having been done sooner.

Reference Source 101

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".