I recently had a discussion with my aunt who has been a registered nurse for the past 30 plus years. She was complementing me on the site; I really liked that because she wouldn’t if she didn’t like it. We began to talk about family history. If you have read the About page, the article feature about me on the Nutritiondata.com blog or any of the articles I have written for Ezinearticles related to health than you know how I feel about the importance of knowing your family history, and more importantly, acting on it once you do know.
My aunt really made some good points, especially with respect to children. Here are a couple of the more important points I want to highlight:
- Children are more obese than she has ever seen. Remember this is based on 30 years of my aunt being a nurse.
- Families are not seeing the correlation between their child’s health and their family history. She said it was amazing to her that families who had a history of diabetes in their family on both sides couldn’t see the impact that might have on their children’s health. She is seeing more kids who are obese and are now taking medication for hypertension and high cholesterol. I wrote a post last week about the cost of diabetes medication doubling along with the doubling of the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in the past 7 to 10 years. All of these things are serious indicators of the future.
- We have the largest demographic in our nation (the baby boomer generation) becoming elderly. This coupled with a youth population that is becoming increasingly unhealthy.
In plain english, we are going into the next 20 years with the following issues staring us in the face. A large elderly population, an unhealthy workforce and a healthcare system that is broken. That is a recipe for disaster. So what is the solution? I have a couple of things I think we can do individually that could be beneficial. First, know your family history if possible. It helps to get some idea as to what your genetic propensities are. Second, START EXERCISING. Third, EAT RIGHT. I apologize for yelling, but I really believe it is just that serious.
One of my favorite commercials is the commercial for Vytorin where they show a food and then show a family member who looks similar to the food item previously shown. It is a very nicely done commercial, but I don’t think it just applies to high cholesterol. I think it applies to your health as a whole. If you can do the three things I mentioned earlier, you can extend your life and enhance the life of your family. I think we need to stop eating at family reunions and start checking ourselves for diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Remember…Get Healthy…Your Life depends On It!!!
convert this post to pdf. Posted under Diet, General Health
This post was written by admin on November 12, 2008
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