Chronic Diseases Haunt Thai Population

[rubl]

Lets add a little controversy here. The average farlang I spy wandering the streets of the fair city of Pattaya is rarely a picture of perfect health or lifestyle. The point has been made that every country has this problem, Thailand more than most in the west, but it is a matter of degree rather than black and white division.

I assume that you are including the body building freaks that spend a fortune in gyms so as to look even weirder than Charles Atlas only to find in later years that the body beautiful (at least to them) has turned to fat.

In the matter of allergies, given that at least 4 different medications are prescribed by Thai doctors for any ailment, who is to know, particularly the guy riding in the Pattaya baht bus, what is causing an adverse reaction? Yesterday I attended a hospital and was asked by the pharmacist, not the doctor who prescribed you should note, whether I had any allergies. I replied , "Only to Thai policemen." She shared the joke with her colleagues and suddenly I was confronted with a number of staff grinning like Cheshire Cats.

To combat the problem that is the theme of this thread it will be necessary that the message is put across to the public that you, and nobody else, are resposible for your body,.Treat it kindly and your problems will be minimised. What are the chances of such a campaign being successful i.e. a Thai person being held responsible for anything? What are the chances of a Thai daring to ask a doctor to explain what is wrong with them, what has caused it and what can they do to avoid future problems, not only in their own case, but possibly also that of their families? I am told that there are dieticians in some of the better hospitals but I have never come across one. Why not print out diet sheets that a doctor can hand to any patient that he/she thinks could do with losing a few pounds, or for the younger element here, kilos, and explain the benefits of staying in a reasonably good trim?

Why do I feel like that I am baying at the moon? Oh! My addled, aging brain forgot the obvious. TIT.

Of course people are responsible for their own body. But without education about food and working out it wont ever work. But remember good food is more expensive then crap food so its an income and education thing. Plus people in general care about taste not health.

Agree. Just going to the gym because it's the thing to do without any thought on what to do or why seems a waste of time and money. Structural approach, learning, etc., etc. The hard way some call it.

As for food, it seems according to latest medical insights most of the food I like and have eaten most of my (too short) life is really bad for me and it might be a miracle I'm still alive

[robblok]

Lets add a little controversy here. The average farlang I spy wandering the streets of the fair city of Pattaya is rarely a picture of perfect health or lifestyle. The point has been made that every country has this problem, Thailand more than most in the west, but it is a matter of degree rather than black and white division.

I assume that you are including the body building freaks that spend a fortune in gyms so as to look even weirder than Charles Atlas only to find in later years that the body beautiful (at least to them) has turned to fat.

In the matter of allergies, given that at least 4 different medications are prescribed by Thai doctors for any ailment, who is to know, particularly the guy riding in the Pattaya baht bus, what is causing an adverse reaction? Yesterday I attended a hospital and was asked by the pharmacist, not the doctor who prescribed you should note, whether I had any allergies. I replied , "Only to Thai policemen." She shared the joke with her colleagues and suddenly I was confronted with a number of staff grinning like Cheshire Cats.

To combat the problem that is the theme of this thread it will be necessary that the message is put across to the public that you, and nobody else, are resposible for your body,.Treat it kindly and your problems will be minimised. What are the chances of such a campaign being successful i.e. a Thai person being held responsible for anything? What are the chances of a Thai daring to ask a doctor to explain what is wrong with them, what has caused it and what can they do to avoid future problems, not only in their own case, but possibly also that of their families? I am told that there are dieticians in some of the better hospitals but I have never come across one. Why not print out diet sheets that a doctor can hand to any patient that he/she thinks could do with losing a few pounds, or for the younger element here, kilos, and explain the benefits of staying in a reasonably good trim?

Why do I feel like that I am baying at the moon? Oh! My addled, aging brain forgot the obvious. TIT.

Of course people are responsible for their own body. But without education about food and working out it wont ever work. But remember good food is more expensive then crap food so its an income and education thing. Plus people in general care about taste not health.

Agree. Just going to the gym because it's the thing to do without any thought on what to do or why seems a waste of time and money. Structural approach, learning, etc., etc. The hard way some call it.

As for food, it seems according to latest medical insights most of the food I like and have eaten most of my (too short) life is really bad for me and it might be a miracle I'm still alive

Of course i agree about going to a gym and not knowing what to do is a waste of time. Its more about food then about training. And yes controlling food and exercising structurally is the hard way.

Its what i am doing and its working but its not for normal people. It takes a lot of a commitment and change of lifestyle.

[stefb1964]

......pollution.................toxic substances.....heavy metals......

.....no regulation.....no enforcement..........and rampant corruption...........so what do you expect....

(.....a common practice is to pass reactions to toxins as 'allergies'....)

we might need to add hubs

[edgarfriendly]

Som Tam Nam Nar!!

[dighambara]

"Deputy Public Health Minister Surawit Khonsomboon cited diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, vascular disease and cancer as five significant chronic diseases, resulting from a lack of exercise, obesity, insufficient fiber intake, smoking and alcohol addiction."

This is not a secret. As much as the Thais try and distance themselves from farangs verbally, they mimic the unhealthy western lifestyle. Lots of fried food loaded with saturated fats and sodium, taking a motor vehicle just to go to the corner 7-11 for a giant sugary drink and playing computer games all day long. When I arrived in Thailand 7 years ago, I only noticed a few obese children. Now it seems that almost one-third of all the school aged children I see are obese and riding motor bikes. With this inactive and unhealthy eating lifestyle beginning at such a young age, the 5 diseases mentioned above will reach epidemic proportions within the next 15 years.

Perhaps required exercise should replace required singing in the schools. Otherwise most of the songs sung in the future will be funeral chants.

Fried foods are a Thai staple. I was here 0ver 40 years ago and the menu was the same then. Only real change is more mechanization, so people work physically less than before.

I walk everywhere and Thai people are astonished that I don't jump on a motorbike to go 6 blocks...

I average a couple of miles every day and I live in a two story house so that I must constantly use the stairs

[Chopperboy]

Thais eat large quantities of refined white rice (starch converts to sugar), cordials for flavouring water with very high sugar content, meals cooked with large amounts of sugar added, restaurants have sugar as a condiment, alcohol etc all of which contributes to causing Type 2 diabetes. The majority of my Thai family aged over 50 have Type 2 diabetes.

I have never heard of health education messages in the Thai media that talks to the risk of high sugar consumption, but Thais are aware of sugar as a cause of Type 2 diabetes (ภาษาไทย), but love sweet food and drinks, Thai phonetic spelling for diabetes - barwann.

Exactly. It's not much about exercise--that's a red herring in the debate. It's all about diet: the sugar, white rice, noodles, and white flour in cakes etc. prompting high insulin levels to drive calories into fat cells. Inevitably, insulin resistance develops, obesity, and diabetes. I'm talking about the average metabolism.

It's almost impossible to persuade a Thai to give up the dangerous carbs.

There was one guy in the UK that weighed about 40 stone (560lbs). He used to drink about 6 litres of coke every day. He stopped drinking it but continued to eat all the other junk food he ate and never exercised. But he lost 10 stone (140 lbs) very quickly just by giving up coke. Sugar is the biggest issue for most people that are obese.

Its now believed in anti-aging community that sugar directly burns the beta cells in the pancreas - not as the medical profession believe that the pancreas eventually just runs out of steam.

[Bagwan]

"Deputy Public Health Minister Surawit Khonsomboon cited diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, vascular disease and cancer as five significant chronic diseases, resulting from a lack of exercise, obesity, insufficient fiber intake, smoking and alcohol addiction."

This is not a secret. As much as the Thais try and distance themselves from farangs verbally, they mimic the unhealthy western lifestyle. Lots of fried food loaded with saturated fats and sodium, taking a motor vehicle just to go to the corner 7-11 for a giant sugary drink and playing computer games all day long. When I arrived in Thailand 7 years ago, I only noticed a few obese children. Now it seems that almost one-third of all the school aged children I see are obese and riding motor bikes. With this inactive and unhealthy eating lifestyle beginning at such a young age, the 5 diseases mentioned above will reach epidemic proportions within the next 15 years.

Perhaps required exercise should replace required singing in the schools. Otherwise most of the songs sung in the future will be funeral chants.

Fried foods are a Thai staple. I was here 0ver 40 years ago and the menu was the same then. Only real change is more mechanization, so people work physically less than before.

I walk everywhere and Thai people are astonished that I don't jump on a motorbike to go 6 blocks...

I average a couple of miles every day and I live in a two story house so that I must constantly use the stairs

The only real change has been the introduction of mechanisation? So McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, Svensons et al have been here over 40 years?

It is a commonly held view that US fast food outlets have done more damage to the World population than their governments foreign policies. At some places you don't even have to get out of your vehicle to get another serving of excessive calories. Who would want to burn some of those precious calories off by actually getting out of the vehicle?

[trainman34014]

They can eat what they like; in sensible moderation. Problem here seems to be that they never stop eating day and night. Everywhere you look they are munching something or drinking fizzy drinks.

[JSixpack]

It is a commonly held view that US fast food outlets have done more damage to the World population than their governments foreign policies.

Only by dizzy leftists, anti-globalists, and our little cadre of forum antiamericanistas, many of whom are merely trolling.

I was waiting for this. In this forum, every topic on the growing problem of obesity and diabetes in Thailand inevitably turns into an attack on the USA (McDonald's-KFC-Starbucks-TV-computer games) and the West in attempt to turn the topic away from nutrition--of which they know little or nothing--and to politics.

It's easy to find examples of pre-modern populations, unexposed to the "toxic environment" you want to blame, who exhibited a high proportion of obesity.

Actually the problem at hand lies w/ modern Thai consumption habits that are merely a development of native culinary traditions as Thais have grown wealthier. This was explained to you earlier. Sugar has been produced and consumed in Asia for over a thousand years. It isn't a Western discovery.

At some places you don't even have to get out of your vehicle to get another serving of excessive calories.

Thais almost always get off their motorbikes to order or eat food. Very few if any fast-food drive-thru restaurants exist here. Wrong country, pal.

Who would want to burn some of those precious calories off by actually getting out of the vehicle?

Has nothing to do w/ the problem at all. Just more hot air.

Edited September 8, 2012 by JSixpack

[atyclb]

Thais eat large quantities of refined white rice (starch converts to sugar), cordials for flavouring water with very high sugar content, meals cooked with large amounts of sugar added, restaurants have sugar as a condiment, alcohol etc all of which contributes to causing Type 2 diabetes. The majority of my Thai family aged over 50 have Type 2 diabetes.

I have never heard of health education messages in the Thai media that talks to the risk of high sugar consumption, but Thais are aware of sugar as a cause of Type 2 diabetes (ภาษาไทย), but love sweet food and drinks, Thai phonetic spelling for diabetes - barwann.

The Thai word you used is not "diabetes" but Thai language. โรคเบาหวาน or simply บาหวาน is probably what you meant to write

[atyclb]

"Deputy Public Health Minister Surawit Khonsomboon cited diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, vascular disease and cancer as five significant chronic diseases, resulting from a lack of exercise, obesity, insufficient fiber intake, smoking and alcohol addiction."

This is not a secret. As much as the Thais try and distance themselves from farangs verbally, they mimic the unhealthy western lifestyle. Lots of fried food loaded with saturated fats and sodium, taking a motor vehicle just to go to the corner 7-11 for a giant sugary drink and playing computer games all day long. When I arrived in Thailand 7 years ago, I only noticed a few obese children. Now it seems that almost one-third of all the school aged children I see are obese and riding motor bikes. With this inactive and unhealthy eating lifestyle beginning at such a young age, the 5 diseases mentioned above will reach epidemic proportions within the next 15 years.

Perhaps required exercise should replace required singing in the schools. Otherwise most of the songs sung in the future will be funeral chants.

Fried foods are a Thai staple. I was here 0ver 40 years ago and the menu was the same then. Only real change is more mechanization, so people work physically less than before.

I walk everywhere and Thai people are astonished that I don't jump on a motorbike to go 6 blocks...

I average a couple of miles every day and I live in a two story house so that I must constantly use the stairs

I very much enjoy using the MRT / BTS stairs up and or down. It makes me feel alive, or rather lets me know I am "not lethargic or nearly dead"

Edited September 8, 2012 by atyclb

[cdnski12]

Simple. Ban 7-11's on every 2nd street corner, driving scooters w/o helmets, Chinese Knock Off Auto Parts (or rejects) especially tires, smoking anywhere, giving masses amounts of money to all religious faiths, farangs over 70 "be" from marrying Thai women ... did I miss anything?

[simple1]

Thais eat large quantities of refined white rice (starch converts to sugar), cordials for flavouring water with very high sugar content, meals cooked with large amounts of sugar added, restaurants have sugar as a condiment, alcohol etc all of which contributes to causing Type 2 diabetes. The majority of my Thai family aged over 50 have Type 2 diabetes.

I have never heard of health education messages in the Thai media that talks to the risk of high sugar consumption, but Thais are aware of sugar as a cause of Type 2 diabetes (ภาษาไทย), but love sweet food and drinks, Thai phonetic spelling for diabetes - barwann.

The Thai word you used is not "diabetes" but Thai language. โรคเบาหวาน or simply บาหวาน is probably what you meant to write

That damned internet search providing wrong Thai wording

[TongueThaied]

Unless people terminate their love affairs with sugar and simple carbohydrate foods that pour out of factories (Mama, etc.), they are doomed to suffer these afflictions. Eliminating them is so, so simple, but people are stupid and undisciplined. The world is over populated anyway. Eat on!

[Bagwan]

It is a commonly held view that US fast food outlets have done more damage to the World population than their governments foreign policies.

Only by dizzy leftists, anti-globalists, and our little cadre of forum antiamericanistas, many of whom are merely trolling.

I was waiting for this. In this forum, every topic on the growing problem of obesity and diabetes in Thailand inevitably turns into an attack on the USA (McDonald's-KFC-Starbucks-TV-computer games) and the West in attempt to turn the topic away from nutrition--of which they know little or nothing--and to politics.

It's easy to find examples of pre-modern populations, unexposed to the "toxic environment" you want to blame, who exhibited a high proportion of obesity.

Actually the problem at hand lies w/ modern Thai consumption habits that are merely a development of native culinary traditions as Thais have grown wealthier. This was explained to you earlier. Sugar has been produced and consumed in Asia for over a thousand years. It isn't a Western discovery.

At some places you don't even have to get out of your vehicle to get another serving of excessive calories.

Thais almost always get off their motorbikes to order or eat food. Very few if any fast-food drive-thru restaurants exist here. Wrong country, pal.

Who would want to burn some of those precious calories off by actually getting out of the vehicle?

Has nothing to do w/ the problem at all. Just more hot air.

Your rant about people here holding alternative views to those of your own might well make an impartial reader consider you a typical red necked, boorish loudmouth. You're not one of those hillbilly types that marry their cousins, wrestle with alligators and worship rattlesnakes are you?

Why do you think, as you state, that discussions on this subject aways turn to the purveyors of fast food? Are all these people that hold that view, wrong? Are the doctors and nutritionists also wrong? Are you Mr. Right just because you are American, or a fellow traveller, and we poor Europeans and those strange but likeable Antipodeans wrong? I don't think that anybody is saying that the US based fast food empires are exclusively to blame for the rise in obesity, one only has to walk around a street market and see the many types of confectionery available to know that this isn't so, but they are in the front rank of those that we should be aiming at when letting loose our arrows. The gaudy advertisments spreading the message that to be 'cool', to be accepted by your contemporaries in society, and acquiring a modicom of 'face', you need to be seen eating at one of the all plastic sales outlets, are all too readily accepted by unknowing, unsophistcated minds.

You don't see too many mature adults, and even less 'wrinklies' patronising these joints so it becomes logical to suppose that they not been dazzled by fluff and have realised the dangers of taking onboard an excessive amount of calories.

Your last two coments rather spoil the whole post, a post which is unfortunately redolent of the 'my country right or wrong' and 'the American dream' BS that you are fed from the cradle on and so foolishly believe. I know of at least three drive through fast food dives so maybe you need to get out a bit more - and keep your eyes open. Maybe you should be excused since you seem confused and cannot tell the difference between getting out of a vehicle and alighting from a motor bike - but you are an expert on nutrition! Hmmm. Does that compute?

On the subject of hot air, from my experience, the US sets the World standard in this respect. No country promotes itself more as heaven on Earth, populated by people with laudable concerns for the state of the World than the US, and yet nothing could be further than reality. The levels of corruption, greed, discrimination and false representation are comparable to those of Thailand.

[JSixpack]

I don't think that anybody is saying that the US based fast food empires are exclusively to blame for the rise in obesity, one only has to walk around a street market and see the many types of confectionery available to know that this isn't so,

Good, glad we got that out of the way, except that the fast food empires aren't to blame at all, esp in Thailand.

but they are in the front rank of those that we should be aiming at when letting loose our arrows.

No, they aren't, since they represent an insignificant contribution to the problem. You've confused cause and effect. When a Thai mother feeds her kid sugar and instant noodles, starting a carb addiction, "they" didn't suggest she do that.

mature adults, and even less 'wrinklies' patronising these joints so it becomes logical to suppose that they not been dazzled by fluff and have realised the dangers of taking onboard an excessive amount of calories.

It's not really a matter of excessive calories, but you wouldn't know that. Nor am I gonna educate you.

On the subject of hot air, from my experience, the US sets the World standard in this respect. No country promotes itself more as heaven on Earth, populated by people with laudable concerns for the state of the World than the US, and yet nothing could be further than reality. The levels of corruption, greed, discrimination and false representation are comparable to those of Thailand.

I suspect a mod will come along soon to inform you that your most enjoyable America bashing, irrelevant to the topic, isn't allowed on the forum, sorry--as I tried to suggest earlier. Isn't there an Iranian forum somewhere where you might feel more at home?

[JSixpack]

I know of at least three drive through fast food dives

Excellent, you've found three drive through fast food outlets in Thailand. And their customers are obese 'cause they're not getting out of their vehicles.

I think you've got a winner here, pal. Publish your own diet book, "The Get Out Of Your Vehicle And Walk 25 Meters Weight Loss Plan."

Sure to be a best seller! But wouldn't the walk just make them hungrier? No matter.

Activity and exercise don't have much at all to do w/ the problem at hand as I noted in an earlier post. It's all about diet.

[cup-O-coffee]

Even people who are fortunate enough to be in good physical and mental health will tell you how difficult it is to incorporate that kind of lifestyle into their daily regimen. Even healthy food is expensive, and the less fortunate cannot afford to purchase vitamin enriched foods to supplement their daily RDA. This is merely one of the many factors that prevent a healthy community. I see too many other factors that prevent this, and would take reams of typing to illustrate futile hopes and answers.

[Sayonarax]

You keep telling us to exercise, but wheres our free public gyms?

[trainman34014]

I know of at least three drive through fast food dives

Excellent, you've found three drive through fast food outlets in Thailand. And their customers are obese 'cause they're not getting out of their vehicles.

I think you've got a winner here, pal. Publish your own diet book, "The Get Out Of Your Vehicle And Walk 25 Meters Weight Loss Plan."

Sure to be a best seller! But wouldn't the walk just make them hungrier? No matter.

Activity and exercise don't have much at all to do w/ the problem at hand as I noted in an earlier post. It's all about diet.

Make that 4; they are building a new Mc D's drive thru in Chiang Mai right now !

[brianP]

'Physical workouts' - how about doing some work instead of perching yourself on one of those ridiculous 'workout machines'? I am not addressing only Thais here.

I made a lot of good money mowing lawns for people that didn't have time, often enough because they had to go to a fitness club or sports club. At 64 I am in full health and only now beginning to develop a gut.

Get back to mowing those lawns, you serf!

Hey, watch it ! i am a Surfer too.

[Anon999]

You keep telling us to exercise, but wheres our free public gyms?

You can find gyms in Isaan that cost you 10 baht day or 200 baht a year. Can you afford that?

[omnilangur]

I eat more sugar than most and all the cakes and carbs in western food is much more prone to diabetic infection than what Thai's eat!