To The Editor:

A letter in one of the papers by Susan Stocker laid out the woes of public school employees in Fort Myers over rising health care costs. She reminds us of the chronic problem most of us have living in the American lifestyle and expecting the Medical Profession to fix our every symptom with a pill.

In my personal studies I find very convincingly that how most of us eat and fail to exercise is the shortest pathway to high health care costs and great discomfort.

Americans are unwittingly enriching the drug companies and keeping doctors in a state of perpetual practice. We have enough problems that are inherited, then we add on the cancer inducing carcinogens and load them up with staggeringly unhealthy foods that are cooked with high salt content and fats. We gorge ourselves on beef and pork in various styles and load on the dressings if we eat a salad.

Going through the typical store a person seriously interested in healthy nutrition will pass over 99 percent of row upon row of salt or sugar laden feel-good tasty mixtures whose ingredients list should tip off any high school graduate of trouble ahead.

If we continue to buy and eat for taste and convenience alone we are as much a part of the health care mess as the government.

When people say there is waste in health care costs, they should start by educating the consumer.

Today with the Internet and access to good health information we can break out of the circle of lifestyle, medicine and insurance. It is not about a quick diet to make up for bad habits, it is about taking responsibility for our own health.

John C. Miller

Lehigh Acres