It sounds like good news.
Most medical patients in the United States say their doctors do bring up the topic of healthy lifestyle choices — specifically diet, exercise and non-smoking — during office visits.
According to a Gallup poll, doctors talk about the benefits of regular physical exercise with nearly three out of four of their patients, or 71 percent. Two-thirds of patients receive some guidance on eating a healthy diet. Half of all patients are warned about the dangers of smoking tobacco, including close to four of five of those who smoke already.
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Actually, there's been a push for years on promoting positive lifestyle choice across the public health spectrum, from those individual clinic encounters, to official policy promotions by groups like the American Medical Association and America's Health Insurance Plans, the national trade association of the health insurance industry, to Michelle Obama's Let's Move! program promoting exercise and healthful diets to American youth.
It could seem safe to assume the flood of information about adopting healthy habits and avoiding dangerous behaviors is putting the American population on a rising tide of physical wellbeing. Only it's not.
Americans continue to surrender ground on the exercise and weight gain battlefield.
A separate study by Gallup and Healthways from June indicates that more Americans are inching into obesity, and more are inching away from normal or overweight status (up nearly 1 percent since 2012). And yet another Gallup poll from April implies the reason for this trend could be that folks are exercising less (those exercising 30 minutes or more three days per week decreased about 1.5 percent from 2012).
So why, despite the increased efforts of clinicians and others to reverse this trend one patient at a time, are we still moving in the wrong direction?
"The first issue is that most people know [they have unhealthful habits] already, and most of the time when you bring this up you're met with less than an ideal reaction," said Christian P. Struven, a specialist in internal medicine based in Plainfield, Illinois.
Struven says that clinicians can provide information and suggest referrals to dieticians, weight loss programs and other community-based interventions, but it's up to each individual patient to take action, and in his experience, the vast majority do not.
He estimated just one in five actually take steps to improve lifestyle choices following his recommendations.
"It's a very frustrating situation. But you say, 'Well, as long as you know about it and understand you're taking a risk,' that's all you can do," Struven said.
With ubiquitous news reports on the dangers imposed by overeating and unhealthful eating, by a sedentary lifestyle and by tobacco use, it's probably safe to assume nearly every American is aware of how their choices are hurting their own health.
Additionally, Gallup points out that doctors — along with nurses and pharmacists — are the professionals most trusted by U.S. consumers, so it would seem unlikely that people just don't believe the warnings they receive. It seems progress in lifestyle choices and related health improvements among Americans could be in a deadlock with the well-proven adage, old habits die hard.
Despite the increased efforts of health and benefits providers, it remains to be seen whether the people or their proclivities come out on top.
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