Dr David Bratt
Last Friday I participated in a medical meeting superbly organised by the NWRHA at the impressive Government Campus Plaza Auditorium.
The topic was overweight/obesity and specifically the enormous increase in it over the last 15 years to the point where almost half of our adults are overweight and one quarter of our children are too. Between 2001 and 2010 the percentage of fat children rose from 8.5 per cent to 23 per cent.
People like to blame their child's overweight on "hormones". Genetics and hormones play a very minor role in making people fat. Genes and hormones don't make a population fat in nine years. That's the environment.
This phenomenal increase in fat children—from one in 12 to one in four—is related to how we now live.
The first factor is exercise or the lack of it. No one walks today. We live in a car culture. Trinis prefer their car to their house. Does anyone stay at home any more? Because of work needs, people spend up to four hours in daily traffic. Children do their homework, eat dinner and sleep in the car. Cheap second hand cars came into vogue around the turn of the century. Is that related to the increase in obesity? The number of cars on the road leads to more and more traffic. One day the entire island will come to a stop because of gridlock. Our politicians seem to believe that traffic is a sign of progress. We reach, you see. We like New York! They don't feel the traffic. They have outriders and plenty siren.
There is the safety factor. Who wants their children out in the road amidst the walking weirdos and drug addicts and the young hotheads speeding around? Add the police to that mix now.
The lack of parks and squares is a national disgrace. How did developers ever get permission to build housing complexes without green spaces where mothers could walk their children as my mother did years ago in Victoria Square? Where is the Government in all this? Is someone getting paid off or is it simply incompetence?
Finally, there is the dirt factor. Today's parents seem to "fraid dirt". Babies are never put to lie down on the floor. They might pick up germs. Children are not allowed to play in school. There are schools in the Port-of-Spain area where recess is no longer allowed. They might sweat, get dirty and smell in the classroom. The children might fall down and hurt themselves. Their parents will get angry.
All this is frightening because of the diseases associated with overweight, the NCDS, diabetes, heart attacks and so on. Annually 10,000 people die in T&T (19,000 are born so every year our population increases by 9,000, not counting the Venezuelans) and, of course, some of this is expected, old age attrition. However, the vast majority of people die from heart disease, 6,000! These are people who die who don't have to die! These are illnesses that people have and they do not have to have them. Adult heart disease and diabetes are preventable. It's how to get people to do the things they need to do that is the problem and basically, it's more exercise (the average Trinidadian walks 1,000 steps a day and needs to walk 10,000) and watching what you eat.
Sitting down in tight circumstances is stressful, you may not notice it, but your body metabolism does. It releases stress hormones which affects how sugar is handled in your body, it rises and the excess is deposited as fat and once you are fat it is incredibly difficult to get rid of it. Add the fast food we now eat, full of sugar, fat, salt, and chemicals and it is no wonder we are now officially classified as a "fat nation" with a food import bill of just over six billion TT and a health bill of another six billion TT just to treat the diseases related to overweight. This is madness.