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NHS prevention plan aims to boost life expectancy

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  • Think mankind has two brains. One that does unbelievably wonderful things and makes all our lives better and the other brain that has no consideration for consequences of how we are changing the planet.

    I think in part it’s because really smart people do the former and ordinary people get to make the decisions.

    In a nutshell I think man is well fucked and life as we currently know it will cease over the next 100 years or so.
  • edited November 2018

    Think mankind has two brains.

    Just two brains? What about the ones that want to do damage to mankind (certainly not wonderful) in order to save the planet? Or those that follow a book to appease some fairy tale?

    This planet and mankind will continue to exist, but change is needed to societal norms as soon as possible to steer us towards a better world sooner.

    This planet is huge, it's not over populated, it's just under utilised. We need to use technology to create more green spaces, make a fuel that never needs replacing, reduce the use of single use materials and increase the use of biodegradable materials...


    Easy.


    In theory.
  • ironically modernisation normally brings a reduction in the birth rate and declining populations, trouble is of course its not happening everywhere. Reminds me a bit of Asimov's Foundation series and psychohistory
  • It sounds a good initiative but will need to be backed up with adequate funds and the political will to resist the powerful food lobby. Hope springs eternal but I am less than sanguine about either of those things happening. A lot of these initiatives do seem to be launched with a fanfare but then allowed to quietly fizzle out over the next few years. One of my problems with successive governments is that they seem quite unable to focus upon, and drive through, four or five key objectives, preferring instead to pursue multiple policies and, ultimately, failing to deliver on most of them.

    As has been said earlier in the thread, cheap junk food is all some people on the breadline feel they can afford and and social deprivation - which shows no signs of being tackled - will remain a key underlying driver.

    Some people will never make lifestyle adjustments but we do desperately need to do something about child obesity. According to Government Guidance in January 2017:

    "Nearly a third of children aged 2 to 15 are overweight or obese and younger generations are becoming obese at earlier ages and staying obese for longer...... The economic costs are great, too. We spend more each year on the treatment of obesity and diabetes than we do on the police, fire service and judicial system combined. It was estimated that the NHS in England spent £5.1 billion on overweight and obesity-related ill-health in 2014/15.

    The burden is falling hardest on those children from low-income backgrounds. Obesity rates are highest for children from the most deprived areas and this is getting worse. Children aged 5 and from the poorest income groups are twice as likely to be obese compared to their most well off counterparts and by age 11 they are three times as likely."

    The NHS is already under enormous pressure from an ageing population; if we can't reduce childhood obesity, the consequences over the next 20-30 years are likely to be dire.
  • The problem is the effects are long term and hardly noticeable on a day by day basis, therefore education and even labelling may not work, then you are left with taxation and legislation.

    As an example of how reactive rather than proactive we are I've noticed as a diabetic several things,

    There are virtually no preventative measures health checks at certain younger ages say 39-50 aren't compulsory. There are no measures in place to reverse diabetes, despite it being an enormous drain on the NHS and potentially catastrophically so in the future. Something as simple as prescribing an exercise programme using a fitbit device could probably save a lot of money.

    Specialisation in this area is not encouraged, there are enough diabetics to set up centres where staff are specialists in treating and reversing the condition, including doing blood and urine tests, but also counselling, education and other treatment. Instead we are simply put on a conveyor belt of drug treatments, see our regular doctor, rather than put on a dietary and exercise programme to treat if not reverse the condition.

    Of course this may be something to do with medical orthodoxy refusing to accept new science, its also harder I guess to be proactive because the absence of sick people isn't a statistic, so short termism prevails - only when something becomes a growing crisis is something done (eventually). But I rather suspect its also to do with the pharmaceutical industry who fund much of medical research and the resulting drug based treatment approach of the NHS.

    I found a similar approach when we had our son, the specialist midwife centre at Sidcup was closing. We also saw a team of midwives so rarely saw the same one twice, both bonkers in my view, and detracting from quality.



  • Has the number of fat kids increased since they've had free travel?

    See loads of them get on the bus for one stop.
  • razil said:

    This isn't a nanny state its more that it was never understood just how bad refined carbs and sugar were for you, hence the massive rise/epidemic in T2 diabetes and other related illnesses.

    As others have said the whole food industry is also set up on convenience food, and that is what they market to us, so people need to be informed.

    So its just not as simple as saying I'll choose my diet, when its something that has been culturally ingrained for generations through ignorance and is now found to be hugely damaging.

    John Yudkin, British physiologist, was writing about the dangers of sugar in 1972 but his work was discredited and fat was pushed to the fore. I'm sure the sugar industry was reluctant to face up to its role in public health.

    Yudkin wrote the book 'Pure, White and Deadly' about sugar and perhaps he was ahead of his time.

    My dad always said that sugar was the greatest killer of the Western world.

    Mind you, he ended up obese and died of stomach cancer aged 63....
  • Ageing population a 'real risk' to Scottish budget http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-46114518
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