February 5, 2019 — Most often, when public health reports discuss the impact of rising obesity, the focus is on diabetes and its complications. Cancer does not spring to mind. But a new report in Lancet Public Health provides a disturbing jolt. Six obesity related cancers are rising, especially in the millennial generation. These are cancers that have always […]
February 4, 2019 — Three years ago, 45 global organizations endorsed guidelines recommending metabolic surgery to reverse type 2 diabetes. At about the same time the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a big expansion of the Diabetes Prevention Program with great fanfare. But today, very few of the patients who could benefit from either of these options […]
February 3, 2019 — We like to be optimistic. In many, many ways, things are getting better for dealing with obesity. Science is giving us a much better understanding of the physiology of this disease. AMA and medical organizations all over the world recognize it a chronic disease, not evidence of some sort of character flaw. And treatment options […]
February 2, 2019 — People who live in large bodies find themselves the target of fat-phobic and body shaming messages on a daily basis. Ellen Maud Bennett died of cancer on May 11, 2018, and she used her obituary to ask the medical profession to stop fat-shaming the ill. She is not alone. Weight bias is everywhere in our […]
February 1, 2019 — We keep hoping that editors and reviewers of obesity, nutrition, and physical activity studies will use a sharper eye when a cluster randomized trial comes to them. But two new publications tell us we can’t count on it yet. In both papers, the researchers claim to have proven the effectiveness of their programs. Yet neither […]
January 29, 2019 — In obesity research, we have a bit of a cluster fuss on our hands. It’s all about a type of randomized study where the randomization is between clusters. This randomization method is important because it’s very useful for obesity prevention studies. For example, you might have children in different schools or different classrooms participating in […]
January 28, 2019 — Bummer. The Lancet Obesity Commission report is out today and if you thought that obesity might be a tough problem to solve, you really have no clue. It’s bigger than you ever thought. It’s not just an epidemic. Not even calling it a pandemic is big enough. It’s a syndemic. A huge, impossible problem. It’s […]
January 26, 2019 — The language of cause cause and effect is slippery. That’s what we’ve learned this week from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “The Impact of U.S. Free Trade Agreements on Calorie Availability and Obesity: A Natural Experiment in Canada” appeared last May in that journal. This week, the authors of that article explained that “impact” is […]
January 23, 2019 — What should we make of links between personality and fat phobia? Or negative attitudes about people with obesity? Angelina Sutin and Antonio Terracciano have new data to suggest personality traits can tell us some things about the social experience of body weight. The associations they found are interesting. But they leave us with questions. For instance, […]
January 21, 2019 — New research published last week in Cell offers a glimpse of how a critical part of the brain gets wired for obesity very early in life. Sebastien Bouret, a senior author, explains: We know that the brain, in particular an area called the hypothalamus, has a very important role in the regulation of food intake […]
