Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Hey Wil­ford Brim­ley: Don’t man­age your dia­betes – lose your dia­betes!

I was watch­ing tele­vi­sion this week and saw Wil­ford Brim­ley in a com­mer­cial for Lib­erty Med­ical.  I’m sure many of you have seen old Wil­ford for years now in his role as pitch­man for the dia­betic sup­ply com­pany — it’s not a new gig for him, but I don’t have cable ser­vice at home and so I see very lit­tle TV.  This week it hap­pens that I’m trav­el­ing and I caught the com­mer­cial in the evening in my hotel room.

I don’t remem­ber exactly how it went but Wil­ford was going over how Lib­erty Med­ical “can help you man­age your dia­betes.”  Appar­ently he feels that they’ve helped him man­age his type II dia­betes quite well over the years.  It sounded like a nice tes­ti­mo­nial, how­ever you couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Brim­ley is very seri­ously over­weight.

Here’s the prob­lem, I can’t say for cer­tain about Mr. Brim­ley, but most type II dia­bet­ics could be cured of dia­betes with a change in diet and weight loss.  Why are we help­ing peo­ple “man­age” their dia­betes instead of help­ing them to health?

Col­lec­tively, we Amer­i­cans live a lifestyle that makes us sick and then we deny it.  We pre­tend that these lifestyle dis­eases, like type II dia­betes, aren’t of our own doing, can’t be cured and need to be “man­aged.”  That’s just plain wrong!

We don’t need to blame our­selves or oth­ers for our lifestyle con­di­tions, although the envi­ron­ment has a lot to do with the national dia­betes epi­demic.   Blam­ing is not help­ful.  We just need to change.  Yes, I know it’s hard to change.  Sure it’s hard to live dif­fer­ently than oth­ers, but it can be done.  And dia­betes does go away!

What would have hap­pened if, decades ago when he first got dia­betes, Wil­ford had called Gary Null instead of Lib­erty Med­ical?  If you know Gary, you know the answer — a lot less “man­age­ment,” no more dia­betes, and a thin­ner more vig­or­ous Wil­ford Brim­ley.

Oh, and prob­a­bly also a lot less profit for the many firms that make mil­lions from push­ing dia­betic sup­plies to seniors with Medicare like Mr. Brim­ley.  Some­times health­care is part of the prob­lem.  Most peo­ple with dia­betes could use a lot more health and a lot less care.  It can be done, but not through the health­care sys­tem.

Mr. Brim­ley will be 76 this year.  Per­haps he thinks he’s too old to change, but I believe that we all can change at any age — if we want to.  Old dogs can learn new tricks!  Don’t you be fooled into liv­ing with ill­nesses or med­ical con­di­tions that are unnec­es­sary, pre­ventable and cur­able!  Wake up.  Find some friends to help you and get started on the road to well being.  You can do it!