March 14, 2024 — Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine disorder affecting young women, with effects that can span from adolescence to life after menopause. It is a complex condition and despite being so common, it’s still poorly understood. Quite often, obesity occurs coincidentally with PCOS. This coincidence has led to the kind of mistakes that […]
June 23, 2023 — Since January, when the American Academy of Pediatrics released a guideline for treating the disordered physiology of children and youth with obesity, we’ve been inundated with popular psychology influencers concerned about the impact on young persons with disordered eating. Their arguments are quite passionate. “Obesity guidelines for kids terrify me,” says one person with a […]
March 4, 2023 — Today – World Obesity Day – is all about changing perspectives. The World Obesity Federation deserves credit for a well-chosen theme, because in the face of much new evidence about obesity, old perspectives are crashing into newer ones driven by evidence and science. Research has brought us new options for treating obesity more safely and […]
December 14, 2022 — Decades have passed with medical experts talking about an “obesity epidemic.” Meanwhile the prevalence of this condition rose without a pause. A new study in Family Practice offers some insight into how this plays out in primary care. Madeleine Tremblett, Annabel Poon, Paul Aveyard, and Charlotte Albury analyzed 159 recordings of advice from GPs to […]
March 1, 2022 — The care in Obesity Care Week (OCW2022) is all about offering real care for real persons facing real harm from obesity in their lives. Yet more than nine out of ten people living with obesity never get any real medical care for this complex, chronic disease. We have good clinical guidelines for obesity care, but […]
January 8, 2022 — Ten years ago, the American Board of Obesity Medicine was not yet certifying physicians in this specialty. Today, obesity medicine is one of the fastest growing medical specialties in the U.S. A total of 5,242 physicians hold this certification. This is indeed good. But the bad news is that it is far from adequate. That […]
August 28, 2021 — Half a loaf is better than none, wrote John Heywood in his 1546 book of proverbs. So should we be thrilled that the USPSTF is making a “huge” change to diabetes screening for people with overweight and obesity? Or is this only a half-measure that will do nothing if people don’t have access to care […]
May 10, 2021 — As the European Congress on Obesity starts this morning, a pair of analyses are casting a harsh light on herbals and dietary supplements for weight loss. In fact, the science for these products is thin. The lead author of this work, Erica Bessell, explains: “Very few high-quality studies have been done on some supplements, with […]
November 24, 2020 — We are waiting, but we should not. A tremendous gap in care for obesity stands open. It is the gap between primary care for obesity that people need and an uncomfortable silence that persists – at best. Because right now, if the silence is broken, most often patients receive only vague advice to lose weight. […]
August 5, 2020 — New Canadian guidelines for obesity care are out and they set a new standard. The new standard is to set aside weight and focus on health. But, this is harder than you might think. Weight is the metric that everyone understands. Many more consumers seek ways to lose weight. But obesity care is more tedious. […]
