I guess alcoholism is too.
"The American Medical Association formally voted Tuesday to classify "obesity as a disease requiring a range of medical interventions."
The shift is aimed in part to get doctors to tackle obesity as if they were treating a disease instead of a lifestyle condition in need of modification.
"Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans," Dr. Patrice Harris of the AMA said in a statement. "The AMA is committed to improving health outcomes and is working to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, which are often linked to obesity." - CBS
I understand that... but...
By that reasoning, life is a disease.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is terminal.
DeleteWhy do people feel sympathy and show compassion for bullimics and anorexics? The people I work with are eating themselves to death for the same reasons bullimics and anrorexics are starving themselves to death: they've been abused, they are suffering from depression, they see themselves as useless, they hate themselves. Why is it that bullimia and anorexia are seen as mental health issues? I've heard anorexia often referred to as a disease. In a world that embraces the thin and the physically perfect, there is A LOT more going on in the mind and body of a person who has eaten his or her way to 300lbs plus knowing he or she will be ridiculed and shunned by the world than JUST "bad" food choices and as I have just heard this earlier in a waiting room "getting off their fat lazy asses." I understand the word "disease" is what has many people rolling their eyes about, and I am sorry if this is coming off as a little strident, but I have seen people die of this saying "I cannot stop. It (eating) is the only time the pain stops."
ReplyDeleteYou make very good points. There are degrees of obesity - I think. Seems to me the morbidly obese are those directly impacted by this - and as I say - I understand the reasoning behind calling it a disease. As you point out - there are often underlying issues.
DeleteMy reservations include questions of cultural standards and fashion - we are so body conscious - people must be thin, must be sculpted through work outs and weight training, and so on - how much do these societal trends influence our attitudes?
There is also the spiritual dimension related to morality and personal responsibility... is gluttony no longer a sin? Is temperance no longer a virtue? We also have free will.
+JMJ+
DeleteTerry, have I mentioned to you the satirical Victorian novel Erewhon by Samuel Butler? In it, the narrator finds himself in a lost civilisation where everything is backwards. There, illness is a crime that people can be sentenced to hard labour for, while crimes are treated with all the compassion and care normally reserved for illness.
I read Erewhon in uni, and my professor remarked that what was a revolutionary idea in Butler's day is totally taken for granted in ours. We want to hold people accountable for their ill health, while referring to criminals as "sick" rather than, say, "sinful." If only it were so easy to take a virtue pill, aye? But that's grist for a whole other classic satiric novel . . .
Today every thing is inside out, upside down, and backwards.
DeleteI'm one of those obese with underlying emotional issues, etc., ... me and Oprah, battling up & down through the decades. So sick of it. I bought Dr. Vost's *Fit for Eternal Life* to help re-program my mental/emotional/spiritual approach with food, how I view myself, etc. Also bought the Nutribullet and am extracting myself (just started this week) and love it.
ReplyDeleteFatness is not a disease. It leads to physical disease, but the roots go much deeper don't they.
+JMJ+
ReplyDeletePS -- What surprises me about this article is that it's news. A few years ago, I read another which reported findings that obesity is not just an illness, but also a contagious one. Haven't people been saying this for years? Or may be they have--and for longer than I marked it--but it's only becoming mainstream now. Ominous parallels, aye?