Number One Health Problem in U.S.

[Catnap]

RIGHT ON, Rested Gal! I had these symptoms for -- I dunno, seems like forever -- and had all kinds of changes of meds and other recommendations until finally, a few months ago, a well-informed PA (physicians assistant) actually *read* that long history sheet they always make you fill out, actually *thought* about the problems I listed, looked in my mouth and said "your airway looks on the small side," and referred me for a sleep study. If routine examinations included routine requirements for evaluating sleep disturbances, who knows how long ago I might have been able to get help! And who knows how much damage was done to my health in the meantime.

[jaymp]

sorry for not reading the above posts. I read the first post, and thought I had to comment. THE SINGLE NUMBER ONE HEALTH PROBLEM IN THE US IS OBESITY hands down. It is a cause of sleep apea, and causes type 2 diabetes, hard disease, coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, hypertension, and i could write a 10 page essay about this! No one single disease, epidemic, or whatever you would like to call it, is more costly to the healthcare system yet more easily preventable or even reversible. Dr. Stan Esselstyn of the Cleveland clinic has done one of the studies proving it can be reversed!
"The 17 patients in the study had 49 cardiac events in the years leading up to the study, and had undergone aggressive treatment procedures. Several had multiple bypass operations. After beginning the eating plan, there were no more cardiac events in the entire group within a 12-year period. " all they did was eat a plant based diet. no meat, no dairy or other animal products, no health problems....go figure

[saduquette]

Is that the only health problem being encountered in the U.S.? I guess there are other health problems that the U.S. Government should focus. Much more why don't they try having a campaign against such or if it's not curable at all, well try having diagnostic test for such. Sleeping apnea could be diagnosed with the signs of course. Different symptoms of it can be seen when a person has it. Or I guess doctors know what to do with such cases.

[Muse-Inc]

I..you have to remember that the DNA for human organisms never intended for us to live past our 40s...

Au contraire, my friend. Human DNA is virtually the same now as 100,000 yrs ago; for that matter, the brain is essentially the same. The difference in our perception of our ancestors is the massive learning that we do as infants and youngsters and the huge number of decisions we make DAILY from the time we're born -- both of which provide us with data which we convert into information that we can pass along to one another. The very large increase in average life span today compared to then is theorized due to decreased maternal death, decreased infant mortality during the first yr (make it thru that that and odds are you'll live to adulthood), vaccines against major communicable diseases, antibiotics against diseases/infections, surgery & life support for accidents/medical emergencies (heart attack, stroke, cancer, etc), oh and xPAP therapy

Rooster et al, right on about diet. We've only been consuming sugar (as we know it) for about 150 yrs -- not nearly long enough for us to have evolved to handle it well. Compared to now, we used to eat a lot of protein and fat was highly prized as was salt; we got a lot of physical activity every day; stress was short-term and typically the srress-survival hormones used up in physical activity. Then, we became farmers; some still thrived, tho most had problems to one extent or another eating grains as the mainstray of their diet. Plus, ya gotta remember that today's meats and fish were quite different nutritionally than what we have today. Fruits, veggies, tubers were not the succulent, juicy, delectible things we eat today. While nutrient density in foodstuffs have typically gone up since those early times, the ratio of proteins:fats:carbs is very different today. Our DNA has not yet evolved to handle the onslaught of these changes.

Cheers!

[DreamStalker]

I..you have to remember that the DNA for human organisms never intended for us to live past our 40s...

Au contraire, my friend. Human DNA is virtually the same now as 100,000 yrs ago; for that matter, the brain is essentially the same. The difference in our perception of our ancestors is the massive learning that we do as infants and youngsters and the huge number of decisions we make DAILY from the time we're born -- both of which provide us with data which we convert into information that we can pass along to one another. The very large increase in average life span today compared to then is theorized due to decreased maternal death, decreased infant mortality during the first yr (make it thru that that and odds are you'll live to adulthood), vaccines against major communicable diseases, antibiotics against diseases/infections, surgery & life support for accidents/medical emergencies (heart attack, stroke, cancer, etc), oh and xPAP therapy

Rooster et al, right on about diet. We've only been consuming sugar (as we know it) for about 150 yrs -- not nearly long enough for us to have evolved to handle it well. Compared to now, we used to eat a lot of protein and fat was highly prized as was salt; we got a lot of physical activity every day; stress was short-term and typically the srress-survival hormones used up in physical activity. Then, we became farmers; some still thrived, tho most had problems to one extent or another eating grains as the mainstray of their diet. Plus, ya gotta remember that today's meats and fish were quite different nutritionally than what we have today. Fruits, veggies, tubers were not the succulent, juicy, delectible things we eat today. While nutrient density in foodstuffs have typically gone up since those early times, the ratio of proteins:fats:carbs is very different today. Our DNA has not yet evolved to handle the onslaught of these changes.

Cheers!

You have misread what I wrote. I did not say that human DNA has changed. Where in my post did I say or imply that?

In fact, human DNA has not changed for more like a quarter million years. What I said is that we humans are not meant to live past our 40's and under natural conditions under which our DNA evolved, we would die of things for which technology today is able to keep us alive. Without that technology, we would all die off at our normal lifespan of about 40 to 50 years old.

The diet you speak of is uniquly tuned with the evolution of our hormones which maintain our energy balance among many other physiological processes.

Anyway, the point I was making is that if you make it to your 50th birthday, consider yourself lucky because you have exceeded your designed (intelligent or not) normal lifespan.

[Muse-Inc]

...you have exceeded your designed (intelligent or not) normal lifespan.

We disagree on this point . From what I've read, there is no evidence that there is a designed lifespan that ends in the 40s! If ancient man had the advantages of those things/practices I mentioned, it is theorized that they would have lived a 'normal' lifespan for modern humans which is estimated to be between 110-120 years.

Notice that we are not all living that long ? I blame food, yummy, delicious, satisfying CARBS (my downfall and now 95% off my plate)

Food yum overeat not enough activity obesity abdominal obesity apnea hypertenstion diabetes (but this last only seems to occur when the genes for glucose malfunctioning get triggered, not all people have them and we do not fully understand what triggers them)

There are physical reasons that aspects of the above appear before or after in that progression, for example, virii that kill beta cells, physical abnormalities that result in airway obstruction, ApoE virus that cause accumulation of fat, tendency to over-produce insulin (the storage hormone) in response to ingested carbs, etcetera. But, for many of us, it can be laid at our poor resistence to the temptations of the food marketers

[BlackSpinner]

Without that technology, we would all die off at our normal lifespan of about 40 to 50 years old.

No we wouldn't - we are designed to live longer. Studies show that the longer a woman lived - the more living grandchildren her daughters had - grandmother were designed to booster childcare. (note it doesn't work for grandfathers)

Pre farming communities were healthier and often had elders who lived into their 70's These were the " google search" of pre history. Many healthy elders meant the tribe was more successful as they had more memory stored. Humans over history have group selected for old age. Farming was the worst thing humans have done for their health - people shrunk by several inches and by living in their bio wastes they were wracked with disease.

Looking at average age of people is deceptive - It is skewed by the infant mortality rate. Also mortality rates were and are different for different classes. Mining communities compared to agrarian compared to ruling classes. Ramses II lived to be in his 90's.

[Guest]

Rested gal,

Your first two points might be valid, but snoring is not necessarily an indication of sleep apnea. Wasting a ton of resources miseducating the public on this issue will set things back. People who have sleep apnea are very likely to snore. The opposite isn't true.

Jan,

People having a BMI of 29-55 is likely why they have sleep apnea. It's also why they likely have type 2 diabetes. The culprit is far more likely to be an obese population. That leads to both conditions.

[SleepGuy]

Just do a google search for "apnea diabetes" then click the news button at the top of the search results.

thanks! that was helpful. i never used that News feature before.

I will send you a link to one or two recent Chest Journal articles (2008) on this very topic.

Diabetes being the plague that it is as soon as the causal connection to apnea is more fully made it will really make a difference. Unfortunately, once diabetes happens it's irreversible even with apnea treatment (though it's much easier to control). The trick here is to get high risk people headed towards diabetes (like me) under apnea treatment before diabetes happens! I am SO very grateful for a good doctor who made the connection for me before the inevitable onset of diabetes.

[timbalionguy]

Reading this makes me wonder how the human race has made it to this point without CPAP. There is a lot more to this than meets the eye.

I am quite obese, but unlike a lot of obese people, I carry my weight very well. I do tire more easily, but it does not slow me down at all. The only thing that works consistently well for me is a strict low carb diet. (There seems to be more than just saying to people that I might be part cat....) However, the scheduling issues CPAP therapy has caused, and a whole host of other stuff going on have made it very difficult for me to consistently do a low carb diet. My body is screaming at me to 'get carnivorous' again....but when I do, there goes my social life for the most part. (I guess that is why most cats are solitary creatures.)

[Muse-Inc]

...The only thing that works consistently well for me is a strict low carb diet....scheduling issues CPAP therapy has caused, and a whole host of other stuff going on have made it very difficult for me to consistently do a low carb diet. My body is screaming at me to 'get carnivorous' again....but when I do, there goes my social life for the most part.

I do low carb and I mean LOW. I'm upfront about it with everyone, invites to eat out, whatever, my mantra is I eat almost no carbs, I eat protein and a lots of it . I have been known to say, "Feed me a slab of meat (poultry/fish), chopped Romain+celery+bell peppers+tomato+parsley+shredded cheese, any crucifer+butter/sour cream, and I'm a happy camper." Dessert is often Dannon's low carb yogurt with a few berries, custards make with half n'half + Splenda, mini lemon cheescakes made with Splenda. Lost 50#s this way, blood chemistry is great much to the disgust of Endo who wants me eat more carbs and less fat. Given my terrible numbers following that advice before, I'm sure with my apnea & its side effects I'd be dead by now. When I was working, I kept a few cans of chicken in my desk for emergencies; they hated ordering food for working meals, I said it was easy...meat/fish/poultry plus cheese plus a salad .

So Timabalion, I'm with you on this. Call me 'carnivore 2' there's a reason my avatar is a cat

[roster]

......
People having a BMI of 29-55 is likely why they have sleep apnea. It's also why they likely have type 2 diabetes. The culprit is far more likely to be an obese population. That leads to both conditions.

This point will remain undecided in my brain (suit yourself if you already reached a firm conclusion). No doubt we have moved to a horrible diet in the U.S. over the last 40 years. There is also no doubt that the medical profession has tended to overlook sleep apnea as a possible diagnosis in people under BMI 29. I have a feeling if everyone is checked, we may find that sleep apnea is just as prevalent in low/normal BMI people as in others.

But there is also some evidence that sleep apnea leads to weight gain. Then this weight gain may cause sleep apnea to get worse which causes more weight gain.

I had sleep apnea undiagnosed for decades. When I graduated from college (age 22) I was a very fit BMI 21.

Sometime in my mid-twenties I developed sleep apnea. Then my weight increased to BMI 25 by age 40 (Most people thought I was still skinny but surprise, 25 is actually overweight).

Now with CPAP, I have the energy to exercise strenuously and regularly and my BMI is again a very fit 21 (age 60). But I still have severe OSA and my CPAP pressure needs have not been reduced. Very nicely though, type 2 diabetes has disappeared. Even on days I have high carb intake, my bg levels remain normal.

[DreamStalker]

...you have exceeded your designed (intelligent or not) normal lifespan.

We disagree on this point . From what I've read, there is no evidence that there is a designed lifespan that ends in the 40s! If ancient man had the advantages of those things/practices I mentioned, it is theorized that they would have lived a 'normal' lifespan for modern humans which is estimated to be between 110-120 years.

Notice that we are not all living that long ? I blame food, yummy, delicious, satisfying CARBS (my downfall and now 95% off my plate)

Food yum overeat not enough activity obesity abdominal obesity apnea hypertenstion diabetes (but this last only seems to occur when the genes for glucose malfunctioning get triggered, not all people have them and we do not fully understand what triggers them)

There are physical reasons that aspects of the above appear before or after in that progression, for example, virii that kill beta cells, physical abnormalities that result in airway obstruction, ApoE virus that cause accumulation of fat, tendency to over-produce insulin (the storage hormone) in response to ingested carbs, etcetera. But, for many of us, it can be laid at our poor resistence to the temptations of the food marketers

Again, you misunderstood what I wrote. I did not say that humans are not capable of living over 100 years now or in the long ago past.

My point is that the average human lifespan has been between 40 and 50 years for most of our evolutionary period (99%) on this planet and only in the last 100 years or so has it risen to between 70 and 80 due to technology. Disagree all you want, I'm not convinced that the "normal" human lifespan is 110 to 120 years ... your facts are off or you do not understand elementary descriptive statistics. But for this point regarding average human lifespan, we are pretty much in agreement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

BTW - Diets high in refined carbs and reduced body movement are what triggers the genetic predisposition for diabetes (especially in peoples of African, Asian, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and well, most non-Europeans although they too have diabetic predispositions, but to a lesser extent).

[Muse-Inc]

Diets high in refined carbs and reduced body movement are what triggers the genetic predisposition for diabetes (especially in peoples of African, Asian, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and well, most non-Europeans although they too have diabetic predispositions, but to a lesser extent).

OK, we've observed it over and over, as a traditional diet is abandoned and a more typical American adopted, those with genes for deranged glucose mgmt have those genes triggered at alarming rates. While we observe this effect, I am not 100% convinced that diet and reduced physical activity are the sole cause, there is just too much we don't know about the genes that create type 2 diabetes.

Interesting tidbit: recent study on the action of metformim shows that it bypasses the genetic defect that causes the liver to not respond to rising insulin levels thus continuing to pump out glucose instead of shutting down production. Now, they still don't understand what triggers the gene to be expressed (what we call 'liver cell insulin resistence'); why does it suddenly become active, what is the trigger? If we understood the trigger, perhaps we could reverse it or prevent it from expression in the first place. Maybe the reversal of type 2 in those who've undergone gastric bypass (or dieted to match bite for bite those who have) will help us understand these mysteries.

Statistics...don't trust numbers any more than I believe an 'observational study' tells us anything about cause. Stats can be manipulated as in mathematics proving 0 = 1...I hadda 'prove' this and it was like doing algebra, turning my head inside out...aaaiieeee. . Give me geometry/trig any day .

DreamStalker, we'll just hafta disagree on human potential life span .

[timbalionguy]

I do low carb and I mean LOW. I'm upfront about it with everyone, invites to eat out, whatever, my mantra is I eat almost no carbs, I eat protein and a lots of it . I have been known to say, "Feed me a slab of meat (poultry/fish), chopped Romain+celery+bell peppers+tomato+parsley+shredded cheese, any crucifer+butter/sour cream, and I'm a happy camper." Dessert is often Dannon's low carb yogurt with a few berries, custards make with half n'half + Splenda, mini lemon cheescakes made with Splenda. Lost 50#s this way, blood chemistry is great much to the disgust of Endo who wants me eat more carbs and less fat. Given my terrible numbers following that advice before, I'm sure with my apnea & its side effects I'd be dead by now. When I was working, I kept a few cans of chicken in my desk for emergencies; they hated ordering food for working meals, I said it was easy...meat/fish/poultry plus cheese plus a salad .

So Timabalion, I'm with you on this. Call me 'carnivore 2' there's a reason my avatar is a cat

I have always been interested in carnivores, and am one of those who starts hankering for a good steak when I watch lions devour a whatever-they-caught-that-day. One day a friend told me about a diet he was on...started out each day with a slab of liver, barely browned on the outside. I then got the books on the Atkins diet, and the fine books by the Eades. As one who understands biochemistry, it all made perfect sense.

I started out with the Atkins diet at the induction level, but then tried to limit food intake as well. It worked, and quite spectacularly. But I quickly learned that meat like ham would leave me severely constipated. The small portions in general left me constipated. I also found out that cheating on the diet with really carb-rich foods (which i was able to avoid for the first couple of months!) made me terribly ill with a particularly painful diaherrea. I was briefly almost within 20 pounds of my goal when these problems hit me hard (and I did not yet understand them).

I fine tuned things over the next couple of years, although in this time period, I ended up moving from Rochester, NY to Reno, NV. Although I have had times when I have done very well with the diet (went 4 months without cheating in the summer of 2007), I have also had times when I have done very poorly. As a result, my current weight is right at my all-time high.

I am hoping to try again, starting sometime this week. But I already have friends begging me to go out to dinner. (I have one friend, who is as thin as a rail who insists in eating every time we do something together. When we have traveled together, we have to stop every three hours and eat a meal )

My problem is that I don't care at all for veggies. I do best as an 'obligate carnivore', and find veggies about as tasty as the 'stomach contents of my prey'. I have never cared for veggies, even as a kid. I don't even like the smell of some of them. The only veggies I really like are the ones that are the worst for you in terms of carbohydrate content. I have come up with other natural ways to ensure I get enough fiber. I have also discovered that trying to eat sparsely is not good, either. I need to eat good-sized portions of meat, twice a day. If I do this consistently, take fiber, vitamin C and Calcium (and a lot of it), I do just great eating like a cat. I'll eat raw beef and venison. I am slowly liking 'guts' more and more, just like a cat. And I feel better and perform better this way. Does not seem to affect AHI much in the limited trials I have done.

In any case, I can't readily find a restaurant that serves reasonable (for me) portions of meat at a realistic price. So when I am dragged out to eat, it usually ends up being a bad combination-- protein with carbs. And I do not care at all for things like lettuce-wrapped hamburgers.

The second failing I have is that I have a terrible sweet tooth. (Strange for a 'cat'. Cats cannot taste sweet. Sweet flavors do not exist in the bodies of animals.) So, when I cheat, it is usually a big cheat. This limits my ability to do movies, ballgames, public events, etc. In a movie for instance, I am driven nuts by popcorn. I LOVE buttered popcorn, but that is even worse than protein and carbs. Its fat and carbs! They serve all sorts of good things at the new baseball stadium they just opened here. Killer beef brisket sandwiches. But the bun and sweet BBQ sauce will do me in!

So in the end, I wish I could just have the right teeth and constitution so I could pick up a fresh rabbit at the public market and eat it like an apple-- skin, guts, flesh, tendons, and even crunch some of the bones. So simple. No packaging. Nutritionally consistent. Little waste, and even that is natural.