Tuesday, May 15, 2012

LOOKING FOR A CURE FOR TOXIC MEDICAL STATISTICS


I logged on to my home page the other morning to see how my stocks were doing, and spotted a headline warning that obese fliers may be at risk because airline seat belts won't restrain them in the event of a serious impact. This was not what I wanted to hear. I'm about 20 pounds overweight, not overtly obese but still a pretty big guy, and since I was planning a trip to Las Vegas later this year, I figured I should maybe knock off a few pounds. Just to be on the safe side. (click below to read more)


One thing that worried me was the possibility that one of the roughly 100 million Americans out there who are officially overweight or obese might have already weakened the seat belt I would be using on my flight, without anybody being the wiser. This meant that, in the event of a bumpy landing, I might bust loose from the restraining device and get my face plastered across the back of the seat directly in front of me.
So instead of my usual hearty breakfast of pancakes with syrup and sausage links on the side, I limited myself to a few mouthfuls of yogurt. A couple of weeks on the low-cal, low-fat yogurt regimen, a few pounds lighter, and I could stop worrying about gruesome seat-belt mishaps forever.
But then I read a story in Eating Well magazine which said that certain types of yogurt are deceptively high in calories and contain ingredients that may be harmful to you. In other words, yogurt may be the most silent of killers.
This alarmed me greatly, as I am among the 38% of individuals who suffer from high cholesterol, according to the Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health (REACH) registry, and I have been trying to get my cholesterol level down for years. So I decided to ditch the yogurt and switch to low-fat muffins. But then I read that low-fat muffins often have high calorie counts and, worse, that having low cholesterol can be hazardous to your health. Specifically, low cholesterol can lead to cancer, anxiety and depression.
I could have sloughed off this unnerving news if I'd read it on some dumb website, but no, the report came directly from the Mayo Clinic. Just the thought that low cholesterol might cause depression or cancer made me so anxious and depressed that I seriously thought about getting a prescription for antidepressants. But then I read a Rockefeller University report which says that run-of-the-mill painkillers—which I take all the time for chronic neck pain—can cancel out the effects of antidepressants, thus making you even more depressed because you can't figure out why your antidepressants aren't working.
Concerned about what I'd read about the perils of low-fat muffins leading to cancer, anxiety and depression, and worried that I might become one of the 50% of Americans who will suffer from some kind of mental-health problem in the course of my life—according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—I hastily scarfed down a granola bar just to cheer me up.
But then I read that granola bars contain lots of sugar and might not be good for you in the long run. Worse, I found out that eating quickly can lead to diabetes, or at least force me into the ranks of the 79 million American adults who, again according to the Centers for Disease Control, have prediabetes and could get full-blown diabetes unless they make serious changes in their lifestyle.
I tried to take this with a grain of salt, since the research on rapid eating was conducted by scientists in Lithuania, so there might be some give in their numbers, or maybe the findings pertained only to downbeat, Baltic gluttons with poor eating habits. I was worried, but despite it all—the seat belts, the depression, the anxiety, the looming threat of diabetes—I was still looking forward to that autumn trip to Las Vegas.
Then I read that the state of Nevada is experimenting with driverless cars—and that the tests on cars that have no drivers steering them have actually taken place right there on the streets of Las Vegas.
So I think I'm staying home.

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