Arguments For Calling Obesity A Disease #9: Medical Education



sharma-obesity-medical-students1Next in my miniseries on the pros and cons of calling obesity a ‘disease’, I turn to the issue of medical education.

From the first day in medical school, I learnt about diseases – their signs and symptoms, their definitions and classifications, their biochemistry and physiology, their prognosis and treatments.

Any medical graduate will happily recite the role and function of ADH, ATP, ANP, TSH, ACTH, AST, ALT, MCV and a host of other combinations of alphabet soup related to even the most obscure physiology and function – everything, except the alphabet soup related to ingestive behaviour, energy regulation, and caloric expenditure.

Most medical students and doctors will never have heard of POMC, α-MSH, PYY, AgRP, CART, MC4R, or any of the well studied and long-known key molecules involved in appetite regulation. Many will have at best a vague understanding of RMR, TEE, TEF, or NEAT.

The point is, that even today, we are graduating medical doctors, who have at best a layman’s understanding of the complex biology of appetite and energy regulation, let alone a solid grasp of the clinical management of obesity.

Imagine a medical doctor, who has never heard of β-cells or insulin or glucagon or GLUT4-transporters trying to manage a patient with diabetes.

Or a medical doctor, who has never heard of renin or aldosterone or angiotensinogen or angiotensin 2 trying to manage your blood pressure.

How about a medical doctor, who has never heard of T3 or T4 or TSH managing your thyroid disease?

Elevating obesity to a ‘disease’ means that medical schools will no longer have an excuse to not teach students about the complex sociopsychobiology of obesity, its complications, prognosis, and treatments.

As I mentioned in a previous post, suddenly, managing obesity has become their job.

No longer will it be acceptable for doctors to simply tell their patients to control their weight, with no stake in if and how they actually did it.

Thus, if there is just one thing that calling obesity a ‘disease’ can change, it is expecting all health professionals to have as much understanding of obesity as they are currently expected to have of diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and any other common disease they are likely to encounter in their medical practice.

Apparently, simply treating obesity as a ‘lifestyle’ problem or ‘risk factor’ was not enough – hopefully, recognising obesity as a  ‘disease’ in its own right, will change the attention given to this issue in medical training across all disciplines.

@DrSharma
Edmonton, AB