News Archive for October, 2018

To improve the quality, access, and utilization of preventive and treatment services for obesity among both children and adults, a group of innovative payers have agreed to take action on a national scale. The My Healthy Weight pledge is a first. It’s the first and only collective initiative offering insurance benefits covering obesity prevention and […]

Medscape tells us that 64 percent of physicians believe obesity is a disease. For nurses, the number is a bit smaller – 54%. But believe it or not, this looks like progress to us. More healthcare professionals are coming around. More of them are finally understanding obesity as a disease. Shifting Opinions Five years ago, […]

New research from the University of Sydney is offering another clue for developing the science of personalized nutrition. Starch is the most common carbohydrate in our diets. And we have an enzyme in our saliva – amylase – that helps us start digesting starch even before we eat it. But different people will have very different responses […]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr coined that phrase in 1849. But we can thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health for keeping it current. They’ve issued the 2018 edition of their annual State of Obesity Report. Therein they tell us – at […]

Yesterday, JAMA published five articles about bariatric surgery. Two new research papers. Three editorials. Taken together they present a picture of the compelling benefits of bariatric surgery in patients with both obesity and diabetes. But they also point to the gap between the reality of bariatric surgery and how we’re dealing with it. Cutting the […]

Childhood obesity starts early. By the time infants become toddlers, about 14 percent have obesity. If you read about the priorities for preventing childhood obesity, you’ll find a lot about nutrition. Family activities, too. But sleeping is a mere footnote. This might be a serious mistake, if you go by what recent research says. The Importance […]

Never underestimate the power of rationalization. Because sounds good, very often, is good enough. Just ask folks selling “natural” foods and drinks. A good story about natural purity fetches premium prices. Also, you should look at new research on white hat bias. Even for researchers, it seems the ends can justify the means. It’s a […]

Our society seems to have accepted that gaining weight is an inevitable consequence of growing up in a place with easy access to calories and where physical activity plays a declining role in our professional and private lives. Aging just makes weight loss even more difficult. In the short term, the consequences of excess weight […]

My struggle with weight began in my early teens. That was when my doctor prescribed  a birth control medicine to treat dysmenorrhea. But I didn’t know it would cause massive weight gain and hormone fluctuations. I’ve had to work at overcoming obesity every day of my life since then. One of the hardest things about […]

There’s no gentle way to express this. We suffer from a huge ethical blind spot regarding access to obesity care. Today, as National Obesity Care Week focuses upon access to care, we must acknowledge just how big this gap is. Of course, we focus a lot on the issue of access to obesity treatment. We […]