Weight Loss Medications or Obesity Medications?
In light of my last 2 journal entries (here and here), I found it interesting to see this article on Medscape today discussing the pitfalls of using the term weight loss vs using the term Obesity. Medscape in particular is guilty of using the weight loss term almost exclusively in order to garner attention on google and other search engines.
While I don’t feel the article did a very good job at explaining some of the reasons why the use of the term is problematic, I appreciated the emphasis on using people first language when referring to patients living with overweight and obesity - I continue to be surprised at the the number of so called experts in the field that continue to use the term ‘obese’, which is regarded as a harmful label that is stigmatizing and is not an actual medical diagnosis.
A helpful rule of thumb is to only use the version of the word with the “y” at the end - so, Obesity, not Obese. The version with the Y is a medical diagnosis that describes a person living with a condition with complex biological underpinnings, and the version without is a label that is historically associated with harmful (and wrong) negative beliefs like ‘obesity is a personal choice’.
Why not make the recommendation to patients to enter “Obesity” or “Weight Management” into their search terms when seeking information or providers on the internet? This is what we do for immunization vs vaccination information, I think it’s a great rule of thumb to teach people how to find information that is potentially more helpful, and it is another potential way to break and/ or question the way we think about weight.
Dr. Ryan Oughtred, ND, CBE, DCOM