Excerpt
SUMMARY: Lifelong obesity, now common in the U.S., is beginning to change how Americans age. Along Alabama's Gulf Coast, one in three adults is obese, and many who have lived with the negative health effects of excess weight are entering their senior years. Special correspondent Sarah Varney of Kaiser Health News reports on the added costs, disabilities and challenges for older obese patients.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Two major trends are on a collision course in the United States: the aging of the U.S. population and a decades-long surge in obesity.
The elderly population is projected to double to 80 million by 2050. And, as that’s happening, obese individuals are far more likely to become sick or disabled as they age.
Special correspondent Sarah Varney has the story from Alabama, produced in collaboration with our partners at Kaiser Health News.
SARAH VARNEY, Kaiser Health News: Bayou La Batre calls itself the seafood capital of Alabama. Residents here depend on fishing and shrimping for their livelihood. And when they sit down to eat, they like most things fried.
Former Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin has been trying to reverse the nation’s obesity epidemic one patient at a time at her Bayou clinic.
REGINA BENJAMIN, Former U.S. Surgeon General: Bake, boil, and broil. Say that again.
GARI QUALLS: Bake, boil, and broil.
REGINA BENJAMIN: So no more fried shrimp.
SARAH VARNEY: Gari Qualls is 69 years old and a retired crab picker. She spent most of her life seriously overweight and was diagnosed with diabetes age 39.
As obesity became commonplace around the U.S., health care providers like Benjamin began seeing the impacts of the disease all around them.
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