Obesity: The New Smoking

It makes me crazy when I see diabetes labeled as a "lifestyle disease." To the numbnuts who coined that term, I guess it means that it results from poor lifestyle choices and can be controlled with better choices. To me, it's an oversimplification that really doesn't help.

There is a vast array of medical conditions that can be impacted negatively by lifestyle choices -- cirrhosis of the liver and pancreatitis are two that come to mind. They are associated by the general public with alcohol abuse. But there are many sufferers who have never used, much less abused, alcohol. There's a connection, certainly, an association if you will, but not a strict cause-and-effect situation.

Lung cancer. Emphysema. COPD. Yes, they're often associated with smoking but not always. Breast cancer. Yup, most breast cancer patients are women, but not all. (Hmmm...can we call gender a lifestyle choice? Maybe not.)

But breast cancer is sometimes associated with weight, or to use the O word, obesity. In fact, the National Cancer Institute correlates obesity with cancer in general. But for some reason we don't talk about that.

Diabetes patients often have an imaginary asterisk by their diagnoses, like Barry Bonds' record in baseball statistics:  Diabetes* (obesity-caused). But there are many cases of diabetes that have no relation at all to obesity--they may be caused by genetic factors or by pregnancy or by acts of God, whatever they are, or some combination.

All those pink ribbons for breast cancer are for breast cancer awareness. There's no asterisk that says "*hey, if she'd laid off the butter, maybe she wouldn't have this crappy disease."

Anyway, obesity has become the new smoking. It used to be that smoking was accepted as a lifestyle. Check out Mad Men if you don't believe me, or any Humphrey Bogart movie. (Hmmm...he did die of lung cancer ... connection? Let's not go there.). No longer. Now we ban smokers from public places like restaurants and within 50 feet of public buildings. I saw in the paper yesterday that Georgia is going to ban smoking in prisons. Now a guy doing four consecutive life sentences will also be forced to give up his cigarettes. The needle might look like a better option to those guys.

Smoking is accepted as a negative lifestyle, one with deleterious effects not only to the smoker but to those who might be in his path. When I was a young girl, my mother smoked herself but she considered a woman who smoked on the street to be no better than a prostitute. Now we consider that woman to be one step above a child murderer -- after all, she's potentially harming all of us with that cigarette, isn't she? Kill her!

And fat's going in that direction. You'd think that obesity would be a personal problem but no, now it's a public health issue. All the debate on health insurance coverage is spawning discussions of whether there should be higher premiums or penalties for obese people, because their medical costs are potentially higher. I'm picturing a bunch of actuaries sitting around a table discussing whether that apple-bodied woman should be allowed to have insurance or not because she might get diabetes if she continues to ignore her growing waistline.

Will food be labeled?

SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Consumption of this product may harm your health or that of future generations.

Will we have separate seating arrangements on planes and in restaurants for those who are slim (read, healthy) vs those who are overweight or ... the dreaded obese? Will your child be rejected from that tony nursery school because you're carrying an extra twenty pounds?

As a society, we overlook all types of risk factors when we see them among our friends -- drinking too much alcohol, abuse of prescription drugs, maybe a little recreational pot-smoking among friends -- but God forbid we should see someone abusing an ice cream cone!

I'm not suggesting that obesity, especially among young people, isn't a huge issue. All I'm saying is that I'd like to be able to say "I've been diagnosed with diabetes" without feeling like I have to add "yes, I know, I really do need to lose weight -- I'm working on it." Is it really anyone else's business?

And, yes, I know, I really do need to lose weight. I'm working on it. But don't label me, or my disease, please.