Posts Tagged ‘bias’

The simple and prevalent view of obesity is that it results from bad choices in diet and exercise. However, that view omits the role of a major factor – stress. In the Annual Review of Psychology, Janet Tomiyama offers an excellent review of the vicious cycle of stress and obesity. Multiple Pathways The connection between […]

Here’s a jolt of reality from research at the NYU School of Medicine. Among the students who are ready to go into the clinic for their clerkships, most of them believe that controllable factors are very important causes of obesity. But most of them think that biological and genetic factors are not very important. This […]

Honestly, this one is hard to wrap our heads around. A new study in Health Psychology tells us that weight stigma during pregnancy and right after birth may be increasing the risk of depression, excess weight gain, and weight retention. Angela Incollingo Rodriguez was lead author on the study. Prospective Observations This prospective observational study […]

UPDATE: Within hours of our posting below, Medscape posted the following retraction notice. While we welcome thought-provoking and even controversial points of view in our commentaries and in comments from our readers, we do not endorse weight bias, nor bias towards any group. After careful review, the editors at Medscape have decided to retract this […]

Objectivity is tedious. When survival is at stake, snap decisions can confer an advantage. Friend or foe? Fight or flee? We might not have time to collect and analyze data. And thus, humans brains are wired with shortcuts for making instant judgments. But those shortcuts come at a cost when we live in a modern […]

UPDATE: Within days of our posting below, Medscape posted the following retraction notice. While we welcome thought-provoking and even controversial points of view in our commentaries and in comments from our readers, we do not endorse weight bias, nor bias towards any group. After careful review, the editors at Medscape have decided to retract this […]

Our president just had his annual medical exam and that ritual is providing us an important reminder. Self-reports – especially about obesity, nutrition, and physical activity – are not very reliable. That’s because most people misremember or shade the truth. We’re all lighter, taller, eating healthier, and more active when we do the reporting ourselves. A Long […]

People who live in large bodies find themselves the target of fat-phobic and body shaming messages on a daily basis. Ellen Maud Bennett died of cancer on May 11, 2018, and she used her obituary to ask the medical profession to stop fat-shaming the ill. She is not alone. Weight bias is everywhere in our […]

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine is stirring up a complex mixture of feelings with some objective data about vaping. The study shows that e-cigarettes are 83 percent more effective than nicotine replacement products for helping people quit smoking. In the U.K., the reaction is positive. In the U.S., the reaction is […]

New research in PLOS Genetics provides deeper insight than ever into the role that skinny genes may play in protecting an individual from obesity. Senior investigator Sadaf Farooqi sums it up: This research shows for the first time that healthy thin people are generally thin because they have a lower burden of genes that increase a […]