Americans and Obesity

I realized that obesity can also lead to unhealthier lives and decided to look into it further.  Taking a look at the statistics given by obesityinamerica.org, which ties in to cdc.gov shows that one-third of U.S. adults are considered as being obese.  As a kid personally I was extremely fat, but I managed to lose all of that weight somehow.  Obesity runs in my family on both my dads side and my mothers side of the family so I understand what it's like.  If almost 75 billion in medical expenses was used for obesity in 2003, one can only imagine how much that would change if statistics were given for this year.

'In Sickness and Wealth' video response

I just wanted to post my thoughts on the video that we watched in class and what I thought about it.  Overall the video was interesting to me as well as very informal.  It made sense that the life expectancy of citizens living in unsafer areas would be quite low.  While those who lived in better areas who had more money lived a much longer life by a couple years.  I'm still a bit surprised at the life expectancy rates as a whole and I didn't actually realize that America was found as being the unhealthiest country.  Even odder that we spend all our time advancing into the technological world, when a majority of people don't even have the proper healthcare that they need to lead more healthier lives.

Health Care Status

Studying up on the health and wellness in our own county, it seems that there will be a certain percentage of individuals who lack health care and thus won't be able receive the aid they need.

From reading "Health Status and Health Care Access of Farm and Rural Populations" (Link located below), in certain rural areas many residents have higher rates of heart disease and other disease in general compared to others.  The primary concern for lack of said healthcare access came from the cost of healthcare as a whole. Simply put some were able to afford it while other's were not.  As for the health care concerns in rural areas, it is mainly because the population is essentially older, having low income levels as well as lower education.

Even though the statistics and information was gathered in 2009, if one were to compare health care overall from 2009 and 2011.  Would the amount of health care access to residents have decreased or increased?  While I haven't looked too far into this myself I hope it's the latter.

Link: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB57/EIB57_ReportSummary.pdf