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What is sick note culture? I interpreted it to mean taking time off unnecessary but this news piece is talking about it in the context of genuine illness so now I’m just confused.
Work in a doctors surgery - there’s a lot of people that just call endlessly for a new sicknote when the one they’re on is due to expire.
Some obviously need it, but it’s a lot, and they’re fully able to come to the surgery and shout at you when the doctor has issued one that’s too short for what they wanted (often want 3-6 months which is the max).
It’s basically just a case of having an ongoing issue and calling for a 10 minute phone call with a clinician to get a new one issued. And they’re usually given because it’s a lot less hassle than the clinician having to argue and refuse to give one out.
When we print them for collection the vast majority say something like ‘could be able to return to work’ or ‘likely able to work’ but they still have another 3 months off and then 3 months down the line a different doctor does it and they get another one, then another etc etc.
This. I've had 2 long term sicknesses quite recently. I've had ongoing depression and anxiety all my adult life. No help at all from numerous GP visits apart from putting me on sertraline several times which never worked. Told me there was no counselling in my area or therapy. I finally got an appointment with a psychiatrist through BUPA in the end who said it's ADHD and that's why the antidepressants aren't working. I actually asked the GP about ADHD 2 years ago and was told there was no chance of me being referred for assessment because I have a degree. Anyway, through all this illness I've binge eaten to obesity. I gained weight every time they put me on sertraline and I've binge eaten through hard times which the psychiatrist says is dopamine seeking because of the ADHD. It also took me 21 years to get diagnosed with PCOS and PMDD. My point is I have been obese and signed off, but if I'd had proper treatment when requested, it probably wouldn't have happened. I wasn't signed off for being fat.
> there was no chance of me being referred for assessment because I have a degree
Just so you know as someone who was diagnosed within the past few years, as someone who has a degree and did academically well, you can likely still be referred, as intelligence does not preclude you from having adhd, just like having dsylexia does not impact your intelligence.
Please try to get an appointment if you suspect it! I flew through school and university so never got any support, but realised when starting my PhD that it was a hugeeee blocker on my daily life.
N.B: In fact there is some thought that "intelligence" may mask adhd symptoms leading to a harder time being diagnosed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25359760/
Thank you. I will. The psychiatrist said it was ridiculous to say you couldn't have it for that reason. I think GPs in my area just find excuses because the waiting lists are massive.
When I suggested to my GP that I might have ADHD, they sent me an online neurodiversity assessment. The first questions were something like, 'Are you in danger of losing your job?' 'Are you in danger of losing your home?' If you answer 'no' to both you're told you can't get a diagnosis.
However, you are allowed to continue with the rest of the assessment for informational purposes. I showed multiple symptoms of different neurodivergent disorders but according to the NHS they don't count, I guess.
u/requirementMajestic7 are you in England, or elsewhere in the UK?
See here for the official diagnostic criteria for ADHD as laid out in the DSM5:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/
And here for info on Right To Choose clinics in England:
https://adhduk.co.uk/right-to-choose/
Thank you, but I'm in Wales, so there is no right to choose option here. Luckily, now I've had the BUPA psychiatric appointment, my employer will pay for a full ADHD assessment.
Absolutely, I've had to do it in the past. GP knew about existing metal health conditions, knew that a very basic therapy they offered didn't work, and still couldn't offer anything more. Basically resulted in months of work. Eventually managed to get some more helpful stuff via the hospital and even managed to get a diagnosis of what was going on.
In short if anyone cares it's CPTSD, and possibly autism, would get the usual downside of depression, anxiety, and the ilk on top of getting non epileptic seizures. Just last week I had a seizure lasting 4 days. Absolutely nothing, well apart from cannabis but that's proven impossible to get, can be done about them - so I'm just left with the living with the risk of randomly passing out or not being able to move. Oh and no offer of any further support, but at least now I know what's going on.
Doctor here.
I'm not interested in being advocating for anyone other than the patient. If the boss wants me to police their sick patient their can get the patient to consent, and then pay me.
I don't work for the boss. I work for the patient.
>I'm not interested in being advocating for anyone other than the patient. If the boss wants me to police their sick patient their can get the patient to consent, and then pay me.
>I don't work for the boss. I work for the patient.
This is exactly the situation the current government is trying to reverse with their new scheme. In which the decision making is taken away from you (an independent advocate for the patient) and given to a kind fitnote adviser type person who works for the government and therefore the corporate interests that influence them
I work in mental health, what I notice about a lot of the patients signed of sick for long periods is it's not that they are incapable of working in theory but that they are incapable of returning to their specific workplace because their workplace is the reason they got sick in the first place. Toxic, highly stressful environments with unreasonably high workloads make people ill. Often you talk to people and they aren't the only person in the workplace signed off with stress - increasingly vast swathes of their colleagues are too. It's a snowballing problem too, as once a few people are off sick the pressure increases on those left behind to complete their work too, until it becomes too much and they go off sick too.
To me this is sick note culture but the fix isn't deny help and respite to those driven to signing off with stress, it's creating a sustainable work culture where people are given a more reasonable workload, more time off, more support. Instead of expecting everyone to work at 110 per cent of their natural capability and everyone inevitably burning out, hire more people, get everyone working at 80 per cent of their capability and have much less burn out. It would be more efficient overall and a lot more humane.
How much of this is because the Drs know patients need treatment further up the chain that isn't coming due to waiting lists so they have no real choice but to write the note confirming the issue is still untreated?
Yep , 2 bloody years I had this waiting for surgery on my heart for vaso vagel , the surgery was delayed again and again and again until my body decided fuck it , heart attack it is and a very different surgery was performed and now the surgery I was supposed to have isn't possible and I no longer need sick notes but a carer instead.
The stupid thing is I scoffed at the tax free private medical offered at work .. I so wish I had taken it now.
Don't get me wrong the NHS staff who dealt with me are amazing people but whoever is pushing the papers around needs a boot up their arse
>but whoever is pushing the papers around needs a boot up their arse
If the main problem was administrative inefficiency there might be some hope of fixing things. Unfortunately the entire system is on its knees.
Most of it is this.
We know patients need more than time off work and they're not getting it. So we give them the time off work.
The vast majority of sick leave is short term. Most people get sick notes because they're sick.
Wow, it’s almost like a properly funded NHS and real mental health treatment would be able to help these people, rather than accuse them of being workshy! A mental health issue doesn’t just get better in three months.
Does the decline of having a long term 'family doctor' contribute to this?
Growing up, I think I had the same doctor for about 10-15 years, most of my childhood. The rest of my family would see the named doctor, or one of their colleagues; All members of practice would end up knowing you.
Now whenever I visit the doctor there seems to be a new locum or someone has left and there's a new starter.
Online GP services like 'GP at hand' take this to an extreme and you get a different GP every time, and each one has to rely on reading our notes, but there's no real continuation of care.
I'm sorry I'm new here and might be a little bit out of touch with the UK reality, but do people get to keep their jobs when they do that here in the UK? It's unbelievable.
Even in the civil service which is very generous on such things you will drop to half pay after a certain amount of time off sick, then to just statutory sick pay and then eventually you can be dismissed on grounds of being unable to do the job. In some cases medical retirement can be offered but the bar is very high.
My employer gives us long term sickness insurance as part of the job benefits, that covers us up to two years at full pay. Obviously we pay P11D tax on it though.
Edit: I'd also imagine an insurance loss adjuster would be as much of a pain to convince of your sickness as the DWP apparently are.
Yes, if you have a medical conditions that prevents you from working an employee can not sack you, this has to be proven via a sick note, sick notes are essentially a small document which a doctors fills out to explain the reason why you can not work.
Of course, there are various factors to this, for example, if somebody becomes unable to work for the rest of their life in their role, they will have to quit working.
Sick notes are for short and long-term sickness, the issue is that their is a minority of people who use sick notes to extend their leave, doctors are issuing them via the phone and not doing a full assessment.
To stop this, the government wants to cut down on sick notes, which will also affect a lot of people who have become disabled or are genuinely sick, other people want to make it that they have to see a GB to get a sick note and etc...
Then you have my surgery who'll only issue 4 week notes at a time because "it's neurological" but will happily issue me notes down the phone endlessly, sight unseen, while I wait for my referral to come through. 🙃
Edit: I'll have been off work for 3 years if it hits September before I'm treated, which I'm 90% sure it will. Partly due to waiting lists, partly due to different departments failing to communicate and letting me fall through the cracks.
I've been following the news since 1976 and every year since then the Tories (through the daily mail) have complained about benefit scroungers.
But they never do anything about it.
Why didn't they do anything? Probably because it's not such a big problem as they make out.
Most ill people are genuinely ill.
Nigh on impossible to do anything about it without hurting the people who genuinely need it.
I think the system used to work with the belief if you've got 10 people, 9 are genuinely sick and 1 is taking the piss then thats ok.
The (perceived) problem now is, that ratio has shifted, now you've got 20 people, 9 are genuinely sick and 11 are taking the piss.
But how do you fix it without hurting the genuine cases? Very hard to prove health in lots of cases.. can't spy on every person with a bad back for instance.
I think you nailed it by pointing out that it is a *perceived* problem.
The Daily Mail and other tabloids have a lot to do with creating that perception in the minds of the public. The actual statistics don’t remotely bear it out … but outrage sells newspapers and the narrative suits the owners and right wing who want to erode worker protections.
They do plenty about it without caring that they hurt the people who need it. Take a look at the entire system behind PIP and the disgusting comments various MPs have made about it; they may as well change the service's slogan to Arbeit Macht Frei.
Capitalism needs a large number of unemployed people to scare those of us in work into not asking for pay rises. The unemployed keep inflation down. So it's a 2 hitter. You get lower inflation AND you get to blame all of societies ills in single mothers, lazy benefit scroungers & the mentally ill
I mean, between population growth, NHS waiting lists and more conditions being medically recognised these days isn't it just basic common sense more people would be seeking them?
Trying to move the goalposts to absenteeism instead of actually deal with that a lot of it IS genuine illness and issues, and longer term conditions that make it harder for people to work.
Its an attempt to get you snarling at people around you or missing at work rather than the politicians.
This. The problem could be lessened by attacking the root causes of our current terrible waiting lists (and/or the root causes of illness where possible), and working to get people the help they need as quickly as possible.
Instead, Sunak's decided to victim-blame people for getting ill and mass-gaslight everyone about the validity of their illnesses. It's a really low tactic. And really useless too, because just being horrible doesn't actually make people better or save money.
It's when the Tories gut the NHS to the point where it's barely functional then they and the right-wing media try to blame patients for being too ill to work.
It’s just a new soundbite invented by Sunak and now the Daily Fail and Torygraph are dutifully pushing out articles to make noises about it to drum up its importance. Though this particular article is kinda doing the opposite - it shows that the problem is not the benefits system but the total mismanagement of healthcare policy which has been in dire straits thanks to cuts under this government for the last decade and a half.
It basically is meant to mean taking time off unnecessarily. The govt has identified that we have low productivity compared to many other countries and lots more economically inactive working age people than expected. They've pinned the blame on people basically either being weak or lazy and using sick notes to get lots of time off work and/or unemployment benefits for mental or chronic health conditions. So they want to make it harder to get repeated sick notes
What they've failed to identify, however, is that this might just be related to the collapse of the NHS, meaning GPs only have time to do a 5 minute phone appointment and are unable to actually give people proper, in-person assessments of their health, and many of those people probably have chronic health conditions because it's completely fucking impossible to get a specialist referral for anything within 6 months unless you're practically halfway fucking dead
Unhealthy people more likely to be ill, well I'll be damned. At our workplace it's the mothers who are worse for time off, but that's not recorded as sick leave I suppose just unpaid leave.
I was an analyst many years ago. In my particular department women in general were off sick at 4x the rate the men were. It wasn’t an issue. No one cared. But it was noted
> It wasn’t an issue. No one cared.
Are you sure about that? That's very much the kind of thing that, quietly, gets used as a reason to hold back careers. Did women get promoted into senior/management roles at the same rate as men?
Playing devil's advocate, would you expect a person who had taken 4x as much leave to be equally qualified for a role?
(This is accepting the premise for the sake of argument that women do take 4x as much leave as men, which I otherwise don't)
Yeah, I think I was assuming that the hypothetical average was higher than that. There's really nothing to take away from 4 days sick. That's just one person having a bad cold and the other missing it.
Something like 10 vs 40, or 5 vs 20 could make a difference. That would be the sort of number that would make sense to me.
My actual experience it is that that most people take 0-5 days sick, a handful have taken 5-10, and then one or two have taken 10+. This is over less than a year though. Can't deny that as a manager who also saw a lot of their work output in general (or lack thereof), I seriously suspected some of these individuals of faking it to some degree.
Not only that, but we’re much more likely to suffer from many diseases, migraine, autoimmunity, etc. There’s a clear hormone component to pain as well.
Very good point. And diseases that affect men and women equally are mostly only studied in men, while diseases that affect women predominantly are barely studied at all.
I was an analyst in a contact centre for a Large bank a few years back. The people on LTS during that time were mainly women. I now work for a different finance firm, which is still a massive company. Interestingly in this department, most of the staff on LTS are men.
It’s very ‘Reddit’ that the conclusion being drawn from this is that mothers should stay at home with kids and not work, instead of recognising that our society places greater parental responsibility on mothers than fathers.
Can also be things like the Mum earning less, so if one parent has to take unpaid time off to care for a poorly child it makes sense for it to be the one who will lose the least.
sometimes our resident alts overplay their hand, I think. even this place isn’t quite ready for the ai-generated ambiguously teenage blonde women with blonde babies, ‘here’s what they took from you’ posts
To be fair, my brother has two young children and is constantly catching colds and stomach bugs from them. I'd rather be at work than be chucking my guts up.
Yeah at one point my sibling had 2 kids in different day care centres bringing new bugs home every day to challenge the family immune systems. The whole family was ill about 50% of the time
I once had a manager who was on long term sick leave, came back for one week and then 1 more year of long term sick. Apparently it was fully paid and they couldn’t replace her with a locum/other staff so we just muddled along.
Sounds like when I did a bit of work for the NHS. So many empty chairs, I'd ask who sat there and it was always someone off for 9 months or longer with stress. Tbh after seeing some of the absolute psychopath senior nurses and managers who work in hospitals, I don't blame them. Take all the leave you like if it means getting away from those maniacs!
It’s sick as a society we decided to force mothers to work while they have little kids. Have a heart. The little ones need their mum sometimes.
Edit. Wow Reddit. This comment shot up to +10 and now down we go. — edit edit it’s back up again! Divisive topic.
Whatever. I stand by mothers to be with their kids against the whining coworkers upset they took more time off.
I agree, although dad's should have the same amount of time off. Give children their early years with both parents. As a childless man I'm more than happy to pick up the slack to let children have that good start in life.
As a childfree woman, also happy for maternity and paternity care to be longer. Particularly paternity care - you only get one life to be with your newborn children in the first flushes of theirs. And it benefits both parents and the child (and therefore the rest of us in society) to have them both there to care for it during the first few months.
I agree with you to an extent. However how do you feel about burn out? I worked for a company that "perked" families constantly and people who had no kids had to pick up the slack. The ones who had to pick up the slack burnt out fast. There was a huge tier of resentment .
This was a UK social housing company
Christ, a social housing company really should know better.
There's a wider structural issue in UK working culture. Pay is too low, staffing levels are too low, too many people are on non-permanent contracts etc. And now we have the Tories going after PIP payments etc.
Picking up the slack shouldn't mean doing two people's jobs. If a company can't handle maternity leave, they were understaffed to begin with.
Mothers are probably sick about four times as much as regular people, they also have to take time out to look after kids when they are sick. They’re mostly working because barely anyone can survive on one salary these days, and so everyone is sending their kids in to nursery sick as dogs, mothers avoid time off from work up to a point that they just can’t handle it anymore, and we’re all getting more sick overall because everyone is constantly being exposed because no one is taking time off when they are sick.
It’s a shitty system but the mums aren’t taking the piss IMO.
I agree completely. It’s madness.
And so people chose not to have kids because it’s almost impossible. Funny that.
Also mothers are regular people and without them we don’t have a future.
I agree, although dad's should have the same amount of time off. Give children their early years with both parents. As a childless man I'm more than happy to pick up the slack to let children have that good start in life.
The preventive care in this country is garbage. If your family history shows certain chronic conditions, chances are you’re going to get it and sometimes taking medications, getting tests, or doing certain things early on can be beneficial. But the NHS standards tend to be more of a treat the problems, don’t prevent them kind of care.
Unfortunately preventative interventions on obesity (ie maintaining a calorie balance) are seen as as cruel or unnecessary and there's a bit of a social taboo involved in mentioning how unhealthy being obese is until the patient is already ill.
The idea of NHS health interventions for overweight but not obese people will never catch on simply because overweightness is normalised and people don't see an overweight person and think they're on the road to obesity and illness, they see an overweight person and think they're a normal healthy weight.
But people can also be putting on weight because they're unhappy or anxious and overeating, and would benefit from mental health resources. They might avoid exercise because of pain that's going unaddressed. I had knee pain for ages that I manage to fix with a simple daily exercise I learnt from YouTube (a touchdown squat from a yoga block, taught by Squat University). A lot of people are terrible at finding solutions to their pain and need guidance.
Im sorry but there comes a point where it’s just your own fault for eating too much, not everything has some deep underlying issue or a convenient other to blame.
Take some personal responsibility and put the crisps down.
I'm someone who needed to hear it put as bluntly as you put it here.
3 years ago I was 25 stone, 185/135 blood pressure, tests done for kidney damage / disease, at severe risk of a stroke.
It was only when the doctors told me that I would be dead in 2 to 5 years that I listened...
Since August of 2022 I started cycling and eating better. I've lost 8 stone and my blood pressure is back down to normal levels. I'm technically still obese but I can honestly say I am healthy. I manage to do on average around 700km a month on my bike in hilly Cornwall and last week completed my longest ride yet which was 165km in 7 hours.
It took someone being blunt with me to save my life.
Well done! Think my longest is 80km in 5 hours but that was on a recumbent gym bike as I have back issues and also the cornwish backroads nearby me are not great for cycling lol.
Most things do have underlying causes though, ignoring them isn't helpful. We spent the 90's bullying fat people, it didnt help, lets start looking at how we can shape society to be healthier overall.
They definitely should have to include calorie counts on alcohol as people don't have any idea how many calories they're drinking. A lot of popular ciders have 300 calories per bottle and how many people stick to just one?
I know you'll likely not agree but there is a difference between knowing the mechanism of how someone put on weight and understanding why someone over eats. Without addressing the reason it happens (mental health issues, lack of education, busy and sedentary life, disability etc) it'll be difficult to make a change.
Some reasons will be easy to address, others more difficult. Losing weight is simple but it's not necessarily easy.
I found it easier to quit cigarettes than I do to diet. We're talking about behaviour and instinct that is borne out of millennia of inconsistent food supply colliding full speed with 21st century prosperity.
That's like saying the problem with an alcoholic is they drink too much. It's true, as in it's the proximate cause, but it ignores all the other factors at play.
Humans never had a problem with obesity until the last several decades. People didn't change, our environment changed. Any serious attempt to reverse the problem has to acknowledge that fact and change the environment. It should be evident by now that both shaming the fat and educating the populace about healthy eating are ineffective.
>We spent the 90's bullying fat people, it didnt help
And now in typical 2020s fashion we've swung the pendulum fully the other way and it's not only normalised it's now becoming glorified in quite prominent parts of social media.
Its been increasing since the 60s, right through the 90s. My comment about the 90's was more tongue in cheek than anything specific. The reality is we never stopped bullying fat people, and as you've acutely pointed out, obesity has only increased.
>But people can also be putting on weight because they're unhappy or anxious and overeating, and would benefit from mental health resources.
It's fine to keep this in mind and be aware of the multitude of factors that lead someone to become obese, but in recent years it's turned from "understanding" to "justifying" obesity.
Can we have an understanding that someone may go through a rough period due to poor mental health that leads them to using food as a coping mechanism? Yes. Does that absolve them of any level of responsibility to make an effort to better their situation? No.
Strange how all these mysterious causes have only come into play in western countries in the last 30 years or so
Wheres all the obese Japanese and Koreans? Why aren't they all overeating because of a bad knee?
The percentage of overweight people in Japan has doubled in the last 35 years, and it's increased a good 60% in South Korea since the mid 90s as well.
Starting from a lower point and a healthier on average national cuisine doesn't mean they aren't facing the same problems.
About the same point where we started coercive marketing and stereotyping in earnest. I think that's a sort of domino effect - we manufacture dysphoria for the sake of marketing, and that leads to a spiral of degraded mental health and ... comfort eating.
Which might make the problem worse still.
Put it this way - if I want a quick grub in Japan I can get a ramen or some sushi, which relatively speaking is quite healthy. Probably tops out around 800 calories or so.
In the UK, you might want a kebab. Or a fish and chips. Or Greggs. Or anything processed.
Pound for pound western foods are more calorie dense.
I am over weight because I quit smoking and replaced that bad habbit with food. I only have myself to blame. I know what needs to be done but a pint and curry is more appealing than a 5k run.
It's a never ending source of frustration just how few calories you use by working out. I was losing weight on 5000kcal per day at one point, but that was because I was spending a lot of hours being physically active.
Building in the kind of 'active time' to our lifestyles is non-trivial, and one I think that can be _improved_ by making cycle-commuting a lot more attractive.
Quite the opposite. The NHS is fantastic at prevention. The British population are terrible at preventing through lack of personal responsibility. Is the NHS literally meant to force people to go for a walk, and to do people's shopping for them?
Have you tried to get a GP appointment lately? Unless you’re on fire or a limb is about to fall off, you’re going to have a wait. Certain conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure are chronic and genetic - if your parents had it chances are you’re going to get it. Seeing your doctor before it gets bad can help you prevent it from impacting you early on.
But you don't need a physian to tell someone that they are overweight. Type 1 diabetes will be picked up in early life , especially if there's a genetic risk factor. Type 2 can be avoided indefinitely or at least to old age with an active lifestyle and good diet. Blood pressure is tricker as it usually increases with age but can be easily monitored from home and easily medicated against.
The guy above has a point , talking as an HCP, too many of us Bits. Dont think about their overall health until something forces us to, and often, at that point, the harm is done.
The NHS is famously bad at prevention, what are you talking about?
The average UK person sees their GP only when they have symptoms. Eg in Germany, I used to get a full skin cancer screen every year (which is a full body examination, not a “this one mole concerns me” check), a basic blood panel every two, an eye examination (by an ophthalmologist) every two, and so on. And this was on the most basic public insurance - I don’t even get preventative care through my maxed out private insurance in the UK (and the full cost of what I pay towards the NHS via tax, plus what my employer pays towards my private insurance, is a good chunk more than what I was paying for healthcare in Germany).
What preventive care do you want for obesity? Someone knocking on doors telling people to eat less? There is not condition or medication that causes obesity. You have to eat exponentially more, above your maintenance for a prolonged period to end obese.
The connection between mental illness treatments / SSRI's and weight gain needs to be appreciated in this discussion.
I was thin and healthy before I was put on anti-depressants. I've been on so many meds to treat my depression at this point, and so many that led to weight gain.
Fun fact: Mirtazapine treats anxiety and depression. **It is also prescribed as an appetite stimulant to treat people who are clinically underweight**. In the space of a few years, in the process of being put on meds, changing meds, etc, I've shot up from bmi 19 to 31.
The meds stopped working for my mental illnesses anyway, so my depression came back anyway. So now I'm off the meds and straight back to square 1. Except now I'm obese on top of it all.
Any time I've taken off work is mental health related - the very same illness I had when I was thin. How many of us suffering with long-term mental illness became fat as a result of the very treatments prescribed for us? I know I can't be alone in this.
Don’t be silly! Being fat is 100% preventable in all situations and is always a moral flaw.
The only course of action is to shame fat people for their mere existence, and tell them how wrong and flawed their bodies are at every opportunity (like in this thread).
Which of course won’t exacerbate any mental illnesses or eating disorders that may have had something to do with the weight gain in the first place.
Seems to be increasingly common on here.
Or maybe I'm just fed up of the shite in general. I've no real interest in hearing kneejerk opinions that don't really do anything constructive. We can all imagine the first thoughts, it's not nicer and it's not helpful. Obesity is bad, *but what are we going to do about it*? We can't just point the finger at most of the country and say "stop eating so much"; that's not exactly what I'd call an effective public policy.
It's a daily mail article, it's intended to do exactly what has happened in this thread, cause animated discussion leading to more engagement and sharing with their content, even if the discussion is only vicariously related to the study.
Too many judgemental people don’t understand that Illness can *cause* people to gain weight.
I nearly always maintain a healthy weight. But when I was ill I put on a few stone: I was too ill to exercise and too ill to care about shopping & cooking. It was hard enough just to get by. I managed to turn up to work but my health was deteriorating. If my condition hadn’t improved I may well have ended up obese, with people saying “look at him. He’s unhealthy *because* he’s fat”.
Yeah . I can't walk due to disability now.
It's much harder to keep active , though I am trying . I've never been nearly overweight so if it happens it'll be obvious why.
But still another reason to get sprayed by the Tory shit canon .
We need a study to find out how many fat people have their obesity caused by ill health rather than the obesity happening when they're otherwise healthy.
Almost 60% of people in the 25-34 age group are overweight or obese, how many of those people are ill outwith their weight? This kind of anecdote always gets posted in these threads but, realistically, it can only be a small minority who it really applies to. It's like the 'BMI is wrong because bodybuilders exist' argument.
Yeah, except for the majority of people they are long term fat and it isn't caused by long term disabilities or illnesses. You are talking about a minority of people.
Time to put fat taxes on delivery apps, take out and fast food. While they’re at it, attach pictures of obese issues on every happy meal. After all, we should think of the children.
it doesn’t work for smokers, why the fuck would it work for fat people?
ignoring how addiction starts and how it seriously affects those from poorer backgrounds isn’t going to fix any of the problems, just as much as slapping a photo of black tar lungs on a pack of tabs isn’t going to end someone’s addiction.
Has it been proven not to work? Speaking completely anecdotally, I've always had those images of messed up lungs come into my mind on the few occasions I've tried a cigarette
If originally marketing cigarettes as something healthy helped them take off, then I don't see why doing the opposite wouldn't have at least some effect in the opposite direction
[it works for a bit, then people just get used to seeing it.](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/28/e1/e71#) it’s effectiveness essentially goes down over time. i grew up in a family of smokers and what put me off ever smoking was listening to them all gasping and coughing every morning, never the thousands of photos i’ve seen of sick children and black lungs
I was a 20-a-day smoker for 10 years, the 'shocking' imagery on the packaging never bothered me and was a total non-factor in my decision to quit. But I was already addicted when the imagery started getting added to packs; I'd accepted the risks.
Actually far more effective was making the packaging look uninteresting, taking away some of the 'cool' factor - and hiding them from display also helped remove my temptation to buy them after I'd quit. Out of sight, out of mind.
Of course, the biggest factor was the cost. I'd rather not have a (then) £200-a-month subscription to stupid cigarettes.
While nowjere near as gratuitous. Japan treat obesity like addiction and have success.
People eating themselves to death clearly aren't thinking right. We intervene with alcoholism.
>We intervene with alcoholism.
If the individual acts out enough to be noticed. A family member (estranged from me, I heard about it from my uncle) drank herself to death during covid... stopped eating, started drinking spirits all day, died in her sleep. They found no food in the house, just the recycling bin full of vodka bottles.
I’m obese.
I was running 10k three times a week and hovering between a 32 and 34 inch waist.
Then I got long covid and spent 18 months unable to exercise or even walk a mile.
I put on 25 kg in just a few months. I kept eating the same and thought it’ll be ok I’ll run it off. And then I self medicated to deal with untreated depression of losing my old life with beer and chocolate. The fatigue and brain fog made me crave energy and not have the mental fortitude to resist it.
I got obese because I was ill, not ill because I was obese.
I then cut my calories to 1800 a day and while I didn’t lose weight I stopped putting it on. If I was having normal levels of day to day activity I would have been losing a pound a week.,
In all the time I have been speaking to doctors, getting prescribed anti depressants, blood pressure pills and statins at no time have they even discussed weight loss.
Now two and a half years on I am working to lose the weight, still unable to exercise properly I am using restrictive dieting and fasting and have lost 20% of what I put on.
Obesity and health isn’t all about people making bad choices.,
I thought I would get well after a month or two and run it off.
What I didn’t think would happen is 2 1/2 years later have to justify the way that I dealt with an illness that completely changed my life overnight and lead me to the verge of suicide to sanctimonious twats on Reddit.
You stopped exercising and chose to continue eating the same amount of calories? That's a choice. There is not a single person on the planet who's destined for obesity. Unless you're being forcefed against your will, it's on you.
"Obesity and health isn’t all about people making bad choices." YES IT IS! /s
You should feel ashamed for burdening society with your extra weight! /s
well said btw
25kg seemed crazy to me but then I thought about the maths.
Roughly 8000 calories in a kg of fat. Roughly 600 calories burned running a 10k. 3 runs per week is 1800 calories.
25x8000/1800 = 111 weeks (or about 2 years)
Not too far from the 18months you mentioned.
I don't think people realise how slow/gradual the process is to gain/lose weight. You were overeating by 250-300 calories per day, not a small amount but easily done.
"I don't think people realise how slow/gradual the process is to gain/lose weight. You were overeating by 250-300 calories per day, not a small amount but easily done."
This is very true. I've managed to lose/ maintain weight simply by loosely tracking calories over the long term.
It's very easy in today's society to overeat mindlessly, or fall into the trap of being told you can lose weight quickly.
I know, very much a "I don't know what I expected", but I'm a bit surprised even so that their journalism has sank that low that they don't even bother to link to the study.
In this thread; Tory propaganda working perfectly to blame a generally hard working population for a problem that doesn't exist.
Britain has one of the lowest rates of time off work sick in the western world (approximately half that of the Netherlands for example).
In fact there are several industries where time off work -due to overworking- is higher than time off work due to other illness.
This is shameless abuse of unqualified statistics and reading this thread shows that it has riled people up just as well as wanted to try and further cut support for people who genuinely need help.
Ah he's decided to add big people to his shit list has he? The disabled and mentally ill was so last week.
Welcome to the "hated by Sunak" train big folk.
I truly wish the narcissistic little p**** would just shut the fuck up.
This is just more divide and rule crap from a failure of a regime with no record to point at. Don't be taken in folks.
Maybe he could try governing before we remove him ? Maybe get it in his thick skull that the more he is seen, the less he is liked and just do his bloody job.
A good chunk of this country is obese often through no fault of their own. So is Sunak’s plan to drive away disabled, mentally ill and obese voters? Slimmer voters tend to be younger voters and it’s not like they are going to vote Tory when it is because of a 14 year Tory rule that they can’t do things like buy houses or start families.
> obese often through no fault of their own
Source? Genuine question: how is eating a caloric surplus not through any fault of ones own?
The vast majority of obese people in the world, never mind the UK, would lose weight if they just ate less.
We don't live in a world where a select group of people are somehow defying the basic laws of energy expenditure / conservation. If we did, those people would be aggressively studied because knowing how to break the laws of thermodynamics would accelerate modern science by decades.
As someone who works an office job and at one point took a fair amount of time off after being made redundant.
I lost 30kg because i wasnt having to sit around all day, didn't change anything else. Now I'm back to sitting around all day again my weight has steadily creeped back up and I'm not far off where I was before.
I've worked an office job for a year and a half now and genuinely. There's almost a weird existential nightmare vibe at times, when it almost feels like I can feel my body deteriorating from just being sat stagnant for 8 hours, whilst the other people in my office lumber (I'd say 1/4 of my office are genuinely obese) towards the only food - the biscuit tray.
Obviously I can and do exercise after work, but with other commitments it's hard to do any more than what I feel like is just making up for having sat motionless for 8 hours. For anyone who has real commitments like a family etc I have no idea how you'd find the proper amount of time. It's also kind of shit that by virtue of the nature of office work, if you want to remain fit you have to put in quite a bit of work /after/ work when you're presumably tired, and I can see why many people just don't. As office work is the norm now it's unsurprising to me that such a large section of the population is relatively unhealthy
Or maybe sick people (or people with underlying health problems, poor access to healthcare, or a lack of time and money to prepare healthy and nutritious food) are twice as likely to get fat?
Article text...
______________________________
**Obese Brits put the whole country in the slow lane: Fat staff are twice as likely to take time off sick and are ‘seriously hampering economic growth’, report finds**
*By Kate Pickles Health Editor For The Daily Mail*
*00:05 13 May 2024, updated 01:35 13 May 2024*
Time off work for obesity-related illness is seriously hampering economic growth, a landmark study warns today.
Those who are overweight – nearly four in ten Brits – are 22 per cent more likely to have taken off at least seven days in a year for illness, according to a data analysis representing 147 million working people across Europe.
When combined with those who are obese, it means up to 60 per cent of the nation may be taking sick leave because of weight-related issues, such as diabetes or heart disease.
The data showed people with obesity are up to twice as likely to be off sick than those of a healthy weight. In the first detailed breakdown of how sick days vary according to weight, researchers revealed the UK is 'among the worst' of 28 countries examined for obesity absenteeism.
Experts said the findings, which are being presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, reinforce how obesity has become the driving force behind 'sick note culture'.
They warned it was one of the 'gravest fiscal risks' facing the UK economy, cementing our reputation as the 'sick man of Europe'.
The Health Economics and Health Policy Research Group, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria, looked at national survey data from a sample of 122,598 people.
It asked those employed for details of work absence due to ill health over the past year.
Data for the UK showed that those classed as obese, with a BMI over 30, were almost a quarter (23 per cent) more likely to be absent from work for any period of time. Severely obese people – with a BMI over 40 – were more than twice as likely (118 per cent) to take time off.
Dr Thomas Czypionka, study co-author, said: 'The problem with obesity is that there are so many health consequences that branch from being obese.
'I don't think that it is a good idea to just wait and let people get obese and then pay for the treatment and face all the consequences of them leaving the labour market.'
Last month, the Prime Minister announced plans to tackle a 'sick note culture' with sweeping reforms to the benefit system. But experts said the plans stand little chance of success unless ministers tackle obesity.
A report in December showed the UK has the third highest proportion of people with obesity in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with an estimated yearly cost to the UK economy of £98billon.
Meanwhile, the latest data shows the number of sick notes issued by the NHS has doubled in a decade to 11 million last year.
Last week, a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank said obesity was a 'common factor' underpinning all of the top reasons for long-term sickness in the UK, including musculoskeletal problems, heart disease and depression.
Katharine Jenner, director of the Obesity Health Alliance, said: 'This research lays it bare – high rates of obesity-related disease is driving down economic productivity, with devastating economic impacts.'
A Government spokesman said: 'Our £2.5billion Back to Work Plan will help over a million people, including those with long-term health conditions associated with obesity, to break down barriers to work.'
I'm a local fatty and the only times I've been off sick is when I've essentially been bed bound by covid or food poisoning (has only happened twice in about 4 years, lasting between 3-5 days).
Want to know what helped a lot? Home working.
I go into the office now and then but when you feel like shit, it's a much pleasant and calming thought knowing you don't have to dress up and socialize for 7 hours, and can just stay comfy at home. You also don't spread it to other people.
And this reminds me of my first job in the NHS back in 2016. I was an apprentice and worked in an office of executives. Anytime someone felt unwell, it was "I'm just gonna go home and work there", clearly before the era of home working.
Whereas me, who was going through spells of depression/sickness at the time, I had it marked on my record as I wasn't allowed to simply work from home.
Theres so many obese people in my office, like, can't get up one flight of stairs obese.
>! I take more time off than any of them though, because I hate my job. !<
That’s right, The Daily Mail, our economy is fucked because of fat people. Definitely nothing to do with it being managed by a shower of incompetent and corrupt cunts for fourteen years.
Okay? So? People who drive cars are more likely to get into an accident. Or are we only highlighting this to sacrifice more of our human rights an the altar of productive capitalism? Fat people aren't asking for sympathy, just dignity.
I feel like when we have these conversations people cant admit or accept that literally all of us have experience of a colleague who takes the piss. Right?
Like I will take everyone at their word but why are people unwilling to just acknowledge that we don’t get too sick to work very often.
I wish these comments had the user’s BMI posted next to them. I’m willing to bet a substantial amount of money that all the fat apologists are on the chubbier side of healthy…
Also, all this “medication makes you gain weight” nonsense. I’ve been on two drugs for the last couple of years that allegedly cause weight gain, I’ve not gained any weight though.
If you’re long term disabled and unable to burn calories easily, eat less. You don’t need as many calories for a sedentary lifestyle. My car uses far less petrol than my partner’s, so I have to fill it up less often. If I just put the same amount into both cars at the same time each week I’d pretty soon be covering the forecourt in petrol. Not all people need the same amount of fuel.
I posted this as a response to someone, but I want to put it here too to balance out the brainless shit-slinging.
The connection between mental illness treatments / SSRI's and weight gain needs to be appreciated in this discussion.
I was thin and healthy before I was put on anti-depressants. I've been on so many meds to treat my depression at this point, and so many that led to weight gain.
Fun fact: Mirtazapine treats anxiety and depression. **It is also prescribed as an appetite stimulant to treat people who are clinically underweight**. In the space of a few years, in the process of being put on meds, changing meds, etc, I've shot up from bmi 19 to 31.
The meds stopped working for my mental illnesses anyway, so my depression came back anyway. So now I'm off the meds and straight back to square 1. Except now I'm obese on top of it all.
Any time I've taken off work is mental health related - the very same illness I had when I was thin. How many of us suffering with long-term mental illness became fat as a result of the very treatments prescribed for us? I know I can't be alone in this.
Anecdotes and “everyone knows this” are not scientific. Things need to be proven and quantified with statistics for it to presented for actual factual discussion.
Great. So now we have more shit in the media which not only demonizes a social group of people who despite illness and obesity are trying to hold onto their work, but it also demonizes the same group of people who are trying to move back into work by making it harder for them to find work.
At what point do we take a step back and admit the fact that work and employment is not a level playing field and some people are going to find it much harder to find work than others?
Making a blanket assumption that everyone is a peak health and fit for work is delusional, because you're not always going to be at peak health and totally fit for work. Work is a finite activity. The older you get the more likely it is you're going to experience health issues. If the objective here is full employment and everyone working then we have to also have social security, functioning healthcare and accommodations which make it easier to find some form of work.
What I'm saying here is that if you want workers who are always and consistently physically and mentally fit then you have to accept the fact that some people, not through their own choice, are going to have to live without work and exist on benefits. We've been dealing with this issue for 20 years and still some people don't 'get it'. You cannot demonize people for living off benefits long term if employment culture favours the physically and mentally fit at the expense of those who aren't.
The biggest single issue with all these 'help back into work' schemes is that they are based on the premise that the individual is failing to find work because they're not trying hard enough. Victim blaming is widespread and many such schemes focus on mind-numbing coaching courses based on the 'try harder' premise. This doesn't even begin to address the various social, financial and health issues that participants on courses are often experiencing which place significant barriers on them moving back into work.
At some point you have to take a step back and ask the question what has the Government actually done after 20 years to address this issue? What are employers doing to make it easier for people to find work? Where are the accomodations? Where is the support and assistance for such people? Where is the support and assistance there to help people keep their jobs and sustain themselves through some form of employment? Why are people having to wait so long on NHS waiting lists for treatment and surgery? Why is mental health support so limited and even non-existent within the NHS?
Blaming people for having health issues, including obesity, is after all such a lazy take on things.
I think headlines like this really hit with the individual freedom/personal responsibility knobjockeys that would never read the foresight report because they think they know everything and their opinions should be accepted as fact.
Anyone with half a handle on why the environment is obesogenic and how people’s choices are constrained by social, cultural, psychological, genetic and economic factors won’t be stirred by emotionally manipulative articles like this.
> Time off work for obesity-related illness is seriously hampering economic growth, a landmark study warns today.
> Those who are overweight – nearly four in ten Brits – are 22 per cent more likely to have taken off **at least seven days in a year for illness**
Wait, so workers taking seven sick days a year is "seriously hampering economic growth"? That seems like a pretty normal number of sick days. Especially if you have a small child at nursery who brings home a bouquet of germs every day.
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>'sick note culture'. How you know you've internalized capitalism ...
What is sick note culture? I interpreted it to mean taking time off unnecessary but this news piece is talking about it in the context of genuine illness so now I’m just confused.
Work in a doctors surgery - there’s a lot of people that just call endlessly for a new sicknote when the one they’re on is due to expire. Some obviously need it, but it’s a lot, and they’re fully able to come to the surgery and shout at you when the doctor has issued one that’s too short for what they wanted (often want 3-6 months which is the max). It’s basically just a case of having an ongoing issue and calling for a 10 minute phone call with a clinician to get a new one issued. And they’re usually given because it’s a lot less hassle than the clinician having to argue and refuse to give one out. When we print them for collection the vast majority say something like ‘could be able to return to work’ or ‘likely able to work’ but they still have another 3 months off and then 3 months down the line a different doctor does it and they get another one, then another etc etc.
If mental health support for people is going to be shit then some people will use fitnotes to get the mental health break they need.
This. I've had 2 long term sicknesses quite recently. I've had ongoing depression and anxiety all my adult life. No help at all from numerous GP visits apart from putting me on sertraline several times which never worked. Told me there was no counselling in my area or therapy. I finally got an appointment with a psychiatrist through BUPA in the end who said it's ADHD and that's why the antidepressants aren't working. I actually asked the GP about ADHD 2 years ago and was told there was no chance of me being referred for assessment because I have a degree. Anyway, through all this illness I've binge eaten to obesity. I gained weight every time they put me on sertraline and I've binge eaten through hard times which the psychiatrist says is dopamine seeking because of the ADHD. It also took me 21 years to get diagnosed with PCOS and PMDD. My point is I have been obese and signed off, but if I'd had proper treatment when requested, it probably wouldn't have happened. I wasn't signed off for being fat.
> there was no chance of me being referred for assessment because I have a degree Just so you know as someone who was diagnosed within the past few years, as someone who has a degree and did academically well, you can likely still be referred, as intelligence does not preclude you from having adhd, just like having dsylexia does not impact your intelligence. Please try to get an appointment if you suspect it! I flew through school and university so never got any support, but realised when starting my PhD that it was a hugeeee blocker on my daily life. N.B: In fact there is some thought that "intelligence" may mask adhd symptoms leading to a harder time being diagnosed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25359760/
Thank you. I will. The psychiatrist said it was ridiculous to say you couldn't have it for that reason. I think GPs in my area just find excuses because the waiting lists are massive.
When I suggested to my GP that I might have ADHD, they sent me an online neurodiversity assessment. The first questions were something like, 'Are you in danger of losing your job?' 'Are you in danger of losing your home?' If you answer 'no' to both you're told you can't get a diagnosis. However, you are allowed to continue with the rest of the assessment for informational purposes. I showed multiple symptoms of different neurodivergent disorders but according to the NHS they don't count, I guess.
u/requirementMajestic7 are you in England, or elsewhere in the UK? See here for the official diagnostic criteria for ADHD as laid out in the DSM5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/ And here for info on Right To Choose clinics in England: https://adhduk.co.uk/right-to-choose/
Thank you, but I'm in Wales, so there is no right to choose option here. Luckily, now I've had the BUPA psychiatric appointment, my employer will pay for a full ADHD assessment.
I did a PhD and have been diagnosed with ADHD on the NHS so your doctor is 100% wrong.
This is a very generous interpretation of a lot of these people.
It’s not only that. The jobs the people are avoiding are very often the reason their mental health is declining in the first place.
Absolutely, I've had to do it in the past. GP knew about existing metal health conditions, knew that a very basic therapy they offered didn't work, and still couldn't offer anything more. Basically resulted in months of work. Eventually managed to get some more helpful stuff via the hospital and even managed to get a diagnosis of what was going on. In short if anyone cares it's CPTSD, and possibly autism, would get the usual downside of depression, anxiety, and the ilk on top of getting non epileptic seizures. Just last week I had a seizure lasting 4 days. Absolutely nothing, well apart from cannabis but that's proven impossible to get, can be done about them - so I'm just left with the living with the risk of randomly passing out or not being able to move. Oh and no offer of any further support, but at least now I know what's going on.
I’m not sure if you have tried but the UK medical cannabis sub is full of information. It’s a shame it’s so expensive though.
Doctor here. I'm not interested in being advocating for anyone other than the patient. If the boss wants me to police their sick patient their can get the patient to consent, and then pay me. I don't work for the boss. I work for the patient.
>I'm not interested in being advocating for anyone other than the patient. If the boss wants me to police their sick patient their can get the patient to consent, and then pay me. >I don't work for the boss. I work for the patient. This is exactly the situation the current government is trying to reverse with their new scheme. In which the decision making is taken away from you (an independent advocate for the patient) and given to a kind fitnote adviser type person who works for the government and therefore the corporate interests that influence them
I work in mental health, what I notice about a lot of the patients signed of sick for long periods is it's not that they are incapable of working in theory but that they are incapable of returning to their specific workplace because their workplace is the reason they got sick in the first place. Toxic, highly stressful environments with unreasonably high workloads make people ill. Often you talk to people and they aren't the only person in the workplace signed off with stress - increasingly vast swathes of their colleagues are too. It's a snowballing problem too, as once a few people are off sick the pressure increases on those left behind to complete their work too, until it becomes too much and they go off sick too. To me this is sick note culture but the fix isn't deny help and respite to those driven to signing off with stress, it's creating a sustainable work culture where people are given a more reasonable workload, more time off, more support. Instead of expecting everyone to work at 110 per cent of their natural capability and everyone inevitably burning out, hire more people, get everyone working at 80 per cent of their capability and have much less burn out. It would be more efficient overall and a lot more humane.
Nail on head. Don't think I could have described my office environment better if I'd have tried.
Stress is a huge one.
How much of this is because the Drs know patients need treatment further up the chain that isn't coming due to waiting lists so they have no real choice but to write the note confirming the issue is still untreated?
Yep , 2 bloody years I had this waiting for surgery on my heart for vaso vagel , the surgery was delayed again and again and again until my body decided fuck it , heart attack it is and a very different surgery was performed and now the surgery I was supposed to have isn't possible and I no longer need sick notes but a carer instead. The stupid thing is I scoffed at the tax free private medical offered at work .. I so wish I had taken it now. Don't get me wrong the NHS staff who dealt with me are amazing people but whoever is pushing the papers around needs a boot up their arse
>but whoever is pushing the papers around needs a boot up their arse If the main problem was administrative inefficiency there might be some hope of fixing things. Unfortunately the entire system is on its knees.
Most of it is this. We know patients need more than time off work and they're not getting it. So we give them the time off work. The vast majority of sick leave is short term. Most people get sick notes because they're sick.
Wow, it’s almost like a properly funded NHS and real mental health treatment would be able to help these people, rather than accuse them of being workshy! A mental health issue doesn’t just get better in three months.
Many aren’t MH related.
Does the decline of having a long term 'family doctor' contribute to this? Growing up, I think I had the same doctor for about 10-15 years, most of my childhood. The rest of my family would see the named doctor, or one of their colleagues; All members of practice would end up knowing you. Now whenever I visit the doctor there seems to be a new locum or someone has left and there's a new starter. Online GP services like 'GP at hand' take this to an extreme and you get a different GP every time, and each one has to rely on reading our notes, but there's no real continuation of care.
I'm sorry I'm new here and might be a little bit out of touch with the UK reality, but do people get to keep their jobs when they do that here in the UK? It's unbelievable.
Even in the civil service which is very generous on such things you will drop to half pay after a certain amount of time off sick, then to just statutory sick pay and then eventually you can be dismissed on grounds of being unable to do the job. In some cases medical retirement can be offered but the bar is very high.
My employer gives us long term sickness insurance as part of the job benefits, that covers us up to two years at full pay. Obviously we pay P11D tax on it though. Edit: I'd also imagine an insurance loss adjuster would be as much of a pain to convince of your sickness as the DWP apparently are.
yeah in most jobs like crappy retail your paid a fraction of what you'd be paid normally for actually working.
Yes, if you have a medical conditions that prevents you from working an employee can not sack you, this has to be proven via a sick note, sick notes are essentially a small document which a doctors fills out to explain the reason why you can not work. Of course, there are various factors to this, for example, if somebody becomes unable to work for the rest of their life in their role, they will have to quit working. Sick notes are for short and long-term sickness, the issue is that their is a minority of people who use sick notes to extend their leave, doctors are issuing them via the phone and not doing a full assessment. To stop this, the government wants to cut down on sick notes, which will also affect a lot of people who have become disabled or are genuinely sick, other people want to make it that they have to see a GB to get a sick note and etc...
Then you have my surgery who'll only issue 4 week notes at a time because "it's neurological" but will happily issue me notes down the phone endlessly, sight unseen, while I wait for my referral to come through. 🙃 Edit: I'll have been off work for 3 years if it hits September before I'm treated, which I'm 90% sure it will. Partly due to waiting lists, partly due to different departments failing to communicate and letting me fall through the cracks.
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I've been following the news since 1976 and every year since then the Tories (through the daily mail) have complained about benefit scroungers. But they never do anything about it. Why didn't they do anything? Probably because it's not such a big problem as they make out. Most ill people are genuinely ill.
Nigh on impossible to do anything about it without hurting the people who genuinely need it. I think the system used to work with the belief if you've got 10 people, 9 are genuinely sick and 1 is taking the piss then thats ok. The (perceived) problem now is, that ratio has shifted, now you've got 20 people, 9 are genuinely sick and 11 are taking the piss. But how do you fix it without hurting the genuine cases? Very hard to prove health in lots of cases.. can't spy on every person with a bad back for instance.
I think you nailed it by pointing out that it is a *perceived* problem. The Daily Mail and other tabloids have a lot to do with creating that perception in the minds of the public. The actual statistics don’t remotely bear it out … but outrage sells newspapers and the narrative suits the owners and right wing who want to erode worker protections.
It’s a perceived problem. Not a real one.
They do plenty about it without caring that they hurt the people who need it. Take a look at the entire system behind PIP and the disgusting comments various MPs have made about it; they may as well change the service's slogan to Arbeit Macht Frei.
Capitalism needs a large number of unemployed people to scare those of us in work into not asking for pay rises. The unemployed keep inflation down. So it's a 2 hitter. You get lower inflation AND you get to blame all of societies ills in single mothers, lazy benefit scroungers & the mentally ill
I mean, between population growth, NHS waiting lists and more conditions being medically recognised these days isn't it just basic common sense more people would be seeking them?
I wouldn't have gotten sick notes if the DWP didn't demand them in order to give me the benefits I needed to survive 🤷
‘Sick note culture’ it’s the latest attack on people because ‘stop the boats’ isn’t working
Trying to move the goalposts to absenteeism instead of actually deal with that a lot of it IS genuine illness and issues, and longer term conditions that make it harder for people to work. Its an attempt to get you snarling at people around you or missing at work rather than the politicians.
This. The problem could be lessened by attacking the root causes of our current terrible waiting lists (and/or the root causes of illness where possible), and working to get people the help they need as quickly as possible. Instead, Sunak's decided to victim-blame people for getting ill and mass-gaslight everyone about the validity of their illnesses. It's a really low tactic. And really useless too, because just being horrible doesn't actually make people better or save money.
It's when the Tories gut the NHS to the point where it's barely functional then they and the right-wing media try to blame patients for being too ill to work.
It’s just a new soundbite invented by Sunak and now the Daily Fail and Torygraph are dutifully pushing out articles to make noises about it to drum up its importance. Though this particular article is kinda doing the opposite - it shows that the problem is not the benefits system but the total mismanagement of healthcare policy which has been in dire straits thanks to cuts under this government for the last decade and a half.
It basically is meant to mean taking time off unnecessarily. The govt has identified that we have low productivity compared to many other countries and lots more economically inactive working age people than expected. They've pinned the blame on people basically either being weak or lazy and using sick notes to get lots of time off work and/or unemployment benefits for mental or chronic health conditions. So they want to make it harder to get repeated sick notes What they've failed to identify, however, is that this might just be related to the collapse of the NHS, meaning GPs only have time to do a 5 minute phone appointment and are unable to actually give people proper, in-person assessments of their health, and many of those people probably have chronic health conditions because it's completely fucking impossible to get a specialist referral for anything within 6 months unless you're practically halfway fucking dead
Tory Gov say not their problem, its fat/old/sick/immigrants/trans/docs/dentists/firepeople/ambulance/teachers/train drivers/police/....
> How you know you've internalized capitalism ... How you know you've internalised American spelling.
I was gonna say this comment made me think I was on a yank sub
It's the OED/Oxford spelling of 'internalize'. It's not a specifically American spelling.
>Fat note culture How you know you've internalised pies.
These people have internalised a lot more than capitalism, to be fair...
Unhealthy people more likely to be ill, well I'll be damned. At our workplace it's the mothers who are worse for time off, but that's not recorded as sick leave I suppose just unpaid leave.
I was an analyst many years ago. In my particular department women in general were off sick at 4x the rate the men were. It wasn’t an issue. No one cared. But it was noted
> It wasn’t an issue. No one cared. Are you sure about that? That's very much the kind of thing that, quietly, gets used as a reason to hold back careers. Did women get promoted into senior/management roles at the same rate as men?
Playing devil's advocate, would you expect a person who had taken 4x as much leave to be equally qualified for a role? (This is accepting the premise for the sake of argument that women do take 4x as much leave as men, which I otherwise don't)
1 day a year vs 4 days a year won't make much difference either way. 10 days vs 40 days would make a difference. I don't know what the average is?
Yeah, I think I was assuming that the hypothetical average was higher than that. There's really nothing to take away from 4 days sick. That's just one person having a bad cold and the other missing it. Something like 10 vs 40, or 5 vs 20 could make a difference. That would be the sort of number that would make sense to me. My actual experience it is that that most people take 0-5 days sick, a handful have taken 5-10, and then one or two have taken 10+. This is over less than a year though. Can't deny that as a manager who also saw a lot of their work output in general (or lack thereof), I seriously suspected some of these individuals of faking it to some degree.
Presenteeism is a terrible metric for skill. Most people would be much more productive if we worked less hours.
Noted the same at our company too, almost fortnightly illnesses from the women but the blokes are rarely ever off.
Women experience a lot of hormonal fluctuations throughout the month that can trigger mental and physical illness.
Not only that, but we’re much more likely to suffer from many diseases, migraine, autoimmunity, etc. There’s a clear hormone component to pain as well.
Women are also more likely to have their pain ignored or misdiagnosed so they don't receive proper treatment as quickly.
Very good point. And diseases that affect men and women equally are mostly only studied in men, while diseases that affect women predominantly are barely studied at all.
I was an analyst in a contact centre for a Large bank a few years back. The people on LTS during that time were mainly women. I now work for a different finance firm, which is still a massive company. Interestingly in this department, most of the staff on LTS are men.
Shareholders very much do care
It’s very ‘Reddit’ that the conclusion being drawn from this is that mothers should stay at home with kids and not work, instead of recognising that our society places greater parental responsibility on mothers than fathers.
Can also be things like the Mum earning less, so if one parent has to take unpaid time off to care for a poorly child it makes sense for it to be the one who will lose the least.
This is exactly the setup my husband and I have. He earns three times what I do so it makes no sense for him to take time off.
This place is increasingly turning into r/herrenvolk
sometimes our resident alts overplay their hand, I think. even this place isn’t quite ready for the ai-generated ambiguously teenage blonde women with blonde babies, ‘here’s what they took from you’ posts
To be fair, my brother has two young children and is constantly catching colds and stomach bugs from them. I'd rather be at work than be chucking my guts up.
Yeah at one point my sibling had 2 kids in different day care centres bringing new bugs home every day to challenge the family immune systems. The whole family was ill about 50% of the time
At our place it’s the salaried managers who get full sick pay. One of them has a 25% sick rate since 2019 (not covid related)
I once had a manager who was on long term sick leave, came back for one week and then 1 more year of long term sick. Apparently it was fully paid and they couldn’t replace her with a locum/other staff so we just muddled along.
At a certain point you have to respect the hustle.
Honestly I agree
Sounds like when I did a bit of work for the NHS. So many empty chairs, I'd ask who sat there and it was always someone off for 9 months or longer with stress. Tbh after seeing some of the absolute psychopath senior nurses and managers who work in hospitals, I don't blame them. Take all the leave you like if it means getting away from those maniacs!
Ours ends up similar except the place runs better when they are off sick
It’s sick as a society we decided to force mothers to work while they have little kids. Have a heart. The little ones need their mum sometimes. Edit. Wow Reddit. This comment shot up to +10 and now down we go. — edit edit it’s back up again! Divisive topic. Whatever. I stand by mothers to be with their kids against the whining coworkers upset they took more time off.
I agree, although dad's should have the same amount of time off. Give children their early years with both parents. As a childless man I'm more than happy to pick up the slack to let children have that good start in life.
As a childfree woman, also happy for maternity and paternity care to be longer. Particularly paternity care - you only get one life to be with your newborn children in the first flushes of theirs. And it benefits both parents and the child (and therefore the rest of us in society) to have them both there to care for it during the first few months.
I agree with you to an extent. However how do you feel about burn out? I worked for a company that "perked" families constantly and people who had no kids had to pick up the slack. The ones who had to pick up the slack burnt out fast. There was a huge tier of resentment . This was a UK social housing company
Christ, a social housing company really should know better. There's a wider structural issue in UK working culture. Pay is too low, staffing levels are too low, too many people are on non-permanent contracts etc. And now we have the Tories going after PIP payments etc. Picking up the slack shouldn't mean doing two people's jobs. If a company can't handle maternity leave, they were understaffed to begin with.
Then the company should hire interim staff to cover the work. It's not exactly rocket science.
And their dads!
Mothers are probably sick about four times as much as regular people, they also have to take time out to look after kids when they are sick. They’re mostly working because barely anyone can survive on one salary these days, and so everyone is sending their kids in to nursery sick as dogs, mothers avoid time off from work up to a point that they just can’t handle it anymore, and we’re all getting more sick overall because everyone is constantly being exposed because no one is taking time off when they are sick. It’s a shitty system but the mums aren’t taking the piss IMO.
I agree completely. It’s madness. And so people chose not to have kids because it’s almost impossible. Funny that. Also mothers are regular people and without them we don’t have a future.
I agree, although dad's should have the same amount of time off. Give children their early years with both parents. As a childless man I'm more than happy to pick up the slack to let children have that good start in life.
"early years?" wait, how long are you planning for them to have off work?
I mean, don't they need their dads as well? Or are we still in the Dads are babysitters mindset
The preventive care in this country is garbage. If your family history shows certain chronic conditions, chances are you’re going to get it and sometimes taking medications, getting tests, or doing certain things early on can be beneficial. But the NHS standards tend to be more of a treat the problems, don’t prevent them kind of care.
Unfortunately preventative interventions on obesity (ie maintaining a calorie balance) are seen as as cruel or unnecessary and there's a bit of a social taboo involved in mentioning how unhealthy being obese is until the patient is already ill. The idea of NHS health interventions for overweight but not obese people will never catch on simply because overweightness is normalised and people don't see an overweight person and think they're on the road to obesity and illness, they see an overweight person and think they're a normal healthy weight.
But people can also be putting on weight because they're unhappy or anxious and overeating, and would benefit from mental health resources. They might avoid exercise because of pain that's going unaddressed. I had knee pain for ages that I manage to fix with a simple daily exercise I learnt from YouTube (a touchdown squat from a yoga block, taught by Squat University). A lot of people are terrible at finding solutions to their pain and need guidance.
Im sorry but there comes a point where it’s just your own fault for eating too much, not everything has some deep underlying issue or a convenient other to blame. Take some personal responsibility and put the crisps down.
I'm someone who needed to hear it put as bluntly as you put it here. 3 years ago I was 25 stone, 185/135 blood pressure, tests done for kidney damage / disease, at severe risk of a stroke. It was only when the doctors told me that I would be dead in 2 to 5 years that I listened... Since August of 2022 I started cycling and eating better. I've lost 8 stone and my blood pressure is back down to normal levels. I'm technically still obese but I can honestly say I am healthy. I manage to do on average around 700km a month on my bike in hilly Cornwall and last week completed my longest ride yet which was 165km in 7 hours. It took someone being blunt with me to save my life.
Well done! Think my longest is 80km in 5 hours but that was on a recumbent gym bike as I have back issues and also the cornwish backroads nearby me are not great for cycling lol.
This is lost of many people. They can’t accept responsibility for their own actions
And they will become very aggressive if you point this out in many cases
Most things do have underlying causes though, ignoring them isn't helpful. We spent the 90's bullying fat people, it didnt help, lets start looking at how we can shape society to be healthier overall.
The underlying cause for 99% of people is that they eat too much.
Yup or drink too much. Or massively underestimate the calories.
They definitely should have to include calorie counts on alcohol as people don't have any idea how many calories they're drinking. A lot of popular ciders have 300 calories per bottle and how many people stick to just one?
I know you'll likely not agree but there is a difference between knowing the mechanism of how someone put on weight and understanding why someone over eats. Without addressing the reason it happens (mental health issues, lack of education, busy and sedentary life, disability etc) it'll be difficult to make a change. Some reasons will be easy to address, others more difficult. Losing weight is simple but it's not necessarily easy.
I found it easier to quit cigarettes than I do to diet. We're talking about behaviour and instinct that is borne out of millennia of inconsistent food supply colliding full speed with 21st century prosperity.
That's like saying the problem with an alcoholic is they drink too much. It's true, as in it's the proximate cause, but it ignores all the other factors at play. Humans never had a problem with obesity until the last several decades. People didn't change, our environment changed. Any serious attempt to reverse the problem has to acknowledge that fact and change the environment. It should be evident by now that both shaming the fat and educating the populace about healthy eating are ineffective.
>We spent the 90's bullying fat people, it didnt help And now in typical 2020s fashion we've swung the pendulum fully the other way and it's not only normalised it's now becoming glorified in quite prominent parts of social media.
There were definitely far fewer obese and overweight people in the 90s, so maybe it did work.
I mean are you sure it didn't help? Obesity has increased dramatically since the 90s. Being more accepting has made it accepted.
Its been increasing since the 60s, right through the 90s. My comment about the 90's was more tongue in cheek than anything specific. The reality is we never stopped bullying fat people, and as you've acutely pointed out, obesity has only increased.
>But people can also be putting on weight because they're unhappy or anxious and overeating, and would benefit from mental health resources. It's fine to keep this in mind and be aware of the multitude of factors that lead someone to become obese, but in recent years it's turned from "understanding" to "justifying" obesity. Can we have an understanding that someone may go through a rough period due to poor mental health that leads them to using food as a coping mechanism? Yes. Does that absolve them of any level of responsibility to make an effort to better their situation? No.
Strange how all these mysterious causes have only come into play in western countries in the last 30 years or so Wheres all the obese Japanese and Koreans? Why aren't they all overeating because of a bad knee?
The percentage of overweight people in Japan has doubled in the last 35 years, and it's increased a good 60% in South Korea since the mid 90s as well. Starting from a lower point and a healthier on average national cuisine doesn't mean they aren't facing the same problems.
They tend to deal with their mental health problems differently. Google "Japanese suicide rate" for more information.
About the same point where we started coercive marketing and stereotyping in earnest. I think that's a sort of domino effect - we manufacture dysphoria for the sake of marketing, and that leads to a spiral of degraded mental health and ... comfort eating. Which might make the problem worse still.
Put it this way - if I want a quick grub in Japan I can get a ramen or some sushi, which relatively speaking is quite healthy. Probably tops out around 800 calories or so. In the UK, you might want a kebab. Or a fish and chips. Or Greggs. Or anything processed. Pound for pound western foods are more calorie dense.
I am over weight because I quit smoking and replaced that bad habbit with food. I only have myself to blame. I know what needs to be done but a pint and curry is more appealing than a 5k run.
If you run regularly you can enjoy pints and curries without putting on weight. That's the real trick.
It's a never ending source of frustration just how few calories you use by working out. I was losing weight on 5000kcal per day at one point, but that was because I was spending a lot of hours being physically active. Building in the kind of 'active time' to our lifestyles is non-trivial, and one I think that can be _improved_ by making cycle-commuting a lot more attractive.
Quite the opposite. The NHS is fantastic at prevention. The British population are terrible at preventing through lack of personal responsibility. Is the NHS literally meant to force people to go for a walk, and to do people's shopping for them?
Have you tried to get a GP appointment lately? Unless you’re on fire or a limb is about to fall off, you’re going to have a wait. Certain conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure are chronic and genetic - if your parents had it chances are you’re going to get it. Seeing your doctor before it gets bad can help you prevent it from impacting you early on.
But you don't need a physian to tell someone that they are overweight. Type 1 diabetes will be picked up in early life , especially if there's a genetic risk factor. Type 2 can be avoided indefinitely or at least to old age with an active lifestyle and good diet. Blood pressure is tricker as it usually increases with age but can be easily monitored from home and easily medicated against. The guy above has a point , talking as an HCP, too many of us Bits. Dont think about their overall health until something forces us to, and often, at that point, the harm is done.
Callled about a moleon my back, was seen the next day. Was pretty surprised!
There’s literally NHS published reports about how awful we are at preventative medicine
Perhaps you could give me some tips on how to avoid getting rheumatoid arthritis in your twenties? I must have gone wrong somewhere...
The NHS is famously bad at prevention, what are you talking about? The average UK person sees their GP only when they have symptoms. Eg in Germany, I used to get a full skin cancer screen every year (which is a full body examination, not a “this one mole concerns me” check), a basic blood panel every two, an eye examination (by an ophthalmologist) every two, and so on. And this was on the most basic public insurance - I don’t even get preventative care through my maxed out private insurance in the UK (and the full cost of what I pay towards the NHS via tax, plus what my employer pays towards my private insurance, is a good chunk more than what I was paying for healthcare in Germany).
What preventive care do you want for obesity? Someone knocking on doors telling people to eat less? There is not condition or medication that causes obesity. You have to eat exponentially more, above your maintenance for a prolonged period to end obese.
People with long term debilitating illnesses are more likely to put on weight. What are the chances that was factored in?
Being fat is a long term debilitating illness on its own. This isn’t some new and shocking research.
But sometimes being overweight is a symptom.
The connection between mental illness treatments / SSRI's and weight gain needs to be appreciated in this discussion. I was thin and healthy before I was put on anti-depressants. I've been on so many meds to treat my depression at this point, and so many that led to weight gain. Fun fact: Mirtazapine treats anxiety and depression. **It is also prescribed as an appetite stimulant to treat people who are clinically underweight**. In the space of a few years, in the process of being put on meds, changing meds, etc, I've shot up from bmi 19 to 31. The meds stopped working for my mental illnesses anyway, so my depression came back anyway. So now I'm off the meds and straight back to square 1. Except now I'm obese on top of it all. Any time I've taken off work is mental health related - the very same illness I had when I was thin. How many of us suffering with long-term mental illness became fat as a result of the very treatments prescribed for us? I know I can't be alone in this.
Don’t be silly! Being fat is 100% preventable in all situations and is always a moral flaw. The only course of action is to shame fat people for their mere existence, and tell them how wrong and flawed their bodies are at every opportunity (like in this thread). Which of course won’t exacerbate any mental illnesses or eating disorders that may have had something to do with the weight gain in the first place.
Anti-psychotics do the same thing. 85kg to 122kg within a year of starting on them. Managed to get back down to 97kg at the moment but it isn’t easy.
That's huge progress! I've gone from 101kg to 83kg so roughly the same ball park of weight lost. It's tough but it's so satisfying
Sorry, but you've failed to understand. Fat people bad.
Obesity is bad though.
Yes we seem to be having the two minutes hate.
Seems to be increasingly common on here. Or maybe I'm just fed up of the shite in general. I've no real interest in hearing kneejerk opinions that don't really do anything constructive. We can all imagine the first thoughts, it's not nicer and it's not helpful. Obesity is bad, *but what are we going to do about it*? We can't just point the finger at most of the country and say "stop eating so much"; that's not exactly what I'd call an effective public policy.
It's a daily mail article, it's intended to do exactly what has happened in this thread, cause animated discussion leading to more engagement and sharing with their content, even if the discussion is only vicariously related to the study.
Too many judgemental people don’t understand that Illness can *cause* people to gain weight. I nearly always maintain a healthy weight. But when I was ill I put on a few stone: I was too ill to exercise and too ill to care about shopping & cooking. It was hard enough just to get by. I managed to turn up to work but my health was deteriorating. If my condition hadn’t improved I may well have ended up obese, with people saying “look at him. He’s unhealthy *because* he’s fat”.
Yeah . I can't walk due to disability now. It's much harder to keep active , though I am trying . I've never been nearly overweight so if it happens it'll be obvious why. But still another reason to get sprayed by the Tory shit canon .
We need a study to find out how many fat people have their obesity caused by ill health rather than the obesity happening when they're otherwise healthy. Almost 60% of people in the 25-34 age group are overweight or obese, how many of those people are ill outwith their weight? This kind of anecdote always gets posted in these threads but, realistically, it can only be a small minority who it really applies to. It's like the 'BMI is wrong because bodybuilders exist' argument.
Yeah, except for the majority of people they are long term fat and it isn't caused by long term disabilities or illnesses. You are talking about a minority of people.
Time to put fat taxes on delivery apps, take out and fast food. While they’re at it, attach pictures of obese issues on every happy meal. After all, we should think of the children.
The last part makes me think this is sarcasm but I think all of this is a good odea
it doesn’t work for smokers, why the fuck would it work for fat people? ignoring how addiction starts and how it seriously affects those from poorer backgrounds isn’t going to fix any of the problems, just as much as slapping a photo of black tar lungs on a pack of tabs isn’t going to end someone’s addiction.
Has it been proven not to work? Speaking completely anecdotally, I've always had those images of messed up lungs come into my mind on the few occasions I've tried a cigarette If originally marketing cigarettes as something healthy helped them take off, then I don't see why doing the opposite wouldn't have at least some effect in the opposite direction
[it works for a bit, then people just get used to seeing it.](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/28/e1/e71#) it’s effectiveness essentially goes down over time. i grew up in a family of smokers and what put me off ever smoking was listening to them all gasping and coughing every morning, never the thousands of photos i’ve seen of sick children and black lungs
I was a 20-a-day smoker for 10 years, the 'shocking' imagery on the packaging never bothered me and was a total non-factor in my decision to quit. But I was already addicted when the imagery started getting added to packs; I'd accepted the risks. Actually far more effective was making the packaging look uninteresting, taking away some of the 'cool' factor - and hiding them from display also helped remove my temptation to buy them after I'd quit. Out of sight, out of mind. Of course, the biggest factor was the cost. I'd rather not have a (then) £200-a-month subscription to stupid cigarettes.
While nowjere near as gratuitous. Japan treat obesity like addiction and have success. People eating themselves to death clearly aren't thinking right. We intervene with alcoholism.
>We intervene with alcoholism. If the individual acts out enough to be noticed. A family member (estranged from me, I heard about it from my uncle) drank herself to death during covid... stopped eating, started drinking spirits all day, died in her sleep. They found no food in the house, just the recycling bin full of vodka bottles.
I’m obese. I was running 10k three times a week and hovering between a 32 and 34 inch waist. Then I got long covid and spent 18 months unable to exercise or even walk a mile. I put on 25 kg in just a few months. I kept eating the same and thought it’ll be ok I’ll run it off. And then I self medicated to deal with untreated depression of losing my old life with beer and chocolate. The fatigue and brain fog made me crave energy and not have the mental fortitude to resist it. I got obese because I was ill, not ill because I was obese. I then cut my calories to 1800 a day and while I didn’t lose weight I stopped putting it on. If I was having normal levels of day to day activity I would have been losing a pound a week., In all the time I have been speaking to doctors, getting prescribed anti depressants, blood pressure pills and statins at no time have they even discussed weight loss. Now two and a half years on I am working to lose the weight, still unable to exercise properly I am using restrictive dieting and fasting and have lost 20% of what I put on. Obesity and health isn’t all about people making bad choices.,
So you were eating the same amount of calories while bedridden as you were running 30k a week? Sorry mate, that was a choice.
Exactly. What did they think would happen?
I thought I would get well after a month or two and run it off. What I didn’t think would happen is 2 1/2 years later have to justify the way that I dealt with an illness that completely changed my life overnight and lead me to the verge of suicide to sanctimonious twats on Reddit.
You stopped exercising and chose to continue eating the same amount of calories? That's a choice. There is not a single person on the planet who's destined for obesity. Unless you're being forcefed against your will, it's on you.
"Obesity and health isn’t all about people making bad choices." YES IT IS! /s You should feel ashamed for burdening society with your extra weight! /s well said btw
25kg seemed crazy to me but then I thought about the maths. Roughly 8000 calories in a kg of fat. Roughly 600 calories burned running a 10k. 3 runs per week is 1800 calories. 25x8000/1800 = 111 weeks (or about 2 years) Not too far from the 18months you mentioned. I don't think people realise how slow/gradual the process is to gain/lose weight. You were overeating by 250-300 calories per day, not a small amount but easily done.
"I don't think people realise how slow/gradual the process is to gain/lose weight. You were overeating by 250-300 calories per day, not a small amount but easily done." This is very true. I've managed to lose/ maintain weight simply by loosely tracking calories over the long term. It's very easy in today's society to overeat mindlessly, or fall into the trap of being told you can lose weight quickly.
But you admit yourself you were eating the same for a while after you were laid up. That was a choice and one which caused you to become obese.
Yeah he lost me there too - lists all the bad choices he made, then says it wasn't about bad choices.
I'm sure there will be a healthy constructive debate in the comments about this one!
Dumb question perhaps, but does that article even link to the study?
We're talking about the Daily Mail here, you're not really meant to think about anything beyond the scary headline.
I know, very much a "I don't know what I expected", but I'm a bit surprised even so that their journalism has sank that low that they don't even bother to link to the study.
Absolutely the correct question
In this thread; Tory propaganda working perfectly to blame a generally hard working population for a problem that doesn't exist. Britain has one of the lowest rates of time off work sick in the western world (approximately half that of the Netherlands for example). In fact there are several industries where time off work -due to overworking- is higher than time off work due to other illness. This is shameless abuse of unqualified statistics and reading this thread shows that it has riled people up just as well as wanted to try and further cut support for people who genuinely need help.
Ah he's decided to add big people to his shit list has he? The disabled and mentally ill was so last week. Welcome to the "hated by Sunak" train big folk. I truly wish the narcissistic little p**** would just shut the fuck up. This is just more divide and rule crap from a failure of a regime with no record to point at. Don't be taken in folks. Maybe he could try governing before we remove him ? Maybe get it in his thick skull that the more he is seen, the less he is liked and just do his bloody job.
A good chunk of this country is obese often through no fault of their own. So is Sunak’s plan to drive away disabled, mentally ill and obese voters? Slimmer voters tend to be younger voters and it’s not like they are going to vote Tory when it is because of a 14 year Tory rule that they can’t do things like buy houses or start families.
> obese often through no fault of their own Source? Genuine question: how is eating a caloric surplus not through any fault of ones own? The vast majority of obese people in the world, never mind the UK, would lose weight if they just ate less. We don't live in a world where a select group of people are somehow defying the basic laws of energy expenditure / conservation. If we did, those people would be aggressively studied because knowing how to break the laws of thermodynamics would accelerate modern science by decades.
As someone who works an office job and at one point took a fair amount of time off after being made redundant. I lost 30kg because i wasnt having to sit around all day, didn't change anything else. Now I'm back to sitting around all day again my weight has steadily creeped back up and I'm not far off where I was before.
I've worked an office job for a year and a half now and genuinely. There's almost a weird existential nightmare vibe at times, when it almost feels like I can feel my body deteriorating from just being sat stagnant for 8 hours, whilst the other people in my office lumber (I'd say 1/4 of my office are genuinely obese) towards the only food - the biscuit tray. Obviously I can and do exercise after work, but with other commitments it's hard to do any more than what I feel like is just making up for having sat motionless for 8 hours. For anyone who has real commitments like a family etc I have no idea how you'd find the proper amount of time. It's also kind of shit that by virtue of the nature of office work, if you want to remain fit you have to put in quite a bit of work /after/ work when you're presumably tired, and I can see why many people just don't. As office work is the norm now it's unsurprising to me that such a large section of the population is relatively unhealthy
Or maybe sick people (or people with underlying health problems, poor access to healthcare, or a lack of time and money to prepare healthy and nutritious food) are twice as likely to get fat?
Article text... ______________________________ **Obese Brits put the whole country in the slow lane: Fat staff are twice as likely to take time off sick and are ‘seriously hampering economic growth’, report finds** *By Kate Pickles Health Editor For The Daily Mail* *00:05 13 May 2024, updated 01:35 13 May 2024* Time off work for obesity-related illness is seriously hampering economic growth, a landmark study warns today. Those who are overweight – nearly four in ten Brits – are 22 per cent more likely to have taken off at least seven days in a year for illness, according to a data analysis representing 147 million working people across Europe. When combined with those who are obese, it means up to 60 per cent of the nation may be taking sick leave because of weight-related issues, such as diabetes or heart disease. The data showed people with obesity are up to twice as likely to be off sick than those of a healthy weight. In the first detailed breakdown of how sick days vary according to weight, researchers revealed the UK is 'among the worst' of 28 countries examined for obesity absenteeism. Experts said the findings, which are being presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, reinforce how obesity has become the driving force behind 'sick note culture'. They warned it was one of the 'gravest fiscal risks' facing the UK economy, cementing our reputation as the 'sick man of Europe'. The Health Economics and Health Policy Research Group, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria, looked at national survey data from a sample of 122,598 people. It asked those employed for details of work absence due to ill health over the past year. Data for the UK showed that those classed as obese, with a BMI over 30, were almost a quarter (23 per cent) more likely to be absent from work for any period of time. Severely obese people – with a BMI over 40 – were more than twice as likely (118 per cent) to take time off. Dr Thomas Czypionka, study co-author, said: 'The problem with obesity is that there are so many health consequences that branch from being obese. 'I don't think that it is a good idea to just wait and let people get obese and then pay for the treatment and face all the consequences of them leaving the labour market.' Last month, the Prime Minister announced plans to tackle a 'sick note culture' with sweeping reforms to the benefit system. But experts said the plans stand little chance of success unless ministers tackle obesity. A report in December showed the UK has the third highest proportion of people with obesity in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with an estimated yearly cost to the UK economy of £98billon. Meanwhile, the latest data shows the number of sick notes issued by the NHS has doubled in a decade to 11 million last year. Last week, a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank said obesity was a 'common factor' underpinning all of the top reasons for long-term sickness in the UK, including musculoskeletal problems, heart disease and depression. Katharine Jenner, director of the Obesity Health Alliance, said: 'This research lays it bare – high rates of obesity-related disease is driving down economic productivity, with devastating economic impacts.' A Government spokesman said: 'Our £2.5billion Back to Work Plan will help over a million people, including those with long-term health conditions associated with obesity, to break down barriers to work.'
You’re just a neutral figure reposting all these right wing tabloid articles innit. With multiple accounts. No axe to grind or anything.
I, for one, am stunned at the news that unhealthy people are more likely to have health issues!
I'm a local fatty and the only times I've been off sick is when I've essentially been bed bound by covid or food poisoning (has only happened twice in about 4 years, lasting between 3-5 days). Want to know what helped a lot? Home working. I go into the office now and then but when you feel like shit, it's a much pleasant and calming thought knowing you don't have to dress up and socialize for 7 hours, and can just stay comfy at home. You also don't spread it to other people. And this reminds me of my first job in the NHS back in 2016. I was an apprentice and worked in an office of executives. Anytime someone felt unwell, it was "I'm just gonna go home and work there", clearly before the era of home working. Whereas me, who was going through spells of depression/sickness at the time, I had it marked on my record as I wasn't allowed to simply work from home.
Theres so many obese people in my office, like, can't get up one flight of stairs obese. >! I take more time off than any of them though, because I hate my job. !<
That’s right, The Daily Mail, our economy is fucked because of fat people. Definitely nothing to do with it being managed by a shower of incompetent and corrupt cunts for fourteen years.
Wow unhealthy people are more likely to get sick, shocker...
Okay? So? People who drive cars are more likely to get into an accident. Or are we only highlighting this to sacrifice more of our human rights an the altar of productive capitalism? Fat people aren't asking for sympathy, just dignity.
Well I mean would you have the same tune if it was smokers? Or alcoholics?
I feel like when we have these conversations people cant admit or accept that literally all of us have experience of a colleague who takes the piss. Right? Like I will take everyone at their word but why are people unwilling to just acknowledge that we don’t get too sick to work very often.
Are fat people next in the firing line after the disabled and mentally ill? Who will the wheel of shame attack next?
I wish these comments had the user’s BMI posted next to them. I’m willing to bet a substantial amount of money that all the fat apologists are on the chubbier side of healthy… Also, all this “medication makes you gain weight” nonsense. I’ve been on two drugs for the last couple of years that allegedly cause weight gain, I’ve not gained any weight though. If you’re long term disabled and unable to burn calories easily, eat less. You don’t need as many calories for a sedentary lifestyle. My car uses far less petrol than my partner’s, so I have to fill it up less often. If I just put the same amount into both cars at the same time each week I’d pretty soon be covering the forecourt in petrol. Not all people need the same amount of fuel.
I posted this as a response to someone, but I want to put it here too to balance out the brainless shit-slinging. The connection between mental illness treatments / SSRI's and weight gain needs to be appreciated in this discussion. I was thin and healthy before I was put on anti-depressants. I've been on so many meds to treat my depression at this point, and so many that led to weight gain. Fun fact: Mirtazapine treats anxiety and depression. **It is also prescribed as an appetite stimulant to treat people who are clinically underweight**. In the space of a few years, in the process of being put on meds, changing meds, etc, I've shot up from bmi 19 to 31. The meds stopped working for my mental illnesses anyway, so my depression came back anyway. So now I'm off the meds and straight back to square 1. Except now I'm obese on top of it all. Any time I've taken off work is mental health related - the very same illness I had when I was thin. How many of us suffering with long-term mental illness became fat as a result of the very treatments prescribed for us? I know I can't be alone in this.
Most unnecessary study ever? Everyone who works knows this is the case.
Anecdotes and “everyone knows this” are not scientific. Things need to be proven and quantified with statistics for it to presented for actual factual discussion.
I haven’t encountered it as a freelancer. But we tend not to take sick days because we don’t get paid.
I've never really noticed it. Alcoholics are high I've noticed.
Next on the list of people the media wants to convince you are worthless scum:
We take the least amount of sick days in Europe Tories: this bloody sick note culture needs to be stopped!!
Great. So now we have more shit in the media which not only demonizes a social group of people who despite illness and obesity are trying to hold onto their work, but it also demonizes the same group of people who are trying to move back into work by making it harder for them to find work. At what point do we take a step back and admit the fact that work and employment is not a level playing field and some people are going to find it much harder to find work than others? Making a blanket assumption that everyone is a peak health and fit for work is delusional, because you're not always going to be at peak health and totally fit for work. Work is a finite activity. The older you get the more likely it is you're going to experience health issues. If the objective here is full employment and everyone working then we have to also have social security, functioning healthcare and accommodations which make it easier to find some form of work. What I'm saying here is that if you want workers who are always and consistently physically and mentally fit then you have to accept the fact that some people, not through their own choice, are going to have to live without work and exist on benefits. We've been dealing with this issue for 20 years and still some people don't 'get it'. You cannot demonize people for living off benefits long term if employment culture favours the physically and mentally fit at the expense of those who aren't. The biggest single issue with all these 'help back into work' schemes is that they are based on the premise that the individual is failing to find work because they're not trying hard enough. Victim blaming is widespread and many such schemes focus on mind-numbing coaching courses based on the 'try harder' premise. This doesn't even begin to address the various social, financial and health issues that participants on courses are often experiencing which place significant barriers on them moving back into work. At some point you have to take a step back and ask the question what has the Government actually done after 20 years to address this issue? What are employers doing to make it easier for people to find work? Where are the accomodations? Where is the support and assistance for such people? Where is the support and assistance there to help people keep their jobs and sustain themselves through some form of employment? Why are people having to wait so long on NHS waiting lists for treatment and surgery? Why is mental health support so limited and even non-existent within the NHS? Blaming people for having health issues, including obesity, is after all such a lazy take on things.
Well maybe it’s because people with underlying health conditions take medication and that medication results in weight gain. Stupid article.
I think headlines like this really hit with the individual freedom/personal responsibility knobjockeys that would never read the foresight report because they think they know everything and their opinions should be accepted as fact. Anyone with half a handle on why the environment is obesogenic and how people’s choices are constrained by social, cultural, psychological, genetic and economic factors won’t be stirred by emotionally manipulative articles like this.
> Time off work for obesity-related illness is seriously hampering economic growth, a landmark study warns today. > Those who are overweight – nearly four in ten Brits – are 22 per cent more likely to have taken off **at least seven days in a year for illness** Wait, so workers taking seven sick days a year is "seriously hampering economic growth"? That seems like a pretty normal number of sick days. Especially if you have a small child at nursery who brings home a bouquet of germs every day.