We can’t avoid the papers and dissertations which warn us about the dangers and problems which are caused by Obesity. Second, only to the opioid crisis, you could be forgiven for thinking obesity is one of the top issues the country faces.
It is an issue for all sorts of reasons but there is a dichotomy in the way in which the medical profession approaches it.
Teaching to deal with the issue
In medical school, the amount of time which is spent teaching prospective doctors is considerably less than a week and in some cases only just over a day, in the entirety of their undergraduate time. There is something wrong with this picture.
If obesity is our biggest health problem why are we not spending more time teaching those who will spend time with the general medical needs how to deal with it better?
Obesity goes beyond the boundaries
One of the big problems is there is a “fattist” mentality. A program over the last few years to help educate children during the first years at school about the reasons behind obesity came away with the horrifying conclusion the children understood the issues intellectually, but it was not enough to stop the bullying of the children who are overweight.
Children pick this attitude up from society as a whole, from parents and grandparents as well as from all of the negative reinforcements of contemporaries.
We can assume that the same is true of our medical community too. Even when they intellectually know there is more to the issue than its superficial dialogue, it doesn’t stop the immediate leaping to conclusions based on negative perspectives.
In fact, an analysis of patient notes noticed that practitioners were likely to note that overweight people would be likely to ignore their advice. The bias is based on the simple idea that overweight people have no willpower. As if that could possibly be true.
Doctors undoing other doctor’s work
Research shows that by the time someone actually goes to see a doctor about a weight issue, they will have tried (and failed) at all of the diets. They may have lost and gained hundreds of pounds by the time they reach the consulting room. On top of everything else, they are nurturing a profound sense of failure.
Doctors and therapists who are experiencing successes with the morbidly overweight have indicated that the only way to success is through persistent work and a lot of repetition. Often, they can see a lot of that work destroyed with a patient needs to see another doctor in an alternative discipline whose quick diagnosis starts with losing a hundred pounds.
It is almost like pushing a button which will send the patient into comfort food.
As a society, we are eating fewer calories than in prior years. Therefore, it has to be the calories that we are eating which is the problem. For me, this is the worst thing about the entire problem. How can you blame the individual when this is what they are presented with.