US 'medical tourists' seek cheap health care abroad

When Veronica Merrill decided to undergo stomach surgery for weight loss, she found two options: pay $12,000 at home in the United States, or have it done in Mexico for $4,000. 

She packed her suitcase.

Her insurance would only cover the operation if she was morbidly obese and suffering from diabetes and hypertension.

This was not the case for the 50-year-old, who weighs 210 pounds (95 kilos) but aspires to slim down to 160 -- precisely because she wants to avoid ending up with those medical conditions.

"It's sad that I have to come to another country" for the procedure, said Merrill, who drives a school bus in rural Arizona and is highly critical of the US health system -- the most expensive in the world.

"We shouldn't have to do that. That's crazy. And we're the only ones (with this system), and that is depressing."

After researching medical tourism options, she saved up the money and contacted a specialist agency to organize her trip over the border to Tijuana, where weight-loss operations and dental treatments are popular.

Others travel to the Mexican city for treatment of cardiovascular conditions or cancer, orthopedic work and fertility care, as well as to buy medications.

"If I only could have done it in the US... (but) I can't pay that much money," she told AFP. "I just want to be healthy."

No price regulation

Each year, an estimated 20 million "medical tourists" seek treatment around the world, according to Patients Beyond Borders. 

About 1.9 million of those people are Americans.

Mexico and Colombia -- which many Americans associate more with drug trafficking than health care -- are among the most popular destinations, along with Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

They all offer lower costs and high-quality infrastructure.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two prominent Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential election, have proposed universal health coverage -- an idea that Merrill considers "logical."

For now, Merrill turned to a company called Medical Tourism Corporation to organize every detail of her trip -- including her flight from Phoenix to San Diego, the driver who took her across the border and a luxury hotel.

Altogether, the tickets, hotel and surgery -- at the Oasis of Hope hospital, right by the border -- cost her $3,880. She paid in cash.

"We do the coordination... (we) have a destination manager in those cities who would help a patient with the language, the local logistics and things like that," said Deepak Datta, who founded Medical Tourism Corporation 13 years ago.

The company sends 60-70 people abroad each month to countries around the world, mainly Mexico.

"I operate on two or more foreigners every day," said surgeon Luis Cazares, who removed 80 percent of Merrill's stomach.

He said his greatest flow of patients is during the tax refund season in the United States, after April.

According to Gerald Kominski, a professor of health policy at UCLA in Los Angeles, the US does "little to regulate prices, in contrast to all other high-income nations."

"Medical tourism from a high-income nation like the US is indicative of a problem with affordability, as opposed to quality," he added.

Universal coverage

But even if "Medicare for All" were introduced as Sanders and Warren have urged, Americans likely would not stop seeking cheaper care abroad, says Medical Tourism Association CEO Jonathan Edelheit. 

After President Barack Obama's health care reforms in 2010, which required all adults to have insurance plans whether through work or the government, medical tourism by Americans expanded, he said.

Some employers whose medical costs "almost doubled since Obamacare was in place" sent staff abroad, he said, citing a company that saved $20 million in five years by sending employees for orthopedic and weight-loss operations outside the US.

Under universal care proposals, the US would likely end up with a system where, like in Canada and Europe, non-urgent procedures such as stomach operations require years on a waiting list.

"Wait times... will push people to go for medical tourism" to get treatment earlier, he predicted.

Indeed, many of the foreign patients at Oasis of Hope hospital are Canadian.

Europe is a sought-after destination for US medical tourists, though it does little to attract them, unlike emerging economies such as Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

The United States itself receives health tourists -- its highly advanced health care system appeals to patients with massive purchasing power from Arab and Asian countries.

But that is a luxury Merrill cannot afford. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Doctors issue warning on 'dad bod' trend

MANILA – “Dad bod” is not the way to go.

This was the statement made by some healthcare experts amid the “dad bod” trend among men over 25 who have noticeable bellies and still get to catch women’s interest.

According to healthcare experts, they are worried that the continuing fad might increase the number of obese males in the Philippines.

According to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), there are 20.9% of obese men in the country.

“Some men most probably rejoiced when they heard that women get attracted to men who are flabbier,” said Carmie de Leon, vice president for sales and marketing of Healthway Medical. “But this rings the bell for healthcare experts.”

De Leon said it is alarming “that different health conditions are already surfacing beyond what our eyes can see.”

Dr. Helen Dy-Eduvas of Healthway Medical, for her part, added that having a huge belly is not a sign of good health since “they become candidates for acquiring a heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and even cancer.”

“When your waistline gains girth, your abdominal fat breaks down easily into fatty acids that flow directly into the liver and into your muscles,” said Dy-Eduvas. “The most affected part will be your cardiovascular system. When this happens, men will risk themselves to acquire the deadliest disease in the country.”

De Leon said it is normal for men to desire to always be at their best “but confidence should not be dependent on what people think or say.”

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Obesity, heart disease linked to childhood bullying

Victims of childhood bullying are more likely to be overweight or obese as adults and have a higher risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses, according to a study by British psychiatrists.

Researchers found that just over a quarter of women who were occasionally or frequently bullied as children were obese at age 45, compared to 19 percent of those who had never been bullied.

And both men and women who were bullied as children had higher levels of fat around their middle -- a known risk factor for heart disease.

"Bullying is bad for your physical health, whether you're a man or a woman," said Andrea Danese, who worked on the study at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London.

Louise Arseneault, who led the research, said its findings should remind teachers, parents and carers to think about the victims, not just worry about how to stop the bullies.

Bullying is characterized by repeated hurtful actions by other children, against which the victims find it difficult to defend themselves, she told reporters. Unfortunately, bullying was "part of growing up for many children", she said.

"We tend to neglect the victims and their suffering," she added. "(Yet) for some children, they will be marked for the rest of their lives."

Arseneault's findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Psychological Medicine, come from the British National Child Development Study which has data on all children born in England, Scotland and Wales during one week in 1958.

It included 7,102 children whose parents gave information on their child's exposure to bullying at age 7 and 11. Some 28 percent had been bullied occasionally and 15 percent were bullied frequently. The children were then followed up at age 45, when measures of blood inflammation and obesity were recorded.

Besides obesity, the results showed that being bullied also led to higher levels of blood inflammation by the age 45.

Some 20 percent of those who were frequently bullied had high levels of a substance called C-reactive protein (CRP). High CRP raises heart disease risk by increasing atherosclerosis, where arteries get clogged up with fatty deposits.

Danese said the effects of childhood bullying on the risk of poor health in adulthood are relatively small compared to factors such as smoking, diet and exercise, but stressed that because obesity and bullying are both common, tackling them could have a significant health impact.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

PH, India lead nations with highest obesity levels

MANILA, Philippines - While the world is focusing on global hunger and malnutrition, another ugly “monster” has emerged.

Obesity, a new form of malnutrition, has surfaced as an urgent challenge affecting several countries.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Philippines and India are among the developing countries with high levels of obesity and under-nutrition.

Obesity as a form of malnutrition often coexists with under-nutrition and results from shifts from local and traditional diets to foods that are increasingly heavy in salt, sugar and fat or processed foods.

The shift to a steady diet of processed food is due to the increasing cost of nutritious and natural food, the FAO said.

The global prevalence of combined overweight and obesity has risen in all regions, increasing among adults from 24 percent to 34 percent between 1980 and 2008.

The FAO said the prevalence of obesity among children has increased even faster, doubling from six percent to 12 percent over the same period.

“Overweight can co-occur with underweight within the same household, and is on the rise in countries with a high level of under-nutrition,” the FAO added in the report.

A 2011 survey by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) showed that 22.3 percent of Filipino adults are overweight and 6.1 percent are obese.

The prevalence of overweight Filipinos is expected to increase significantly by 2015.

“If this trend continues, it is highly likely that more will suffer from high-risk diseases that could lead to death,” the FNRI report said.

The factors leading to obesity in developing countries like the Philippines are numerous.

One leading factor is increasing world and domestic food prices, forcing increased purchase of unhealthy processed food over healthy and staple but expensive food.

Price increases threaten food security for poor households. For example, the 2011 increase in the price of basic grains meant that, in many developing countries, the cost of a kilogram of wheat doubled from about $.15 to $.30, a critical difference for people who live on little more than a dollar a day.

Food represents a substantial portion of the expenditure of poor households in poor countries.

For countries in Asia and Africa, expenditure on food was generally over 50 percent in the early 2000s, prior to the 2007-2008 crisis. In the Philippines, expenditures on food amount to 63 percent of a person’s income.

Biggest risk

Obesity is the biggest risk factor for type 2 diabetes mellitus. It likewise aggravates hypertension and raises blood cholesterol levels, which are major predisposing factors to the development of heart attacks and strokes.

In overweight men, the occurrence of impotence and sterility is higher than average while in obese women, there is a higher than average incidence of menstrual disorders, infertility and complicated pregnancies.

In both sexes, obesity increases the risk for gallbladder stones.

Obesity is likewise associated with cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, ovary and gallbladder among women, and colon, rectum, prostate, pancreas and stomach among men.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Calling girls 'fat' may result in weight gain

NEW YORK - Young girls who have been called “too fat” are more likely to be obese as young adults, according to a new research letter.

The early stigma of being labeled that way may worsen the problem rather than encouraging girls to become healthier, but more research is needed to be sure, the study authors say.

“This study is one step closer to being able to draw that conclusion, but of course we can't definitively say that calling a girl "too fat" will make her obese,” said senior author A. Janet Tomiyama of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“This study recruited girls when they were age 10 and followed them over nine years, so we know it's more than just a one-time connection, which makes me believe that it's an important question to continue researching,” Tomiyama told Reuters Health in an email.

She and her coauthor examined data from an existing study that followed girls through their teen years. At age 10, the girls answered the question, “have any of these people told you that you were too fat: father, mother, brother, sister, best girlfriend, boy you like best, any other girl, any other boy, or teacher?”

Out of just over 2,000 girls, a total of 1,188 answered “yes” to any of the choices.

Those girls were more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight relative to height - in the obese range ten years later than girls who answered “no,” according to the results in JAMA Pediatrics.

“We know from considerable evidence that youth who feel stigmatized or shamed about their weight are vulnerable to a range of negative psychological and physical health consequences,” said Rebecca Puhl, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

“This study suggests that negative weight labels may contribute to these experiences and have a lasting and potentially damaging impact for girls,” said Puhl, who was not part of the study.

Girls who had been labeled “fat” were still at higher risk of obesity even when researchers accounted for their BMIs at age 10, household income, race and parental education level.

The effect seemed to be strongest when the labels came from family members, which increased the risk of obesity later by 60 percent, compared to 40 percent when the comments came from friends or teachers. But it’s not wise to make too much out of the difference between those numbers, since this was only an exploratory study, Tomiyama said.

She was not at all surprised that over half of girls had been labeled “fat.”

“The pressure to be thin in our society is intense, and other research shows that people label both themselves and others as 'overweight' even if their objective body mass index is in the 'normal weight' range,” she said.

Females are exposed to weight stigma more often, but the connection may be present for boys as well, she noted.

There are ways for parents to address weight and health issues with their children that don’t involve labeling, Tomiyama said.

“There's no need to say the ‘f’ word at all if you want to improve your child's health,” she said.

Parents could instead focus on the health of the family as a whole, said Angelina Sutin, who was not involved in the new study.

Sutin studies psychological wellbeing and health disparities at Florida State University College Of Medicine in Tallahassee.

“The best approach would be to start kids early on a path toward healthy living by eating healthy food and being physically active,” Sutin told Reuters Health in an email.

“This applies equally to parents as it does to kids – children model their parents’ behavior, so if kids see their parents making healthy choices, they are more likely to also make healthy choices,” she said.

Parents could identify activities the child enjoys and work on ways to do more of them, she added.

“I think the focus of the conversation needs to change,” Tomiyama said. “Right now, we have a laser focus on weight instead of health, but many studies show that weight is a really imprecise indicator of actual health.”

“Parents can talk to their child about adopting healthy behaviors without once mentioning weight,” she said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Children with psoriasis may also be obese

Children with the skin disease psoriasis are about twice as likely to be overweight or obese as children who don't have the disease, U.S. researchers said.

Lead author Dr. Amy Paller of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and pediatric dermatologist at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago said U.S. children with psoriasis have much higher odds than psoriatic children in other countries of being obese or overweight.

The study, published in the Archives of Dermatology, found U.S. children with psoriasis had four times the odds of being overweight or obese as healthy controls.

"Within this U.S. population, Hispanics and African-American children had significantly greater rates of being obese and overweight than whites and Asians," the study authors wrote in the study. "The odds ratio of being obese were particularly high for U.S. children with more severe psoriasis."

source: upi.com

Children with the skin disease psoriasis are about twice as likely to be overweight or obese as children who don't have the disease, U.S. researchers said.
Lead author Dr. Amy Paller of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and pediatric dermatologist at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago said U.S. children with psoriasis have much higher odds than psoriatic children in other countries of being obese or overweight.
The study, published in the Archives of Dermatology, found U.S. children with psoriasis had four times the odds of being overweight or obese as healthy controls.
"Within this U.S. population, Hispanics and African-American children had significantly greater rates of being obese and overweight than whites and Asians," the study authors wrote in the study. "The odds ratio of being obese were particularly high for U.S. children with more severe psoriasis."


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/11/28/Children-with-psoriasis-may-also-be-obese/UPI-12631354085676/#ixzz2DWbNsNIu

Japanese scientists confirm fat-burning protein

OSAKA, Japan - A team of researchers of Japan's Kyoto University has found a protein that helps the body burn fat following an intake of fatty meals, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Monday.

The researchers at the Kyoto University's Institute of Chemical Research compared mice with protein called GPR120 with those that do not have the protein, and provided them with high-fat feeds, the report said.

They confirmed that the mice without the protein were heavier than those who had it by an average of 15 percent, and accumulated twice as much fat in their bodies, it said.

The Japanese scientists also analyzed the genetic sequence of about 20,000 people in Europe, including the French and the British, and found that people with mutant GPR120 genes were 1.6 times more likely to be obese.

Based on the result of the research, the Japanese scientists concluded the protein is capable of detecting fat, and also plays a role in prompting the body to burn the fat.

Professor Gozo Tsujimoto, head of the researcher team, was quoted by NHK as saying that the development of drugs that activate the protein will help prevent obesity.

source: interaksyon.com