Daily Blog- Day 472: Is Obesity the Disease of Society?

The post Daily Blog- Day 472: Is Obesity the Disease of Society? appeared first on Healthy Living Revelations.

I am sure that everyone has heard the horrible news about Robin Williams. It is thought that it was due to suicide. That is why I became increasingly interested when I saw this article that said he did not die from suicide. (Click here for article). Rather than he died from depression. I thought about this a little bit more, and even though both technically are right, when it comes to society, we would be more likely to say that someone died from cancer even though they died from an organ not working anymore or something being blocked. We still would say they died from cancer. The same should go for depression.

This being said, I decided to evaluate this more in other very common diseases. One of the most obvious in this day and age (especially for Americans) is obesity. Even though obesity and depression are two different things, they share one common bond… both are increasing in society. It is estimated that by 2020, depression will be the second most common illness in the world (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/opinion/a-great-depression.html?_r=0). Plus, over 1/3rd of Americans are already obese even though very few used to be not that many years ago. (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html)

We are all aware of these facts, but it’s not often we step back and look at the bigger picture of mental illnesses. Not only has our food drastically changed, but society has changed as well. Images like this are quite common and stick with us.

A picture such as this one tells us that it is okay and normal to supersize meals. Plus, the food itself contains very addictive ingredients that are put in to MAKE us want to come back for more. In the moment, we feel happy and we remember that. The more that we engage in this act, the more it becomes a habit. It becomes a conditioned response to feel happiness after having any type of processed food with those chemicals.

Society has also made the mistake in which we feel we always need to be working. It has become normal to work 12-16 hour days. Yes, you may only be at the office for 8 of those, but the fault of always being connected almost naturally has some of us working more. We feel immense pressure to be the best and work up the ladder. It’s one thing to have goals, but another thing to try to force a dream that society may have impressed in you. Along with this, constant work and stress keeps us from our families. Divorce rates have also increased in the past years. This adds added stress and hardship, which can lead to depression. Divorce does happen, unfortunately, but there are definitely a number of relationships that fail due to stress… The stress society may have helped to create.

This stress can also lead to obesity. When we feel stressed, we go back to those chemically processed foods that we know made us feel happy before. If we’re constantly stressed, we’ll constantly look for that outlet to happiness. Those few moments are enough to make us continuously go back to those same foods so we have something to look forward to during our day. This again creates a habit, which an be unbelievably difficult to break.

So what is the answer to all of this? The answer is that we need to step back from society and learn to relax and find happiness on our own. We need to find hobbies again to make ourselves happy. We need to find new outlets outside of these chemically laden foods. We need to learn to spend time with our friends and family again. More often than not, people will say no to friends because they have to work or they want to stay up working. Why can’t we say no to work every once in awhile to spend time with friends and family? No, I’m not saying everyday, but if you have vacation time, you should take that not just for your sick days, which also may be due to too much stress.

Just something to think about. There is always a greater meaning to what we’re going through. We can’t blame it all on society, but it’s important to see the flaws so we can be aware of why we’re acting a certain way.

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