Fat test? Fat chance!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009 The Telegraph reports that "Everyone aged between 40 and 74 will be called in to their GP for a 'fat test' and prescribed weight management and exercise if they are overweight, under a new government drive against obesity". I can't wait.
Seriously, if I get called in for a 'fat test' I won't be responsible for my actions. I may (out of curiosity) pop along so I can find out just how intrusive the nanny state has become.
It would also give me the opportunity to tell my GP that it is no business of government what I weigh or how much I exercise.
The most important factor is choice. As long as it's not compulsory I don't have a problem with 'fat tests' or health education (as long as it doesn't involve unnecessary scare-mongering).
But we all know how government works. If voluntary codes don't produce the "correct" result, the next step is legislation - and coercion.
What will happen, I wonder, if I refuse a 'fat test'. Will I barred from using the NHS?
Full report HERE.
Reader Comments (31)
Earlier this year I saw my GP for help in losing weight and was sent to sign up to the surgery's diet clinic. I duly saw the nurse who then proceeded to bash on about how the BHF have brought out this wonderful book on how to lose weight, was is good for you and what isn't.
Being a smoker, I immediately took umbridge at this as I told the nurse, considering the BHF spout a load of lies and junk science with regards to smoking and SHS, why should I have any faith or confidence in them when it comes to losing weight?
Anyway, I agreed to take the bumf and have a read and she was going to contact me about another appointment. I know I said earlier this year, but actually it was the end of last year - I am still waiting for her to get back to me!
NHS? What do they know about people, their individual problems and why the hell should we trust a service that is happy to lie through its teeth to us about things it does not approve of?
I saw my doctor for a routine blood test about 4 years ago.
I walked into her surgery and she said to me "You're getting a little chunky".
I looked her up and down and said, "You're not exactly anorexic yourself".
"Touche", she said.
My weight hasn't been mentioned since.
It would also give me the opportunity to tell my GP that it is no business of government what I weigh or how much I exercise.
I've been thinking of writing to my GP to tell her pretty much exactly this. I haven't been to see her for 2 years. I haven't needed to. I'll decide for myself what I think I'm well or not, thank you very much.
The only reason I haven't is because she isn't actually at all pushy about 'lifestyle' health issues.
It's not hard to see where it will end. People will simply stop going to their doctors on a routine basis. They will cease to see their GPs as friends, but as a petty tyrants. And so the whole 'healthist' programme will result in worse health all round.
And all of these 'health' programmes are based on pseudoscience. There is no science of alcohol and obesity or keeping fit. Nor even of smoking. It's all bilge from start to finish. It's a profound shame that the medical profession has become re-infected with this sort of Nazi eugenic thinking. It needs to be reformed and de-nazified. And that reform should start at the top, with Nazi doctors like Sir Liam Donaldson being fired. And struck off..
Brillianty put, Idlex
I have a small confession to make. 6 years ago it crossed my mind to give up smoking and went to a doctor in Harley Street for a private consultation. I was hoping that he would be able to give me some current and medium term health reasons to give up my 20-30 a day habit.After being given a 15 minute lecture on my 50 units a week of alcohol we then moved onto heart and lungs. The heart rate monitor said 55 beats per minute and then we moved onto blood pressure. After taking it three times he asked me if I ever feel faint if I get up in a hurry. Funny you should say that I replied.
Two weeks later I went back for the results after he had all the blood test results back. liver good, BMI 24, lung function slightly reduced from smoking. He had asked me about what exercise I took, which was 3 visits to the gym a week, I was still playing football too. I ran 6 miles a week, rowed 3 miles a week and cycled 9 miles a day to and from work. The only warning he gave me was to be aware of my hypoxia, very low blood pressure which means I could black out after rest.
He gritted his teeth and said I was the fittest 43 year old he had examined, let alone a 30 a day smoker who drank 7 bottles of wine a week.
Just goes to show Dave, there are always exceptions to the rule, especially when the rules are based on lies and junk science!
When are they going to start picking on Ginger People ?
I'm STILL waiting for Jeremy Beadle to pop out of a UFO in Trafalgar Square and broadcast a nationwide 'Gotcha ! '
I mean, this IS all a Big Joke - isn't it ?
Well, isn't it................?
Sorry to burst your bubble Martin V, but I just do not believe this government and it's quangos have a sense of humour!
Until more people find themselves persecuted, it is unlikely that sufficient numbers will get together and protest or, better still, REVOLT!
Whenever I am asked if I smoke by health professionals I always answer that "I refuse to give any details about my life style habits on the grounds that I may be discriminated against. That means I am not going to tell you if I smoke, if I drink alcohol, or what I eat."
It generally gets the response "oh" and then I'm left alone but more importantly, the doctor has to look for other causes of my ailment other than lifestyle factors. They can assume I smoke but unless I tell them, they have to treat me fairly as someone who doesn't smoke.
If they make an issue of it, then I say that I am a pro-choice activist and my conscience won't allow me to give up this sort of information.
At a recent visit to my dentist, I was asked if I smoked and when I gave the answer above, the dentist was rather put out and said that smoking could be relevant to dental problems. I replied that so could the fact that I wasn't able to get an NHS dentist for five years! She had no answer to that one!
... and as a smoker, I believe that I am much healthier than many non-smokers who can't run as fast and who are not as physically fit.
While our health disservice is target driven expect to either have to cure yourself or seek private treatment. GP's are paid to meet targets - so many cholesterol tests, so many smear tests and mammograms, so many quit smoking councilling sessions etc, etc. It's a wonder they have time to actually address the complaints their patients visit them to get treated in the first place.
But using an old banker's term, I'm a lemon. Bankers used to categorise their customers in 'fruit' groups, cherries through to lemons. The lemons of course were their least profitable customers and so, as far as my local GP practice is concerned, I'm a lemon. I ignore all invitations to be prodded, poked,measured, x-rayed, weighed and otherwise categorised.
I imagine at some point it will become compulsory to submit one's body to the State's interference with a threat of being struck off the NHS register for non compliance. So be it. It may be unfashionable to not be terrified of being ill and not needing constant reassurance that some deadly disease isn't silently at work in some part of my body, but I feel well enough as I am.
Unnecessary health testing is another way of the Government keeping the population frightend and malleable. When we're constantly reminded how 'frail' we are, we are unable to be strong. They don't want us to be strong, they want us to be weak and frightened.
Well said Ali.
I have lost all faith in the medics. I saw a locum twice, and both times he was reaching for his prescription pad before I had sat down. On the first visit he told me I have Type 2 diabetes (I don't, and subsequent tests proved me right. The second time, he told me that I had a problem heart, and that I should cram down an array of pills. Again, subsequent tests revealed that I am as healthy as a bull), so I don't feel at all embarrassed to second guess their "diagnoses".
I shudder to think of all those people who place doctors on pedestals and (literally) swallow everything.
I'm a lemon too.
And proud of it.
What a pathetic lot you are. Can't you understand that you are FAT simply because you smoke too much? It is a proven fact that smokers have at least 40% less lung capacity than non smokers, which is why they do not move about as much as healthy non smokers, which in turn leads to all this weight gain.
Give up your smelly habit, and then you will be able to start moving about again and you will also smell better. As for going to your doctors and telling lies to them and thinking that you are being funny in doing so, you are not only harming yourselves you are also harming everyone else who has to visit their GP on REAL matters. By misleading your doctor they will not be able to correctly diagnose REAL patients who need and deserve treatment, not wastrels like yourselves
Next time one of you manages to even get to your doctor's surgery, they will be telling you more than you are getting chunky, they'll be telling how long you have left to live.
Aye, wifey.
Just like they must tell 96 year old Cyril Carter every week. He was "supposed" to die 20 years ago. How do you explain that?
And I'll take chunky over brain-dead anytime....
Miranda. Like your hubby you get your facts wrong. It is non-smokers who are fat and obese people die youngest. Obese people cannot move as fast as healthy smokers, which makes them fatter.
Miranda, on average a person who gives up smoking puts on 1.5 stones.
Miranda, I love you! I haven't laughed so much in ages, which is apparently very good for health, so keep the jokes coming!
Oh dear - does your husband know you're out, Mrs T.
Every so often I, a chubby smoker who takes alcohol as medicine and shudders at the sight of a gym, do something and shake my head in disbelief. Yesterday evening for example I was asked to take an orchestral rehearsal due to their regular baton swingers ill health. Now you have all seen what us conductors do. On my feet for two hours with a large amount of physical movememnt. So what made me shake my head in disbelief? The fact that I was not over heated and short of breath with palpitations, headache and light headedness - well, wasn't I supposed to be all of those things?
By the way, my next project is to video myself playing an excerpt from Hungarian Rhapsody on my trombone to add to my youtube portfolio.
I have noticed in genuinely nice, liberal, right thinking, middle class people who would not vote for Margaret Thatcher or her equivalent to save their lives, a surprisingly harsh attitude to the social group known as 'chavs'. It occurs to me that if these respectable, good citizens are encouraged to support interfering, discriminatory and bullying measures to control the 'undesirables', for reasons of their cost to the taxpayer, they will thereby unwittingly be licensing similar interventionist control of their own lives - and thoughts.
Margaret Thatcher used divide and rule politics which split the old working class into two groups. Some became "chavs" and their former neighbours became the lower middle class with a very superior attitiude of "I art better than thou".
Sadly the old working class is broken up and no more and gone with it is the old solidarity. What was that Thatcher said about society ....
Further to ali's comment, I've been reading recently that GP's are now being accused of over-medicalising the elderly especially wrt cholesterol and type two diabetes although whether this is due to the goalposts being changed, targets or kickbacks from pharma, I'm not sure.
I love Pat's response to intrusive questions!
Now, which GP is going to call Sir Liam in for his fat test and advise him that he's clinically obese....?
Yea Donaldson's a right "Tub", so is most of the cabinet what a cheek !
Spoken by a 5'6" 9st 48 year old healthy smoker.
Weird this winter everyone in my office got this cold that made them all cough for weeks, except two of us,"the smokers".
The last time I saw Sir Liam on television I thought he might have slimmed a bit. Perhaps he can't win really. One might see his choice of image as between that of the lean and hungry plotter Cassius or (elsewhere) the rumbustious Toby Belch. Perhaps the controversy is summed up in the latter's challenge to Malvolio, the pompous Puritan: 'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?'
Your right he has slimmed a bit .
But like most extreme slimmers he looks sort of saggy now.
Poor old "bird flu" Donaldson.
Uh oh... the anti-drink campaigns are failing!
http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?storycode=63407
Expect them to be intensified shortly.
The Publican article should be entitled "Everyone's an Expert Now". Here we have doctors and nurses being quoted that they believe that the solution is to up alcohol prices. Since when did they become sociologists and psychologists specialising in anti social behaviour? Since when did treating the consequences of binge drinking qualify someone to pontificate on its causes?
If they had enough police on the streets and applied existing laws for being drunk and disorderly etc, there wouldn't be a problem of the associated violence with binge drinking.
The government has created this problem themselves.
Going back to the flu thing.
I recall as a child contracting hong kong flu in 1968.
Fortunately I survived most partly due to the fact that the GP's is those days were "real doctors", who were allowed to make decisions.
The doctor was good and having examined my self and my elder brothers heart rate etc., decided that as their were no signs of respitory or pulmonary distress prescribed huge codine tablets I mean they were like 20mm dia (AND TASTED REALLY BAD "),and regular amounts of water .
We survived ,why ?
1.Because he knew we would through his "real" experience.
2.His earlier examination showed that the important organs in our bodies were not going to pack up .
3.He knew that if the horrible flu would have taken one of our lives that it would have been a hard fact of life.(well as a doctor i'm sure he was used to dead ,dying people anyway).
Another point ,at the age of 11 I practically dislocated my neck ,it was whilst playing british bulldog on the school field,(this was not by any means a sedate pastime undertaken by children at the time),(mostly boys but even in those days some of the girls were quite capable of holding their own),
Anyway to cut a long story short...
The cure was simple but effective.
Whilst the GP sat in front of the doctors chair chatting to me as a distraction the phisio whom I was introduced to briefly put his forearms under my jaw bone ,lifted me off the seat and rapidly moved the said forearms from left to right .
I recall hearing a cracking noise in my neck upon thereafter my neck straightened up and I was fine albeit a little stiff around the sides of my neck.
This is what I accuse our modern society of.
You have:
Created a society where large proportions have become brainwashed wimps.
The brainwashed wimps fear life because they believe every dumb bit of it.
They are afraid to walk anywhere in case they get mugged or abused or something.
They drive instead of walking ,(see above) not good for the ticker eh!
They work long hours, not good for the ticker eh!
They eat cheap conveniance food not good for the ticker eh (the reason is working too much to pay the mortgage-rent).
They bog out in front of the telly as a result and get fat (see previous comment about Liam previosly being, "FAT"),
You cause more stress by screwing and criminalising them for really petty (pardon mon francais) ,merde.
Try 34 in a 30 or oh my god the ultimate crime ,DROPPIN, A FAG END, YOUR KNICKED NE NAW! NE NAW! NE NAW!
Can we have real doctors and real coppers back please.
You know the ones who only lean on people who are really bad .
I have not had a cold for 5 years yet I smoke.
It's because I had a real rough and tumble childhood as it should be.
In medical terms that means I actually have a f*****g functioning immune system.
And I have a fit physiology.
Fat's in you brain not your body.
Ask Jackie, you can still be succsesfull and FAT.
Sorry untill the said authorities behave in a "rational manner" my comments won't either.
ps the lowest heart attack rate in the world belongs to a tribe of Inuits round the Aleutian islands.
Why ?
Because they live on sea food and exercise is part of their life.
Just one point I noticed that when they went on a Walruss hunt (some of the hunters were over 70 years old ),
They paused for a moment on the beach, AND LIT UP!
I do wish more people saw this.
Spin is not neccesarily the answer.
Forget the spin look at the problems rationally.
But then that would require guts and intelligence would it not?
.
Yes Helen, but instead of more police on the streets there will be higher taxes and a ‘scientific study’ on how sniffing the bouquet of a fine Chardonnay will raise your risk of nasal hair cancer.
Recently a womon in Ireland who tried to take out a redundancy insurance policy was loaded 100% because the health police deemed her overweight.
She eventually took it to the High Court and it was dropped.
This goes to show just how far the health nazis are prepared to go if they think they can get away with it.
Maybe ireland thought it was going to be another 'world leader' with this one too.
It is correct that doctors (in ireland anyway) are shelling out cholestral tablets like they're going out of style, as my doc told me 'half the country are on them'.
I read an article by an MD recently where he said that more than half the people who suffered a heart attack had normal to low cholestral levels and that public perception of cholestrol as the culprit were shaped by aggressive marketing from the anti cholestrol propaganda lobby in the food and drug industry that have nothing to do with scientific reality.
He also went on to say that several of his letters on the subject have not been published.
Does all this ring a familiar bell?
my friend has just got over a small heart attack. He dosnt smoke he is stick thin and he dosnt drink. Well one on the patients in his ward was told he needed to see a dietitician because he needed to lose wieght. When she arrived she was as big as a bus and bigger then the patient himself.I had to laugh. I will not change my life style to suit anyone its my life and if i die young because i smoke it my choice.I would rather have a short happy life rather then a long miserable one so they can stick their health check up thier arse. I donot think its up to any government to tell me how to live my life and the more they try the less i take notice of. I am not a five year old kid i am 57 years old. This government is the worse corrupt government i have ever experienced and they have just about upset everyone. Gordon brown is no anerexic and neither is his wife or the clowns that work for him.They are full of lies lies and more bloody lies. You only have to think of the weapons of mass destruction to figure that one out. None were found. If this government closed our borders instead of letting in every tom dick and harry we wouldnt have a problem with the health service costing us millions more. We would have enough school places enough social houses and enough bloody water to go round. Its because they have let to many people into this country and they are making us all pay for thier incompetence. What donaldson and his croniees should be saying to brown and his clowns is close the f..... door.