Diet and exercise: they were supposed to be the answer to all that ails America’s obesity and health care cost problem.
Signs of this Utopian vision are everywhere. From entire government departments encouraging healthy lifestyles through fitness, sports and nutrition, government websites that encourage “healthy lifestyles,” and entire community efforts to partner with health care organizations to fight obesity with the hope of cutting health care costs.
What if, believe it or not, when it comes to people with Type II diabetes, diet and exercise don’t affect the incidence of heart attack, stroke, or hospital admission for angina or even the incidence of death?
Suddenly, all health care cost savings bets are off. Suddenly, we have to re-tool, re-think our approach, understand and appreciate the limitation of lifestyle interventions to alter peoples’ medical destiny. Suddenly we have to come to grips with a the reality that weight loss and exercise won’t affect outcomes in certain patients. Suddenly, there is a sad reality that patients might note be able to affect their insurance premiums by enrolling in diet and exercise classes after all.
These thoughts are so disruptive to our most basic “healthy lifestyle” mantra that few can fathom such a situation. Nor would any members of the ever-beauty-and-weight-conscious main stream media be likely to report such a finding if it came to pass.
And yet, that is exactly what has happened.
