ArcaMax

We survey Plan Z dieters on occasion and ask them all kinds of questions. In a recent survey, we asked them the biggest reason they decided to go on a diet and chose Plan Z. You know what the most popular answer was?

I, for one, was surprised by the answer.

The most popular answer was, “I could not stand the pain any longer.”

My hips hurt.
My knees hurt.
My feet hurt.
My ankles were always swollen and sore.
They just hated the pain. They didn’t like the way they looked either, but it was the pain that was the final straw. Good news is we asked them why they did Plan Z AFTER they had completed it, and it was remarkable how many people said, “After Plan Z, my pain is gone or almost gone.”

So let’s set that aside for a minute and examine the situation. I did a little bit of research.

We all know the advancing age of Baby Boomers is upon us. In the 80s we learned that low fat was the way to eat and that we had to exercise. Thirty minutes a day, five days a week was the recommendation. So, many of us started jogging after work. You never saw people in running shoes jogging down the road in the 1960s. Now you see them every day. Some spring along the streets and others laboriously lope along. Some have a dog in tow and even others are jogging behind baby carriages outfitted with a suspension made to take the bumps along the way.

Some of us jogged for over 20 years before things started breaking down. Our joints could not take it any longer. And that goes for skinny runners as well as overweight ones. Joints wear out if you repeatedly beat them up by over-doing things like running. We didn’t evolve to jog five miles a day. We evolved to run away when a big animal was chasing us, but not to day-after-day go run a route around our neighborhood. Gain too much weight and the situation gets even worse. The cost of joints wearing out is huge.

The orthopedic device industry is now topping at $43.1 billion a year. Yep, that’s a B for billion. And that’s only the parts! That doesn’t include hospitalization, the surgery, the aftercare or anything else.

There are 2.9 million joint replacements done per year.
1.4 million of those are hips.
1.2 million are knees being replaced.
100,000 are shoulder replacements.
If you just count the hip surgeries, that’s over 3,800 being done per day and that even counts weekends!

Someone has to perform those surgeries. There are now over 25,000 orthopedic surgeons practicing in the US. The average orthopedic surgeon performs 29 surgeries/procedures per month. We are keeping those guys and gals pretty busy these days.

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