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On the other hand, AMA's declaration could help increase funding for future obesity research. It could also lead to payment for doctors who want to simply talk
by fcorr 13y ago
On the other hand, AMA's declaration could help increase funding for future obesity research. It could also lead to payment for doctors who want to simply talk to patients about nutrition or exercise -- time that's not currently reimbursed by insurance plans.
I don't know enough about medicine to discriminate well between a disease, condition, syndrome etc., but some of the points made in the article make it sound like this new designation of obesity as a disease is mainly to do with appearances.
- strasser 13y agoProbably we're overthinking the whole thing. When I was a kid, obese people just ate too much.
- glenra 13y agoSome obese people do eat a lot, but the causality direction is unclear. It's likely they eat a lot in large part because they're obese. The human body in general is amazingly good at calibrating how much you eat versus how active you are to stay within a pretty consistent weight range - if it weren't, we'd all starve or become morbidly obese in response to tiny inadvertent changes in diet or exercise. But in some people, that calibration mechanism is off - they feel hungrier than they should or their metabolism works slower than it should given their size, and the mismatch leads them to become obese. We don't yet know why and we don't yet know what can be done to reliably change or fix it. We've almost certainly been underthinking the whole thing.
- angersock 13y agoHow long ago was that, if I may ask?
- rtpg 13y agoThere's a difference between being overweight and being obese you know.