HEALTH AND FITNESS EXPRESS

'Obesity epidemic', 'diabetes increasing', ... you can't open up a paper or look at your TV without someone reminding you that people are getting fatter.

Obesity is just another symptom of general metabolic dysfunction. The others? -headaches, tiredness, poor sleep, sleep apnoea, cardiac insufficiency, depression, colds and flu, diabetes, cancer, low libido, elevated blood pressure, inflammatory conditions, rashes, infertility ... the list goes on and on. Obesity is just one of the many tips of a very large body system dysfunction iceberg.

Focusing on obesity as the problem misses the point, clouds the issue, diverts attention. Plus, of course, none of the symptoms of metabolic dysfunction are public health problems, they're private health problems, responsibility for the effects of which governments are free to accept or reject.

If people refuse to take responsibility for their own health, nothing will help them, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thin, let alone a public health system.

The right to universal health care is attended by a responsibility to keep yourself fit and healthy.

A MOST INGENIOUS PARADOX

Based on current evidence, the more responsibility governments have accepted for privately induced body system dysfunctions, the unhealthier people have become. Similarly, the more money governments have poured into the medical and pharmaceutical industries the unhealthier people have become. Obviously the wrong cause is meeting the wrong treatment. So much for selective evidence-based medicine.

When it comes to body system dysfunction the usual suspects in particular junk food and lack of exercise are the first to step forward. Too much junk food is definitely a big problem, particularly when most of the junk food in this country comes from Coles and Woolworths and is eaten at home. You'll know you've got a junk food problem at your place if your recycling bin contains more rubbish than the other bin.

But people starving on full stomachs is just as big a problem as people getting fatter. If you don't provide your body with the essential nutritional building blocks it starts to suffer from all manner of metabolic dysfunctions, particularly oxidative stress.

It's not just about eating too much.

The medical profession hasn't, as a rule, worked this one out yet. If you want a good book to read, click here and purchase Ray Strand's book, 'What your doctor doesn't know about nutrition may be killing you'.

As for exercise, in the grand scheme of things the only service the medical profession gives to the prescription of exercise is lip service. They don't know how to measure it and because of that, rarely do they measure it in their surgeries and then use the results as part of their diagnostic armory.

They'll prescribe all manner of expensive pathology and radiology tests but fail to prescribe the one test that will provide them with the most significant set of clues about the health of their customer. It takes 5 minutes and can be done out the back of the surgery. Lack of regular, systematic and vigorous physical activity lies at the very heart of general metabolic dysfunction.

They don't know how to prescribe physical activity in such doses as to stimulate the restoration of good health and because of that they rarely prescribe it. If they did, the gyms in this country would be bursting at the seams and chemists would be standing outside their shops hosing down the footpath. Click here and visit the Complete Fitness Program site.

They fail to recognise that it's a big ask in this country expecting to stay healthy without being fit.

A case in point, the AusDiab study carried out by Paul Zimmet's self-styled International Diabetes Institute. The study created an absolute orgy of paper writing but failed to measure how fit people were. When an underlying cause of all the popular metabolic dysfunctions doesn't get measured in landmark research studies you begin to lose faith in medical research and the medical industry's ability to not only home in on the cause of general metabolic dysfunction but also make useful recommendations about its treatment.

The AusDiab researchers are not alone. In the recently released Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's biennial report there are no figures on the aerobic fitness of Australians. There are no figures about the fitness workforce. It's as if it doesn't exist. Nor are their figures on how strong or flexible people are, thereby making a mockery of their prognostications about the cause and treatment of all kinds of musculo-skeletal dysfunction.

HOW TO STIMULATE METABOLIC DYSFUNCTION

So where does one look for the cause of the exponential growth in general metabolic dysfunction?

The first of the soft, slow moving targets that looms into view is the junk pharmaceutical industry, working hand in glove with the junk medical industry which hands out the scripts for drugs which mask the symptoms of general metabolic dysfunction without restoring dysfunctional body systems to good health.

A metabolic dysfunction needs a metabolic solution, not a chemical solution. That's medicine 101. The junk pharmaceutical phenomena, relatively recent in the long history of medicine, has perverted the course of health care. It's easier to reach for the pad and prescribe a pill, easier to reach for the prescription and swallow the pill than do what fit and healthy people do to keep themselves fit and healthy.

The medical industry has become tranquilized through it's drug dependent relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.

Second is that section of the medical industry that persistently refuses to measure how fit people are before prescribing a symptom-masking, junk pharmaceutical. It's the profession that doesn't have an exercise prescription - or at least one that includes frequency, time or intensity. Telling people to amble around the block a few times a week is about as useless as prescribing a drug without specifying the dosage and how often it needs to be taken.

If you have the inkling that you've developed one or more of the symptoms of general metabolic dysfunction the last place you'd want to go is a surgery because of the high likelihood that you'll come away with a drug to mask the symptom not a prescription that will stimulate the body's own recuperative power. There's a good chance you'll be on the drug for the rest of your life and that your health won't get better. Naturally the drug companies are rubbing their hands with glee. You're the victim of a dreadful hoax.

The third villain is any government that encourages people to stay unhealthy by subsidizing junk medical treatments. In Australia, if you've got any of the symptoms of general metabolic dysfunction the government will subsidize your visits to the doctor (more often than not paying the full account), subsidize your visit to the chemist and subsidize your stay in hospital.

Do bodies really get fitter and healthier under this regime?

Doubtful.

Just look around you.

If this method of health care was working, the amount of money spent on medical treatments each year would be declining. Instead it goes up another billion dollars every few months.

It's a system that has complicated the simple, made the cheap more expensive and bolstered the financial status of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. And the more money that's been spent, the unhealthier people have become and the longer the waiting lists for medical treatments.

It's threatening to bankrupt the Commonwealth and state governments. This is just selective-evidence, symptom masking, pharmaceutical based, dependence-generating, pouring-money-down-a-back-hole junk medicine.

There is a growing backlash against blank cheque medicine, with those who are fit and healthy getting tired of watching their money being poured down the black hole in the direction of the unfit and unhealthy.

For 80% of people, if they did what the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and the head of his Department do every day to keep themselves in good shape, they'd be as fit as trout, lean as greyhounds and toey as Roman Sandals. The national health bill, private and public would go down by 80%.

Want to be fit and healthy? Do what fit and healthy people do.

Very few people became fitter and healthier in a surgery or a chemist shop.

But the big question is, at what point do we expect the privately generated expenses associated with general metabolic dysfunction become the public responsibility of Government?

Well-meaning moves by Governments to take responsibility for individual health, have been accompanied by the greatest decline in individual standards of health and fitness since the pre-historic, protoplasmic globule first caught a cold. It's a flawed model. It'll never work. It only encourages people to keep themselves in poor shape.

Governments in this country wrapped up most of their public health responsibilities by the end of the 1960's - clean water, hygienic sewerage systems, infectious disease control, good governance and good education systems by world standards, and unparalleled affluence. Then people started becoming unhealthy. Then they wanted governments to pay to patch them up. Too much money spent on medical services will never be enough.

SO WHAT CAN A GOVERNMENT DO?

Firstly it can't do much until there is a compulsory first party health insurance system with premiums rated against risk. If you don't smoke, you're fit and close to your ideal weight you'll pay a lower premium. Reward good behaviour, not bad.

Secondly, gradually reduce and then phase out subsidies for the treatments of general metabolic dysfunction that don't stimulate recovery. If people know that their standard of living is going to drop because they have to pay the full price of their blood pressure medication, maybe they'll make the choice and take their shorts and sandshoes out for a jog before breakfast and spend half an hour meditating after tea. Maybe they'll drink plain water instead of sweetened, carbonated water.

If governments want to subsidize anything they can subsidize activities that help people improve their health and fitness - but only on results. Sell your Merck and Mayne Pharma shares and buy into Fitness First and Blackmores!

Thirdly, divorce the health system from the welfare system. Until that happens, it will continue to be bled dry by people who are quite able to pay for their own illhealth treatments - and/or make the choice to be come fit and healthy and not pay anything.

For the state governments, just sending out accounts would dramatically reduce waiting lists in their hospitals.

So, don't ask what your doctor, your chemist. your hospital or your Government can do for you, ask what you can do for yourself. That's the real primary health care.

You'll get good advice on fitness from your local fitness centre and good advice on how to eat more of the things that are good for you and less of the things that are bad for you from your naturopath.

In the mean time stay tuned, highly tuned and don't go to doctors for things doctors can't cure with a pill.

John Miller