In the top medical news of the week in recent days, four studies caught me off-guard:

    Lung cancer rates plummet;

    We’re doing less physical activity but not eating more;

    We’d have 40 percent less breast cancer if we had BMIs of 27;

    40 percent of us will have diabetes by 2050.

    Why do you think lung cancer rates are plummeting? Well, first, keep in mind that we still have a long way to go, as lung cancers kill more Americans than the next three combined – breast, colorectal and pancreatic. That equates to about 160,000 deaths a year. Yet lung cancer rates and deaths have decreased in every ethnic group, and in men more than women. So why have they decreased so much since the late 1970s? It's because more than 90 percent of lung cancers are related to smoking, and that has decreased substantially, from 50 percent of men in 1960 to under 20 percent now.

    But chronic disease management (yes, tobacco use is in that category) now accounts for 84 percent of all medical costs in the Americas. Just one of those, obesity, is overtaking tobacco as a cause of disability and death. And just last Thursday, the costs of this in human lives was re-estimated upward – a lot. Like the difference between karaoke and the Beatles.

    Prior to last week the estimates and increases in diabetes were worrisome enough – prevalence of diabetes in the United States increased from 4.2 million or 20 per thousand in 1974, to 5.6 million or 24 per thousand in 1983, to 7.8 million or 30 per thousand in 1994, to 16 million or 55 per thousand in 2004, to 29 million or 91 per thousand in 2014, with a prediction of 120 million by 2060. Oops, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just said they were wrong – try 160 million by 2050.

    Can we knock that down, like the U.S. and Canada have done with lung cancer? Absolutely – as only three things are responsible after our genes. You apparently need a genetic predisposition, as more than 60 percent of us in America do indeed have for Type 2 diabetes. All of us do not get the disease, at least not yet, as some of us do not have the environmental factors added on – unmanaged stress, food choices and portion size, and lack of physical activity. Even if you get pre-diabetes, you do not have to progress to diabetes.

    You can get a do-over, and not even have pre-diabetes. You get a do-over, no matter how old you are, as long as you aren’t 6-feet-under yet. But most aren’t taking that do-over (are you?), and that is creating a problem for you and for society. That means that you're likely to suffer from disabilities and other medical problems. You do not have to be overweight or obese (Americans as a group are, on average, 40 pounds overweight). From 1983 to 1999 or so, we ate 2 percent more calories. Per year. Compounded. So we now eat 500 calories more per day than we did in 1858 (when the first reliable data we can find for calorie consumption in America was recorded) to 1983 (when we started to eat more).

    And since 1994, the National Health Data surveys indicate we are doing 1 percent less physical activity a year. Per year. Compounded. Those two indicate 40 pounds now, and 40 perent with Type 2 diabetes in 2050. This isn’t just a decrease in standard of living problem for all in America; this is a disability problem for you – 40 percent of breast cancers would not appear if we had normal weight, typically 12 years of cognitive dysfunction, and 7 more years with a major pain or numbness in a leg, not to mention kidney failure and eyesight loss that you’ll have. Not a great picture.

    Want to see how a 338-pound sheriff is doing as he tries to return to work after his second heart attackat age 44? No, it's not the norm to have heart attacks at age 44 now – but it will be if the CDC’s predictions come true. But Sheriff Don has decided to go public and try to get a do-over. We’ll tell you in the next blog how to follow him and do it yourself (and invite friends to do it with you and Sheriff Don) if you also want a do-over.

    So the message is: We can do better. And we must do better faster than we did for tobacco (54 years and counting) if medical costs are not to crowd out all education and social programs in any federal or state budget. And it just isn’t that hard to do better – but we need to figure out how to motivate more Americans to do better, or we as a society are toast.

    Through the 3D-NLS you can find the trend of Lung Cancer, thus do the better for the Lung Cancer.