Your message to patients: Supersize, shorter life
Patients must understand that obesity impacts quantity, as well as quality of life.
Editorial. Feb. 17, 2003.
We have become a nation of supersizers. A study in the Jan. 8 Journal of the American Medical Association found that food portions at fast-food restaurants and at home have gotten bigger since 1970. The study's results are more bad news for physicians fighting what is an uphill battle of the bulge.
Obesity is an epidemic. Previous JAMA studies indicated that two in three U.S. adults are classified as overweight or obese, up from fewer than one in four in the early 1960s.
Obesity ranks second only to tobacco in causing premature death. It has been linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, heart disease, diabetes and arthritis.
Yet physicians often find themselves in an exam room with overweight patients who don't seem particularly concerned about this litany of health problems and, as a result, are even less inclined to undertake a diet and exercise program to shed unhealthy pounds.
But thanks to a recent study, once again in JAMA, physicians may finally have a compelling way to explain the situation and make even the most apathetic obese patient pay attention -- by expressing obesity's damage in years of life lost.
Researchers' findings, in a study that took race and gender into account, suggest that obesity can have a profound and quantifiable effect on the life span. The risk of increased years of life lost is greatest when the onset of obesity is at a young age.
[...]
Full text of
American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2003 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
SHARE
