Take Care of own Health

[bovlomov]

I think there is a lot to be said for helping yourself rather than looking for sympathy or blaming other factors.

I agree that personal responsibility goes a long way, but often the efforts of the individual are working against not only their own inclinations but against a whole range of government policies that make it easier to do the wrong thing. Transport policy, tax rates, planning rules, funding choices, etc often make it easier to be be unhealthy than to be healthy.

[NUKe]

The minister, in this case, seems to be focusing solely on individual responsibility, without acknowledging the state's role.

Probably getting ready to ration the health service to only those who are healthy. So unless you have a perfect BMI, can run a mile in 5 minutes you will be excluded. However runners are to be excluded on the grounds that its dangeraous and they might turn up at A&E

[Cugel]

My wife and I argue our views on this a lot.
Regarding obesity, she largely blames the food manufacturers. I think the responsibility lies with the individual. I suspect the causes are a mix of these and other factors.
I was a 'fatty' when in my early teens, the taunting and teasing ,whilst cruel, hit the mark and I did something about it. I've never really put it back on but know I could easily if I ate all the 'nice' things.
I get periodic bouts of the blues and find my cure is to get out on the bike for a day.

I think there is a lot to be said for helping yourself rather than looking for sympathy or blaming other factors.

Of course I realise some conditions cannot but need help but I'm not sure if obesity is one or not.

Waiting to be shot at by all the large people who have tried every diet known to man with no effect

I feel you are half right. But you underplay the difficulty of controlling one's irrational impulses. I have known clever people who have overeaten (a lot) and who have blamed nobody but themselves, but struggle to stop eating. For them it is a mental / emotional problem, a bit like self-harming. They cannot be cured without their own effort, but they may also need help.

"Half right" is good shorthand for the complex issue with multiple factors, that is the increasing lack of general health in the Blighty population.

Like Francovendee, I believe that a degree of shaming by others (with subsequent individual effort to change) is an effective mode for changing behaviours .... if the shaming can be positive rather than merely a jeer .... and if the behaviour being shamed is widely agreed to be damaging (to oneself and/or others). "Positive shaming" must contain some indication, means or help to change the behaviour being shamed, to better behaviour.

Which brings us to the other half of your "half right". As others have noted, humans are not always rational. I would suggest that a rational human act is a rare thing, myself. Almost all of us arrange our behaviours to be conventional (what everyone else does); and we will choose the immediately-pleasurable over other choices that only see their benefits much further into the future. ("I'll just have these 6 pints and the takeaway now as I can start the dry period and diet tomorrow").

In practice, the government allows (promotes and encourages, in fact) many bad short-term-pleasurable behaviours, from boozing through over-eating to gambling and lack of exercise. They do so by failing to regulate or legislate against damaging "goods" and "services" that many do find pleasurable. When eating tons of junk-fud, gambling 'til you're broke and driving badly everywhere in a car are all promoted or allowed, it's all too easy to predict what the large scale effects on most of the population will be.

If the population were "nudged" more against these bad things (as we have been against smoking) and the bad things seriously discouraged or even banned (as they have been with smoking) then the scale of bad habits amongst the population will decrease (as they have with smoking). Excuse my repetition of the "smoking" example but it's such an obvious reduction-model for much else that's bad-product in our society.

There will be the cry of "nanny state". I like nanny myself. She gave me the NHS so I didn't die of a filthy disease and malnutrition when I was a bairn; free education right up to as clever as I could get (not very); a safe society where one could prosper without fear of predation and exploitation by the owners of Dark Satanic Mills and other human-crunching apparatus. Given the infantile state many of the population have been reduced to by consumerism, nanny seems a bluddy good idea!

But first there will have to a severe reduction in Toryism and the associated neo-liberal hegemony that reduces every value and activity to a profit margin or just cash.

Cugel

[francovendee]

What I find difficult is to find is a reason why people ignore information available and or play it down. For years we've been told about the effects of bad diet, smoking, drinking to excess, and taking no exercise. We have more information than we've ever had and in my eyes the population is becoming less healthy.
My wife's friend, an educated lady, is grossly overweight. It effects her joints, back and breathing. She will follow all the treatment and advice from the doctor except lose weight. She has the appetite to shame any one I know and will always take an extra portion if offered. I feel tempted to point this out to her but I'm sure it would cause a row. I'm sure she chooses the easy option and relies on the medicine men to make everything work out. She's not alone in having this view.

[Flinders]

The reward is instantaneous, the penalty is deferred and the cure takes time(as well as restraint).
That is the root of the problem.

A good summary. I also concur with the 'self-harm' thing. When I am feeling lousy with my illness, I hate myself and don't think I'm worth looking after, it doesn't feel like it matters what I do (or eat).
Also agree that getting out on the bike is, for me too, a massive help with all of that.

[Cugel]

What I find difficult is to find is a reason why people ignore information available and or play it down. For years we've been told about the effects of bad diet, smoking, drinking to excess, and taking no exercise. We have more information than we've ever had and in my eyes the population is becoming less healthy.
........

Our traditions and history of thought - embedded in our language, legal systems and a whole host of other cultural artefacts - have established the Judeo-Christian notion that we have free will and can choose to be "bad or good". Enormous amounts of research over the last few decades has demonstrated that this is a completely false picture of how humans behave.

Our reasoning and rationality is something we invent after-the-fact of our behaviours to justify them. Those behaviours are born and refined in the depths of our genes & memes; in the obscure place that is our sub-conscious. They are formed out of that place as it's been constructed by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and the shorter period during which cultural artefacts (such as language) have infested us with their own built-in but hidden assumptions and drivers.

There is something in a human that "reasons". It's function seems to be only to justify what we have or want to do, not to be logical or "scientific" about the initial choices we make. It's a rhetorician well able to lie effectively, not just to others but to ourselves. It says, "What you have done or now want to do is right because....." then invents any reason it can to justify the needful-thing or feeling.

In moments of stress, even this rhetorician goes away and we just behave as the dark inner motors drive us, from moment to moment.

Frightening, isn't it? But it explains a lot about the often crazed self (and other) harming acts we so regularly perform.

It also explains those altruistic acts, in exactly the same way. They're evolved herd behaviours rather than just kindly and reasonable acts, even though we prefer to describe them as kindly and reasonable with our reasoner-rhetorician.

Flesh robots, all of us!

Cugel

[francovendee]

Wow Cugel! That's sounds really scary

[Cyril Haearn]

One could occupy oneself to avoid diversions and bad habits, reading, study, cycling, gardening, diy, teaching, learning, grandchildren

Going to see a film featuring Sigmund Freud today, did a bit of background reading as preparation, one of his biographers was Ernest Jones from Wales, studying Freud keeps lots of academics busy

Next film is Bohemian Rhapsody with Queen, just got to learn their 50 greatest hits first, listed in the Guardian, "I want to ride my bicycle with a fat bottom girl"

Heard a couple of reviews of the film, +99 & - 99! Guess I shall have to make up my own opinion

Plus One for the nanny state

[Cugel]

One could occupy oneself to avoid diversions and bad habits, reading, study, cycling, gardening, diy, teaching, learning, grandchildren

.......Heard a couple of reviews of the film, +99 & - 99! Guess I shall have to make up my own opinion

Plus One for the nanny state

One can also occupy oneself with bad-habit diversions, a list of which I can supply to you if you find yourself hankering for experience of something involving chocolate, cake and teasing. See? Not even teaching can be trusted to be always a good habit as I could teach you many bad ones, which you would then have learnt. So nor can learning always be a good habit as it depends on the subject matter inculcated into one's character as it forms and reforms under the various tuitions.

As to the grandchildren, they are keen to teach me bad habits which, being modern, they are fully aware of from the age of 19 months. How innocent my own generation were in our youth - I knew nowt naughty until I was at least 16. Oh no I didn't!

But I digress.

Part of the process for acquiring good habits is to get past the point where they feel bad to the point where they're addictively good. Cycling's a good example. How hard it is at first, as the nether, muscles and everything cry for mercy after only a 10 miler. How pleasurable it becomes, as one gets the sign, consumes café-cake or lies on the pink settee after the club run basking in endorphin.

Woodworking is the same. One must get past the chisel-bites and bodged ugly first piece to the point where the acts of creation give a warm glow of pleasure and even a muted pride. (Best to mute it as it comes before a fall, or even a sawn-off finger).

***
Now, what is this thing you are going to make up: "my own opinion"? I have never seen a-one of those, nor heard one; nor apprehended one with any other of my sense organs. Surely you are like the rest of us and pluck your opinions from the vast flowing river of such things passing by your wee island of self (whatever that is) as the mass media flumes and waterfalls of "opinion" cascade the things about you in an ever-rising tide.

On the other hand "made up" is often the nature of opinion, since the facts are often well-hidden by a pile of queer human artefacts, from philosophy to conspiracy theory.

Cugel, probably in need of some chocolate, cake and teasing from nanny, followed by a cuddle.

[Cyril Haearn]

Knuspermais/popcorn is so expensive in the cinema, no right-thinking person could thoyle it
One bad habit avoided

[Cugel]

Wow Cugel! That's sounds really scary

I have been scared of myself and what I might do when pressed for some years now. I hide from myself in the cupboard of carefulness, being particularly careful to avoid others who also have a mad glint in their eye. I began to learn about the cupboard in my early years, as I roamed the streets of Tyneside and came across other small humans seemingly desirous of indulging their inner beast.

Cugel, now civilised (in part).

[djnotts]

Cugel: "There will be the cry of "nanny state". I like nanny myself. She gave me the NHS so I didn't die of a filthy disease and malnutrition when I was a bairn; free education right up to as clever as I could get (not very); a safe society where one could prosper without fear of predation and exploitation by the owners of Dark Satanic Mills and other human-crunching apparatus. Given the infantile state many of the population have been reduced to by consumerism, nanny seems a bluddy good idea!

But first there will have to a severe reduction in Toryism and the associated neo-liberal hegemony that reduces every value and activity to a profit margin or just cash."

Thanks - saves me having to put too much effort in to a Comment - right on, bro. My very-near-severe COPD has left me too wearied after my 39 miles today as a (belated, obviously!) attempt to take care of (some) of my health issues to think too deeply......

[Cyril Haearn]

Plus One for nanny

Trouble is I think, the bad times before the NHS are out of peoples memories, anyone who bothers can read about them but most are not interested

The same with wars, soon very few people will be able to describe WW2

We should do more remembering, more historians should upgrade to politics

[Cugel]

Plus One for nanny

Trouble is I think, the bad times before the NHS are out of peoples memories, anyone who bothers can read about them but most are not interested

The same with wars, soon very few people will be able to describe WW2

We should do more remembering, more historians should upgrade to politics

My septuagenarian neighbour just died. He was in WW11 and had a very traumatic time for the whole period being part of a crew on an armed Channel motor boat, which boats skirmished greatly with Axis craft in that waterway. He was about the only one to survive of those who went into that service at the beginning of the war. There were many horrible deaths and injuries.

He wrote an autobiography - with a pencil in old school notebooks - which he eventually published for his family & friends. It covered most of his life (up to his late 80s) and was an eye-opener because it was unedited, without attempt to entertain; and otherwise open & honest, unlike many autobiographies one can purchase.

His war time experiences and the effects they had on him and his contemporaries was one thing. But set in the context of the rest of his attitudes, beliefs and experiences, they illuminated for me just what a different world it used to be before the 60s turned us all into hedonistic consumer people with no fundamental understanding about just how bad and dangerous human life can get, largely at the hands of other humans.

My generation, and even more so those that have followed, often seem oblivious to how humans have made life hell for themselves and each other over the centuries. They think things will always be nice, supportive, fair .....

We're also very good at civilisation and it's huge advantages and opportunities - until our Mr Hydes overwhelm our Mr Jekylls. I feel that the loss of national memory of what the first half of C20th was like presages a period of Mr Hyde-ing. There seems to be a lot of monsters roaming about these days...... A lot of them have immense power & glamour, with which they have conjured the smaller monsters hyding within their supporters.

Cugel, going cycling tomorrow, though (antidote to impending doom).

[Debs]

The irony of WWII, 1940s and 1950s is the diet they had here in Britain was nutritionally more balanced than what many consume today.

Todays obesity problem:
It's probably a lot to do with hundreds of thousands of years of half starved human-being evolution and survival diets which has suddenly interfaced with [McDonalds] later 20th, and early 21st Century glutenous resource of sugary fatty salty stuffs that is in so much abundance and easily affordable, and gettable, and eatable yummy.

But it's not all bad news, the corporate companies who market high sugary and fatty food stuffs are trousering Billions of £ profit from the marketing, and targeting your children especially; slick television commercials of junk food, sweets, super sugary puffowheatwotever breakfast cereal.
Sugar is rather addictive [ like being on drugs ] get 'em hooked when young and make money for life.
I expect the Government know all this already, the corporate food industry probably have politicians in their pockets, and besides; if people die prematurely they save on the state pension fund, so a win win situation!