Obesity is a huge problem in the United States, according to health officials who say it is the culprit behind increased rates of a host of chronic illnesses, including type-2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Alzheimer’s disease has also been connected in some research to obesity, according to the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, and other medical experts.
“Obesity opens the door for a lot of really negative health outcomes,” said Peter Rumble, director of health policy and evaluation at the Sonoma County Department of Health Services. “The obesity epidemic in the United States is truly an avoidable epidemic, and it’s proliferating like we have never seen before. … We are seeing obesity in our youth in alarming rates, as well as in adults,” Rumble said.
“We know that children who are dealing with obesity are more likely to deal with obesity as an adult as well. We know physiologically that your body almost becomes accustomed to obesity, so it’s much harder for a kid who is dealing with obesity to manage that as an adult,” he said, adding, “You can see the trend starting in Sonoma County in the fact that 70 percent of our kids aren’t passing their school physical fitness tests. It’s appalling and it’s frightening.”
According to statistics on the Centers for Disease Control website, “Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70 percent of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.”
Not only does being obese place a person at higher risk of developing heart disease and suffering a stroke as an adult, “Almost every organ system in the body is adversely affected by having excess body fat,” Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis said in an HBO video called, “The Weight of the Nation.”
According to the video — which can be viewed online at http://theweightofthe-
nation.hbo.com/films — “even a small amount of excess weight, accumulated slowly at the rate of a few pounds a year over many years, can lead to type-2 diabetes,” which if left untreated can lead to its own set of serious health problems, or even death.
“Obesity is not only one of the top public health issues facing our country; it’s also a threat to our nation’s bottom line. Rising obesity rates threaten to drag our economy down through higher health care costs and lower productivity. Currently, 69 percent of American adults are overweight or obese,” according to the HBO video.
“Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” according to the CDC. “The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 18 percent in 2010. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5 percent to 18 percent over the same period,” the CDC states.
And while “prevention is the best medicine,” there is no one simple fix for those who are already there.
“We know what we need to do,” Rumble said of the issue he calls “complex.” Because obesity has many different inputs, there is not just one program, service, or reason for it, he said.
Health officials know that people’s physical environments can contribute to obesity, he said. For example, do their communities have sidewalks to walk on? Parks to play in? Are there more fast food outlets, than healthy food outlets? More liquor stores, than grocery stores?
“All of these factors have a very strong connection to not just obesity, but heath in general,” Rumble said. “Then you have the outgrowth of that; the food environment. What kind of food do you have access to and what is more readily available for you to consume.
“I love In-N-Out Burger, but I have the means and the ability to go to farmers markets to purchase healthy, fresh food, and that is what constitutes the bulk of my diet,” Rumble said.
But for someone who is living in poverty in one of those neighborhoods that doesn’t have healthy food outlets — and instead has concentrations of liquor stores and fast food — and doesn’t have parks, it can be difficult to make healthy choices, he said.
“If I am working two jobs, just to make sure I can turn on the lights at home and to take care of my kids, the healthy choice for food isn’t likely to be the easy choice to make, or even a choice that is available. At some pizza parlors you can feed your family for $5 and if you can do that and still pay your PG&E bill, you are going to do that,” he said.
“You have all these contributors to obesity. What we need to do is take a broad perspective of a really challenging issue and come at it from a systems approach. How do we create a healthy environment in the county for everyone to live in? How do we make sure that everyone has access to healthy food; that everyone has the opportunity to support his or her family? How do we make sure everyone has access to a park and a place where they are able to engage in some kind of physical activity?” Rumble said.
There are communities where parents don’t feel like their children are safe walking to school, and schools that have reduced physical education, as the result of budget cuts and increased pressure to reach academic standards.
“And it’s the availability of Coke versus water. You walk into a market and you have a wall of Coke and Pepsi facing you rather than water. It’s all of these things,” Rumble said.
Health Action (www.sonomahealthaction.org) — a broad-based community council staffed by the Department of Health Services – has developed an action plan that aims to make Sonoma County the healthiest county in California by 2020.
The plan consists of 10 goals.
“The first goal is related to education. We want to make sure every kid in Sonoma County graduates from high school. That is our first goal because we know one of the greatest determinants of good health over your life is your success in school. We know if you don’t graduate from high school, statistically speaking, you will not be as healthy as someone who has,” Rumble said.
The second goal on the list of 10 relates to income.
“We know that at a certain point, every additional $12,000 you make buys you a year of life. So we ask ourselves as a community, what do we want for people who live here? We want people to succeed in school; have good jobs, because we know all of this contributes to a healthy community, and a thriving economy,” he said.
Other goals included on the list have to do with being physically active, eating healthy food, enjoying good mental health and having good medical insurance.
