PubMed Health⌕ Search
Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 8906396

Obesity.

J W Kreider·K C Hughes·D Smeal·T Hirai·E K Manders
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Obesity is a heterogeneous family of disorders with several overlapping contributory causes. It markedly increases morbidity and mortality from many different diseases, and affected patients are the targets of severe, negative social pressures. Physicians traditionally have been unsuccessful in treating obesity. The usual physician's office approach to obese persons is to conduct a good history and physical examination and then prescribe a 4200-J diet sheet and monthly or biomonthly office visits. This approach usually produces mild and ephemeral weight loss. Some patients quickly become disillusioned and manifest as appointment "no-shows." The doctor often bemoans the lack of will power of his or her ex-patient. Such patients and their physicians would be better served by referral to a professional weight management program, in which a coordinated team approach has proven effective and persistent in body weight control. "He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat."

Explore related subjects

Behavior TherapyExerciseFemaleHumansHypothalamusMaleObesityJournal Article

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

J W Kreider, K C Hughes, D Smeal, T Hirai, E K Manders. 1996. Obesity.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8906396/

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed1998

Executive summary of the clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults.

An estimated 97 million adults in the United States are overweight or obese, a condition that substantially raises their risk of morbidity from hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, and endometrial, breast, prostate, and colon cancers. Higher body weights are also associated with increases in all-cause mortality. Obese individuals may also suffer from social stigmatization and discrimination. As a major contributor to preventive death in the United States today, overweight and obesity pose a major public health challenge.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1998

Effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in preventing HIV risk behaviour in injecting drug users.

OBJECTIVE: To consider evidence for the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in reducing the risk of infection with HIV of injecting drug users. METHOD: We reviewed 19 published studies of the effectiveness of individual counselling, HIV testing, group interventions, street outreach, and a 'social' intervention designed to change norms for safer behaviours. RESULTS: Eight of 15 studies that examined behavioural outcomes provided evidence of the effectiveness of an experimental intervention, compared with a control or comparison group. In four of these studies, however, serious design limitations made results difficult to interpret. In the other four studies without design limitations, the success of the experimental interventions may have been due to their greater length and intensity as well as to having been conducted with stable and well-motivated populations. Nine of the 15 studies showed evidence of marked behaviorial changes in both experimental and comparison group(s), with the changes in many cases being sustained for upwards of 12 months. CONCLUSIONS: A close examination of the evidence and competing hypotheses for the pattern of results suggests that participating in evaluation research may itself be a valuable intervention. Implications for the development of interventions include the potential efficacy of health risk assessment. Implications for evaluation of interventions include the need for developing unobtrusive measures and for assessing the impact of behavioural assessments. Despite the large behavioural changes reported in most of the studies, a substantial proportion of subjects receiving interventions reported unacceptably high levels of risk behaviours. New, more potent interventions are needed, such as those designed to change the norms of entire communities of drug users concerning safer injection and safer sex.

Behavior Therapy↗