PowerSwitch

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625 ... 91984.html

So what does society do with a person like this when we are heading towards where we are heading? Does society continue to fund her enormous "medicare" bills, or does it leave her, effectively, to die?

Well, we all have our thoughts about this and what we see as wrong with the US, western society and the medium- to long-term prospects for the human race.

In the short term, a question for you, UE. It's not meant to be provocative - it's a question I'm asking myself too.

What would you do if you were her?

I read "The China Study" and went mostly vegan to avoid the kind of illnesses that this lady has.

I haven't seen the full film http://forksoverknives.com/ yet but you can get the idea from the trailer, they follow some people who made changes to their diet, their health improved and they were able to stop taking expensive drug cocktails.

emordnilap wrote: What would you do if you were her?

If I were here, I would probably be very desperate and have no idea what to do. I would probably consider suicide as an option.

What would you do?

murpen wrote:I read "The China Study" and went mostly vegan to avoid the kind of illnesses that this lady has.

I haven't seen the full film http://forksoverknives.com/ yet but you can get the idea from the trailer, they follow some people who made changes to their diet, their health improved and they were able to stop taking expensive drug cocktails.

Living more healthy lives than most 62-year-old Americans have lived is not very difficult and would obviously lead to fewer health problems (although I'm yet to be convinced that Veganism is healthy). More to the point though, living more healthily now isn't going to help this lady very much. It's too late for her. Unless she wins the lottery, her future doesn't look good.

UndercoverElephant wrote:What would you do?

Good question!

There's two ways of attempting to put yourself in her position: the obvious one won't work, that of imagining it happening to me here. That's not to say it won't - but more we're in a different culture here and understand that culture better and what we're up against.

The other, trying to put yourself in her context, is tremendously difficult. I don't really know enough about the culture in her region to do it.

So the answer to the question is a huge compromise and not simple but I'll make an initial stab; I'm assuming I'm in her situation but I'm still me.

Like murpen, I'm a believer in you are what you eat and I don't think it's ever too late to alter poor eating habits so a complete examination of diet would be called for, naturally. If you use your noddle to sort the wheat from the chaff, there are massive resources on the net to help you and sympathetic people.

I'd change my doctor or, at the very least, get him/her to concentrate on getting me off medication. There has to be a way. You could say, without modern medication, this person would be dead. Well, looking at that cocktail, you'd wonder...

If you can eliminate a drug, it frees up money to spend on better quality food. Easy to say, very hard to do but that would be my aim. Organic food, fresh and simply prepared. Whether or not you agree with having a vegan diet, simply avoiding dairy can't be a bad idea. The average American diet seems to be mostly corn; veganism encompasses way more variety, automatically making it more healthy, whether or not you personally think it's ideal.

I'd also start looking for people in similar situations, with regard to both finances and health.

In any event, I would start trying to get my weight down. And before anyone cries foul, I'm only saying what I'd do. Those medical problems make such a task doubly hard but I'd want to live.

Not an easy question but I'm definitely not the suicide type.

UndercoverElephant wrote: Living more healthy lives than most 62-year-old Americans have lived is not very difficult and would obviously lead to fewer health problems (although I'm yet to be convinced that Veganism is healthy). More to the point though, living more healthily now isn't going to help this lady very much. It's too late for her. Unless she wins the lottery, her future doesn't look good.

So you'd really commit suicide rather than try a plant-based diet for a bit? You wouldn't have anything to lose and you'd save a fortune just at the supermarket. The video didn't really say what illnesses she had apart from diabetes and "studies have shown that a vegan diet may be effective in managing type 2 diabetes" (Wikipedia).

She's lived in a society that had low taxation because it didn't provide free health care or pensions when she was young and now she's older she wants the next generation to keep her.

Did she support higher taxes when she was working? Hardly fair to ask the state to cough up now is it?

She has 2 children. She should move in with one of them and do the best she can. In large parts of the world that is the default option. I remember trying to explain the concept of old people's homes to a couple of young Syrian students....they were appalled that we in the West abandon our parents when they become inconvenient and I was ashamed for my country in that so many people do it.

emordnilap wrote:Well, we all have our thoughts about this and what we see as wrong with the US, western society and the medium- to long-term prospects for the human race.

In the short term, a question for you, UE. It's not meant to be provocative - it's a question I'm asking myself too.

What would you do if you were her?

eat less

murpen wrote: "studies have shown that a vegan diet may be effective in managing type 2 diabetes" (Wikipedia).

ANY ultra low calorie diet can help reverse the symptoms of type2 diabetes.

Something about the amount of fat around the pancreas? Biology is a bit of a closed book

UndercoverElephant wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625 ... 91984.html

So what does society do with a person like this when we are heading towards where we are heading? Does society continue to fund her enormous "medicare" bills, or does it leave her, effectively, to die?

Wilst I fully acknowledge that big business, which basically runs the society in which she lives, actively encourages her and people like her to over-eat, in particular, the poor because it is cheaper to eat shit, then it is a moral responsibility of those corporations to help someone like her.

Obviously, they're not going to, which leaves the financial burden on the rest of the taxpayers. However, it's not their fault and they are already struggling enough as it is. I'm afraid the only feasable thing to do is to give her all the information she needs in order to understand why and how to eat less. If she chooses not to, then she should be left to get on with it and die of her obesity at her own expense.

Anyway, it's in the USA isn't it? In which case, she gets to live or die at her own expense in any event doesn't she?

JavaScriptDonkey wrote:She has 2 children. She should move in with one of them and do the best she can. In large parts of the world that is the default option.

Excellent point.

stevecook172001 wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625 ... 91984.html

So what does society do with a person like this when we are heading towards where we are heading? Does society continue to fund her enormous "medicare" bills, or does it leave her, effectively, to die?

Wilst I fully acknowledge that big business, which basically runs the society in which she lives, actively encourages her and people like her to over-eat, in particular, the poor because it is cheaper to eat shit, then it is a moral responsibility of those corporations to help someone like her.

Another excellent point.

Drugs are one of the things that will go very quickly when TSHTF to any extent as the manufacturing process is high tech and relies on a lot of very exotic chemicals. There will, unfortunately, be a rapid die off of ill people once the stocks runs out.

When someone is taking that much medication one wonders how many of the tablets are being taken to alleviate the side effects from some of the other tablets.

It was shown during the last war that with less food in general people are much healthier as long as they receive an adequate food intake. That wasn't a vegan diet just one with reduced meat and dairy intake. As has been said elsewhere on this board, that will happen as oil gets more expensive.

There was a famous experiment with rats, wasn't there, where they lived longer when kept under-fed.