Diabetes rate in the US doubled over the last 10 years, with the highest levels in the South.
WV, SC, AL, Ga, TX and TN had the highest rates and MN, HA and WY had the lowest rates.
Religiosity, poverty and low educational achievement all seem to be bad for your health and
work against Wellness. What can we do to add Wellness to Peace and Prosperity, which most
politicians accept as primary national goals, at least in the abstract?

Not in a society obsessed with consumption, it isn't, rla ....

How could you think it might be?

I don't think it is a national goal. I do think it could become a national goal. Although most
politicians say their primary goals are Peace and Prosperity and the majority of Citizens also
give lip service to Peace as a goal, the only goal that operationally exist is prosperity. Or as you said above, the only real goal is gold.

Individuals know of and seek wellness, rla ...

The question is one of WHY ...

A member of a family unit can seek wellness and earn the enmity and hostility of the same family unit, I have observed ...

Some do and many don't. Most people have a concept of sickness and try to avoid it or get relief from it.

True. Everyone is either getting better or worse and every family is either getting better or worse.

"Good health is maintained by keeping a watchful eye on our bodies, by observing what usually benefits or harms them, by restraint in our general diet and style of living, by foregoing physical pleasures in the interests of our bodies' well-being, and finally by the skill of those whose expertise lies in this field of health."

- Cicero, circa 2,000+ years ago

The people who have problems with Wellness as a national goal also have a problem with the idea of any "national goals" other than paving roads and defending our trade interests abroad.

It's in our constitution. "Support the general welfare", whatever that means. To some I guess it means the opportunity to work so you can pay through the nose for private health insurance.

Apparently, nobody in the WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERPOWER NATION has a clue as to what "wellness" even is, rla ...

There is a statement for you, alright ...

If nobody knows what it is, how can you expect to find it as a national goal?

Wikipedia says that Wellness usually means a healthy balance of Mind, Body and Spirit...

Research in Social Psychology suggest that the reason Barack Obama won the election is
that people have a selfish urge to expand their own identy through others. For example,
when pairs of persons from different races are systematically brought together for any shared activity over time, they measure less prejudice (both self report test and physiological tests) towards
other persons in their environment. This effect is stronger when persons are confronting other
problems not of a racial nature (economic).

The general semantics rule for defining concepts is to say what they are and what they do. What they are and are not, what they do and what they don't. Wellness does not mean avoiding or
curing disease. Our task is to develope a consensus of what it is...

WELLNESS is not defined in my copy of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary ...

Use it to warm your fireplace.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Wellness

1. the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, esp. as the result of deliberate effort.
2. an approach to healthcare that emphasizes preventing illness and prolonging life, as opposed to emphasizing treating diseases.

Well Livyjr, you said you prefer forward thinking. Maybe this is our opportunity to get it into the dictionary...

Donald Ardell published a book in 1982 called, "14 Days to a Wellness Life Style" He called it a positive approach with five dimensions. He drew a small circle within a larger circle. He labeled the
smaller circle SELF RESPONSIBILITY. He divided the larger circle into 4 quadrants, labeled: Nutritional Awareness, Physical Fitness, Stress Awareness & Management and Environmental Sensitivity. Most of the problems we saw in Rehab were a result of not living like this. My question is,
How can we use our government to change the culture so that most people live more like this?

You and I have talked at length about this before, rla ....

I think the first point that must be considered is that it is NOT our government ...

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

John Galt said on November 9, 2008 3:47 PM: We were conditioned in training to NOT kill women and children and unarmed adults, BLUE ...

We were taught fire discipline ...

SUPPRESS ENEMY FIRE ...

CLEAR YOUR FRONT ...

That was it ...

Subsequently, in your generation, that conditioning was removed ...

The killing of women and children by the American military is now considered not only to be permissable, but RIGHTEOUS ...

The American government has spent a lot of OUR tax dollars on mental health professionals to advise it on how to remove that conditioning that kept many of us from drawing down on and killing a woman or child ...

Part of the means of removing that conditioning was to change the language of the Code of Conduct, so that in your mind, the mission is no longer one of defending this country, it is now one of simply fighting ...

You are conditioned to believe that you are fighting for FREEDOM, and it is proper to kill anyone anywhere who is believed to stand in FREEDOM's way ...

No nation has ever survived long after it adopts that mindset, BLUE ...

The relevant example would be Athens and the Delian League ...

Athens, like America today, tried to use military might to jam "democracy" down the throats of its neighbors at swordpoint ...

In return, the neighbors got together and 'belled the cat of Athens" ...

They dismantled it ...

And that was the end of the "Golden Age" of Athens, forever ...

Except in history books, of course ...

And so ...

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...7.html#comments

I'll accept billfmsd's definitions as a starting point, rla ...

What he is talking about, of course, sounds like traditional Chinese medicine to me ...

Yes, as a starting point. It does contain some problems...

Such as?

I'll have to get back to this later...going with my wife to take one of the horses to where she's going to be taking
some lessons.

Health Coverage-


I think this is an important topic. I am not sure insurance is the only area that needs to be addressed.
Study comes out that Statin drugs are good for everyone....
Lipitor is tying their patten up in court so they can extend it and not have a generic pill produced until after 2009 expiration date.
OK in august 2008 a FDA warning came out saying people taking Simvastatin (Zocor) generic version of Statin and Amiodrone should be aware the combination could cause kidney failure or sudden death.

OK I switched to generic from Lipitor because insurance would not pay for name brand when alternative generic available.
Now what can be done about pharmaceutical cost.

Regulation that is effective and unobtrussive...provide a ceiling on drug cost that also allows for healthy competion...

#1. Wellness includes both states and traits...experiencing the process of living a Wellness Lifestyle.
Employing the Wellness Concept avoids the traditional dychotomous Mind/Body Problem that
has plagued Philosophy and Psychology down through the ages...we got over Aristolean Logic...
The Person responds as a whole...Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually. Integrating perceiving,
conceptualizing, feeling, intending and acting is experienced spiritually (Intuitively)--linking Future,
Present and Past...

#2. An approach to Self Management based on self-monitoring, including Health and Wellness
Monitoring and Holistic Health Program Management...

I don't want any, thank you very much ...

Can a drugged-up America be said to be on any kind of path to WELLNESS?

Does WELLNESS come out of a pill bottle?

Should everyone then have free access to all the pills that they want, so long as those pills are government-approved?

Personally, on thinking of all of this, I am forced to conclude that God was some kind of drunk or other screw-up when he invented human beings ...

Thank God that afterward, he either sobered up, or wisened up enough that he was able to recognize his previous errors, and so invented the pharamceutical industry to compensate for his previous errors in creating us so incompetently that we need a massive infusion of drugs each day just to keep us going .....

And so ...

For those of us who missed the wellness boat early on and lived our lives as degenerates,
we now have a profile of degenerative diseases and modern medicine is keeping us alive.
It is not the best way but it is a way. We can educate the younger generations and reorganize our communities to promote wellness.

I don't think it helpfull to blame our failures on some abstraction, "God" or to give the abstraction
credit for our creative successes...

What is, is, rla ...

I got my head smashed in in Viet Nam by the exploding warhead of an RPG-7, which then caused me to get ripped apart like a Christmas goose ...

Talk about living as a degenerate, rla, there it is right there, I guess ...

And in my case, what is called "modern medicine" is anathema to me ...

The farther away from it I get, the healthier I feel ...

Hospitals are places where you go and catch real nasty diseases, or have body parts cut off of you by mistake, and there you die ...

I am kept alive by grace of God ...

Imagine that ....

Power of the placebo effect, I would say ...

And no adverse side effects, either ...

And so ...

And thanks to veterans, rla, here in America, you have that right ...

Thanks to all who preceded us, including veterans...

In its efforts to overhaul health care, Congress is planning to give employers sweeping new authority to reward
employees for healthy behavior, including better diet, exercise, weight loss and smoking cessation. The go-to people in the Senate if you have input is Max Baucus of Montana and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

In the article I just read, rla, Max Baucus is talking about the federal government taxing health insurance benefits ...

Baucus is Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and has more influence than anyone on how tax money gets spent. He is not the best people's advocate for a sensible health care program--only the one most in need of watching...

So Baucus has employer's "give" or "grant" these extra "health benefits", which he can then count as taxable income, to make some more money off of, up into the billions, he estimates ....

And so ...

WELLNESS takes work on the part of the person who desires to be well ...

That has to include coping with the poisons that are in food, the air and drinking water ....

If the person does not wish to do this work, and if the government will do nothing to keep us from being poisoned and sickened by the un-healthy environment, then WELLNESS is at best a pipe dream ...

And so ...

FIRST, THERE WAS THE WORD...

The WORD has existed for a long time ....

And so ...

And so has INACTION ...

And so ...

WHERE ARE THE NATION'S HEALTH COMMISSIONERS?

HOW COME THEY ARE NOT FRONT AND CENTER AT THIS MEETING?

OBAMA IS ARROGATING POWER TO HIMSELF THAT HIS OFFICE DOES NOT HAVE ...

And so ...

"Obama has meeting today to discuss health care"

11 MAY 2009

WASHINGTON – Hospitals, insurance companies, drug makers and doctors are planning to tell President Barack Obama today that they'll voluntarily slow their rate increases in coming years in a move that government economists say would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it.

When President Bill Clinton took on health care reform, industry leaders fought back, killing the White House proposal before it could gain any traction.

Now those industry leaders are trying to help Obama find a solution to the problem of uninsured Americans, offering $2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years.

Although the offer from the industry groups doesn't resolve thorny details of a new health care system, it does offer the prospect of freeing a large chunk of money to help pay for coverage.

And it puts the private-sector groups in a good position to influence the bill Congress is writing.

Six major groups plan to deliver a letter to Obama and pledge to cut the growth rate for health care by 1.5 percentage points each year, senior administration officials said Sunday.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to sketch the offer before full details are revealed at a White House event scheduled for Monday.

The industry groups are trying to get on the administration bandwagon for expanded coverage now in the hope they can steer Congress away from legislation that would restrict their profitability in future years.

Insurers, for example, want to avoid the creation of a government health plan that would directly compete with them to enroll middle-class workers and their families.

Drug makers worry that in the future, new medications might have to pass a cost-benefit test before they can win approval.

And hospitals and doctors are concerned the government could dictate what they get paid to care for any patient, not only the elderly and the poor.

Obama has courted industry and provider groups, inviting their representatives to the White House.

There's a sense among some of the groups that now may be the best time to act before public opinion, fueled by anger over costs, turns against them.

It's unclear whether the proposed savings will prove decisive in pushing a health care overhaul through Congress.

There's no detail on how the savings pledge would be enforced.

And, critically, the promised savings in private health care costs would accrue to society as a whole, not just the federal government.

That's a crucial distinction because specific federal savings are needed to help pay for the cost of expanding coverage.

Costs have emerged as the most serious obstacle to Obama's plan.

The estimated federal costs range from $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, and so far Obama has only spelled out how to get about half of that.

WELLNESS exist in degrees...The state of wellness is normally distributed in the population. From a social system's perspective, the first step is to develope the concept of wellness as a desirable state...while we systematically develope programs to remove the impediments of wellness from the environment and to increase wellness seeking
behaviors of individuals. Providing access to medical care is an important piece of this. Blaming the victims is not going to help...

Blaming the victims?

HUH?

What victims?

Victims of exactly what?

And who are they?

Somebody who can't get off their dead @$$ to do some exercise?

That "victim" **** really doesn't fly well with me, rla ....

It is a COP-OUT ....

And so ...

No, it's not, rla ....

I heard a report just the other day that better educated people in the USA have better health or wellness than those less educated ....

Where is the normal distribution in that?

And you have no valid method to measure wellness that I have seen to date ....

Just seeming excuses for why it doesn't exist in but a handful in America ...

And so ...

And if it is a normal distribution, that implies that wellness is a direct function of nature ....

And so ...

Any variable (total wellness score) that is the sum of a large number of independent factors is likely to be normally distributed--an upside down bell shaped curve. 68% of the cases will fall between +1 and -1 standard deviation
from the mean and an additional 27% of the cases will fall between +2 and -2 standard deviations.

It is true that wellness scores and total education (in the US social system) are strongly correlated. Wellness scores
are also correlated with total income...Dr. Donald Ardell is an established expert on measuring Wellness...

Is the intelligence level required to get an education so that your Wellness score can be higher a normally distributed function, rla?

I'm using Normal Distribution or Gaussian Distribution as a statistical term in the context of probability theory...

Intelligence, educational achievement and Wellness all form normal distributions and are all positively correlated...

Wellness? What sort of feminine crap is this? Modern Democratic I assume. Leading to historic subsurvience.
Laced cuffs and politics never won a battle, nor advanced liberty...but it's cute parlor conversation. Very cute.

"normal distributions" (slavery?) and are all "positively correlated" (politcally correct?). Bow deeply, or draw a weapon.
Whatever your predisposition requires...I thought it was Arkansan...but I guess it is Acquiescent, fancy talk aside.

Boy, IH ....

I'm not into feminine, myself, and I sure am not into subservience ....

But as a disabled veteran, the pursuit of a state of wellness is what keeps me alive ....

That and my will power ....

And so ...

THERE ARE SUCKERS BEING BORN EVERY MINUTE ....

AND THEY ARE EASILY SEPARATED THEIR MONEY ...

AND SINCE MONEY IS WHAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND ....

WELL ....

And so ...

"Conflicts of Interest Taint Medical Studies"

Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director, LiveScience.com

Mon May 11, 1:45 pm ET

A new review of studies finds 29 percent of cancer research published in high-profile journals had disclosed a conflict of interest.

While it's a good thing that the conflicts were disclosed, the review also found conflicts affect the research outcomes.

The results, announced today, will be published June 15 in the journal Cancer.

The findings add to a mountain of evidence suggesting you should be skeptical of health and medical advice.

Other investigations have indicated that many medical studies simply are not accurate.

Further, the media is known to distort key aspects of medical studies, twisting findings by virtue of ignorance, blowing obscure, unpublished "breakthroughs" out of proportion, and frequently failing to disclose industry funding even when the researchers do mention it.

Even common existing treatments can be found pointless, as in 2007 when researchers showed that honey works better than cough medicines in soothing children's coughs.

Industry ties

Drugs are, of course, big business.

So there is incentive to fund studies that will shine positive light on a drug.

Other industries do the same.

A recent study funded by gum-maker Wrigley found - no surprise - that chewing lots of its sugarfree gum can help you cut down on calories.

The most frequent type of conflict revealed by the new review was industry funding of the study, found in 17 percent of papers.

In another 12 percent, at least one of the study authors was employed by the industry - drug companies and others aiming to market treatments to patients.

Drug trials with reported conflicts of interest were more likely to have positive findings, the review revealed.

"Given the frequency we observed for conflicts of interest and the fact that conflicts were associated with study outcomes, I would suggest that merely disclosing conflicts is probably not enough," said study author Dr. Reshma Jagsi, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that we need to look more at how we can disentangle cancer research from industry ties."

Many of the studies are likely wrong anyway, other research indicates.

Medical scholar John Ioannidis of the Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. has analyzed medical studies over the years and concludes that most are flawed by poor study design, bad math or self-serving data analysis.

Other researchers have countered, however, that multiple studies of a given treatment tend to clearly bear findings out or refute them over time.

Conflict affects outcome

In the new study, Jagsi and her colleagues found other dubious outcomes.

They looked at 1,534 cancer research studies published in prominent journals.

Studies that had industry funding focused on treatment 62 percent of the time, compared to 36 percent for other studies not funded by industry.

And the studies funded by industry focus on epidemiology, prevention, risk factors, screening or diagnostic methods only 20 percent of the time, vs. 47 percent for studies that had declared no industry funding.

"A serious concern is individuals with conflicts of interest will either consciously or unconsciously be biased in their analyses," Jagsi said.

"As researchers, we have an obligation to treat the data objectively and in an unbiased fashion."

"There may be some relationships that compromise a researcher's ability to do that."

For example, she said in a statement, researchers might design industry-funded studies in a way that's more likely to produce favorable results.

They might also be more likely to publish positive outcomes than negative outcomes.

"In light of these findings, we as a society may wish to rethink how we want our research efforts to be funded and directed," Jagsi said.

"It has been very hard to secure research funding, especially in recent years, so it's been only natural for researchers to turn to industry."

"If we wish to minimize the potential for bias, we need to increase other sources of support."

"Medical research is ultimately a common endeavor that benefits all of society, so it seems only appropriate that we should be funding it through general revenues rather than expecting the market to provide."

Jagsi and her colleagues looked at all original clinical cancer research published in five top oncology journals and three top general medical journals in 2006, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Media gets it wrong, too

There are other reasons for the average person to be skeptical about medical breakthroughs.

Peer-reviewed journals act as filters, with findings reviewed by capable colleagues before publication.

Plenty of medical research that has yet to be published makes it into the popular media, too, where more distortions take place.

A study in 2006 found that out of 175 stories in the popular media that discussed unpublished research, only two noted that the research was unpublished.

But even if a study is published in a peer-reviewed journal, that doesn't mean the media will do its job.

A 2008 study detailed in JAMA looked at 306 news articles, online and in newspapers, that dealt with about company-funded medication studies.

Only 42 percent of the articles disclosed the fact that industry had funded the studies.