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Question about Health and Weight
Jun. 3rd, 2018 04:43 pmWhy does the medical establishment use a disease model for obesity? How is this beneficial? They don't do this for other symptoms which have multiple possible causes. If you see your doctor because you are short of breath, they don't tell you to breathe better. They look at heart health, lung function, possible neuromuscular disorders, medications, and maybe even psychological issues. There are a lot of reasons that one might be short of breath. They might even put you on oxygen if your blood oxygen levels are low while they try to figure out the exact cause.
How is being overweight different? Why do we treat obesity as if it were the disease, and not the symptom? There are a lot of reasons one might be carrying more weight than the doctors prefer. But lifestyle choices is only one of them, and even there, those choices are often intertwined with other issues like joint pain and time management problems and poverty. But by using a disease model when looking at obesity, it seems like they are getting their causality wrong a lot of the time. People in pain move less, which increases weight, which makes it harder to move, which increases weight. But seems like you want to tackle the pain, first.
I also want to bang my head against a wall every time someone says "obesity epidemic." To the best of our current knowledge, obesity is not contagious. So using an epidemic model is just nuts. It seems like this impairs communication, not improves it.
I think that I would be much more willing to talk about my current weight with my doctor if I had a feeling that we weren't going to be scolding me, or recommending drastic solutions like a gastric bypass, and instead were looking at it as a symptom with an underlying cause. But "you weigh too much" is, um, not helpful? It's not new information.
How is being overweight different? Why do we treat obesity as if it were the disease, and not the symptom? There are a lot of reasons one might be carrying more weight than the doctors prefer. But lifestyle choices is only one of them, and even there, those choices are often intertwined with other issues like joint pain and time management problems and poverty. But by using a disease model when looking at obesity, it seems like they are getting their causality wrong a lot of the time. People in pain move less, which increases weight, which makes it harder to move, which increases weight. But seems like you want to tackle the pain, first.
I also want to bang my head against a wall every time someone says "obesity epidemic." To the best of our current knowledge, obesity is not contagious. So using an epidemic model is just nuts. It seems like this impairs communication, not improves it.
I think that I would be much more willing to talk about my current weight with my doctor if I had a feeling that we weren't going to be scolding me, or recommending drastic solutions like a gastric bypass, and instead were looking at it as a symptom with an underlying cause. But "you weigh too much" is, um, not helpful? It's not new information.
