Archive for August, 2020

Do We Follow the Science? Or Something Else?

August 31, 2020 — It’s a wildly popular catchphrase in this age of COVID-19. Follow the science. The video on the right is packed with cautionary tales by Rohin Francis. In short, he explains that when policy makers say they’re following the science, it’s often a fiction. Mangling the science might be a more apt description. Mangling the Science […]

What Exactly Is Well-Controlled Obesity? Does It Matter?

August 31, 2020 — A chronic disease is a medical condition that stays with you. Doctors don’t have a cure, so the goal is to control it. To come as close as possible to living a healthy life despite whatever chronic condition might trouble you. Diabetes? By carefully controlling your blood sugar and your body’s response, most people can […]

Meeting People on Own Their Terms in Obesity Care

August 30, 2020 — I am a psychologist working in a bariatric medicine and surgery program. To give some context, the average BMI for a patient referred to our program is approximately 45. We receive referrals from a wide variety of medical specialties in our practice. So I am constantly learning from meeting people with obesity who come with […]

Scientific Literacy: Teach Questions, Not Answers

August 29, 2020 — It seems today the mistrust of official health advice and spread of “alternative” treatments for COVID-19 are as frightening as the virus itself. How is it that so many people are ill-informed (and seemingly choose to be so) about the pandemic, despite decades of compulsory science education? Of course we are entering a post-truth era […]

Alexa, Am I Too Fat? Amazon Wants to Help

August 28, 2020 — Are we ready for our Alexa smart speaker to tell us exactly how much body fat we have? Just in case we are, Amazon has some new technology to take us in that direction. It’s called Halo. Now for only $65 (discounted from a list price $99.99) we can get a smart band, an app, […]

Imagined COVID Vaccine Study, Real Obesity Clickbait

August 27, 2020 — When it comes to clickbait, enough is too much. The CNN headline on the right proclaims both truth and fiction. It’s true enough that obesity increases the risk of complications from COVID-19. But suggesting that a “study finds” obesity damages the efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine is false and misleading. This is nothing but obesity […]

Obesity Care and Prevention: Less Death and Cancer?

August 26, 2020 — Can obesity care and prevention lead to less death, cancer, and other complications of obesity? This question has been a hard one to answer. For one thing, we’re not too good at prevention. Obesity rates keep going up, not down. However, on the plus side, we have pretty good data on preventing death, cancer, and […]

A Lifestyle Free of Obesity, Which Is Not a Lifestyle

August 25, 2020 — Having obesity is not a lifestyle. Obesity is a chronic disease. But not having obesity is a lifestyle. In fact, it’s a lifestyle that sets a person free from years of having major chronic diseases. Like obesity. This is the logic Solja Nyberg, Archana Singh-Manoux, and Mika Kivimäki offer us in JAMA Internal Medicine this […]

Dietary Supplements and Other Magic for COVID-19

August 24, 2020 — The COVID-19 pandemic is a boom time for dietary supplements, says the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN). Because the threat of a viral pandemic seems to bring huge sales gains. Some people have trouble with wearing a mask. But maybe they have less trouble with popping supplement pills. Nevermind that masks actually help with the […]

BPA: Would You Like a Receipt for Mortality Risk?

August 23, 2020 — Sage advice from an attorney about making safety claims for any product: safe is a four-letter word. In other words, an absolute assurance of safety is almost always a lie. So the challenge is to figure out if something is safe enough. For example,consider the “everywhere chemical” known as BPA (bisphenol-A). A new study in […]