Fat-acceptance advocates say medical terms like "obesity" and "overweight" stigmatize fat people and should be eliminated from our vocabulary. They're putting public health at risk to promote a misguided ideology.
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Twenty years ago, an expert panel at the National Institutes of Health lowered the BMI cutoff for being overweight from 27 to 25. But a recent report suggests that for one segment of the population — postmenopausal women – that might not be low enough. Also, to define obesity in this population the cutoff of 30 might be too high.
A recent study shed light on something we've known for some time, but haven't quite lived by: Eating slowly could curb weight gain. Here's why this makes sense.
Will "Adiposity-Based Chronic Disease" change personal behavior, the way the term "obesity" could not? Two scientific associations that made the switch hope it will.
Not many people in the UK, and probably in the US too, are aware that overweight and obesity are risk factors for several types of cancer. A new report from Cancer Research UK indicates that the majority of those surveyed were ignorant of that fact. This doesn't bode well for the economics of health care in the UK, and the same is likely true for the US since we're even fatter than our cousins across the pond.
Despite the fact that men everywhere have given up on looking like Brad Pitt circa Troy, is dad bod healthy?
According to a new Danish study, obesity isn't as bad for health as it used to be. More exactly, the BMI associated with the lowest mortality risk seems to be higher than it was 40 years ago. But given some of the problems associated with using BMI to estimate obesity, we're not so sure that these results apply to everyone.
It's easy to be led astray by trusting to logic when evaluating health advice. But sometimes logic is borne out by science, as in the case of a recent study of prevention of knee arthritis by weight loss in overweight and obese women.
Experts describe childhood obesity as the canary in the coal mine for chronic diseases. But too many parents are in denial about their children s weight and attitudes vary among different ethnic groups and income levels, among other variables.
In a new study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. S.A. Cunningham of Emory University and colleagues reported that later incidence (new cases) of obesity is greater for children who are overweight as early as kindergarten.
Metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions including high blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess abdominal fat and abnormal cholesterol levels, is known to increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and