Saturday Story: Odd Double Standard On Obesity As A Disease, And Diet Bullshittery From Credible Voices Helps No One
12 out of 149 people remaining in remission from diabetes 5 years after a diet program is exciting?
I’ve seen a great deal of concern acknowledging obesity as a disease whereby the argument against doing so is that there are people with higher weights with no medical or quality of life consequences. Make no mistake, it’s an argument built on weight bias. Not that those wielding it are biased, but rather the alarm itself upholds the notion that of all chronic diseases that themselves confer risk, weight is unique.
What do I mean?
No one bats an eye about diagnosing someone with hypertension. If a patient has higher than what risk tables deem to be a healthy blood pressure that’s what they’re diagnosed with. Same with blood sugar and diabetes and high cholesterol and dyslipidemia.
I could go on.
All of these are diagnosable diseases yet none of these diagnoses guarantees medical consequences. People can live long, rich, medically uneventful lives with these diagnoses - and not just consequent to their treatment but also consequent to the simple fact that risks aren’t guarantees.
I’m not saying I don’t understand the concern, but hand-wringing about obesity as a diagnosis indirectly upholds the notion it’s horrible to have, a notion born of societal weight bias. I’m hopeful though that as more and more safe and effective medications come online, that its treatment, and the discourse around it, will one day be no different than it currently is for other diagnosable chronic non-communicable diseases with varied penetrance like high blood pressure and more.
For Medscape I wrote about a recently announced plan in the UK to fund the “soup and shakes” diet to help with the remission of diabetes. On Twitter I called its release bullshittery and though I’m keen to see more coverage of interprofessional dietary support for people with chronic diet related diseases, credible voices speaking hyperbolically like diet hucksters helps no one.
Have a great weekend!
In the last decade (or two, if lucky) of a long life, I've finally tumbled to the fact that obesity is a description, not a diagnosis. Maybe I did myself a favor by taking care of my nutritional and physical health all these years. But maybe it was just a hobby after all.
Love that term .. bullshittery ... so much of that in the pseudo-medical world of 'woo' . (my term for all that nonsense). These same hucksters who start internet bits with "Doctor's don't want you to know..." are now using ready to use doctors (or at least the health care administration) to sell their woo?