They, as in the experts have decided that no one really wants to make any changes in their lives. People, or so it has been determined, want to continue guzzling sodas and eating donuts, not caring about weight gain, heart disease and the other serious diseases that are skyrocketing upwards. But, if you ask anybody with any of these conditions or any combination of them, the changes are slow in the coming and are not being reflected in the average survey. For some, the changes are made more difficult by medications that are hard to stop taking and for a very small sector of the population, yes, the experts are right. They don't want to change.

It started with smoking several years ago. People did everything they could to stop smokers- from barring them from smoking in certain places to fining them to raising the prices for cigarettes to outrageous levels. Still, there are millions of smokers, even though certain cancers are increasing and more kids are being diagnosed with asthma than ever before. People are being barred from certain positions because of their smoking status -but still they smoke. There are now over nine million kids who are asthmatic at a cost of more than four billion dollars every year.

After smokers, "they" came after the obese. Obesity has now increased by nearly 140 percent over the past two decades. The cost for treating obese people is $147 billion a year and increasing. There are worries that the number of people who are overweight or obese may continue to rise, perhaps accounting for nearly one hundred percent of the population by 2030. There have been programs that have been implemented, including pilot programs that offered free nutritional education and exercise but still, the waistlines continue to grow and along with the weight gain comes the increased risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes. The number of people diagnosed with diabetes has more than doubled since 1996 and the number of kids with Type I or Type II diabetes has increased dramatically as well. Diabetes, at this time, costs even more in health care expenses than obesity.

Several of the experts have warned that many patients are just interested in medications rather than trying to make the tough changes in their life. From fighting to get their cholesterol levels down to working to reduce their weight, the experts claim that it is the easy way or no way for the majority of people. However, most people think the experts are refusing to see the real, big picture and are just looking for someone to blame.