Silence adds to the harm of obesity, new study shows
Many know the biting comments about weight gain, but the shame and lack of proper dialogue may also contribute to obesity.
A new study shows that the lack of medically sound discussions about obesity could be harmful. The global Awareness, Care, and Treatment In Obesity Management’s International Observation study (ACTION-IO) identified several gaps in the treatment of the condition. These gaps and attitudes have contributed to an increase in obesity by 300% worldwide since 1975. The study garnered responses from 14,502 adults with obesity and 2,785 health care professionals.
One of those harmful beliefs is that losing weight is the sole responsibility of the one carrying it. This was found to be common among three-quarters of those surveyed.
Only around half of the ACTION-IO participants admitted to discussing their weight with their medical personnel in the last five years, an indication of the shame associated with obesity. This is despite 65% of people with obesity saying they would like their health practitioner to openly and professionally discuss issues around weight with them. This lack of dialogue was found to be a key contributor to the weight-gain and the inability to manage obesity.
“There is a lot of shame and stigma associated with being overweight or obese, and the stigma itself can actually increase the risk of obesity,” said Retha Harmse, the spokesperson for the Association for Dietetics in South Africa. “We need to change our vocabulary and understanding when dealing with obesity. I often highlight that although you have fat, you are not fat. Similarly as having fingernails doesn’t make you a fingernail.”
Keeping the weight off
According to the ACTION-IO study, the majority of respondents made active decisions to shed the kilos, with at least 81% embarking on a serious mission to lose weight at one stage during their life. This was successful for some, with over a third of participants able to lose more than 5% of their body weight. Unfortunately, as with many conditions that are not treated at their core, only 29% were able to maintain that weight loss for at least a year.
“We cannot ignore that we live in an obesogenic food environment,” says Dr. Chantell Witten, a registered dietician and lecturer at the University of the Free State. “Unhealthy fast food is readily available, South Africans generally have low nutrition literacy, and healthy food costs more.”
Although factors like genetic predispositions and specific pathophysiological alterations have been found to play a role in the prevalence of obesity, dialogue can help. It is largely believed that dialogue between those impacted and their healthcare providers — particularly about realistic weight-loss goals — could go a long way to ensuring that obesity does not eat at one from the inside.
The World Health Organisation says obesity and being overweight are linked to more deaths worldwide than being underweight. The condition is a catalyst for other illnesses including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, high blood cholesterol and atherosclerosis (the build-up of fat in the veins and arteries), cancers, and sleep disorders.
In South Africa alone, 70% of women, 31% of men, and 13% of children are considered overweight or obese. Although 1.9 billion adults around the world are overweight — 650 million of whom fall into the category of obese — experts have found that obesity is not always treated as the medical condition that it is.—Health-e News
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Silence adds to the harm of obesity, new study shows
by Sasha Star, Health-e News
March 4, 2021
Related
One man’s ambitious run for mental health awareness
Many people’s mental health has been negatively affected by the pandemic. One local man, who suffered from anxiety related to COVID-19, aims to set a world record running to raise money for a mental health charity.
A cost-effective clinic that puts care at the centre of daily treatment
The CareKahle Clinic in Orange Farm gives patients healthcare services at reduced rates helping unburden the state primary health care system.
#Covid-19 vaccine: Behind the scenes health workers are in two minds
A nurse at Khayelitsha District Hospital became the first person in South Africa vaccinated against the coronavirus. Yet, as scientists and government officials race to inoculate other frontline workers, some health workers are suspicious of the vaccine.