SUZANNE TATE: Must See Ourselves Honestly To Work On Health, Wellness

We’ve all heard the funny axiom about how well we deal with reality – that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

For many of us, it’s our home address. I found clearer focus on this following the health care forum U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher hosted Aug. 20 in Abingdon.

The editorial I wrote that was published Sunday, Aug. 23, talked about the importance of wellness and prevention of disease. It also described how many people in the region struggle with being overweight or obese, smoking and the associated illnesses that come from these problems.

The editorial estimated that two-thirds of the crowd at the health care forum could be considered overweight – a formula that follows the statistics for the region. In Southwest Virginia, about 67 percent of the population is considered overweight. And the Bristol-Kingsport region is ranked second nationwide – behind Huntington, W.Va. – for smoking. About 30.5 percent, or roughly a third, of all adults in the region are smokers.

Face facts, folks, this is keenly unhealthy. Local hospital administrators have said that about two-thirds of all admissions are due to smoking-related illness. That’s everything from cancer, heart attacks and strokes to emphysema, recurring bronchitis and chronic lung diseases like COPD. And excess weight leads to type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. These illnesses plague local citizens.

But several writers and callers who have contacted me since the health care forum want to work from a different set of facts. They claim that the majority of attendees at the forum were not overweight, likely didn’t smoke and doubted anyone from the newspaper even came to the event. When pressed about anyone overweight in the audience, they claim those people were bused in from elsewhere.
I spent more than four hours at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center last week because I wouldn’t write about a local event I hadn’t witnessed. I did not weigh any participants or give them urine tests for nicotine. But I know what I weigh, I trust my own eyes and I believe the facts based on medical tests for the region. I also know what cigarettes look and smell like, since I spent all of my 20s and most of my 30s smoking.

I believe Dr. Jerry Miller, one of the town hall panelists, who founded the largest medical practice in the region and has spent 43 years caring for local patients.

His message was simple: Wellness and prevention is a more effective and less costly path to take, but doctors don’t get paid that way now. To change the system and hold down costs, we need to pay doctors for comprehensive work with patients that helps them lose weight and keep it off, regularly take their needed medicine, set and meet exercise goals, recognize addiction (including nicotine) and work to mitigate it.

His message of personal responsibility, and developing trust with health care providers, was cheered by the crowd. But no one wants to be lectured. When I elaborated on his points, readers went off the rails.

“I don’t think you would have found many people in that audience who ate fried food or smoked that day,” one person e-mailed.

Others claimed that Miller’s statistic – that 67 percent of the regional population is overweight – was way too high. Others claimed it is genetic, versus behavioral. Forget about “pulling the plug on grandma” – they wanted to blame her for their spare tire.

Certainly family history plays a role in health, but smoking and overeating are learned behaviors that can be broken, not genetic dispositions that a person is hopelessly stuck with.

That’s why we can quit smoking – thank goodness – lose weight, change our eating habits and exercise more, despite what we might be doing today. It’s also why my mother is trim and lean at 69 and I am 40 and fatter.

I have mirrors in my house and a scale in the bathroom. Plus, my mother has been working on it for years; I have not. When Dr. Miller was talking about the 67 percent, I knew he meant me and I didn’t take offense. I am making progress, but I know I have many strides to make.

The sooner we see ourselves – whether in the mirror, on the bathroom scale or break our own convoluted view of what overweight, or “fat,” really means, the sooner we can get to work on getting well and preventing disease.

But the word “fat” is a high hurdle, full of stigmas. We’re so afraid of it that we don’t even want to use it to describe our pets.

Case in point: A lost cat classified ad that ran last Sunday in this newspaper called the pet “heavy set.”

Was the owner afraid the cat was going to read the newspaper and take offense at how it was described?

Suzanne Tate is the opinion page editor at the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at (276) 645-2534 or .