"Healthy Choices, Abundant Life: Honoring God Through Faithful Stewardship"

In this insightful episode of Soaring In Health & Wellness, Dr. Steve Wells welcomes family physician Dr. Stephan Hanna to discuss how our daily lifestyle choices profoundly influence not only how long we live, but how well we live. While advances in medicine, sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics have dramatically increased life expectancy over the past century, the greatest health threats today are no longer infectious diseases but preventable chronic illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, and chronic respiratory disease. Dr. Hanna explains that many of these conditions are closely tied to the choices we make each day regarding nutrition, physical activity, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, sleep, and weight management.

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Wells and Dr. Hanna encourage listeners not to feel condemned but empowered. They emphasize that even small, consistent lifestyle changes can significantly improve health, reduce disease risk, and increase healthy life expectancy. Particular attention is given to West Virginia's growing obesity epidemic and its impact on future generations, reminding us that true wellness involves caring for the whole person—body, mind, and spirit. As believers, we are called to be faithful stewards of the bodies God has entrusted to us, trusting Him for strength as we pursue healthier habits that allow us to live with greater purpose, vitality, and hope.

Key Takeaways

•  Advances in public health and medicine have increased life expectancy, but chronic diseases are now the leading causes of death. 
•  Lifestyle choices—including nutrition, exercise, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, sleep, and weight management—have a tremendous impact on long-term health. 
•  Obesity significantly increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, and other chronic illnesses. 
•  Healthy habits established in childhood often determine health outcomes later in life. 
•  Even modest improvements, such as losing a small percentage of body weight or quitting smoking, can produce meaningful health benefits. 
•  True wellness requires a balanced approach that includes physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, and social well-being. 
•  Prevention is far more effective than treating disease after it develops. 
•  God has entrusted us with our bodies, and honoring Him through healthy lifestyle choices enables us to serve Him and others more effectively.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and thank you for listening to Storing in Health and Wellness with Dr. Steve Wells. Dr. Wells is a chiropractic physician with a passion to help individuals reach new levels in health and wellness. He's been involved in the health and wellness field for over 30 years. Dr. Wells received his Bachelor of Science degree from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with an emphasis in health and exercise science. He received his second Bachelor of Science degree in general sciences, along with his Doctor of Chiropractic degree with honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. Soaring in health and wellness is a tool to help educate individuals reach new levels in health and wellness and a passion to live with a sense of purpose and vitality. Dr. Wells and his guests, ranging from doctors from all areas of health care, educators, nurses, personal trainers, counselors, and pastors, will discuss and inform you on how to improve all dimensions of wellness from a biblical worldview perspective with one goal in mind: seeing you soar towards optimal health and wellness. If you're ready, let's get started with today's program with your host, Dr. Steve Wells.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Today's guest is Dr. Stephen Hanna. He's a medical doctor, a family physician who has been practicing in Parkersburg, West Virginia for over 30 years. He was born and raised in West Virginia. Dr. Hannah attended Duke University where he received a degree in religion, as well as completed his pre-medical studies following his time at Duke University. Dr. Hannah went to Morgantown, West Virginia, where he received his medical degree from West Virginia University. And Dr. Hannah is a member of the Christian Medical Society. So welcome, Dr. Hannah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Thank you, Steve. It's really good to be here. I really admire you and congratulate you for doing this health series. Told my family that they could listen if they want to, but they've heard me speak enough and use them in stories that they probably don't want to. But I've I've got three children that spent talk occupies most of my time. I have a daughter who's in college, actually with your uh daughter, and she's pre-medical and on her way to medical school eventually. And then I've got a 16-year-old son who's a band nerd, and I've got a 12-year-old son who's a scout, who uh we just spent a long week in the heat and the uh and and the rain at uh scout camp, but all those were good experiences, and blessed to have a wife who uh loves me despite all that.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I tell you what, the the award that Lauren got, uh who's attending Marshall, can you explain a little bit of that award?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, that was a really exciting thing. We're all of course the big WVU fans, as you are, and when and she was looking forward to that. But Marshall has what's called a combined BSMD program where they have an accelerated program where the award that she applied for and and one with uh nine other students in the state requires her to go to three years of undergraduate, and then you're directly accepted into Marshall University with some scholarships available with that. So she'll go right into Marshall Medical School. And so I'm really thrilled and pleased, although my partners have tried to talk her out into going into medicine these days.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Wow, I tell you, so congratulations to your daughter, Lauren. I tell you, she's a great great kids, great family. And uh again, thank you for helping me uh put this on. It like I said, it wouldn't be possible without our guests that we have. And our today's topic, pretty much the the outline of today's topic is pretty much could be lifestyle choices and their immediate effects as well as our long-term effects on life expectancy. Uh, we'll discuss maybe some action steps that we can do to help increase our healthy life expectancy, and we'll explain the difference between healthy life expectancy and total life expectancy, and hopefully that you all will receive. And again, this this podcast is not to put any type of condemnation, but it's to bring more of an awareness, education, and things that we may be able to do to help improve our health. And we do this out of love and so forth. But as far as I was reading uh Health the Basics by Rebecca Donatelli, and she makes a note here individual behaviors of lifestyle choices can help you attain, which is succeed, maintain, or regain good health, or they can deteriorate your health and promote disease. And as far as that with Dr. Huber in his book, Essentials of Physical Activity, you know, if we look at where we were, and you remember the stories back in the day when we used to hear mom and they say, you know, I used to walk to school in six feet of snow and and you know, and all that so forth. But as far as if we can kind of elaborate where we were back in the 1900s and where we are today as disease goes and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Right. And I think uh you, as I did, I I grew up the grandchildren of a farming family, and my my grandparents had a farm of 160 acres, which I was able to move to uh when I moved here 30 years ago, but they had 11 kids and they raised their food. They worked very, very hard and have great stories and great memories of visiting them. But you know, back then 70 percent of the American population lived in the country and was physically active in food production, and the food they ate was not processed or refined, it was grown and picked by them. Whereas today, as Dr. Huber mentions, 95 of our per percent of our population lives in cities and has work-saving devices and lawnmowers, and we just don't get the kind of physical activity nor the kind of diet that uh we had at the turn of the 10th century.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

I tell you, that is so true. And I you know, when when when I was reading his book and so forth, you know, he did make a note as far as from the birth of Christ to the year 1900, life expectancy had only advanced only 20 years. And so the average life went from 25 years old to 47 years old. And I just thought that was wow, I that was just kind of blew my mind. And then you can see where in 1980 life expectancy pretty much nearly doubled. In 1900, life expectancy was 47.3 years old. In 1980, it went to 73.7 years old, and now in 2014, it's 78.8 years old. Can you kind of discuss as far as what you kind of feel as far as what has led to the increase in life expectancy and where we may be as a nation as far as what's become the major concern as far as you know it can affect life expectancy?

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, sure. As most people know, and as you mentioned, a lot of our health longevity and our life expectancy was related to public health measures such as water purification and storage. And one of my friends just returned from mission in a third world country, and when your water treatment plant and your storage are the main street of town, you're not going to live very long with that kind of an environment. And so our life expectancy was due to water purification and storage for and then to the development of vaccines and antibiotics to fight infections, and so that's been a tremendous boon to us. I saw a Civil War reenactment a month ago out of Henderson Hall, and I was thinking about these Civil War soldiers being shot and then kidnapped. And when you look at the almost 600,000 plus soldiers who died during the Civil War, more than half of them died of disease and malnourishment and infectious disease. And so when you think of all these new armies coming together, they had no idea, no experience that they would be fraught, not just in the prisoner of war camps, but in the armies getting together that measles and tuberculosis and malaria and dysentery and typhus wiped out, you know, whole units at that time, even before they got to the battle. And so that was sort of the dawn of medical institutions where we realized hand washing, like our mother said, really did have a lot to do with infection and the spread of disease. And then came antibiotics. But that's it's been a really change since that development in the late 1800s or the 1900s as far as life expectancy.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

So in your office, as far as you know, back in like I said, even though we're having that expectancy has increased, it seems like poor health is becoming the more dominant factor as far as based on what Katie Koshnik said as far as national vital statistics. As far as the life expectancy can be 78, almost 80 years old, but as far as 69 years old would actually be healthy life, and the last 10 years of our life so forth will be more as far as disability issues. Are you seeing that type in your practice as a physician?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yes, and and and what we've seen obviously now that people are not dying of infections like they are the you know, influenza and pneumonia used to be a chief killer of people, and now with the advent of vaccines and antibiotics, people are living longer, and so the lifestyle choices we make are even more germane to our how long we're going to live. So the diseases of cardiac disease and diseases of inflammation and diseases of chronic respiratory disease all catch up with us. I did want to add one caveat. I think that the development of vaccines, it's sort of a has become a controversial thing. I remember talking to one of my mentors here, Dr. Robert Crooks, who I know a lot of listeners probably remember as a great pediatrician father figure in the area, and he was alive not too long ago when he remembered taking care of children who had pneumonia and had to be placed in an iron lug and lung. And he remembers people dying of measles. And and I remember when I first started out, I did a lot of pediatrics, and I would do uh probably a lumbar puncture or spinal tap on a young child at least once a month. And in 1987, when the Haemophilus bacteria vaccine came out, it was dramatic because within a year, 99% of meningitis due to that bacteria was gone. And I went to a medical convention and there were 200 doctors there, and the speaker said, How many of you have seen a case of meningitis caused by homophilus bacteria in the last year, and no one raised their hands? And to think that just during that 25-year period, we've wiped out meningitis due to homophilus bacteria is a great thing. And I I saw a patient this week who asked me about his child that I'm not taking care of, but 18 months old and has not had any vaccines, and the dad was struggling with that. And I think that as lifestyle choices that we make for ourselves and also for our kids, to have them vaccinated is a really powerful thing that we should continue to be mindful of how miraculous it was and how much that has contributed to our longevity.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

I'd say as far as with cochinick and so forth, the national statistics reports, we had talked again as far as the life expectancy increasing dramatically, where it's premature deaths from infectious diseases actually has decreased. And as far as what they're finding, you know, as far as research goes, is that the cause of death has shifted to chronic diseases, such as Dr. Hanna has mentioned, as far as heart disease, cancer, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. And that would include your COPD, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, your emphysema, your chronic bronchitis, and so forth. Now the chronic diseases is basically the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. And that's where pretty much they're responsible for seven out of ten deaths is related to chronic diseases. And that that just kind of just kind of blows my mind because if you look at with what Dr. Fitz Huber has mentioned in his book, the chronic degenerative diseases are primarily, he says, is a disease of lifestyle. You know, lifestyle choices, lifestyle behaviors. And he kind of explains as far as the degenerative d's, you know, often begin undetected early in life as and progressively cause deterioration health as we grow older. So there's a lot of times there could be things going on that we are not aware about that's actually affecting our health. He notes 40 to 50 percent of all heart attack victims die before they reach the hospital after the first heart attack. And that basically is sometimes the first symptoms of these is also the last. And then he also makes a note also in regards to coronary artery disease, as far as being occluded, that 70 to 90 percent with atherosclerosis buildup of the phyto deposits are there before any noticeable symptoms actually appear.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

That's right. And we're seeing more and more of that, that the lifestyle choices we make, or more importantly don't make, lead to diseases. And we see that all the time in the offices, I'm sure you do, that people who smoke cigarettes end up with premature cancer, premature heart disease, and especially lower respiratory diseases. And it's it's hard. Sometimes we talk, and I know you have a very good interest in wellness and what we can do to augment people's health and their lifestyles, but a lot of the times I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall because trying to get someone to quit smoking, which would seem an obvious benefit, is very, very hard. Trying to get someone to quit drinking excessively with their problems with alcohol, and trying to get someone to get up off the couch and move. Those are very simple lifestyle decisions, but very difficult to put into effect for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Well, that's true. I'd tell you what it in my office like that, you know, Dr. Hayna, being a family practitioner, medical doctor type two, he sees a lot of these chronic degenerative diseases, and that's where I kind of refer to him. But as far as what comes in my office, is basically a lot of people complaining of lower back pain. Lower back pain is probably the number one cause uh for patients to enter my office. And a lot of times, if if you were to do the research and I was to do a statistic analysis, it's just to see how many of those people are having lower back pain is related to their obesity. You know, and so if we can control, and and like you said, you try you beat your head against the door, I beat my head against the door constantly, constantly, like, oh please, you know, and you know, I'm always on the you know, my wife and I basically have two two thoughts, two different thoughts. I go more on preventive, and she's more of a reactant. I don't know if you're and your wife are like that as far as raising your kids. I'm like, if I can prevent my kid from hurting himself, that's much easier than reacting after he falls and hurts himself. So I always try to uh provoke preventive uh activities and so forth. As far as the of course, as Dr. Hanan mentioned, some of the things that we can kind of control as far as that maybe help with the degenerative changes or chronic diseases, is like you said, lack of physical activity. Physical inactivity and overweight obesity are responsible for nearly one in ten deaths in the United States adults. He talked about poor nutrition, such as high dietary salt, low dietary omega-3 acids, high dietary trans fatty acids, you know, also are the dietary risk with largest mortality, death effects is our diet. We look at the excessive alcohol consumption, causes 80,000 deaths in adults annually through cardiovascular disease, other medical conditions, as well as accidents and violence. And then again, there's smoking, tobacco use, basically causing response for one in five deaths in American adults. So if we can kind of control that and also increase our fruits and vegetables, you know, up to I know when we first started with the fruits and vegetables, it was three to five servings. You know, that's increased since then. I think it's seven to nine servings of raw fruits and vegetables that the American Heart Association or American Caring Society recommends. But I tell you what, we're gonna go ahead and take a break and we're gonna thank our sponsors.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

For more details on the web at freedomgatechurch.com. Soring in Health and Wellness is also brought to you by Mount Lourences, located at 2108 Clinton Avenue, Sweet Deal, Parkersburg, West Virginia. For more information, go to www.mountloorcairo.com. If you'd like to be a sponsor or help support Soring in Health and Wellness Podcasts, please go to www.patreon.com forward slash soaring health and wellness or www.eaglesway ministries.org.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Welcome back. Our guest today is Dr. Stephen Hanna from Parkersburg, West Virginia. He's a family medical practitioner for the past 30 years. And where we left off is basically talking about the determinants that we can make as far as that affect our lifestyle, as far as the lack of physical activity, poor nutrition, excessive alcohol consumption, and tobacco use. But there's other some determinants that you can look at as far as that could affect that as well. And that's use of vitamins, supplements, caffeine, over-the-counter medication, illegal drugs, sexual behaviors, and also sleep habits, recycling, hand wash, which we took the uh discussed earlier. So we're gonna go ahead and pick up with Dr. Hannah. And Dr. Hannah, do you have any more that you'd like to input as far as some of those determinants?

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Well, yes, I think one of the things that we're trying to do today is encourage people because a lot of this information is not new, and I found, as you probably have, that the voice that a person hears may or may not impact them at that particular time. And so hopefully something we'll say will help someone make a decision to improve their health. I like to use the example of one of my delightful little patients who I really talked to for 10 years about stopping smoking. That was our main thing. Every time she had fairly bad emphysema, she would come in. I said, You know, you'd be better if you stopped smoking. And she eventually got mad at me, as did her family, that I wasn't helping her with her breathing problems. And so I said, Well, let me send you to a lung doctor and we'll see what they say. And she came back a month later and she goes, You know what? I stopped smoking because he told me cigarettes were bad for me. And so sometimes we just need to hear it from a different perspective. And I hopefully some of the things we say today, as you and I were talking before the break, West Virginia now has unfortunately gained the number one state in the country as far as obesity. And we are number one as far as obesity in the United States. We passed Alabama and Mississippi over the last few years, and we've gone from 1990 when we had 13% of our population was obese, now to 2016-2017, where almost 37% of people, and some would say more, in West Virginia are obese. And of course, then that leads us because of that lifestyle choice and the development to us being number one in hypertension in the country and number one in diabetes in the country. And those are statistics and things that are are real world that really scare me, and I know you too as a health professional.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

I tell you what, that is that's a true, and I tell you that that's that's one of the reasons as far as that, you know, the Lord kind of put this on my heart as far as, you know, what can we do to help, you know, reverse this trend, this epidemic, as far as health and wellness. And you know, I'm from West Virginia, you're from West Virginia. West Virginia is a great state to live. There's a lot of activity, things you can do. It's a beautiful state, but we're always seen to be on the wrong end of pretty much the health curve, so forth. We're always seen to be the first as far as when it comes to obesity, things like that. And in fact, you know, you mentioned the statistics as far as where we're at now, but as far as back in 1990, and remember we first discussed 1900s as far as the life expectancy, but you can see where the trend for 1990, when we were basically doing these analysis as far as, and you can actually go to the internet and pull up stateofobesity.org, and you'll get these statistics as well. But in 1990, we were at 13.7 percent. We were ranked fourth in the United States. Then 1995, it went to 17.7 percent, and 2000, five years later, it would jump to 23.9 percent, 2003, 27 percent, and now 2016, 37.7 percent. And we're in 2018. And you know, we were talking earlier when you first came in, it's like that as far as I would probably subject that the obesity right now is 40 percent. So basically four out of ten adults are obese. And like uh Dr. Hannett said and so forth, with that obesity, the increase in obesity, the World Health Organization estimates that two billion adults worldwide are overweight or obese. And against along with the increase in obesity, come increase, like you said, diabetes, chronic liver disease, heart disease, stroke, other chronic diseases that are leading causes of death. And you know, I was kind of you mentioned that the point as far as diabetes, and this is an article that was brought out as far as from healthy communities, healthy future.org. So again, if you go to www.healthy communities, healthy future.org, you'll see that where they had made a comment as far as if we do not reverse the obesity epidemic, our children are in danger of becoming the first generation of Americans living sicker and dying younger than their parents' generation.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

That's right. And it's very scary statistic. I was at a diabetic pediatric conference at Akron City Hospital, Akron Children's Hospital, a year or two ago. And of course, they had the statistics for obesity and diabetes in the Ohio area. And if you look at the three counties in Ohio that are adjacent to Parkersburg area, including the one we are now, they estimated that 35% of all third graders in those counties were already obese. And so what we've come to call the dia obesity epidemic, the obesity leading to diabetic, we're seeing that in in children now. And we're used to be the only childhood diabetics we saw were the type 1s, the ones who ran out of insulin. And now type 2 diabetes in children is actually much more common now. Uh and like everything else, I think, Steve, it's multifactorial. You know, in West Virginia, the poverty creates a lot of problems as far as buying healthy food, the lack of inactivity, the unemployments, the fact that the poverty means we don't take the time or to have the money to buy the foods we need. It's it's a very complex problem. And I know you quoted some really good sources. One of the ones I like is the Robert Woods Foundation that's been looking at obesity both in West Virginia and nationally, and they have reflection on the same statistics that we basically are have become couch potatoes, and the increased carbohydrate intake that we have and the fast food we Have has all contributed to obesity. So hopefully we can uh touch on some of those ways we can change that around and encourage people to change their lifestyles and then their grandchildren and their children's.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

I tell you, you know, you mentioned that as far as uh on our previous podcast with Dr. Huber, uh, we are talking about the nine dimensions of wellness, and and every part of that dimension of wellness interrelates or reacts to everyone. For example, like you talked about financial, you know, financial health. You know, if you don't have the money to buy good, healthy food, sure, it's gonna affect other issues and so forth. So everything that interrelates, everything that interacts and so forth. So what what we're trying to do is basically increase someone's level of health and wellness more towards optimal health and wellness, where there's a balance of all the dimensions of wellness, not only physically, but also emotionally, spiritually, financially, occupational, and so forth. So, and we had talked last time with Dr. Huber as far as these sedentary environmental SEDs. Have you are you remembered SEDS? Yes, the the the couch potato, as you called it, and so forth, and the epidemic that it's causing on children. Whereas children today are like you said, it's not type one, there it's actually type two, and that's that's more for an adult, but now we're seeing it in children, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

That's right, absolutely. And now have kids come in and they'll have the stigmata of physical signs that may indicate obesity. And the other thing we're seeing a lot, you know, you talk about obesity leading to other diseases such as cardiac disease. For a long time, we wondered why men in particular would die of a heart attack in their sleep, because you really don't think about that being a strenuous activity, at least it's not for me. And I spend a lot more time there than I used to. But what we found out is that people who have sleep apnea have increased hypertension. And what happens, and here again, obesity is a big contributing factor to this, is that when you have sleep apnea and you have some obstruction of the airflow into your lungs, your oxygen level decreases through the night. So at 4 or 5 a.m. in the morning, your oxygen level actually gets low enough to cause a cardiac irritation and arrhythmia. And so people, because of their obesity and other causes for sleep apnea, have a heart attack and sometimes die in their sleep because of that. So one of the things that obesity needs to be treated for an association is make sure that if if your spouse is snoring or gasping, that sleep apnea is something that can be treated even before we lose our weight. I tell you what, Dr.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Hanny, it it's something that you mentioned it because I really wasn't it didn't seem like it was that noticeable 30 years ago or 20 years ago. But I have patients coming in like that that are getting sleep tests. It seems like it's more common as far as sleep apnea, you know, they're sleeping with the mask and so forth. Are you finding that in your practice as well as far as absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

And I order sleep studies on a lot of people, and now with the increased technology, we have the opportunity to both do sleep studies in the hospital, and there are also home sleep studies which are a little more affordable and give us good information too. But the study of sleep science and as it uh how it affects our health has come a long way in the last 15 years, and so uh it's a great thing both for kids and also for adults to look into that behavior.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

I'd say, you know, we've been talking a lot about uh the obesity, but as far as some other lifestyle choices that seem to be can key contributors to uh the death among Americans, and uh it's it's pretty much the uh national vital statistics of with Katie Kochinek. And he basically the top two of the eight as far as key contributors to death is tobacco, accounting for estimated 480,000 deaths per year, which basically equals 18.3% total deaths per year. And then we talk, of course, we've been we've been pretty much talking about diet activity patterns, obesity, accounting for an estimated 400,000 deaths per year, equaling 15.2. So you can see as far as the top eight or the top two of the eight, basically is contributing to almost you know, 35, almost 40 percent of the total deaths as far as tobacco and also obesity. But then you come down to a third community factor is also the alcohol consumption, and that represents ninety thousand numbers of deaths per year, equaling three point four percent. So you can see the major drop-off uh as far as diet activity, obesity representing fifteen point two percent, and then the next third would be alcohol consumption, three point four total deaths. So those three lifestyle choices, you know, again tobacco, obesity, diet inactivity, alcohol consumption are basically represent the top three. So if you were to take care of those, that would kind of help with life expectancy, what you would figure.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Right. And the other nice thing about that is it's those are lifestyle changes we can make, and all of us want to be more independent, and we don't want to be dependent upon the government or our doctor or someone to have to fix our life, and and we have the ability to do that ourselves, and even small changes, even a five percent change in someone's weight, it significantly alters the other health diseases we're talking about. Now, tobacco, I always encourage my patients to cut down because I do think a half a pack a day is better than two packs a day, but I always get the response when someone I say, Are you still smoking? They go, Yes, but I've really cut it down to a half pack a day. And I say, that's just like saying I'm just a little bit pregnant. And so, you know, things that come our way as far as tobacco, that's one thing that we really need to say. Look, your health care changes, your body changes, improves. As soon as you stop smoking, I mean you see almost immediate benefit.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

I tell you, you know, I'd I'd like to hear a couple of your some of your patients' stories. We'll will we'll protect we're protecting their identity, you know. As far as but when I was looking basically at an article and trends in obesity among adults, I find it really interesting as far as they he he makes Fleagal's article basically talks about medical interventions for these conditions have improved over time, lessening the impact of obesity to date. And some of those interventions would be what would you think would be the interventions as far as uh gastric bypasses, sure, and things like that to help with the obesity epidemic?

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Right. And I think you know, when I look at medical interventions over the last 30 years, and I'm not advertising for them, but something like Weight Watchers, I think, has been good because it it gives us three things that I think are very important in treating obesity. One is accountability, you need someone else. Two is that by contributing money, it makes you dedicated to do it. And three, I think it does give you a good lifestyle. But you know, one thing I want to avoid doing is being judgmental of people who are obese, because I'm overweight, I need 20 pounds off, and a lot of times people go people who are obese feel bad enough about themselves anyway. And I remember a story about a retired surgeon in town who was a patient of mine, and I said, Look, if you don't lose some weight, you're gonna get into even worse trouble than you are. And he said, Steve, there's only three things in my life I've enjoyed doing. He said, One was raising children and they're all gone. Two was having relationships with my wife, and I'm too old to do that now. So all I have left to do is eat. And so we talked about that at at length. That's it's a tough issue, and we love to eat. I eat when I'm happy, I eat when I'm stressed, and I I love eating as most people do, and it does give us an increase in our dopamine neurochemical transmitters. So there is a pleasurable activity to eating that we enjoy, and so we when you get in the psychological component of eating, we s tend to self-medicate ourselves with food a lot.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

I tell you what, you know, that is so true. And again, we all there's all room for improvement. I can improve. In fact, you know, what really kind of got me involved like that is I was actually uh my lifestyle pretty much was sedentary because I'd either be watching my kids play sports, you know, on the bleachers, or I'd be sitting at my desk in my office. And I I mentioned this last week in the podcast. But my wife, she for some reason, she'd she she always thinks she needs to buy things that are on sale. Okay, and that would be like the peanut NMMs, that would be like the candy, that'd be like the chips, that'd be like, you know, the pop. I'm I'm I'm looking into myself and I ask her, I said, why are you buying this? What's on sale? You know, you get two bags for one. I'm thinking, you know, you would save so much money if you want to buy it complete because you know who eats it is I'm sitting there eating it, and it's just not just not healthy. So anyway, so this this podcast is is great information for me and so forth. But as far as the in the same articles like that, they say medical treatments may be reaching their limits in preventing early deaths related to obesity. People are like we talked about before with Dr. Hanett, people are becoming obese at earlier ages, exposing them to the adverse effects of excess body fat over a longer period of time. And the magnitude of the obesity epidemic has brought predictions that an overall decline in life expectancy will take place in the US by the mid-21st century. And again, you know, obesity and poor eating habits can lead to pretty much all the major chronic diseases, as we talked about, as far as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah. And it's and we're seeing that. And there's a lot of studies that show that kids who are in kindergarten and who are in elementary school and in junior high who become obese at those ages carry the obesity into adulthood where it makes it a lot harder to do. One other thing in obesity that that we like to keep eating, particularly if there's different foods, and so one thing I advise my patients is to try to avoid buffets. There's a story about one of the restaurants that opened here in Parkersburg that had a buffet, and in the first week, Parkersburg set a national record for the amount of consumption and visits to that buffet for that chain. And so I I think you know, there's a feedback mechanism we have when we eat. If we only have three foods available to us, our mind gets tired of it. But if we have 50 foods available to us, we can just keep going, and we have this thing where I'm going to get my money's worth. So small portions, one serving back to the buffet, and uh are some of the simple things we can do.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

You know, I tell you what, again, as we we're talking about lifestyle choices here, is you know, Roth's Roth and Ensel define lifestyle choices basically as a conscious behavior that can increase or decrease a person's risk of disease or injury. And again, we've been talking about some of those choices being smoking, exercising, eating a healthy diet. But with Dr. Fritz Schubert, he had noted in his books like that that 83% of deaths before age 65 could have been prevented with a healthy lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah, it's an amazing statistic, it really is.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

You know, and then also in that same article like that, he says studies at the University of Tennessee and at the Massachusetts General Hospital revealed that lifestyle was a major contributing factor in more than 78% of the hospital admissions. You know, and I tell you what, as far as you know, before we go into making health choices for immediate results, uh we're gonna go ahead and take a break and thank our sponsors.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Thank you for listening to Sorian Health and Wellness with Dr. Steve Wells and his guests. We would like to thank our sponsor, Mountaineer Chiropractic. For more information, go online to MountaineerCairo.com. If you'd like to be a sponsor or help support Storyan Health and Wellness Podcast, please go to the web at Eaglesway Ministries.org and select the patron page in the top menu bar. If you or your business or church would like Dr. Steve Wells to speak at your church special event or conference, please go online to Eaglesways Ministries.org and select contact from the menu bar or send an email to Eaglesway Ministries at gmail.com or call 304-485-6589. Until next time, think of Isaiah chapter 40, verses 29 through 31. It gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.