Do you smoke.smoke!

Originally posted by craiglll@yahoo.com why do you think McDonalds is putting ingredient & nutritional information on the wrappers of its food? To prevent the catchup from landing on your tie while driving and eating a Big Mac.

OK, Capt Cardiologist, let's delve deeper. If we have genetically identical folks (twins, for example), ignoring everything else, who is more likely to have health issues, the twin who smokes but is at ideal BMI or other weight measure of your choosing OR the twin who is obese but does not smoke?

Originally posted by laineybug We are dismissed as lazy and stupid and not worthy of the 'medical god's' help. You really need to be careful of these blanket statements based on your experiences. There are many caring doctors who do their best to help obese people. It's not the doctor's responsibility to get them up in the morning and tell them to hit the track or pool.

Originally posted by gull80 By the way, did I mention that you're lazy and stupid? Not in the past few days.

Rules, rules, rules, my one grandson wanted to join the armed forces of Canada, the would not accept him because he had smoked pot within the last six months. Too many rules - I guess our country is going to pot. But after they found out the bud he had was a Budweiser they changed their mind and welcomed him with open arms..

Aaah.....What's this Marijuana stuff y'all keep talkin about??.....Seriously though.....That Refer Madness movie was right on in my opinion...LOL!! Newmastersswimmer p.s. Geochuck.....From what I understand, Marijuana should be the national plant of Canada!....at least for places like Toronto and Vancouver....More LOL!!

Geek, there is a huge difference between smoking and folks who have a serious weight problem. Smoking is clearly a choice that has been made by the person. Granted, you can choose to over eat or not eat right, and you can choose to exercise or not. However, weight MAY not be under a person's control. I read somewhere, but I don't remember the source, that if a person was more that 30? pounds overweight that there was a huge probablility that there was a medical condition impacting their weight. And the sad thing is that most doctors are biased against overweight individuals in the same way you are. I know this is from personal experience. For years and years and years I would go to my doctors and complain about weight gain and get the same ole tired advice, eat low fat, exercise more... nothing more, no questions about what I actually was eating, no questions about how much/what I was exercising, no questions about other symptoms, no lets do some tests to see if there is something going on. In other words they ASSUMED it was MY FAULT I was gaining weight (and from talking to other women with weight problems they have gotten the same treatement from the medical community, so it just wasn't my doctors). I finally got to the point where I would insist on tests but when the results came back outside of normal limits guess what the docs said? "It's not yet at a level I feel comfortable treating," or would just out and out lie and tell me the results were within "expected ranges." I finally became so disgusted with the 'medical gods' I stopped going completely and the extra pounds kept coming. By the time the doc of integrative medicine openned down here I was displaying about 95% of the symptoms of hypothyroidism and could barely get out of bed in the morning and would drag around all day because I had such a lack of energy. I decided to give intergrative medicine a try. Guess what? The new doc took one look at my records and said he couldn't believe I had never been prescribed thyroid because my tests had been coming back outside of normal range for years. So next time all of you folks out there see someone who is overweight don't be so fast to judge them. Their weight may not be their fault and they may have been trying to get help with it but have been brushed off due to predjudice and bias.

I know why I am overweight I eat too much and don't train enough. But some of the Doc's are nuts. When I was in top form 218 lbs - 6'3" - my chest was 52 inches and yet he said by my height I should weigh 180 lbs. I did not smoke. Hypothyroidism is it related to Graves disease? I tried to smoke at 21 years of age but the smoke seemed to seer my lungs.

Originally posted by newmastersswimmer Aaah.....What's this Marijuana stuff y'all keep talkin about??.....Seriously though.....That Refer Madness movie was right on in my opinion...LOL!! Newmastersswimmer p.s. Geochuck.....From what I understand, Marijuana should be the national plant of Canada!....at least for places like Toronto and Vancouver....More LOL!! Did you know Chong from Cheech and Chong was a Canadian.

Actually laineybug I feel that some smokers are in fact unfairly dicriminated against by insurance companies.....and here's why I feel that way:.....Many older generation smokers (who haven't died yet of complications) were not given the same kind of information about the dangers of smoking that is available today.....In fact smoking was promoted as a somewhat glamorous habbit up untill around the 60's or so by many industries including the movie industry (and the tobacco industry of course).....Couple that with the fact that big tobacco companies have been found guilty of deliberately skewing the facts about the dangers of smoking for years (please don't take this as a prelude to another political debate however!).......I feel it is unfair for the millions of Americans who were then drawn in to becoming addicted to this HIGHLY addictive substance to now have to face higher financial burdens in thier insurance premiums as a result.....Granted many of the younger generation should know better.....but I believe the tobacco industry has spent lots of money targeting the youth of America with thier ads......So I for one think that the tobacco industry should pay much (if not all) of the extra insurance premiums for most of these smokers.....I know many of y'all will vehemently disagree with me on this....and that's fine....I'm just giving my opinion on the subject....not trying to pick any fights with anyone.....If you disagree with my opinion then I will respect your differing opinions. Newmastersswimmer