Taking Responsibility for your Health

The debate over health care will continue to rage.  The fact that health care reform has passed will not end the debate.  Many Americans, myself included, believe that people who make poor decisions for their overall health should pay more for their health care.  If you choose to eat one meal per day at McDonald’s, don’t expect me to pay for your health care. 

The notion that providing more people with insurance will reduce health costs in this country is a ridiculous one. The problem of sky rocketing health care costs is not one of lack of insurance.  It is there because too many people make the wrong decisions about how to live their lives.  They choose not to eat healthy, not to exercise and not to supplement their diets with missing nutrients.  Those people we will call “omitters.” They omit something from their life (like healthy food and exercise) that causes them to be less healthy.  Then there are people who actually contribute to their own demise.  They smoke or drink alcohol excessively for example.  Those people we will call “destructors.”  There are many people that fit into these categories and most people are a combination of omitters and destructors.

I can already hear the complaints while some of you are reading this.  You are saying, “But it is much more complicated than that…!”  There are other factors that play into it including socioeconomic status, income level, education level, etc.  While I believe that to be true, I only believe it to a certain point.  The vast majority of people, regardless of income level know that smoking is bad for you, yet they continue to smoke.  The vast majority of people know that excessive alcohol consumption is bad for you.  The vast majority of people know that exercise is good for you.  I don’t care what income level people have or what education level people have, these are known facts that most choose to ignore.

A perfect example

I was giving a lecture to a large group of people.  It was about diet and health and how to improve your own health with simple diet and exercise.  After the lecture a woman came up to me and told me how much she enjoyed the lecture and that she’d learned a lot.  She also said that she’d love to come in a see me as a patient, but couldn’t possibly afford it.  All of her money was accounted for and there was no extra room in the budget.  As I spoke with her I noticed that she smoked.  I asked her about it and asked how many packs per day she was smoking.  She told me about a pack.  She also told me that her husband smoked about a pack and a half per day.  I told her that I would certainly recommend that she and her husband stop smoking and if she did that there would be more than enough money in the budget to cover my services.  She agreed, but said “her husband” would be unwilling to stop leaving her without enough to cover my services.  This was a classic example of not taking responsibility for her own health.  She did not want to quit smoking, in my opinion, and was sure her husband would not either.  If she was truly concerned about her health and wanted expert guidance she would have quit and saved the money and been able to afford my services to help her to better health.  I have broken down just how much they would have saved if they’d quit smoking.  It is staggering.

Depending on your location, a pack of cigarettes costs between $4.50 and $5.  Let’s take the middle and use $4.75 to calculate our numbers.

The wife’s yearly costs in cigarettes = $1733.75

The husband’s yearly cost in cigarettes = $2600.63

TOTAL COST is $4334.38 per year!

They would save more than $360 per month if they both quit smoking.

Unfortunately, this woman never came in as a patient in my office.  It’s too bad because we could have done wonders in terms of improving her health and overall quality of life.  She is a classic destructor.  She added something into her life that will shorten her lifespan and decrease its overall quality.

Another reason people claim they can’t stay healthy is because they can’t afford a membership to a gym.  That’s a very poor excuse.  You don’t need to go to a gym to exercise.  If you have access to the outside, you can exercise.  Walk, run, skip, do anything.  Just be active.  There are also unlimited amounts of body weight exercises that one can do in their home.  Simple examples include push-ups, lunges, jumping jacks and core training.  These are all easily done inside with no equipment.

So, if you’re reading this and you aren’t healthy, which one are you – an omitter or destructor?  Are you a little of both?  The first step is recognizing that you are doing something incorrect in your lifestyle that is possibly causing you to be unhealthy.  You may say that it only affects you, but it doesn’t.  Over time it causes a drain on funds in the health care industry and forces everyone else to pay more in taxes.  If everyone stayed active and ate right, health care costs in this country would plummet and we wouldn’t need to argue about it any longer.  Will this prevent every disease?  No.  Will it go a long way?  Absolutely.


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Filed under Diet, Public Health

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