have you ever heard aboutThe Obesity Paradox?” This refers to the healthcare phenomenon that high BMI is often cited as a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, yet these patients maintain high survival rates if a cardiac event occurs.
In addition, many patients with high BMI perform better and live longer than men with the same disease and ‘typical’ BMI.
What does the medical field get wrong about fat people?
We are constantly bombarded with messages from health care professionals, families, and “concern trolls” that weight is detrimental to health. There are many older studies that “supported” the claim that
Based on current research, scholars believe that the relationship between weight and health can be explained by factors such as: Body-related stigma, avoidance of health care, or inadequate treatment by health care providers.
Where does the lack of knowledge about plus-size people in health care come from?
Doctors are taught very little about plus-size people in medical school.
In many cases, family doctors provide nutritional advice to obese patients without any prompting. However, during the course of medical school education, most students 20 hours Emphasis on nutrition. Nutrition-focused time does not include meal planning or how to use motivational interviewing to ask patients about their daily eating habits.
Obese people may be shocked to learn that they cannot donate their bodies to science. do not accept Agency for postmortem studies on specific BMI.
This excludes a large portion of the US population. How should a medical student learn about the fat body without being given the opportunity to study it?
Other Examples of Fat Bias in Medicine
If you have ever considered becoming a bone marrow donor, you will be aware that there is a BMI limit.Medical professionals may have been able to justify this in the past because of where the bone marrow is harvested from. 83% donations have been collected on the periphery, and the debate has completely collapsed.
To receive an organ transplant, you must be below a certain BMI. This makes us question. And am I too fat to save myself? Dr. Rebecca PaulThe director of the Research and Weight Stigma Initiative at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University said: “We know that weight stigma is very prevalent in healthcare settings and it affects us in many ways. and sometimes at a much more complex level related to access to treatment, denial of service, and are included in this more complex conversation about medical risk and the justification for all this. It’s a safety issue, but there can be legitimate medical risks in some cases, so you really need to make sure it’s justified. ”
Did you know that fat people need long needles for vaccination? This was something that was discussed when the Covid-19 vaccine became available. 2022 paper vaccination journal Some people, especially those over a certain weight, are not adequately immunized against Covid-19 because standard needles cannot penetrate the deltoid muscle, pointing to existing needle length guidelines for vaccines. This suggests that there may not be
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not provide specific guidance on needle length for Covid-19 vaccines, but does provide general guidelines for intramuscular injection. A one-inch needle is sufficient for adults assigned to females at birth and weighing less than 200 pounds.This guidance is consistent for HPV, tetanus, and influenza vaccinations, and any vaccine administered intramuscularly.
The debate over the efficacy of emergency contraception in people with a higher BMI is a hot topic that resurfaces on social media every few months. Dr. Alison EdelmanA professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University said: “When contraception was developed it was a one-size-fits-all model, but our population today is so different than it was when the drug was developed that it is possible that the most common types of emergency contraception do not work. Women with high BMI.”
Two emergency contraceptive pills available in the United States are Plan B and Ella. Studies have been conducted on both in an attempt to determine if there is a weight-related efficacy threshold. However, these studies have reached different conclusions.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed Plan B, finding conflicting data and too much to make definitive conclusions about whether it is less effective in women weighing over 165 pounds or with a BMI over 25. A Scottish study found that Plan B may be less effective in women over 170 pounds.
This leads many doctors to recommend Ella, especially for overweight people. Most effective for people under 195 pounds.
Is anyone actively thinking of including overweight people in healthcare?
yes!of All of Us Research Program seeks to include people who are normally excluded from medical research. Unlike many research studies that focus on a specific disease or population, this program provides national research resources through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for thousands of research questions, covering a wide range of health conditions. doing.
More than one million diverse participants have contributed to electronic health records (EHRs), biospecimens, surveys, and other means of building comprehensive data sets that will be made available to researchers worldwide. increase.
There is also increasing research into the stigma of weight, the impact of poor evidence-based care on the fat community, and the reasons behind fatphobia in medicine.
who likes the fat doctor (@fatdoctoruk on TikTok) share their first-hand experience and knowledge in the medical industry to spread messages, including weight, to their followers.
Social media is filled with nutritionists and dieticians trying to spread a similar message while working in a field where size is often seemingly unlimited. @yourdietitianbff, @elainaefirdand @findfoodfreedom.
We hope that one day, more size-inclusive advocates and medical researchers curbing the fat bias will improve access to evidence-based medicine.
Someday we will no longer be an afterthought.
Someday we will be active participants in medical research.
One day, we will no longer be considered worthless.