by Bob Flaws

While I was searching this afternoon for some statistics at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website, I came across a very arresting and disturbing map. It is a map that shows the growing percentage of obesity in the U.S. year by year (http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/). It begins in 1985 when only eight states had a maximum obesity rate of 15-19% (although, to be fair, in 1985, not all states were keeping track of obesity).

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The map then changes color state by state year by year showing this rate go up till only one state, Colorado, had an obesity rate of 15-19% and all the rest of the states had rates of 20 to more than 30%. (The map stops in 2007.) This steady upward trend toward being overweight and frankly obese is very alarming. As professional health care providers, we all know the morbidity and mortality associated with being overweight. Hopefully, one of the good things to come out of the current recession/depression may be a reversal of the trend towards ever larger portions at restaurants. Already I am seeing ads on TV for $1.00 mini-burgers and down-sized ice cream sundaes. Concern over the rising rates of obesity was one of the main reasons Blue Poppy Press chose to publish Juliette Aiyana's book Chinese Medicine & Healthy Weight Management.

In any case, thinking about all this sent me back to the Nei Jing (Inner Classic) to read what the founding fathers of Chinese medicine (sorry, at that point in time, they were all men) had to say about diet and being overweight. So here are some statements of fact we all might want to think about. In the "Treatise on Impediment" in the Su Wen (Simple Questions), it says, "Drinking [and] eating till double [in amount], the intestines and stomach are damaged." Similarly, the "Great Treatise on the Living Qi Connecting with Heaven) in the Su Wen says:

Due to eating [till] full, the sinew vessels [become] horizontally [and/or violently] bound, [while, in terms of] the intestines, morbid appetite makes for piles. Due to great drinking, there is qi counterflow.

The "Treatise on Strange Diseases" in the Su Wen has this to say about overeating certain types of foods:

[Overeating] fat, people must have internal heat. [Overeating] sweet, people must [have] fullness in the center.

Now think of ice cream: congealed fat plus lots of sugar. 'Nuff said. I think I'm going to eat an apple for lunch.

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