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I define "wellness" as money spent to make you feel healthier, even when you're not "sick" by any standard medical terms. To make you stronger, to make you see better, to make you hear better, to fight what we might call the symptoms of aging. The overall primary need today is not wealth - it's health.
Today, the lower the income, the more we see obesity. Obesity is a symptom of poor nutrition. Typically someone who is obese is also vitamin-deficient, suffers from fatigue and arthritis or other ailments that all stem from poor nutrition.
Since 1980, we have more than doubled the percentage of overweight and obese people in our country. In 1980, 15% of the population was obese; by the year 2000 that number had jumped to 27% - i.e., 77 million clinically obese people! Those numbers have increased ten percent in just past four years and are still growing at beyond epidemic rates.
Because of people being overweight or obese, we've also tripled the propensity to get diabetes in this country, with similar increases in so many other diseases. Today, at the time of unprecedented economic prosperity, we're seeing a huge part of our population falling off the edge. For me, here is the most amazing number-61 percent of the United States population is overweight. That number, too, has doubled since 1980.
Today, the food industry represents about one trillion dollars annually; the "sickness business" is another trillion (actually, about $1.4 trillion).
These two industries feed one another in a fairly insidious way because such a huge part of sickness today is caused by the poor nutrition supplied by the food industry. These two trillion-dollar industries work together to support that horrifying 61 percent overweight number.
Looking at those numbers, you might think that one day soon, everyone will be overweighed or obese. That's actually not the case, though.
The 39 percent of the U.S. population who are not overweight comprise 10 to 15 million Americans who are aging; as they age, they are getting more healthy, more fit, more strong - actually younger, by any standard medical definition.
These people represent that new economic sector. They are primarily wealthy people, the first thing they do as they start to have money is to figure out how they can be healthier - and they're doing it outside the medical establishment. They are going to fitness clubs, watching their food, taking the proper amounts of vitamins and minerals, and investigating supplements and other products that support their wellness.
In the year 2000, wellness in America was already a $200 billion industry; about half of that is composed of the $24 billion spent on fitness clubs plus the $70 billion spent on vitamins and minerals. This $200 billion was hardly a blip ten years ago.
By definition, all of wellness is new technology. The only way to learn about wellness is through someone close to you who has had a wellness experience. You see your college roommate and go, "My God, John, you look great! You look so healthy - what did you do?" You bump into a wellness experience and start to find out that there is a whole wellness industry out there, with all sorts of new products and services.
Of anything I've ever been involved with, the wellness industry looks the most exciting right now.
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