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Live like you love life
Professor Henry Fraser
“We make a living by what we get, but we
make a life by what we give.” (Dr. John Maxwell, America’s
leadership guru)
“The obesity epidemic – mass suicide in slow
motion”. (Henry Fraser)
Every year for twelve years the Heart and
Stroke Foundation of Barbados has been presenting a “Healthy
Lifestyle Seminar for Business and Professional Executives”.
This Seminar has consistently delivered a 5 Star product, thanks
to the dedication of its core members, to whom I would like to
pay tribute today - Mr. Drurard Symmonds SCM, J.P., the President,
Professor Trevor Hassell, Dr. Basil Springer and in recent years
Executive Director Adrian Randall.
Barbados leads the Caribbean in an epidemic
that can only be described as “Slow motion mass suicide”. The
epidemic is an epidemic of chronic non communicable diseases,
sometimes known as the life style diseases – or the obesity
related diseases – or the metabolic syndrome and its
complications - or – listen for it - the Deadly Quartet. One or
more of these obesity and life style related conditions now
affect the majority of adult Barbadians. Let me say that again…
one of these conditions or the complete Deadly Quartet affects
the majority of adult Bajans.
Historically, we had long recognised the
problem of high blood pressure and its most common consequence –
a stroke or “Passover”. Professor Trevor Hassell reported the
first hypertension survey, sponsored by the World Health
Organisation, more than 30 years ago. By the 1970s diabetes was
also becoming much more common in the Caribbean, although 50
years earlier medical textbooks said it was “rarely seen in
black people”!
But the first paper on obesity in Barbados
only appeared in 1978 (I reported, at a Caribbean Health
Research Conference at the then Holiday Inn, that obesity was
seen in the great majority of patients attending QEH medical
outpatients).
In the National Nutrition Survey of 1981,
orchestrated by Dr. Frank Ramsay, the prevalence of overweight
and obesity in women was 39%. In the Wildey Study of 1988
(Foster and Fraser) 30 % of women over age 40 were obese. In the
International Comparative Study of Hypertension in Blacks (ICSHIB)
of 1991, 30 % of women of younger ages, between 25 and 75, were
obese. These and other studies, reported variously by Fraser,
Hennis, Hoyos and Adams, demonstrate a steady increase in
obesity, so that the majority of women are now either overweight
or obese, while overweight and obesity in men are approaching
the half way mark, hypertension affects almost half of the adult
population and diabetes affects one quarter of the population
over 40.
National responses to the obesity epidemic
are interesting, and perhaps puzzling. The USA (now known as the
“Fast food nation”) appears to be wallowing in it. On the other
hand Britain, where the figures (both the numbers and the
shapes) are only half as bad as ours or America’s, seems
obsessed with the problem, and agonises over the solutions! In
Bim the medical profession has been studying the problem and
advising the nation for nearly 30 years that we’re heading for
trouble, that we’re killing ourselves, that we’re causing
suffering and wasting money, all to little avail, when the
solution is in our own hands and, we might add, our own feet, if
only we’d move them more before they ossify!
More than a year ago, at an International
Consultation on Chronic Diseases, Government announced the
approval of the establishment of a Commission on Chronic
Diseases. Unfortunately, as we are all now well aware, World Cup
and Harrison’s Cave are getting most of the government money not
already committed to essential recurrent expenditure. and the
Commission on Chronic Diseases remains on the back burner … only
the stove is in the basement and it’s getting too late to put
the fire out! So the solution, as already mentioned, is in every
individual’s hands, and must be every individual’s
responsibility, if we’re to stop the mass suicide.
For a businessman, a notoriously frequent
victim of business lunches … and the resulting phenomenon known
to many old timers as a “corporation”, but which I think should
be more accurately called a “time bomb”, obesity and its awesome
risks would seem like bad business and a bad investment. But
businessmen take risks, sometimes with dramatic consequences.
For an executive, concerns should be centred as much on the
collective corporation as on the personal corporation; as much
on the body corporate as on the personal body. And since the
best way to lead is by example, we must talk about both personal
responsibility and corporate responsibility, about risk taking
and risk avoiding, and about living right in order to live well
– to live like you love life, and to walk the talk – literally.
There are many aspects to healthy living,
but the most powerful mantra can be captured in four simple
thoughts and eight words:
Eat less
Exercise more
Laugh often
Forgive always,
And the simple verse:
Give before,
Give after,
Give more,
Give laughter.
There are many successful approaches to
eating less and eating healthy. I would only remind you that the
best things in life are free, that many kinds of exercise are
free - walking, jogging, swimming, skipping, dancing and floor
exercises, the greatest of which is the push up.
And so then there’s laughter… still the best
medicine . So exercise is the pill for every ill, and laughter –
before and after.
And lastly, give and forgive. Read Nelson
Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, on the power of forgiveness,
the most powerful force in human relationships. To forgive is to
give up and renounce anger and resentment . It’s a gift to the
person who you feel wronged you, but most of all it’s a gift to
yourself, because it releases you from the anger. It’s a very
special kind of giving.
As the famous American writer and leadership
guru Dr. John Maxwell wrote: “We make a living by what we get,
but we make a life by what we give”. These simple precepts
should be our core values, and they make it easier for us to
focus on “living right”. Much eating is comfort food. Many of
our bad decisions are made for the wrong reasons. Much of life
is spent eating more and doing less, until we can’t make the
effort anymore, and we see more and more people resigned to life
in a chair or a wheelchair. With half of our population
approaching a state of entropy, it really is like mass suicide
in slow motion.
Yes, I exaggerate a little, for effect, but
the epidemic is spreading, and by 2020 there will be hardly any
body playing cricket, because the obesity rate in our
adolescents is increasing exponentially and the state of entropy
approaches!
So let’s wake up to the reality and “live
like we love life”.
Professor Fraser is Dean of the School of
Clinical Medicine & Research, UWI, and a Past President of the
Barbados National Trust.
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