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 OurBlook interview with Dr. Matthew Edlund, known as the "Rest Doctor" ... www.therestdoctor.com
What are the pros of getting America's public schools involved or more involved in trying to combat childhood obesity?
ME: Healthier kids, more involved parents, a generation that will not grow up obese and diabetic. The issue is health, not healthcare ... lifestyle is the biggest issue in long term survival and health.
What are the cons?
ME: Blaming the schools when things don't improve.
If school cafeteria lunches generally could be healthier and more nutritious, what has stopped them from being so? What can be done to improve them?
ME: Money is the biggest factor, and advertising. As Michael Pollan points out, kids today eat food products, not food. The cheapest food is cheap because of government subsidies. If we cut them out, we'd have far less obesity ... people have to realize that food policy is health policy, and hundreds of billions of our healthcare costs are the result of crazy federal agricultural subsidies.
British TV celebrity chef Jamie Oliver came to America last year and launched a Food Revolution campaign ... he worked with school lunch crews in Huntington, W.Va., to create meals with fresh ingredients instead of processed foods that bring on obesity. He even set up a cooking school there. Your thoughts?
ME: Great stuff. It just has to be done elsewhere, and sustained. Sustainability is difficult due to cost, with the cheapest food and the most widely available generally the most unhealthy. We tax ourselves, spend the money on foods that will get us sick, and pay for it with vastly increased health care costs. That's crazy.
These questions have focused on the role of schools but is it fair to place the primary responsibility on them? Where do parents' child-raising responsibilities fit into this? Can't children take some responsibility themselves?
ME: Everyone is responsible. Schools complain they can't do very much, and sometimes, they can't. It's a personal responsibility, a family responsibility, even a national responsibility. The Germans figured out in the 19th century that a healthy economy required a healthy population ... so don't use government dollars to subsidize foods that make people sick.
In your new book “The Power of Rest: Why Sleep Alone Is Not Enough,” you discuss how obesity and lack of rest (active rest as well) are related. Can you elaborate on that for us?
ME: Rest and food are both required to rebuild the body ... something we do on a vast and fast scale. You essentially get a new heart in about three days. How you rest, like how you eat, is critical to health. Without rest, which includes passive rest like sleep, people gain weight. Adolescent obesity is much more a result of sleep and rest deprivation than people know.
Are American public schools doing a good job with physical education classes and periods with a goal of reducing childhood obesity?
ME: No. People should realize that exercise is everything that involves using voluntary muscle. Ordinary movement is exercise. A bigger issue than school lunches is getting safe conditions so kids can walk and bike to school. Autotransport is just the beginning of getting healthy, but it really helps. Following a simple daily rhythm of going FAR ... Food, Activity and Rest, in sequence ... can do a lot to control weight and make people healthy. You don't get such giant glucose and insulin spikes when people walk or move after meals. FAR can really make people feel more alert and lose unwanted weight.
Some schools are curtailing or even eliminating recess periods to concentrate more on academics. Your reaction?
ME: Get kids moving. With 20-30 minutes of physical activity, you grow new brain cells ... at night, in sleep, in memory areas. Physical activity increases mental sharpness. Academics are critical, but you need an alert, awake body to learn.
Is there anything else you'd like to say about childhood obesity and the role of schools in dealing with it?
ME: Mainly this ... health, not healthcare, is the issue. Public health can start with the schools. Healthy lifestyles lead to smarter kids, with better memories and more creativity, who need not face an adult life of diabetes and obesity. What you do is what you become. Schools need to teach that health starts with you ... and by following simple rules like going FAR (Food-Activity-Rest) you can create a lifelong health insurance no one can take away from you.
(Dr. Edlund ... a rest, sleep and body clock expert ... is a psychiatrist in Sarasota, Fla., and director of the Center for Circadian Medicine and the Gulf Coast Sleep Institute. He has been a professor of medicine at Brown and the University of Texas. His new book is published by Harper One.)
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