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For better or worse (worse), people don't go to the doctor for lifestyle analysis and rarely take lifestyle advice from their doctors. They go to their doctors
by swatcoder 2y ago
For better or worse (worse), people don't go to the doctor for lifestyle analysis and rarely take lifestyle advice from their doctors.
They go to their doctors to know when to start medical interventions.
Even simple waist-to-hip ratio assessement would be a big win for identifying lifestyle concerns, but neither that nor the far more involved VO2Max and DEXA rests are going to become standard unless they becoming a gaiting condition for some celebrated drug or procedure.
And that's as much because of the patient's perspective of what they want from doctors as it is because of the doctors or broader establishment.
- readthenotes1 2y agoI know an aged cardiologist who jokes: "I tell my patients they will need to lose weight, but whatever they do they must not lose it too fast. They always follow that advice just fine"
- makeitdouble 2y ago> Even simple waist-to-hip ratio assessement Settling for subpar "could be good enough" heuristics instead of doing actual measurements is partly why people are less receptive. Basically it'd just be telling them they're fat, and not what's their actual individual risk, and it would also make tracking progress overly difficult: what if after a year of exercice their VO2Max greatly improves while waist to hip only slightly changed ? Overweight people already have distrust of doctors just telling them to first lose weight and dismiss their specific requests for help, additional advice vaguely based on statistics would probably not help.
- llm_trw 2y agoWaist-to-hip ratio is as accurate as dexascans and VO2Max measurements done in a lab. People don't want to hear it because they are out of shape.
- makeitdouble 2y agoWait-to-hip ratio is an accurate measurement of cardio-respiratory capacity ?
- llm_trw 2y agoMorbidity and mortality, which is what the article's title is about.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoThe article is about how morbidity and mortality relate to cardiovascular fitness. The fact that waist to hip ratio also is related to morbidity and mortality is a bit irrelevant in that specific context. One can imagine a person who vigorously rows every morning for 45 minutes and has a high cardiovascular fitness, but who also has a very poor diet and is thus fat.
- llm_trw 2y agoOne can imagine many a thing which doesn't exist. One should stick to the facts however.
- BenFranklin100 2y ago[flagged]
- llm_trw 2y agoYou seem overly hostile. Have a good day.
- makeitdouble 2y agoWaist-to-hip ratio takes more time to change than VO2Max, it can even negatively change as a subject exercices more (e.g. they put more muscle than lose fat) Waist-to-hip is a good predictor for generic subjects who otherwise never cared about improving their health. If the goal is to actually improve health, that assumption stops being true and you can't rely on generic heuristics anymore.
- jeffbee 2y agoWho wants lifestyle advice from an American doctor? If they find out you biked to their office, 9 out of 10 of them will scold you about helmets, in the exact same counterproductive way as Americans of every other occupation.