May 18, 2023 — It is impossible to miss. At ECO2023, we are seeing tremendous excitement about advances in obesity care – mixed with concern about what happens when those advances meet with reality. As ECO2023 unfolds, we’re hearing more about the advances that new obesity medicines are offering, but we’re also hearing reminders about the gap between the […]
February 1, 2023 — “I would tell them to look beyond the weight and accept me.” These words of a 17-year-boy point to twisted ideas about body weight that surface in the relationships among parents and teens. The words come from a mixed-methods study just published in Body Image by Samantha Lawrence and colleagues. Why is this such an […]
September 23, 2022 — Two recent studies make it clear that a brighter view is emerging for obesity surgery in teens. First, in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Nestor de la Cruz-Muñoz and colleagues document good outcomes from bariatric surgery for adolescents over more than a decade. Second, Fereshteh Salimi-Jazi and colleagues provide a 15-year analysis […]
August 13, 2022 — Two new studies in Pediatric Obesity point to a common theme. It seems that healthcare providers, parents, and youth all, for various reasons, may be avoiding the subject of adolescent obesity. It is a difficult subject for all three groups – largely because of concerns about emotional well-being. Whether parents and youth talk about or […]
June 28, 2022 — Today we will take every little bit of good news we can. So the word that FDA is adding one more obesity treatment option for teens with Qsymia, though incremental, is certainly good news. In approving the drug for this use, FDA noted that the teens taking it lost between five and seven percent of […]
April 18, 2022 — New data keeps documenting the safety, health, and quality of life benefits from bariatric surgery for teens who need it. But only a tiny number of the 4.5 million young people with severe obesity receive this procedure. So what are the daunting barriers that stand in the way? A new qualitative study in SOARD offers […]
February 19, 2022 — To folks who concern themselves with eating disorders, this is not news. Rather, it is confirmation. The pandemic has brought a sharp rise in eating disorders. A new report yesterday in the MMWR provides solid documentation. In fact, the proportion of emergency department visits with eating disorders doubled for teenage girls during the pandemic. Emily […]
October 21, 2021 — A new report in MMWR this week provides a stark reminder. COVID vaccines save lives – especially for teens with obesity and other medical conditions. The study analyzed 464 patients 12 to 18 years old. Of those, 179 were hospitalized with COVID-19 and 285 were case controls. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of these patients […]
October 13, 2021 — In so many ways, COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down, and the disruption continues. Casual – and annoying – talk about pandemic weight gain continues to swirl, thought the data on this tells a very mixed story. But something more serious is getting less attention – a sharp spike in eating disorders for young […]
September 17, 2021 — For some time, it’s been clear to mental health professionals that social media could be a problem for teens. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has long minimized the issue. But reporting this week from the Wall Street Journal tells suggests that Facebook knows from its own research that Instagram promotes self-stigma for teenage girls. Slides from […]
