November 20, 2022 — Fed up. That’s where we are with stories about how people taking semaglutide for obesity are keeping people with diabetes from getting an adequate supply of the drug they need. Fed up, because it’s a stealthy way of expressing implicit bias against people living with obesity. The subtext is that those people don’t really need […]
November 9, 2022 — Physiognomy – a textbook example of pseudoscience – came from ancient Greeks and fell into disrepute during the Middle Ages. This is the practice of judging a person’s character by their physical appearance. It happens, of course. But we’re more than surprised to find a medical journal – Sage Open Medicine – giving it credence. […]
October 28, 2022 — Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan is struggling. On one hand, he knows shaming people with obesity is clearly wrong. But while he rejects outright shame for people with obesity, he’s struggling with with the idea of acceptance. He decided to talk about this because he was watching the Emmy Awards and Lizzo came on. “For those […]
October 16, 2022 — It’s a fact. Healthcare professionals are human and so are their patients. So inevitably they will – regardless of their professionalism – encounter friction with some patients. These are patients who wind up being labeled “difficult” and all too often because of that label, receive care that is less than optimal. Physician Joan Naidorf says […]
October 15, 2022 — In GQ recently, Will Peischel asked if the world is ready for extremely effective weight-loss drugs. Of course, the simple answer is yes and no. First of all, it’s clear enough that most people don’t really understand these drugs or the condition they treat. Peischel makes that clear right up front when he calls them […]
October 8, 2022 — Weight loss is a complicated subject these days. For good reasons, many people hesitate to dwell on it. Moral panic about fatness, weight bias and stigma, and concerns about eating disorders have made this subject controversial at times. So as we look at the meeting at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that starts today […]
October 5, 2022 — Toxic beauty standards are costly – both in terms of health and wealth. This message resonates from a new report funded by the Dove Beauty Bar brand and published jointly with the STRIPED project at the Harvard School of Public Health. This report details the cost of unrealistic beauty standards exploited by a beauty industry […]
September 15, 2022 — Public discourse about obesity is often locked into the wrong debate. On one hand, a common view holds that this is a problem for which prevention is the only real answer. People must have good nutrition and active lives by default so that children will not grow into adulthood with obesity. On the other hand, […]
September 14, 2022 — A diverse group of folks with unusual expertise gathered in Charlotte last night with a small audience of about a hundred people. They brought questions and curiosity about the chronic disease of obesity. They also brought lifetimes of experience with this disease – either in themselves or through loved ones. It was an evening for […]
September 13, 2022 — Today we are grateful to Sarah Le Brocq for offering her personal story of the reality of living with obesity. Originally appearing in Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine here under a Creative Commons license, we thank Le Brocq for making it possible for us to share it on ConscienHealth. I grew up on a little Island in the […]
