Metabolic syndrome accounts for 40% of adult drug costs

[question everything]

aturday, May 7, 2005

Metabolic syndrome accounts for 40% of adult drug costs

From Register news services

Americans with metabolic syndrome - a condition marked by big waistlines, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol problems - account for $4 of every $10 spent on prescription drugs for adults, according to a study.

The report by Medco Health Solutions, a huge prescription benefit manager, shows that adult use of medication for the syndrome jumped 36 percent between 2002 and 2004.

Annual prescription costs for people 20 and older with metabolic syndrome averaged $4,116 last year, 4.2 times the average amount spent on drugs for that age group, according to New Jersey-based Medco.

Medco released the data to The Associated Press. Medco reached its findings by studying prescription records from a random sample of 2 million clients.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/05/07/sections/business/business_nation/article_510760.php

[kenny blankenship]

1. Eat up, America!

Have more of everything--you deserve it.

[politicat]

2. Metabolic syndrome is NOT about overeating, if you would be bothered

to google the concept.

It's related to insulin resistance and especially to the thrifty gene type. The body is evolved to resist weight loss and encourage weight gain, so at times of stress, the body becomes more efficient at using the consumed calories and with energy expenditure.

A person with metabolic syndrome can eat 1300 calories a day, expend what should be 3300 calories a day in work, exercise, and base metabolism and still gain weight. It's not so easy as energy in must be less than energy out because hormonal changes in the body can generate its own heat. Further, it's a vicious cycle, since insulin resistance leads to fat storage, which leads to an increase in fat storing hormones (because fat produces such hormones) which lead to greater insulin resistance. And dieting makes the situation worse, since it increases the production of ghrelin (to stimulate appetite) and decreases the production of leptin. There's also discussion of the correlation of high levels of heavy metals in the bodies of those with metabolic syndrome as possibly causative.

It's related to cortisol resistance (Cushing's syndrome without the pituitary lesions), adrenal fatigue (similar to Addison's), and several other hormonal issues that endocrinologists are just starting to study.

UCTV has had a great series of programs on just recently on this, as well as a series of endocrinological lectures that were relatively easy for me, a psych MS, to follow. You might check them out.

[Southsideirish]

4. I bet if you try you can make your point without being insulting.

Why the nice Saturday morning hostility?

[Lindacooks]

6. What was insulting in that reply?

I thought it was well stated, logical, and calm.

[politicat]

9. .

:shrug:

You're about as clear as mud, there.

No hostility intended, so you're reading it in.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. Not overeating but what we're eating (unintentionally)

Using common sense and logic tells me that if the American meat and poultry industry chooses to feed their cattle, hogs and chickens with feed laden with hormones and antibiotics, then those hormones and antibiotics are going to move along the food chain to us. Chickens have become a grotesque caricature of the creature once know in nature. They have been bred to grow bigger on less food, particularly in the breast area. Uh, hello America - what are the root causes of "metabolic syndrome".

We should be embarrassed as a nation that other countries will not import our meat for the above reasons. I have heard people from other countries recoil when they taste what passes for meat here. Hubster and I have just committed to being primarily vegetarian. Of course, that doesn't protect us from the flounder genes in tomatoes.
We're watching for a widening gap between our eyes.

[amazona]

7. I really doubt it's what "we're" eating

My partner and I eat the same thing -- except that I have a faster metabolism and eat a lot more -- and I weigh what I did in high school (my proper weight) and he continues to grow. I feel helpless to do anything about it. Chickens are not laden with antibiotics and hormones -- this is a myth, the profit margin on poultry is too thin for any unnecessary medications to be given to chicken -- yet when I cut back or cut out the beef and pork and stick with chicken, fish, vegetarian meals, it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference.

The superchickens with the large breasts are not the products of hormones but are the products of selective breeding. All domestic poultry is the product of selective breeding. There are no Rhode Island Reds or Aracaunas running around in nature!

Other nations don't import our meat or many other goods for political reasons. Do you suppose Japan doesn't import our rice because of hormones, don't think so!

I prepare healthy meals from scratch and I grow a lot of the vegetables and herbs we eat. I don't think most people can be reasonably expected to do more. Yet the person I care for most continues to grow. You can't imagine the frustration and fear.

I think we have to look beyond the "diet" answer. I believe it's an easy way of blaming the victim. I see too many good, strong people around me who are fat! If it was a matter of choice and willpower, these folks wouldn't be fat. My guess is that there is some contaminant in our air or water that is affecting people who have genetic sensitivity. But we don't know, because it is in the corporate interests to blame the individual for his illness.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[politicat]

8. Exactly! DH and I are in similar situations.

I maintain my weight on about 1300 calories a day, 1 to 1.5 hours of exercise in 20-30 min chunks, and lots of fluids. (By calculations, I expend about 3300 calories a day. I am the solution to the energy crisis.) I was never overweight as a child; my metabolism went wonky about 2 years ago for no discernible reason. In two years, I've learned a lot about endocrinology and diet and exercise and basically know that the experts know very little that works in a bedside setting. Tons of theory, little practical knowledge.

On a similar diet, DH would be in a coma. He requires 2100 calories just to live, but would probably be heroin chic if he actually tried to do more than move his mouse finger on that. He doesn't need to move to lose weight; he exhales it. It's like living with a teenage boy.

So, no, it's not diet. It's not even what's in the food we eat - else I'd be okay, since I buy my veggies locally and from organic gardeners or grow my own; my flour is organic and milled locally, and my meats are organic fed, free-range and grass fed or biologically appropriate. There hasn't been an artificial preservative in this house in years. (Salt, vinegar and natural fermentation being another matter.) Same for both refined sugars, refined flours and basically anything that's not a whole food. So that's not causative or curative.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

12. I suggest you google poultry and antibiotics

It's not a myth. You could probably start with the first one that popped up for me - the Sierra Club report on antibiotics and poultry.

[mahina]

10. Very informative, thanks.

My own body did a 180 within a short period, and I'm still struggling to get back to health. Thanks for the insight.

[Ilsa]

3. How much we're eating is part of the problem.

What we are eating and what we are not doing are the other two issues. Overall, Americans eat too much processed, high-fat, high-sodium junk, then sit on the couch with the Nintendo or tv remote in their hands all day for entertainment. And these are bad habits being passed on to kids, and it's evident in their round waistlines.

But this isn't the whole problem as related to metabolic syndrome. I can't help but wonder if the Medco study lumped alot of diseases contollable by diet into this one category.

[jpgray]

11. Behavior is responsible for most of this

Americans aren't significantly different genetically from other populations in the world, but in terms of behavior we're sedentary, gluttonous and avoid blaming our own selves with a religious intensity that surprises me sometimes.