How obesity became the new face of disability in America “Obesity itself originates as an inflammatory disease,” Fenster, who has also practiced in rural areas of Georgia and Florida, says. “In these lower socio-economic areas, what you see is people eating the cheap foods—the sodas, the bags of chips, the energy drinks. So you see a direct correlation in these areas between the type of food consumption and obesity, and then you see the development of what we’re learning now are inflammatory conditions, neurodegenerative conditions, strokes, heart attacks, joints, diabetes, and of course obesity.“ “It’s become a social norm to overeat,” says Rob Archuleta, who grew up in Pueblo and now runs a program in the city for recovering drug addicts called Addict2Athlete. For Archuleta, a recovering addict who was once obese, the connection between weight and addiction is clear. “We define addiction as a toxic compulsive behavior. And overeating can be toxic, behind alcohol and drugs. You couple that with not knowing what a serving size is anymore as a society, and in Pueblo it’s really bad.” Clearly, this is an epidemic that won’t be going away anytime soon. From a disability standpoint, however, cardiologist Michael Fenster believes that physicians must do more to disrupt the cycle at the beginning. “We enable people to a degree by saying oh, you know, you’re disabled, you’re too fat, here, ride the scooter, park in the handicapped spot, and we give them pills,” he says. “Western medicine isn’t set up for prevention. We’re set up to triage and treat. People come in after a heart attack and I put a stent in. But we don’t talk to them about how to prevent the heart attack from happening.“ But they are trying to do something about it, which is evident at the end of the linked article at http://ift.tt/2aMJ4XX.
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