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Query: UMLS:C0028754 (obesity)
 124,988 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Preliminary, exploratory studies examine self-perceptions of the stigma of overweight in relatiopship to weight-losing patterns of female and male children of different ages. It is suggested that the concept of stigma may be a viable analytical tool in studying overweight as: an exclusive focus in interaction, related to a negative body image, overwhelming others with mixed emotions, clashing with other attributes of the person, an equivocal predictor of activities, and related to one's sense of responsibility for one's overweight. Female adolescents in the Slimnastics class in a high school and children and adolescents in an obesity clinic in a hospital were studied. Male children and female adolescents had more trouble losing weight than did female children and male adolescents. Youth who viewed overweight as both one's responsibility and as an illness that required the joint efforts of oneself and others, especially professional experts, were more successful in losing weight than those youth who believed that overweight was solely their responsibility or not at all their responsibility. Intensive focusing on one's overweight and one one's negative body image seemed to inhibit or deter weight losing for some youth.
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PMID:Self-perceptions of the stigma of overweight in relationship to weight-losing patterns. 42 Jan 37

Dr. Boyd C. Quint recently presented important data regarding the relationship of estrogen therapy to the risk of endometrial carcinoma, but the data seem to have been inappropriately analyzed. Dr. Quint studied 291 postmenopausal women who received primary treatment for endometrial carcinoma at the Swedish Hospital Medical Center in Seattle, Washington between 1960 and 1973. The 1st step in Quint's analysis was a determination of the ratio of new endometrial carcinoma cases to the total "major gynecologic operations" for the intervals 1960-1966 and 1966-1973. This ratio was observed to increase from about 2% for 1960-1966 to about 4% for 1966-1973, but this change -- while statistically significant - cannot be used to support the hypothesis that the absolute incidence of endometrial carcinoma increased from the 1st to the 2nd interval. The 2nd step in the analysis was a determination of the incidence of nulliparity, obesity and hypertension, and/or diabetes and prior estrogen therapy among the endometrial carcinoma patients 1st treated in each of the 2 intervals. The prevalence of the constitutional stigma commonly associated with endometrial carcinoma, obesity and hypertension and/or diabetes can be seen to be significantly lower among the 203 patients 1st treated between 1966 and 1973 than among the 88 patients 1st treated between 1960 and 1966. Conversely, the prevalence of prior estrogen therapy is seen to be much higher. Data indicating that approximately 50% of Seattle area women had used or were using estrogen therapy by 1973 to 1974 - median use of about 10 years - are in press. Quint's data do support the hypothesis that estrogen therapy may be an etiologic factor among the more recent cases of endometrial carcinoma.
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PMID:Estrogen therapy and endometrial carcinoma. 98 96

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate an educational intervention designed to modify the stigma held by first-year medical students towards obese patients. The intervention, composed of video, audio and written components, was based on Petty and Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model. Prior to the course, the medical students held largely accurate beliefs about the causes of obesity, but they still maintained negative stereotypes of the obese as lazy and lacking in self-control. Analysis of students' attitudes toward obese patients five weeks and one year after the course indicates that the intervention was effective. At the five-week assessment, students in the intervention group differed from students in the control group on six of eight measures of attitudes toward the obese. One year after the course, the intervention group was significantly more likely to rate genetic factors as important in obesity and less likely to blame the obese for their condition.
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PMID:Obesity stigma reduction in medical students. 133 40

Although millions seek treatments for obesity, the benefits of treatment have been overstated. For most people, treatment is not effective; the majority of the obese struggle in vain to lose weight and blame themselves for relapses. Repeated experiences of failure add to the psychologic burden caused by the social stigma and the presumption of psychopathologic conditions attached to obesity. Many therapists may be contributing to this psychologic damage by giving their patients false hope for success and by failing to recognize that seeking treatment for obesity may be triggered by psychologic problems that are not addressed in obesity treatment.
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PMID:Obesity treatment: the high cost of false hope. 173 97

The stigma associated with obesity is likely to limit the opportunities obese women have to develop social skills. This hypothesis was tested by having obese (n = 15) and nonobese (n = 22) women converse on the telephone with college students who were unaware of the women's weights. Ratings made by judges who listened to the women's contributions to the conversations but who were unaware of their weights showed that obesity was negatively related to judgments about the women's likability, social skills, and physical attractiveness. The telephone partners of obese women rated the women and themselves more negatively than did the partners of nonobese women. Obese and nonobese women generally did not differ in their evaluations of their own and their telephone partners' behavior, and they also did not differ on a measure of social self-esteem. These findings suggest that there are real differences in the social behavior of obese and nonobese women and that these differences affect the impressions formed by those with whom they interact.
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PMID:Social interactions of obese and nonobese women. 221 72

Morbid obesity is a major health problem in this country and throughout the world. In addition to its social stigma (in the western world), obesity exacerbates several disease states such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disease and restrictive lung disease. When effective medical treatment of obesity becomes available, it will depend in part upon understanding the physiologic factors that control satiety. This review summarizes the information available on brain and gut control mechanisms of satiety. Brain nuclei located in the lateral hypothalamus, ventromedial hypothalamus, and other paraventricular areas are the sites of action for potent neuropeptides, such as cholecystokinin (CCK) and neuropeptide Y, that appear to regulate feeding. Exogenous CCK has been used clinically to decrease meal size in obese patients. The sites of the satiety cascade that are most often manipulated are the gastric and intestinal phases. Physiologic gastric distension is a potent inhibitor of feeding, whereas the intermeal interval may be regulated by intestinal signals released by food in the gut. Jejunal-ileal bypass has fallen from favor and has been replaced by gastric restrictive procedures that create a small proximal gastric pouch that empties into the small bowel (gastric bypass) or the distal stomach (gastroplasty). These operations rely partially on their ability to produce gastric distension in the proximal gastric pouch at an early stage during a meal. Thus, failure results if the pouch compensates by distending or if the stoma widens with subsequent loss of slow emptying. Improved medical and surgical treatment will be designed to intervene at specific sites of the satiety cascade as knowledge of the physiologic control mechanisms of satiety increases.
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PMID:Physiologic approaches to the control of obesity. 229 39

It is argued that the stigma attached to overweight or obesity often causes overweight to operate as a "master status." College students (N = 223) were asked to write stories about male and female stimulus characters who varied only in body image. It was hypothesized that subjects writing about overweight stimulus characters would be more likely than those writing about normal weight characters to (a) write sad or negative stories, (b) create unpleasant characters, and (c) describe their characters with more negative personality characteristics on a semantic differential personality scale. Support was found for part (a) and (b) of the hypothesis but not part (c). The relationships were stronger when the stimulus was a picture than when it was a descriptive paragraph and when the stimulus character was female rather than male. There was indication that female subjects were more likely to associate an overweight body image with an unpleasant personality than were male subjects.
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PMID:The salience of overweight in personality characterization. 726 15

Most of the available appetite-suppressant drugs act on noradrenergic and possibly dopaminergic receptors to produce satiety. A smaller number increase excess neuronal serotonin levels by blocking serotonin reuptake or by increasing its release. All these drugs produce significantly greater weight loss than does placebo in most studies. Abuse is a problem with amphetamine, methamphetamine, and benzphetamine, whereas other drugs have minimal or no potential for abuse. Weight loss can be sustained for up to 36 months. Net weight loss, compared with placebo, ranges from 2 to 10 kg, and weight regain after terminating drug treatment proves that drugs do not work when not taken. The stigma of obesity, the public opprobrium toward obese persons, and regulatory rigidity have led to unjustified distrust in the potential of drug treatment for obesity.
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PMID:Use and abuse of appetite-suppressant drugs in the treatment of obesity. 836 2

Obesity is a complex condition. In humans, it depends on a variety of social, cultural and behavioural factors acting on the physiological mechanisms that dictate food intake and energy expenditure. In the past decade, details of these mechanisms and of the genes that control them have started to unfold. Are we, however, at risk of pursuing the more molecular aspects of this twentieth-century epidemic while allowing the stigma of obesity to prevent us from implementing radical treatment programmes that could prevent many premature deaths in the short term?
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PMID:Obesity: how can it be controlled? 922 45

Obesity is associated with the development of some of the most prevalent diseases of modern society. The greatest risk is for diabetes mellitus where a body mass index above 35 kg/m2 increases the risk by 93-fold in women and by 42-fold in men. The risk of coronary heart disease is increased 86% by a 20% rise in weight in males, whereas in obese women the risk is increased 3.6-fold. Elevation of blood pressure, hyperlipidaemia and altered haemostatic factors are implicated in this high risk from coronary heart disease. Gallbladder disease is increased 2.7-fold with an enhanced cancer risk especially for colorectal cancer in males and cancer of the endometrium and biliary passages in females. Endocrine changes are associated with metabolic diseases and infertility, and respiratory problems result in sleep apnoea, hypoventilation, arrhythmias and eventual cardiac failure. Obesity is not a social stigma but an actual disease with a major genetic component to its aetiology and a financial cost estimated at $69 billion for the USA alone.
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PMID:Obesity as a disease. 924 38


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