Obesity: Even Our Doctors Won’t Tell Us We’re Fat

Note from Connie: What’s a doctor to do when his patient is overweight or obese? Confront the patient?  Warn him or her that heart disease, type 2 diabetes and an early death likely lie in wait? Well, apparently some doctors just plain chicken out when it comes to revealing the truth, according to a recent study in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, which Karen James tells us about. 

Dear blog readers, I invite you to talk back to us: Would you rather have a doctor lie by omission or tell you the truth and possibly save your life if your weight was higher than it should be? In fact, remember that situation I discussed previously in which this doctor actually got in trouble for bluntly telling a patient she was fat?

Generally speaking, we’re not in favor of lying. But when your friend/girlfriend/wife asks you if her jeans make her look fat, it’s not exactly like you can tell her that her the truth.

Evidently, doctors aren’t any more likely to level with us, according to a a story we read on Time.com by CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, M.D.

A review of more than 9,000 patient records found that doctors at the famed Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minn. basically lied to most of their obese patients by not saying anything about their need to lose weight.

The M.D.s there diagnosed only 505 patients as obese when they examined more than 2,500 obese patients (between November 1, 2004 and October 31, 2005).

And researchers — led by Warren G. Thompson, M.D. — found that only 574 had an obesity management plan recorded, according to this study, which appeared in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

So about 2,000 obese patients who went into that clinic walked out without a documented diagnosis reflecting as much!

This is particularly sad because those patients with documented
obesity were twice as likely to have developed a weight-management plan
with their doctor than those without.

We also thought it was interesting to learn that staff physicians
were less likely than residents to document obesity as a diagnosis.

Karen James for the SUGAR SHOCK! Blog

4 thoughts on “Obesity: Even Our Doctors Won’t Tell Us We’re Fat”

  1. I hate to shock you with this information, but obese folks? We already know, thanks. We don’t need to be diagnosed or otherwise pathologized to know we’re big fat slobs — my fat isn’t hiding behind my shoulder like a mall perfume sniper just waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
    And, for that matter, what can we actually do with an obesity diagnosis? Are you going to refuse treat my deviated septum or my crummy knee until I lose weight? What about when the fat comes back and brings new friends? Particularly with the obese, fat is a pretty permanent condition. You can blame my screwed up knee and nose on my fat, but that doesn’t change the fact that my knee and nose need to be fixed now, please, not a year and a half from now when my diet or bariatric surgery finish doing their magic.

  3. It is sad that a lot more people are overweight now. I see so many of them eat mostly sugary foods. Even the government does not care about the health of its people. I just wonder how long before people wise up and start taking care of their health. The first thing should be a ban on sugar.

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