Obesity has always been an issue in America–but now the number of people over 300 pounds needing hospital treatment has created a growing market for special equipment, including patient lift devices.As baby boomers age, so does the average age of nursing staff–whose greatest incidence of injury is from lifting and moving large patients. A Texas-based hospital supply company said “its members bought $847,000 worth of patient lifts in 2001. Last year that number was up to $43 million.” And with the increasing popularity of bariatric surgery to help obese patients lose weight, some hospitals are now buying whole suites of specially designed beds, walkers and commodes.

How ironic that as more and more health issues are connected with serious overweight, the occurrence of it is increasing so much. Perhaps it’s just a case of numbers–there are more obese people now because there are just more people–all those baby boomers–hitting that age when losing weight becomes more and more difficult.

So even as holistic approaches to healing have begun to attract serious dollars in the marketplace–and some hospitals are followin the money by adding things like Reiki to treatment options for certain diseases–so now obesity cures are becoming serious revenue sources, too. It’s not just for pill-hawkers anymore…