Doctors are significantly less likely to diagnose obesity in patients if they don’t have their own weight under control, a new study from two Johns Hopkins schools shows. According to Time Magazine, researchers found that only seven percent of doctors who believe their own weight exceeded that of their patients said they would diagnose obesity.
“I was totally surprised by the findings,” said lead author Sara Bleich of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The school, together with researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, studied 500 primary care physicians nationwide to discover how a doctor’s weight influenced his or her treatment of overweight patients. They found that only 18 percent of overweight and obese doctors discussed weight problems with their patients, and only seven percent actually diagnosed obesity.
And when overweight physicians did diagnose obesity, they were less likely to prescribe lifestyle changes like diet and exercise, which experts say are crucial to long-term weight loss. Instead, doctors advised their patients to take anti-obesity medications.
Researchers believe these trends may have an adverse effect on the obesity epidemic in the United States, especially as 53 percent of physicians are currently overweight or obese. Doctors may feel self-conscious and hypocritical offering weight-loss advice to patients when they themselves are at an unhealthy weight. Patients need to hear the truth, however.
The first step in remedying this condition is to get doctors healthy, Bleich said.
“If we improve physician well-being, and improve their lifestyles toward weight loss or weight maintenance, that can go a long way toward influencing the care they provide their patients,” she said.
