BODILY HEALTHExercise, obesity and self-control
One of the most pressing threats to health at the start of the twenty-first
century is obesity. In 2007 a UK government report warned that nearly
sixty percent of the country’s population would be obese by 2050, if
nothing was done to halt current trends. And obesity isn’t just a problem
for the rich countries of the West – the World Health Organization has
warned that “overweight and obesity are dramatically on the rise in low-
and middle-income countries”.
Stated simply, obesity is a problem that arises when a person’s energy
intake consistently exceeds the energy they burn up. A popular belief is
Bedside manner is about more than just improving patient satisfac-
tion, and there’s evidence that a doctor’s interpersonal style can have
a real effect on patient-health outcomes. In 1989, Sherrie Kaplan, now
at the University of California, Irvine, and her colleagues reported that
chronically ill patients with doctors who provided more than the usual
information, showed emotion and allowed ample time for questions,
subsequently showed better outcomes in terms of blood pressure,
blood-sugar levels and other markers. More recently, a team led by
David Rakel at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and
Public Health found that patients who rated their doctors as highly
empathic and attentive recovered from the common cold a day earlier
than patients with a more remote doctor – an effect similar to that of
the most promising anti-viral drugs.