Posts Tagged ‘bariatric surgery’

It has long been true that health systems delay care for teens with severe obesity. Health plans stall and do their best to avoid paying. Many pediatricians are uncomfortable with the subject. Parents are unsure of what to do and often feel blame for their child’s medical condition. Guilt and blame breed denial and delay. […]

It’s 2021 and the medical world has mostly moved on from the archaic view of bariatric surgery as a treatment of last resort for obesity. For many patients, delaying bariatric surgery harms their health. The rest of the world is still struggling to catch up. But healthcare providers who care for people living with obesity […]

Roughly three-quarters of Americans have excess weight or obesity. So weight is a major daily concern for most people. It’s uncomfortable to talk about and as a consequence, it’s a topic that many will not publicly address. But Connecticut is now an “odd man out” for access to obesity care. For every other state in […]

To folks who care for people receiving bariatric surgery, it seems like the world’s best kept secret. But it shouldn’t be. This surgery puts diabetes into remission and reduces the burden of many other diseases that result from obesity. It gives people a better quality of life. And it lets people live longer. So why […]

In all of the work we do with nutrition, obesity, and metabolic health, nothing is more irritating than a false choice between prevention and treatment. More than a century old, the parable of The Ambulance Down in the Valley is a perfect expression of it. Shall we spend all of our money on an ambulance […]

Cancer is one of the risks of obesity that many people do not appreciate. Diabetes and heart disease have links to obesity that many people understand. But cancer as a complication of obesity has not made the charts. Nonetheless, obesity clearly raises the risks of 13 different kinds of cancer. A new study in Gastroenterology […]

This is not hard to see. But recognizing and dealing with effects of systemic racism in obesity care is not so easy. Black and Hispanic communities have a much higher prevalence of obesity and its complications. But they have much less access to effective obesity care. The outcomes for that care are worse in these […]

Can a taste for sweetness predict how well someone will do after bariatric surgery? A new study in AJCN suggests that this may be so. In fact, this prospective observational study found two predictors of weight loss in a cohort of 96 bariatric surgery patients. One was an intense taste for sweetness. The other was […]

Not long ago, bariatric surgery for adolescents with severe obesity was a rare consideration. Payers stubbornly resisted paying for it. Even for a 16-year old weighing more than 300 pounds, the very idea seemed “extreme” and off-putting. But now the American Academy of Pediatrics offers clear guidance. Surgery can be safe and effective for a […]

Media images of good health are a tricky business. On one hand, fashion and lifestyle businesses are feeling pressure to include more diversity in the imagery they blast at us. But when they do, guardians of public health protest. So we have debates about what is healthy to show people in Cosmopolitan. Or the health […]