For those of you who vaguely recognize the name, The Lancet is a world-wide renowned medical journal, somewhat like the UK counterpart to JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, only older by 60 years.
To provide a little background on The Lancet , for context, it is safe to say this is not a tacky tabloid:
Here is the article, Redefining public health in New York City.
We used to be number one in most if not all of the desirable categories; we haven't been number one for a very long time now. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee, time to sit up and recognize that we cannot continue to try to promote past glories as something innate to us. We are failing. The first step in reversing this terrible trend of expanding failure, in our health and health care, in our longevity and other public health issues, in our educational failings, in our wealth and income disparity and our declining ability for our citizens to succeed is to acknowledge our problems. We need to honestly identify them, find and fix the causes for our drop from that pinnacle of success.
I don't REALLY care if we are number 1 or number 5 or number 8. But we should be worrying about why it is we are not among the world leaders in significant categories that measure both quantity and quality of life. We should be concerned about why it is we are declining, and we should be concerned about what we can do about it.
The answer is NOT giving more money to the wealthy under the guise of pretending they are job creators; if THAT worked, we would have more jobs than we have people, given our extreme gap in wealth and income between the top 1% and the remaining 99%. So why does anyone, especially on the right, even try to pretend that claim makes sense any more?
The answer is NOT less regulation to be more business friendly; if that worked, we wouldn't have had the financial disaster arising from fraud and disastrous business practices that sent us into a world financial crisis. We have had more growth and better quality and quantity of every economic metric during eras of more regulation, not less. Less regulation simply allows big business and the wealthy to shaft the majority of us to benefit a few special interests.
What does NOT work is to reduce government spending or government efforts at public health and public education. What does not work is to be fact averse or anti-science. What does not work is more ideology and more right wing religion dominating the public square.
What clearly DOES work is optimum regulation, and constructive public health measures. People experiencing addiction make very different decisions than people who are not. Sugar, like the nicotine in tobacco, or the long term effects of alcohol, is addictive.
What do we know about sugar and addiction, and when did we know it? The research has been accumulating for the past 25 years. You no more override addiction by simply exercising your individual liberty, given the changes to your brain activity and chemistry, than you can just decide to not be drunk after consuming alcohol or decide not to be unconscious while under general anesthesia. That is not how our bodily organs work, no matter how much bumper sticker thinking you repeat about your individual ability at independent decision making.
The blog Chemistry on Your Table, about the intersection of science and food noted:
The increase in sugar consumption is not an accident; it is big business, complete with Big Agri-business subsidies and lobbying.
To provide a little background on The Lancet , for context, it is safe to say this is not a tacky tabloid:
The Lancet
In the 2010 Journal Citation Reports, The Lancet's impact factor was ranked second among general medical journals, at 33.63, after The New England Journal of Medicine (53.48).[2]So it carries some weight( pun intended), intellectually speaking that The Lancet came out earlier this month in support of the various public health measures of Mayor Bloomberg in improving both the quality and quantity of life in New York City -- a very dramatic improvement in a short period of time.
Here is the article, Redefining public health in New York City.
New York City's life expectancy is rising faster than anywhere else in the USA, as its health department pioneers tactics that could transform the practice of public health. Ted Alcorn reports.
“If you want to live longer and healthier than the average American, come to New York City”, pronounced New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg as he released updated data on the city's life expectancy last December. The numbers gave him reason to crow: from a nadir in 1990, when life expectancy in the city trailed the US average by 3 years, it had lengthened by 8 years to 80·6 years, surpassing the country.
In the national context, the increase in New York City's life expectancy stands out (figure). The Institute for Heath Metrics and Evaluation recently estimated the life expectancy for each of the USA's 3147 independent cities and counties. Manhattan's life expectancy rose 10 years between 1987 and 2009, the largest increase of any county, and the other four counties that make up New York City were all in the top percentile.
By contrast, national life expectancy lengthened only 1·7 years per decade, and the USA—already trailing the world's longest lived countries—dropped back further. “What we see in the United States sends an alarming, alarming message”, says Ali Mokdad, who led the research. “We are not catching up with what everyone else is achieving. And in many counties in the United States, we are falling behind: our life expectancy is going backward.” In this context it is all the more urgent to understand the improvements witnessed in New York City, and the lessons that can be applied elsewhere.For the lip-service-only fact-averse right wing patriots, the people who like to run around chanting 'we're number one! we're number one!", insisting on our exceptionalism fantasy, this should be a wake up call - a very LOUD wake up call.
We used to be number one in most if not all of the desirable categories; we haven't been number one for a very long time now. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee, time to sit up and recognize that we cannot continue to try to promote past glories as something innate to us. We are failing. The first step in reversing this terrible trend of expanding failure, in our health and health care, in our longevity and other public health issues, in our educational failings, in our wealth and income disparity and our declining ability for our citizens to succeed is to acknowledge our problems. We need to honestly identify them, find and fix the causes for our drop from that pinnacle of success.
I don't REALLY care if we are number 1 or number 5 or number 8. But we should be worrying about why it is we are not among the world leaders in significant categories that measure both quantity and quality of life. We should be concerned about why it is we are declining, and we should be concerned about what we can do about it.
The answer is NOT giving more money to the wealthy under the guise of pretending they are job creators; if THAT worked, we would have more jobs than we have people, given our extreme gap in wealth and income between the top 1% and the remaining 99%. So why does anyone, especially on the right, even try to pretend that claim makes sense any more?
The answer is NOT less regulation to be more business friendly; if that worked, we wouldn't have had the financial disaster arising from fraud and disastrous business practices that sent us into a world financial crisis. We have had more growth and better quality and quantity of every economic metric during eras of more regulation, not less. Less regulation simply allows big business and the wealthy to shaft the majority of us to benefit a few special interests.
What does NOT work is to reduce government spending or government efforts at public health and public education. What does not work is to be fact averse or anti-science. What does not work is more ideology and more right wing religion dominating the public square.
What clearly DOES work is optimum regulation, and constructive public health measures. People experiencing addiction make very different decisions than people who are not. Sugar, like the nicotine in tobacco, or the long term effects of alcohol, is addictive.
What do we know about sugar and addiction, and when did we know it? The research has been accumulating for the past 25 years. You no more override addiction by simply exercising your individual liberty, given the changes to your brain activity and chemistry, than you can just decide to not be drunk after consuming alcohol or decide not to be unconscious while under general anesthesia. That is not how our bodily organs work, no matter how much bumper sticker thinking you repeat about your individual ability at independent decision making.
Sugar addiction
A 1987 study showed sugar acted as an analgesic drug whose effects could be blocked by a morphine blocker.[2] In her 1998 book, author Kathleen DesMaisons outlined the concept of sugar addiction as a measurable physiological state caused by activation of opioid receptors in the brain and hypothesized that dependence on sugar followed the same track outlined in the DSM IV for other drugs of abuse.[3]
2002 research at Princeton began showing the neurochemical effects of sugar, noting that sugar might serve as a gateway drug for other drugs.[4] The research group fed chow to the rats as well as a 25% sugar solution similar to the sugar concentration of soft drinks. After one month the rats became "dependent" on the sugar solution, ate less chow and increased their intake of the sugary drink to 200%.[5] The sugar industry asserts that similar effects have been reported for rats given solutions that tasted sweet, but contained no calories.[citation needed] However, some scientists say that caloric value may not be the issue. Researchers say that sugar and the taste of sweet is said to stimulate the brain by activating beta endorphin receptor sites, the same chemicals activated in the brain by the ingestion of heroin and morphine. [6]
In 2003, a report commissioned by two U.N. agencies at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization was compiled by a panel of 30 international experts. It recommended that sugar not account for more than 10% of a person's diet.[2] However, the US Sugar Association asserted that other evidence indicates that a quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.
A 2008 study noted that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain, and thus might be expected to have addictive potential. It referenced bingeing, withdrawal, craving and cross-sensitization, and gave each of them operational definitions in order to demonstrate behaviorally that sugar bingeing is a reinforcer. These behaviors were said to be related to neurochemical changes in the brain that also occur during addiction to drugs. Neural adaptations included changes in dopamine and opioid receptor binding, enkephalin mRNA expression and dopamine and acetylcholine release in the nucleus accumbens.[4]Part of the problem in people making intelligent decisions is that they are unaware of how much sugar is added. You expect sugar in candy bars or other sweets; you are less aware of it in ketchup, or crackers and peanut butter, or salad dressing, items labeled health foods like dried fruit, etc. Your intention is to eat something else, not selecting for sugar.
The blog Chemistry on Your Table, about the intersection of science and food noted:
The average American consumes approximately 22 teaspoons of added sugar every day, which adds more than 320 calories to our daily diet. On average, 16% of Americans’ daily caloric intake comes from added sugar.
Added sugars in processed foods may be listed (or disguised) in the ingredients under a range of names such as:
The increase in sugar consumption is not an accident; it is big business, complete with Big Agri-business subsidies and lobbying.
is the term for the relationship between sugar and various aspects of food addiction including: bingeing, withdrawal, craving and cross-sensitization. Some scientists assert that consumption of sweets or sugar could have an addiction like effect.[1]is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals.[1] The Lancet was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, an English surgeon who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet, as well as after the term "lancet arch",[citation needed] a window with a sharp pointed arch, to indicate the "light of wisdom" or "to let in light". It publishes original research articles, review articles ("seminars" and "reviews"), editorials, book reviews, correspondence, as well as news features and case reports.
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