OCR Text |
Show Is Overweight Important? By DR. JAMES W. BARTON Bell Syndicate. WNU Service. THOSE of normal weight and many also who are overweight may have the opinion that too much importance impor-tance is being attached to overweight its dangers to health and life. If they were to talk for just five minutes to the actuary of any life or sickness insurance company they would learn some startling star-tling facts because insurance companies make or lose money on the types or kinds of risks they accept. One of the first facts the insurance insur-ance company actuary will point out is the great amount of diabetes among the overweights. He will back this up by showing the figures of Dr. E. P. Joslin, Boston, the outstanding out-standing . authority on diabetes, who tells us that diabetes is the result or penalty pen-alty of overweight. The figures for the Dr. Barton ' death rate c diabetic dia-betic men over forty-five years is as follows: The per cent of overweight to death rate is as follows: five to fourteen, twice the normal rate; fifteen to twenty-four, twenty-four, four times the normal rate; twenty-five and over, ten times the normal rate. These figures tell in most dramatic fashion the penalty for overweight. As you know, the commonest cause of death after middle age is disease of the heart, bloodvessels and kidneys, because the heart and bloodvessels have the hard work of carrying a large quantity of nourishment nour-ishment to the kidneys to have wastes or poisons filtered but and useful substances retained. Now high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, and defective work by the kidneys all accompany overweight, over-weight, and the simplest method of relieving unnecessary strain is to reduce the weight and size of the patient. Thus when an individual gets down to, or nearly to, normal weight his chances of developing heart, bloodvessel and kidney disease dis-ease becomes very much less. British Expert's Views. Dr. Herbert I. Coombs in the British Brit-ish Medical Journal, in pointing out the importance of overweight in addition ad-dition to diabetes, heart, bloodvessel bloodves-sel and kidney disease, tells us that "arthritis inflammation of joints is one of the commonest diseases encountered by the general practitioner, prac-titioner, and it is almost always associated with overweight." Another point brought out by Dr. Coombs, and one that is likely to be overlooked, is the great change in mentality or outlook with the increase in-crease in weight. It is generally agreed that overweights are rather cheerful and good natured but after a period of time this good nature of the slightly overweight degenerates into lack of ambition and a "don't care" attitude toward anything and everything. Still another point, and one familiar fa-miliar to every physician is the bad surgical results that often follow operations op-erations on very fat patients. "Mechanical "Me-chanical difficulties of nursing heavy patients and the increased risk of infection when large masses of fat tissue are exposed when the knife is used, are often important factors in working against recovery of overweights who come to operation opera-tion for gall stone, diabetic gangrene, gan-grene, and other conditions." Causes of Diarrhoea. Figures from private and public hospital clinics show that at least three of four give a history of being be-ing constipated. Although these people peo-ple are on their feet and are not sick enough to be in bed, they can hardly be considered normal. However, even among those who are normal or not sick, it would appear that at least half, or 50 per cent, are constipated. It is interesting therefore to read of the other type of cases, that is those who do not appear to be sick, but instead of being constipated are afflicted with diarrhoea. Of course at times when much fruit is eaten or when something "not fresh" has been eaten, diarrhoea diar-rhoea often occurs, lasting for two or more days. But when diarrhoea is present all the time and no excess ex-cess or over-ripe fruit or other food has been eaten, then the cause must be found to prevent the weakening effects of the diarrhoea. Dr. A. Richieri, Buenos Aires, in the Argentine Medical Journal, states that diarrhoea occurs very often in all forms of hyperthyroidism hyperthyroid-ism (that is when the thyroid gland in the neck is manufacturing too much juice). As there may be no other symptoms symp-toms but the diarrhoea (no great increase in-crease in heart rate, no enlargement enlarge-ment of the thyroid gland, no bulging bulg-ing of the eyes, no trembling or nervousness), ner-vousness), it would be difficult to locate the cause as due to an overactive over-active thyroid gland except for tha metablolism test. |