America’s Top Killer: Us

I think you accidentally hit the caps lock key.

AMERICA'S TOP KILLERS ------------------ POLITICIANS, BIG BUSINESS, GREED !

INDIVIDUALS MAKING CHOICES FROM THE OPPORTUNITIES THAT PRESENT THEMSELVES.

SOME CHOICES NOW RESULTING IN LOSS OF HOMES , JOBS, ETC.

POLITICIANS MAKING CHOICES " BAILOUTS FOR BIG BUSINESS ", RAISING TAXES ON THE WORKING CLASS TO COMPENSATE FOR LOSS REVENUE.

AMERICA GOING BANKRUPT ---------------- WHY ?

While I support an individual???s freedom of choice to make bad decisions about their own lifestyle, I do not want to pay for it. Perhaps we could send everyone over 300 pounds and morbidly obese to Afghanistan for an extended vacation. Drop cancer coverage for those who smoke. Stop brain injury coverage for motorcycle riders without helmets. It would be a difficult thing to do as a society but consider the hundreds of millions of dollars of our money spent every year to protect the medical records of the paranoid. When does a personal preference become a ???God Given Right??? for which everyone else needs to pay.

Keeney and the authors of Nudge represent one of the biggest contemporary threats to freedom. These are people who have the self given "right" to tell the rest of us what we should and shouldn't do because they're right to decide for us is more important than our freedom to decide for ourselves. Their thinking leads straight to a sort of totalitarianism, which is ultimatly no less dangerous to freedom than Nazi or Islamic totalitarianism.

Balanced and well organized life may gurantee long living, but not gurantee hapiness. To get happiness in life, the most needed is self satisfaction. No one can liver forever!! If life is long enough, we have to live more careful, but with the best effort, we can not deserve live no more than 100 years. if I really want to junk food, I will eat it. It makes no difference at all.

healthy choices and a balanced life do not lead necessarily to an unzestful life ! what a cliché ! who is enjoying himself the most: the one getting systematically drunk or overeating, or someone drinking and eating in amounts that are acceptable to the body ? Destructive behaviour is a prison, and believe me I have tested it. Life doesn't have to be like that, but it is true that environment in early age plays a big role. Next where do you put your energy in positive drive or negative one? that is what this study is about it seems whithout giving all the answers to a complex problem.

Do healthy choices, or an orientation to a balanced life, necessarily reflect a life without zest ? is getting drunk or overeating the way to get the most out of life ? You must be joking ! It just becomes another problem. Destructive behaviour is mostly an escape from some pain we carry but can't reasonably solve or deal with. This is not just theory but experience of life. It is not thaught at school though we learn through trial and error. And that is what this report is reflecting.

thanks to the folks linking poor human judgements to the present state of disharmkony on the planet we are living on. the global observations are correct. no one yet, however, has touched upon the difference between a "zestful", but full of poor quality judgements versus a pure and righteous life, with not much "zest." why is the desire for zest deemed an exercise in negative judgement?

who wants to live forever swaddled in safety and group reasonableness? a life of reasonable safety with real zest rather than the erstaz zest promoted by our culture? the first instant after birth is the first instant closer to death. better to make the most of what potential this life bestows on us than to wait around supersafe for death to catch up to us. we will always lose that choice.

We love bumper sticker slogans. Was Elvis more "interesting" or was he a drunk/drugged slob wallowing through his empty life? Or we repeat statistical errors from headlines so often until "truth " is irrelevant (our birth death rate is not higher than other countries because they define the categories differently).

Generally, as we reduced deaths due to infection, cardiovascular events, stroke, and cancers became the statistical leaders. Cardiovascular causes are down significantly. Predictably as we reduce those, then other causes will become the statistical leaders. Causality can be complex; "diabesity" underlies some % of cardiovascular conditions, etc.

It is very difficult to prove that you can extend life; the better case is the quality of that life..The key problem is that it is the cumulative decisions across 40+ years that define risk, yet many folks have the attention span of a gnat.

The Government can demonstrably not manage itself; hard to turn our lives over to them. What it can do is change costs and consequences so folks can make informed choices. If you lead a healthy life, then your insurance costs are X. If you lead an unhealthy life, your insurance costs are X + Y. Then you have to verify healthy choices by statistical quality controls with testing.

This can also include the Standards of Care; you weigh 350 pounds and you have diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and a fatty liver? Ok, running and weight lifting therapy is M-W-F if you want those $800 pills to cost $100. Bad back so bad you can't work? Exercise therapy is 5 days a week while you go to school to learn a new skill, but no stipends.

Cruel? Unfair? Guess what happens in those countries we point at as being so wonderful? Oh, you're 66 and you need expensive surgery? Hmm, you're no longer an economically viable unit that justifies the investment; we'll put you on the list.

What do you think? Should meat-production facilities actually take responsibility for their own actions and clean up the mess they make?

Many of you seem to view choices as affecting ONLY yourself. Some of you talk about accepting responsibility for YOUR own actions.

Heres the truth. We do not live in a vacuum, we all live on the same planet and ultimately share the same resources. Your waste and pollution enters into everyone else's water and food supplies, for current and future generations.

Our sustenance is based off the quality of the environment we live in. The choices that YOU make will affect me and everyone else on the planet.

Should we be free to poison the environment and contribute to pollution just because Americans want to over consume meat, killing yourself AND OTHERS in the process? If we are to fully accept responsibility for our actions, then meat SHOUD be very expensive because it causes pollution that you are not paying for. You are also not paying for the loss of marine life due to expanding dead zones caused by fertilizer runoff. If you want to live up to your talk and be responsible for your actions, then meat should be very expensive because there are currently unaccounted costs for its production.

Like I said earlier, the meat industry is responsible for massive amounts of CO2 emissions, fertilizer run-off, expanding dead-zones, and other pollution.

Why should the rest of the world be facing the consequences of the meat and pill obsessed American citizenry?
These drugs we take go right back into the water supply and pollute everyone elses drinking water.

This is how it works out

Massive American meat consumption -> disease + pollution -> massive pharmaceutical consumption -> more pollution -> more disease

If we were to all cut out meat from our diets, we would live healthier lives with fewer need for pharmaceuticals which means less pollution and GHG emissions.

I realized long before this article that our personal choices determine the length of our lives but these choices are not for the gov't to oversee. If we allow the our gov't to tell us how many bottles of wine to buy or that we can't buy a pint of ice cream we are essentially turning our entire lives over to a communist state. Let the people who choose to smoke kill themselves quicker. Let the chubby person at the checkout line buy the 5 bottles of soda. They know the risks, the information is always there for us accept or ignore. Our lives are ours to do with what we will. I personally workout frequently and try to eat well, but I also like a glass of wine or a few beers with friends. When the government starts telling me that I can't buy that six pack of beer I will move to a country that will. I already am a bit annoyed by the seat belt laws, helmet laws, and the laws preventing me from my right to die if I so choose. These laws are all things that deal directly with my life and my right to do with it what I wish. Our rights are being taken away quicker than we realize. My opinion is that we need to repeal some of these laws that should be a personal choice.

I made a decision to take care of myself and not listen to what everyone else is doing. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes last year, but ignored it. My A1C went up. Using my meter and checking my blood pressure everyday gave me a powerful reality check. Since I changed my diet to low carb, my meter readings are stablized. I'm losing weight and my BP is under control with medication I'm taking an injection to help my sugar stablize and its working. I ALONE decided to to the research about what's best for me I am going to get down to a good,, healthy weigh, exercise daily and get off the meds; I'm going to continue the education in my chosen profession. I'm going to find a church where I can get my spiritual food. It's been a long time for me to "wake up" and start taking care of me. Personal responsibility is important. I, for one, don't want to look back on my life and realize that my choices led me to an early grave.

The majority of the American population is overweight/obese. I might would compare it all to the Wall Street crisis: allow McD's to pump out $1 cheeseburgers and expect those with limited means to make another choice. Perhaps a bit of regulation in the area of what food chains are allowed to market and sell is called for, but lazy food addicts likely will make the choice to eat processed "beef" patties before eating a "veggie" one. Just saying...

Two foods that kill many people every year are high fructose corn syrup and transfat loaded soy margarine. When the government reduced subsidies for corn and soybeans and raised subsidies for other vegetables and fruits it will help. People will choose what is cheaper, and it will be tastier and healthier.

I can't make my 34-year-old husband with sky-high blood pressure eat well and exercise, but I can make good choices for myself and my 4-y o daughter...each choice we make has a consequence. I'd rather die slamming into the ground after a botched sky diving accident than letting my fat heart give out, but that's MY choice. Gov't makes lots of cash letting us be fat and lazy. If we become too self-productive, the gov't would become obsolete-where's the money in that?

If the government reduced subsidies for corn and soybeans and expanded subsidies for vegetables and fruit it would help. High fructose corn syrup and transfat loaded soy margarine kills many every year.

Wow, this is just what we need, more government telling people what to do. When do people stand up and say "Hey, I am an adult. I make my own decisions and accept the consequences of my behavior". As far as this costing us more in health administration, that is BS. Imagine how much healthcare would cost if every adult lived to be 100 or older? Normal degeneration of the body would more than make up for any money saved by by Big Brother" passing laws about how we should live.

Where so we draw the line?

This is what you can expect with government run healthcare. You will have some idiot liberal telling you what and how much to eat. Who you can marry or have sex with. Mandatory abortion and government mandated lifestyle choices. Personally, I want the goverment's hands off my body.

I have lived all over the world and have seen what governments can do. Any indvidual that would be willing to give the government this kind of control of thier life is a moron.