Filed under: Pharmacy
Florida continues to see a rapid rise in fatal overdoses caused by prescription-drug abuse — a trend fueled by a cottage industry of cash-only pain clinics — while deaths from illegal drugs wane, according to a report from the state’s medical examiners released Tuesday.
Nearly 1,000 deaths were caused in 2008 by the potent painkiller oxycodone — a 33 percent increase from 2007, the report says. Four years ago, only 340 deaths statewide were attributed to oxycodone, the most popular drug in the black-market pill trade supplied by pain clinics.
Conversely, deaths from cocaine overdoses declined by 23 percent, to 648 in 2008.
Overall, prescription drugs accounted for 75 percent of the drugs found in overdose victims last year, the report says.
“The magnitude and severity of prescription drug abuse calls for strong, coordinated action,” said Bill Janes, the director of the state’s Office of Drug Control, in a written statement.
Florida took a step in that direction when the Legislature passed a law creating a statewide database to monitor prescription sales and increasing oversight of pain clinics, which operate with little scrutiny.
The prescription database is designed to detect addicts and drug dealers buying pills from multiple doctors – often by faking ailments or medical records – a practice known as “doctor shopping.”
To read the complete article, visit www.miamiherald.com.
How much are cancer drugs worth that may only prolong a patient’s life by a few weeks? It’s a pressing question given the rising cost of medicines, and one that a pair of National Institutes of Health researchers is urging cancer specialists to tackle now.
NIH’s Tito Fojo, who works on experimental cancer therapies, and Christine Grady, a bioethicist, call upon oncologists and the government to figure out when a costly cancer drug is worth prescribing and when it is not, saying, “We cannot ignore the cumulative costs of the tests and treatments we recommend and prescribe.”
The pair’s recent commentary in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute takes a look at drugs like Erbitux, a supplemental drug for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. Erbitux costs about $80,000 for 18 weeks of treatment, they write, while only prolonging life by an average of 1.2 months. The drug also carries side effects.
So is the money spent on Erbitux worthwhile? The paper outlines potential standards for oncologists to apply in assessing the value of a drug before writing a prescription.
Fojo and Grady have company in raising the cost issue. Colorectal cancer specialist Leonard Saltz, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, elaborates on the problem in a recent interview with CurrentMedicine.TV. The cost of new treatments has snuck up on practitioners but now needs to be dealt with head-on, he says.
“The problem is that none of the [new] drugs do what they set out to do, which is replace that which came before them,” Saltz explains. “They get added to the mix,” he says, and drive up costs without necessarily showing an adequate benefit.
Image courtesy of fluxfoto via iStockphoto
American obesity rates continue to rise, and Washington state is not immune to the epidemic. For the third year in a row, Washington’s adult obesity rate increased, with one in four residents now considered obese.
Washington ranks 28th among states in the annual “F as in Fat” report released Wednesday by the Trust for America’s Health.
Washington’s young people, ages 10 to 17, are middle of the pack when it comes to weight, ranking 33rd among the states with nearly one-third of children overweight. Last year, the report didn’t include data for young people, so it’s unclear whether the number of overweight children in Washington state has grown or shrunk.
“So far the actions that have been taken against obesity are too few and too weak,” said Dr. James S. Marks, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which co-sponsored the report. “The future and health and wealth of the country demands we face the obesity epidemic with the seriousness it deserves.”
The findings of the report are grim. The only state with an adult obesity rate below 20 percent was Colorado, at 18.9 percent.
For the fourth consecutive year, Mississippi has the fattest population in America, with 32.5 percent of adults considered obese and 44.4 percent of children ages 10-17 registering as overweight.
No state saw a statistically significant decrease in obesity rates.
However, that doesn’t mean the explosion of diets and exercise programs are for naught.
“We are beginning to see early signs of hope,” Marks said in a telephone conference call with reporters.
Among the positive signs are that 19 states have school lunch policies stricter than the Department of Agriculture guidelines, and every state has some sort of physical education requirement in public schools. Additionally, last year’s report showed 37 states with an increase in obesity rates, while this year had only 23 states, including Washington, experiencing an increase.
The report quotes experts as saying that the best way to ensure the obesity epidemic is eased is to give it a higher public profile.
“It’s essential that we deal with obesity as an essential part of health reform,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health. “Today’s generation is on course to be the first generation to live shorter, less healthy lives.”
With about a third of children nationally being overweight, the report emphasized that steps need to be taken not only in schools, but in communities, especially low-income ones, where crime rates can keep kids inside and an average meal connotes a walk to a fast food joint down the street.
“Kids are not able to eat healthier foods unless their parents purchase healthy food,” Marks said. “To change community norms, you have to reach out to adults and kids. That’s what they did with smoking.”
Also at issue are overweight baby boomers, whose excess baggage could further stress the Medicare and Medicaid systems.
“People’s quality of life will be dramatically diminished by going into their later years overweight,” Marks said.
Among the strategies suggested by the report are universal health benefits for the obese, a nationwide campaign to ensure communities are conducive to healthy living, and greater education for children on the importance of maintaining a healthy weight.
A very private health problem, it turns out, is associated with potentially significant and costly complications.
In a review of the scientific evidence, researchers found that constipation might lead to or boost the risk for more serious complications such as hemorrhoids, anal fissures, fecal incontinence, colonic conditions and urologic disorders.
Dr. Nicholas J. Talley, chairman of internal medicine at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, said that few people appreciate the seriousness of constipation because symptoms can vary greatly, from mild to severe.
“Most people have mild intermittent symptoms, and they should not worry, although some do become excessively concerned,” said Talley, who is also a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Mayo’s College of Medicine. “Others suffer in silence, because it’s embarrassing to talk about your bowels.”
Roughly 12 to 19 percent of the population in North America — as many as 63 million people — suffer from constipation, according to the review.
In the United States, the direct cost of treating constipation is about $235 million a year, another study has found. Inpatient care was responsible for 55 percent of the cost, even though constipation is treated mainly in outpatient settings.
People who experience two or more symptoms for at least three months for six months or longer are considered to have “functional constipation.” Symptoms include straining, lumpy or hard stools, sensation of incomplete evacuation, sensation of anorectal obstruction, manual maneuvers to help with defecation and less than three unassisted defecations a week.
For some people, being constipated is just the prelude to other problems affecting their anus, colon or urinary tract. Could there be a link?
To help demystify the matter, Talley and his colleagues conducted a literature search for relevant studies published between 1980 and 2007. Their findings were published earlier this year in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Though the role of constipation in diverticular disease and colon cancer remains unclear, case-control studies — which compare one group of people with a health condition to another group without it — have shown a significant association between constipation and hemorrhoids. Interventional studies, which have involved dietary changes and medicinal therapies to minimize constipation, also have suggested a cause-and-effect relationship.
At least an association has been shown between constipation and other conditions, too. Studies of people with rectal prolapse, in which the rectum becomes stretched and protrudes from the anus, suggest such a relationship. More than 50 percent of people with anal fissures, which are small splits or tears in anal tissue, also have constipation. And fecal incontinence, the second most common cause for nursing home admissions, often occurs along with constipation, the researchers noted.
There also appears to be a causal relationship between constipation and urologic disorders.
Despite such connections, the number of medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat chronic constipation is limited, according to a review in a supplement to the Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy.
One of the newer medications, Amitiza (lubiprostone), is the only FDA-approved medication for the treatment of adults with chronic constipation for which there is no known cause.
“Lubiprostone appears to be very effective; however, a relatively high percentage suffer from nausea when they take the drug on an empty stomach,” said James C. Eoff III, executive associate dean and professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy in Memphis. “For the ones who take it with food, the percent effectiveness ratings are very good.”
But there are new options in the pipeline. One is a drug called linaclotide, the first compound in a new class of laxative agents. “This would be a very effective alternative to treatment of chronic constipation,” Eoff noted.
Another, called prucalopride, works by increasing motility and transit in the colon. “The most recent findings indicate this may be a safe and effective treatment for chronic constipation and hopefully for IBS-C — irritable bowel syndrome with constipation,” he added.
As for preventing constipation, Talley said he’s found that a well-balanced diet, exercise, a regular toileting pattern and not avoiding the urge to go when nature calls can help.
“Lifestyle is key for most,” he said.
More information
The American Gastroenterological Association has more on constipation.
SOURCES: Nicholas J. Talley, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of internal medicine, Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, and professor of medicine and epidemiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn.; James C. Eoff III, Pharm.D., executive associate dean and professor of clinical pharmacy, University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy, Memphis, Tenn.; American Society for Colon and Rectal Surgeons, Arlington Heights, Ill.; April 2004, American Journal of Gastroenterology; Managed Care Interface; New England Journal of Medicine ; November 2008, Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy, supplement; January 2009, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Filed under: Health News
Oceanic Retirement Communities of America (ORCA) has started taking reservations for a program that will allow seniors to own a condo on a private residential cruise ship that also provides both the Independent and Assisted Living accommodations typically found in land-based facilities.
“People retire to Florida for three things mainly … warm sunshine, golf, and the water,” states Mel Medina, President of ORCA. “This is a unique package that provides for all that plus a wellness capability.”
The ORCA Lifestyle Cruising Program will provide the healthcare aspects of traditional retirement facilities on private resident-owned cruise ships to be home ported in various coastal Florida cities. Seniors would enter the program just as they would a typical Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) with a nominal entrance fee and subsequent monthly Residents’ Care fees, but would live aboard the cruise ship until eventually health issues would necessitate their moving into a skilled nursing facility ashore. The big difference is this. Unlike a CCRC, on an ORCA ship, you actually OWN your residence like a condo. Upon passing, it actually reverts to your estate. The heirs can sell the stateroom or keep it for their own use by renting it out until they are 55 and ready to retire and move aboard themselves.
The first ship will enter service sometime late Summer or early Fall and will take frequent cruises to the Bahamas and Central America.
“This is an ingenious concept that fosters the active and adventurous senior lifestyle so demanded among the retiring baby boomers,” says Medina, who also owns a major Central Florida home healthcare company.
Enrollment pricing in the ORCA Lifestyle Cruising Program varies from $259-499,000 for 2 people. Monthly Residents’ Care Fees are about the same or a little less than conventional retirement facilities. The fee covers all expenses of operating the ship including fuel, crew, housekeeping, medical center, insurance, cruises, port fees, maintenance, and all residents’ meals. The owners will live aboard the ship in typical cruise ship size staterooms which are about the same size as conventional land-based facilities but with a twist … This retirement community has a night club, martini bar, library, elegant dining room, spa, workout room, putting green, shuffleboard, 12 guest cabins, and 6,000 sq’ of sun deck. The staterooms have large flat-screen TVs, WiFi, room phones, and are fully furnished.
“All things considered we think most retiring baby boomers and seniors will rather move onto a beautiful ship whose view changes frequently rather than sit in a typical shore-bound facility that lacks the ambience of moonlight on the open sea,” concluded Medina.
For more information or to make a reservation, call Carlos Gil toll-free 1-866-WIL-CRUZ (866-945-2789). The company’s website is http://www.condoships.com
This release was issued through eReleases(TM). For more information, visithttp://www.ereleases.com.
In many ways, seniors have the least to gain from an overhaul of the health care system. Thanks to Medicare, they’re the only age group that already has universal coverage. And they have had a drug benefit since 2006.
That’s why, in national surveys, seniors are significantly less likely than younger adults to say they expect to benefit from a national health overhaul. A June survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found just 21 percent of people 65 and over say their families would be better off with a health care revamping, compared to 43 percent under 65. (Kaiser Health News is a program of the foundation.)
That’s worrisome for people wanting to pass the legislation. Seniors “are the biggest voting bloc, so it’s hard to see how this will all pass without seniors getting behind it,” said Jim Furman, the chief executive of the National Council on Aging.
To try to win over skeptical seniors, President Barack Obama and lawmakers are proposing ways to strengthen Medicare and lower seniors’ out-of-pocket costs.
On Monday, for example, the pharmaceutical industry announced a deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee to cut their brand name prices in half for seniors after they reach a Medicare coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole.” The agreement is contingent on enactment of broad health care legislation.
The timing of the announcement was crucial.
Just days before, Obama’s hopes for major health changes took a hit when the Congressional Budget Office issued unexpectedly high cost estimates for Democratic Senate plans. Moreover, hospital and doctor groups had just begun to criticize Obama’s proposed $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to help fund coverage for the uninsured over the next decade. The provider groups argue that the cuts would hurt their ability to serve elderly and other patients.
The drug agreement gave AARP officials ammunition to say that their over-65 members would gain from an overhaul. “This will help quite a bit, as the doughnut hole has been the biggest complaint from our members,” John Rother, AARP’s executive vice president for policy and strategy, said in an interview.
Jack Hoadley, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, said, “If seniors feel like something is in the reform plan for them, such as fixing the doughnut hole, it can have key consequences,” for the legislation’s chances.
AARP has yet to endorse any health bill, despite pleas from Democrats. Still, it has a big stake in a successful overhaul: Half its 40 million members are under 65. Overhaul advocates say those younger members stand to win big from having a guaranteed, affordable insurance option, especially if they lose their employer-provided coverage in the economic slowdown.
Some seniors back an overhaul, in part because of concern about their children and other family members.
“I am happy as hell with Medicare compared to being under private insurance all those years,” said John Martin, 78, of Boynton Beach, Fla. “My only wish is that my children and grandchildren could have a plan like Medicare.”
Others are leery of any government changes. Patrice Lynch, 58, who works at a Birmingham, Ala., seniors’ center and gets insurance through her husband’s employer, said, “I just don’t trust the government, and think that with any reforms I’ll still have to pay through the nose when I get to retirement age.”
The doughnut hole was included in the legislation that created the Medicare drug benefit. Coverage stops when a senior’s drug costs reach a certain level — this year, $2,700. When the costs reach $6,154, coverage starts again, with the government picking up 95 percent of the tab.
The AARP, besides working to reduce or eliminate the coverage gap, also is pursuing other goals, including:
- Creating a pathway for the government to approve generic versions of expensive biologic drugs that are often used for patients with cancer. Obama favors such a change, which is included in legislation being discussed by Senate and House committees.
- Establishing a Medicare transition benefit to cover the costs of home care when people leave the hospital.
- Increasing Medicaid funding of home and community-based services that offer an alternative to nursing home care.
- Making it easier for beneficiaries to qualify for low-income subsidies for Medicare drug plans.
The AARP hasn’t taken a position on whether a government-run insurance option should be created as part of a major overhaul. Health insurers, hospitals and doctors oppose a public plan, which the president favors to help the uninsured.
Chances are that an overhaul plan would require individuals to have insurance, and Rother said that ample subsidies should be provided to make the coverage affordable. In addition, AARP wants new rules that would bar insurers from setting premiums for older adults that are more than double those for younger adults. About 13 percent, or 7.1 million, of adults age 50 to 64 were uninsured in 2007 — about 36 percent more than in 2000, the group says.
The backing of the seniors’ lobby can make the difference between success and failure on Capitol Hill, something that Democrats — who have sometimes had rocky relations with AARP — are keenly aware of. In the early 1990s, AARP didn’t throw its support behind a health care overhaul until it was too late, say Democrats who were involved at the time. In 2003, it supported Republicans’ Medicare drug benefit bill over objections by many Democrats.
For its part, the AARP leadership has learned, through painful experience, to make sure it has members’ support before going out on a limb. It supported a plan that Congress passed in 1988 that required Medicare enrollees pay a tax to finance coverage for catastrophic illness.
Several months later, former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, then the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was famously caught on television being chased down a Chicago street by a group of angry senior citizens who wanted him to answer for his vote.
The tax was repealed in 1989.
(Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service and is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization that’s not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
Filed under: Health News
Poverty, fear play roles in skipping lifesaving therapies, researchers say,,,,
Almost 25 percent of black women with advanced breast cancer refuse the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that could save their lives, a new study finds.
Black women have almost twice the rate of advanced breast cancer as white women do, largely because the disease is often diagnosed after it has already progressed. In addition, some black women have misconceptions about cancer and are reluctant to seek medical help, the researchers said.
“We found in this study on locally advanced breast cancer, mainly done in black women, that almost a quarter of the patients [refused] chemotherapy and radiation therapy that are the standard of care for stage 3 breast cancer,” said lead researcher Dr. Monica Rizzo, an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Why these women balk at treatment is unclear, Rizzo said. “We looked at martial status, as well as religious background, of those women and, unfortunately, we were not able to find any clear identifier,” she said.
Things that may be associated with their refusal of treatment are fear of the medical system and poverty, which makes it difficult to get to the hospital and get time off work for treatment, Rizzo said. In addition, cultural differences may also play a role, she said.
Rizzo noted many more blacks refuse breast cancer treatment than women from other populations.
The report is published in the May 22 online edition of Cancer.
For the study, Rizzo’s team looked at the records of 107 women with advanced breast cancer reported in one inner city hospital from 2000 to 2006. About 87 percent of these women were black. Among these women, 29 percent had tumors that do not respond well to new targeted treatments.
Although the recommend treatments for advanced breast cancer are chemotherapy and radiation, many women chose not to be treated. In fact, 20.5 percent refused chemotherapy, and 26.3 percent refused radiation, the researchers reported.
The researchers speculated that factors such as cultural beliefs, access to health care, other illnesses and patient choice may all play a role.
To try to get more of these women to accept treatment, Rizzo’s group has started a community outreach program that uses a nurse practitioner and a social worker to follow breast cancer patients and their care.
Educating women is also important, Rizzo said. “Educate more women and dispel some fears that they can have about cancer and cancer treatment, and encourage them to have yearly mammograms to catch cancers at an earlier stage, when the cancer is more curable,” she said.
Breast cancer expert Dr. Gretchen G. Kimmick, an associate professor of oncology at Duke University Medical Center, thinks these results are concerning.
“This finding, that a large proportion of these women were not getting chemotherapy or radiation, is worrisome,” Kimmick said.
“I think it’s a social and cultural thing,” Kimmick said. “We have to educate and be sensitive to cultural issues, too. Some of the women we take care of think God is going to take care of them, so they don’t pursue their treatment,” she said. “Sometimes that’s how they deal with crisis.”
Kimmick thinks poverty has an influence as well. “Lower-income patients don’t have the job security that some other people have. If they are absent form their job for days in a row, they’re going to lose their job,” she said. “They are also embarrassed they can’t pay.”
More needs to be done to remove these disparities, Kimmick said. “Disparities are not just fixed by telling people what they need to do — you have to help them do it,” she said.
Barbara A. Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, said the study does not add much to what is already known.
“I find the study curious at best,” Brenner said. “There seems to be very little new in it. The researchers seem to have worked around the edges of the most important questions for black women with stage 3 breast cancer — the need for better and more effective treatments, and the need to understand how failure to complete treatment, which is an issue that reaches far beyond the black community, affects outcomes,” she said.
More information
For more about breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.
Study suggests MRI scans better than questionnaires for evaluations
Many seniors who’ve had a stroke fail to report that fact, say researchers who recommend the use of MRI scans rather than patient self-reporting to determine stroke history.
The study included 717 Medicare recipients aged 65 years and older (average age 80.1) in Manhattan. They or their caregivers completed a questionnaire about stroke history, including whether they’d ever had symptoms of stroke or been told by a doctor that they had a stroke.
On the questionnaire, 85 participants (11.9 percent) reported a history of stroke, but MRI scans found evidence of stroke in 225 participants (31.4 percent).
The sensitivity of stroke — number of people who reported having a stroke divided by the total number of those with stroke detected on MRI — was 32.4 percent. The specificity — number of people who reported having no history of stroke divided by the total number of those with no evidence of stroke detected on MRI — was 78.9 percent.
“Lower functioning memory, cognitive or language ability or presence of hypertension [high blood pressure] or myocardial infarction [heart attack] were associated with an increased frequency of false-negative reports,” study author Dr. Christiane Reitz, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, wrote in a news release from the journal.
“Our results indicate that sensitivity and specificity of stroke self-report are low when using MRI scans as validation,” the researchers concluded. “In stroke research, sensitive neuroimaging techniques rather than stroke self-report should be used to determine stroke history.”
The study appears online and in the July print issue of the Archives of Neurology.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about stroke.
Driven by rising health care costs at home, nearly 1 million Californians cross the border each year to seek medical care in Mexico, according a new paper by UCLA researchers and colleagues published today in the journal Medical Care.
An estimated 952,000 California adults sought medical, dental or prescription services in Mexico annually, and of these, 488,000 were Mexican immigrants, according to the research paper, “Heading South: Why Mexican Immigrants in California Seek Health Services in Mexico.”
The paper is the first large-scale population-based research ever published on U.S. residents who travel to Mexico for health services. It is based on an analysis of 2001 data from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the nation’s largest state health survey.
“What the research shows is that many Californians, especially Mexican immigrants, go to Mexico for health services,” said lead author Steven P. Wallace, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, which conducts CHIS. “We already know that immigrants use less health care overall than people born in the U.S. Heading south of the border further reduces the demand on U.S. facilities.”
Cost and lack of insurance were primary reasons both Mexican and non-Mexican U.S. residents sought health services across the border.
Both “long-stay” Mexican immigrants (those in the U.S. for more than 15 years) and “short-stay” immigrants (less than 15 years) have high rates of uninsurance: 51.5 percent of short-stay immigrants and 29 percent of long-stay immigrants do not have medical insurance.
“This points to the importance of expanding work-based insurance in health care reform, since virtually all Mexican immigrants are in working families,” said co-author Xochitl Casteada, director of the Health Initiative of the Americas at the University of California, Berkeley.
Both short-stay and long-stay immigrants have even higher rates of uninsurance for dental care: 77.6 percent and 51.6 percent, respectively.
Not surprisingly, dental care was the most common service obtained by immigrants.
Among non-Latino whites, prescription drugs were the most common medical service obtained in Mexico.
Long-stay immigrants used Mexican health services the most, with 15 percent reporting crossing the border during a year’s time for health services. Half of these long-stay immigrants lived far more than 120 miles from the border.
Long-stay immigrants are more likely to be documented than short-stay immigrants, Wallace noted, which makes it easier for them to travel back and forth to Mexico.
Short-stay immigrants those most likely to be undocumented were also the least likely to need medical care in all areas, with one exception: mental health.
“Undocumented immigrants tend to be younger, stronger and consequently healthier,” Wallace said. “But they are also the most stressed out, as many are struggling economically, culturally and linguistically.”
Short-stay immigrants who sought treatment in Mexico were more often women and were more likely to tell their doctor they were feeling “sad or down.”
Other findings:
- Immigrants who travel to Mexico for health services are not necessarily the poorest. One explanation: The cost of travel may offset any financial savings, creating a disincentive for the very poor to travel.
- Although cost was the primary factor in seeking health services, cultural and linguistic barriers and immigration factors were also important motivators.
How often immigrants cross the border to Mexico for health services is particularly relevant to efforts to create and expand binational health insurance plans, Wallace said.
Since 2000, several private insurance companies and at least one employer group have developed such plans which cover an estimated 150,000 California workers who use Mexican medical facilities near the border.
These plans may be both more cost-effective for employers and more culturally relevant for participants, Wallace said.
“To the extent that binational plans encourage more people to access preventative and other health care, they should be encouraged,” he said.
Contact: Gwen Driscoll
gdriscoll@ucla.edu
310-794-0930
University of California – Los Angeles
Source:Eurekalert
Too many rely on drugs to fix what healthy living would cure, researcher says,,,,
The benefits of eating right, exercising and keeping your weight down are well-known, but few Americans are living that healthy lifestyle, researchers report.
In fact, over the past two decades exercise rates have dropped, fruit and vegetable intake has also fallen, and in the meantime obesity rates have soared, a new study finds.
“This is somewhat of a report card on how we are doing on healthy lifestyles compared to 18 years ago,” said lead researcher Dr. Dana E. King, a professor in the department of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. “The results are about a C minus.”
There is no mystery behind the increasing rates of diabetes and high blood pressure since they are directly related to healthy habits, the researchers said. But it’s never too late to change — by living a healthy lifestyle you can produce profound effects on your overall health and even extend your life, they added.
King believes that Americans rely too much on drugs – not diet and exercise — to lower blood pressure and cholesterol and prevent diabetes and heart disease.
“I wonder if we have become a little bit of a ‘take a pill’ society,” he said. “‘Take a pill and I can eat what I want.’ The fact is no pills are as potent and as powerful as a healthy lifestyle,” he said.
The report is published in the June issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
For the study, King’s team collected data on more than 15,000 people aged 40 to 74. Among these people, 7,340 had participated in the 1988 to 1994 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and 7,811 participated in the same survey for the years 2001 to 2006 .
In the 18 years between the studies, the percent of obese people had increased from 28 percent to 36 percent. The number of people who exercised 12 times a month or more dropped from 53 percent to 43 percent, and the number of people eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily decreased from 42 percent to 26 percent, the researchers found.
Smoking rates barely budged (26.9 percent to 26.1 percent), King’s group found. More people did report drinking moderately in the 2001 to 2006 survey versus the earlier survey (40 percent to 51 percent), the researchers said.
Overall, the number of people practicing all five healthy habits dropped from 15 percent in 1988 to 8 percent in 2006, King noted. This low percentage was seen in both healthy people and people with chronic health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
“We are not eating our fruits and veggies,” King said. “We are exercising less, we’re more obese. It’s not a good end-of-the-year report card. But we can do better next semester. We need to get back to the basics of healthy lifestyles and not taking the easy way out of pills, because they are not as effective as a healthy lifestyle in preventing cardiovascular disease and maintaining vitality through the middle and later years.”
Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, believes that changes in society that foster healthy lifestyles need to be enacted to help reverse these trends.
“A consistent and compelling body of scientific literature makes clear that a very short list of lifestyle behaviors, dominated by dietary pattern, physical activity level and tobacco use, overwhelmingly influence both the likely number of years in our lives, and the quality of life in our years,” Katz said.
The current study is disheartening, “if not depressing,” Katz said. “In every way conceivable, from cost to convenience, the modern food supply favors the consumption of highly processed, low-nutrient, high-calorie foods. Every aspect of modern life, from hectic schedules, to constant stress, to the reliance on labor-saving technology, fosters sedentariness,” he said.
These regrettable trends are a dose of reality, Katz said. “We cannot, with any hope of success, devise a world that fosters ill health, and encourage people to navigate through it as if it weren’t there. Eating well, being active, and in general taking good care of oneself and one’s family must lie along paths of lesser resistance.”
More information
For more information on the benefits of healthy living, visit the American Heart Association.
