Why we need a Health Industry

Surely by now everyone knows about eating a healthy diet, taking sufficient exercise, and avoiding recreational drugs? Maybe not.

An article published online on April 28, 2009 in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine (PLoS Medicine) estimates that 1,977,000 deaths each year in the United States are due to preventable risk factors. Smoking, hypertension and being overweight top the list, with 1,078,000 yearly deaths attributed to these preventable causes. Other factors included inadequate physical activity, elevated glucose, high low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, insufficient omega-3 fatty acid intake, high trans fatty acid intake, alcohol abuse, low vegetable and fruit intake, and low dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Clearly, the message about diet and exercise has some way to go.

Lead author and Harvard School of Public Medicine doctoral student Goodarz Danaei said, “To have hundreds of thousands of premature deaths caused by these modifiable risk factors is shocking and should motivate a serious look at whether our public health system has sufficient capacity to implement interventions and whether it is currently focusing on the right set of interventions.”

Whilst they work on it, maybe we should just get on with what we’ve been doing for years in the health industry, and continue educating people on healthy lifestyles and the natural methods they can use to rectify their health issues.

Comments are closed.

Top