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>I was under the impression that doctors were getting sheepish about giving such advice in the US. Patients don't like to hear it. Seems like doctors either te

>I was under the impression that doctors were getting sheepish about giving such advice in the US. Patients don't like to hear it. Seems like doctors either tell people to lose weight to cure an ear infection or they don't say anything about weight ever because the outcomes are poor so why bother. >creating a perverse incentive in a for-profit healthcare system. Normally private insurers would dump these kinds of people (perhaps leaving them for some government insurer to deal with if such exists). But in a world where insurers' profit margin is regulated to a fixed percentage of the money that flows through insurers they are valuable people to have around.

bobthepanda 4y ago
Medical staff now get personal satisfaction scores from patients at some hospitals, so now there is also a huge tension about telling patients things they don’t like. Anecdotally, this was a big reason many of my friends left medicine and nursing.
watwut 4y ago
> Seems like doctors either tell people to lose weight to cure an ear infection or they don't say anything about weight ever because the outcomes are poor so why bother. Pretty much. But larger thing is that ... doctors are not nutritionists nor lifestyle experts. They do know their own specialization very well, but they are not able to make people loose weight. They do not have evidence based well know strategies of the "we know that this program/advice makes x% of people to make loose weight long term" sort. Usually, what patient gets is general advice of "eating less" followed by some unsustainable diet that is necessary going to fail and just lead to yoyo cycle. By unsustainable I mean the sort if diet that leads to malnutrition of some sort due to missing stuff your body needs or the one that is too low in calories making the person following it unable to function normally.

bobthepanda 4y ago

Medical staff now get personal satisfaction scores from patients at some hospitals, so now there is also a huge tension about telling patients things they don’t like. Anecdotally, this was a big reason many of my friends left medicine and nursing.

watwut 4y ago

> Seems like doctors either tell people to lose weight to cure an ear infection or they don't say anything about weight ever because the outcomes are poor so why bother. Pretty much. But larger thing is that ... doctors are not nutritionists nor lifestyle experts. They do know their own specialization very well, but they are not able to make people loose weight. They do not have evidence based well know strategies of the "we know that this program/advice makes x% of people to make loose weight long term" sort. Usually, what patient gets is general advice of "eating less" followed by some unsustainable diet that is necessary going to fail and just lead to yoyo cycle. By unsustainable I mean the sort if diet that leads to malnutrition of some sort due to missing stuff your body needs or the one that is too low in calories making the person following it unable to function normally.