The U.S. is getting obese and the ramifications of that will be costly and long term.
That was the message during a recent gathering of state medical professionals in Wausau during the first Aspirus Obesity Treatment Summit.
Dr. Timothy Logemann is a cardiologist at Aspirus. Dr. Logemann says many of us are obese and getting larger and that is being termed an epidemic...
"...In Wisconsin, 40-50 percent of adults are going to be obese. Obesity is designed as body mass index above 30. That doesn't include the people who are overweight either...."
He says in Wisconsin and elsewhere, people with normal body weight are in the minority.
He says the risks of Type 2 Diabetes dramatically increases, along with hypertension, degenerative joint disease, arthritis, sleep apnea and others. Dr. Logemann says a recent New England Journal of Medicine article was chilling...
"...If you are a three year old right now, you have a 65 percent chance of having obesity when you turn 35. To me it's overwhelming to understand the health care crisis those kids are going to have. We have to start thinking about this. We have to get our minds around this. We have to start thinking about our children because they're not going to live the quality of life us adults are living now..."
Speakers, including health journalist Gary Taubes, detailed the problem and possible solutions. Taubes has written several books, including a best seller Good Calories, Bad Calories.
The estimated annual health care costs of obesity-related illness are $190 billion or nearly 21 percent of annual medical spending in the United States.
