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Why Is Obesity Getting Worse?
22 Plays1 month ago
Human lives all over the world are haunted by an all too familiar threat, and it's getting worse.
Under our current global economic system, the majority of human lifestyles globally are becoming increasingly unhealthy. Yes, there's GLP-1s, and new research, and advancements in nutritional science, but obesity is the result of one's way of life in its totality.
There's no wonder drug that will fix it for us, unless we stop treating our bodies like labor machines.
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Transcript
Strategies to Combat Obesity
00:00:07
Speaker
The obesity epidemic is worsening. There are simple things we can do to reduce risk, like cutting sugar, eating more, less junk food, join a gym, go for a walk, get a dog, more physical activity, more water,
00:00:22
Speaker
We know all these things. Even as I say these things, I feel my eyes rolled because we've been told them all our lives. There's no better version of these recommendations. It's pretty simple. Why then is this disease spiraling out
Fatty Liver Disease and Obesity
00:00:34
Speaker
of control? There was a new study published yesterday in The Lancet, which is a famous British medical journal, reporting on the anticipated prevalence of fatty liver disease worldwide and the numbers are not good.
00:00:48
Speaker
Fatty liver disease is the colloquial name we give to damaged liver that arises due to obesity. There's a separate category of liver disease related to alcohol and so this is not that.
00:00:59
Speaker
ah Cirrhosis, yes, but also fat in the liver from drinking. But this is not that. This is driven primarily by obesity and lifestyle changes. In a person with obesity, the liver accumulates fat over years.
00:01:11
Speaker
and gradually
The Liver's Role and Risks
00:01:12
Speaker
stops functioning. So the function of the liver cells is to detox the body, to get rid of all of the various poisonous things that your cells create and secrete into the blood. And the liver is an amazing chemist and filter that gets rid of this stuff. And when the liver starts to fail,
00:01:28
Speaker
you gradually get poisoned by these things that continue to circulate and not be cleared. And it's associated with inflammation and fatigue and jaundice and lots of toxicity and it's actually painful and messy and the major reason for liver transplant.
00:01:44
Speaker
So at the moment about 1.3 billion people or 16% of the world's population is affected by fatty liver disease and these numbers based on this article are expected to blow up to about 2 billion people ah by 2050.
Lifestyle's Impact on Obesity
00:02:00
Speaker
It's a kind of a medical disaster occurring and I think it's our built environment and diet and physical activity patterns that are killing us. There are simple things we can do to reduce risk like cutting sugar, eating more, less junk food, join a gym, go for a walk, get a dog, more physical activity, more water,
00:02:22
Speaker
We know all these things. Even as I say these things, I feel my eyes rolled because we've been told them all our lives. There's no better version of these recommendations. It's pretty simple. Why then is this disease spiraling out of control? I don't think it's a lack of well power.
00:02:37
Speaker
I think it's our toxic built environments and the structures of our lives that are driving these changes. And I think it's worldwide. I think these are the effects of peacetime and prosperity and late stage capitalism.
00:02:52
Speaker
We're all working longer hours. We spend more time sitting in traffic. We don't have time to work out. We negotiate with ourselves. I'll just work for one more hour at the computer rather than taking the walk. We have time to shop for healthy foods or healthy foods are too far away or too expensive and neighborhoods don't have those kinds of stores or um everything's not affordable and nobody has time anyway. And these patterns are being seen worldwide.
00:03:18
Speaker
Multinational corporations are doing better than ever making lots and lots of money. And it's great that people are happy to have jobs, especially in countries that have long histories of colonialism and
Health Consequences of Obesity
00:03:31
Speaker
exploitation. And so now rising incomes, especially in these lesser developed countries, are contributing to higher income, but also people working harder and taking less care of themselves. Corporations are not really interested in our health. They are interested in our labor and they will pay us the least possible
00:03:50
Speaker
for the most labor that they can extract. And then the market clears. So there's a lot of studies of health and income distribution and status that show there's a strong linear relationship between job status, income, and your health, including longevity. And in general, the wealthier you are, the healthier you are worldwide.
00:04:09
Speaker
But health has become a casualty of this employment equation, and obesity is the most obvious consequence. So fatty liver disease, That's only one condition arising from obesity. There's all sorts of other complications and problems that occur as well, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and cancer, and shortened lives. In many ways, I think economic success is turning into a health disaster.
00:04:32
Speaker
I worry most about children who are growing up in our obesity culture. the risk of pediatric obesity goes up fourfold if one parent has obesity. But if both parents have obesity, the risk is 13-fold. So that suggests it's not only disproportional, but it runs in systems over which children have very little control. So how do we reduce this disease burden when both parents are working and possibly the children themselves are either at working or in school We're staying long hours and everyone's so busy and nobody has time to eat properly or shop properly and walk and play.
Future Implications and Solutions
00:05:03
Speaker
Without a kind of a course correction, we're all going to end up up like the obese passengers on the Axiom, the spaceship in the cartoon movie Wall-E. I don't have any big structural answers, but without a deeper realization, and this is going to have to be worldwide, that these systems are all interconnected. The Lancet tells us that the burden of pain and disease and early death arising from these obesity-related complications is depressingly predictable.
00:05:28
Speaker
Corporations making it possible for their employees and for the children of these employees to live healthy lives and avoid obesity is going to have to be an essential part of the terms of employment everywhere in the world.
00:05:50
Speaker
You've been listening to The Fifth Column, a series of podcasts documenting the intersecting stresses of our time. I'm Gerry Dennis. Please tune in again soon.