New research in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism reveals that metformin, a medication traditionally prescribed to treat diabetes, is linked to lower risks of dementia and early death.
In the study by investigators at Taipei Medical University that included 452,777 adults with varying degrees of overweight and obesity, 35,784 cases of dementia and 76,048 deaths occurred over 10 years. Metformin users exhibited significantly lower risks of both dementia and all-cause death than nonusers.
The benefits of metformin were seen across all categories of overweight, obesity, and severe obesity, with 8–12% lower risks of dementia and 26–28% lower risks of death.
“Although our study results are promising for metformin’s effects on dementia and mortality, further research is required to explore the mechanisms involved,” said co-corresponding author Chiehfeng Chen, MD, PhD, MPH.
French fries were associated with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D), while other forms of potatoes – including baked, boiled, and mashed – were not, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that swapping any form of potato for whole grains may lower the risk of T2D.
The study was published July 30 in the BMJ. [Regrettably, no mention is made of SA’s beloved slap tjips – Ed.]
According to the researchers, while previous studies hinted at a link between potatoes and T2D, the evidence was inconsistent and often lacked detail on cooking methods and the potential effects of substituting other foods for potatoes. “Our study offers deeper, more comprehensive insights by looking at different types of potatoes, tracking diet over decades, and exploring the effects of swapping potatoes for other foods,” said lead author Seyed Mohammad Mousavi, postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Nutrition. “We’re shifting the conversation from, ‘Are potatoes good or bad?’ to a more nuanced—and useful—question: How are they prepared, and what might we eat instead?”
The researchers examined the diets and diabetes outcomes of 205,107 men and women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II, and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. For more than 30 years, participants regularly responded to dietary questionnaires, detailing the frequency with which they consumed certain foods, including French fries; baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes; and whole grains. They also reported on new health diagnoses, including T2D, and various other health, lifestyle, and demographic factors, which the researchers controlled for. Over the course of the study period, 22,299 participants reported that they developed T2D.
The study found that three servings weekly of French fries increased the risk of developing T2D by 20%. Baked, boiled, and mashed potatoes were not significantly associated with T2D risk. The researchers calculated, however, that eating whole grains – such as whole grain pasta, bread, or farro – in place of baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes could reduce the risk of T2D by 4%. Replacing French fries with whole grains could bring T2D risk down by 19%. Even swapping refined grains for French fries was estimated to lower T2D risk.
The researchers complemented their study with a novel meta-analytic approach to estimate how swapping potatoes for whole grains could affect the risk of T2D, using data from previously published cohort studies. This involved two separate meta-analyses: one based on data from 13 cohorts examining potato intake and the other from 11 cohorts on whole grain intake, each encompassing over 500 000 participants and 43 000 T2D diagnoses across four continents. The results were closely consistent with those of the new study.
“The public health message here is simple and powerful: Small changes in our daily diet can have an important impact on risk of type 2 diabetes. Limiting potatoes – especially limiting French fries – and choosing healthy, whole grain sources of carbohydrate could help lower the risk of type 2 diabetes across the population,” said corresponding author Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition. “For policymakers, our findings highlight the need to move beyond broad food categories and pay closer attention to how foods are prepared and what they’re replacing. Not all carbs—or even all potatoes—are created equal, and that distinction is crucial when it comes to shaping effective dietary guidelines.”
An analysis of data from more than 4.7 million Chinese women showed that those who had low blood sugar levels prior to conception were more likely to have certain adverse pregnancy outcomes – such as their baby being born preterm or with low birth weight. Hanbin Wu of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with the National Research Institute for Family Planning, presents these findings on July 29th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine.
Prior research has shown that women who are hyperglycaemic before or during pregnancy are more likely to face adverse pregnancy outcomes, as are women who are hypoglycaemic during pregnancy.
However, few studies have explored whether hypoglycaemia detected before pregnancy is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes for women without pre-existing diabetes. To help clarify, Wu and colleagues retrospectively analysed data on 4 866 919 Chinese women from the National Free Preconception Checkup Project, a free health service for women planning to conceive. Using data from 2013 to 2016, they analysed associations between preconception hypoglycaemia and pregnancy outcomes.
A total of 239 128 of the women had preconception hypoglycaemia. Compared to those with normal preconception blood sugar, they had a higher risk of certain adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as preterm birth, low birth weight, or birth defects. Women with hypoglycaemia tended to be younger than those with normal blood sugar levels and were more likely to have BMIs in the “underweight” category.
However, the adverse pregnancy risks associated with preconception hypoglycaemia varied for women with different BMIs. For instance, underweight women had a higher risk of miscarriage, while overweight women had a lower risk of their baby being large for their gestational age.
On the basis of these findings, the researchers suggest that screening for preconception hypoglycemia could be explored for its potential to improve pregnancy outcomes. Further research could also address some limitations of this study, such as by including women from other countries and more information on patients’ gestational complications.
The authors state, “In addition to paying attention to women with preconception hyperglycemia, our findings call for increased concern for women with hypoglycemia in preconception glycemic screening. These findings emphasize the importance of preconception examination in preventing and managing reproductive health risks for all women planning to conceive, and also highlight the necessity of comprehensive screening and coordinated interventions for abnormal FPG (fasting plasma glucose) prior to and during pregnancy, which is crucial for advancing the intervention window and mitigating the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes.”
An Australian study has found that drinking just one can of artificially sweetened soft drink a day may increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 38 per cent.
Surprisingly, that risk for artificially sweetened soft drink is even higher than for those who consume sugar-sweetened beverages, such as regular soft drinks, where the risk was found to be 23 per cent higher.
The research, conducted by a team from Monash University together with RMIT University and the Cancer Council Victoria, followed more than 36 000 Australian adults over nearly 14 years.
The study – led by Distinguished Professor Barbora de Courten from Monash University and RMIT University, Associate Professor Allison Hodge, from the Cancer Council Victoria, and Monash PhD student Robel Hussen Kabthymer, and published in Diabetes & Metabolism – adds to growing global concern about the health effects of both sugary and artificially sweetened drinks.
“Drinking one or more of these beverages each day – whether sweetened with sugar or artificial substitutes – was linked to a significantly higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes,” said Mr Hussen Kabthymer.
Professor de Courten, senior author on the study, said the findings challenge the common assumption that artificially sweetened beverages are a safer choice.
“Artificial sweeteners are often recommended to people at risk of diabetes as a healthier alternative, but our results suggest they may pose their own health risks,” she said.
While the link between sugary drinks and diabetes could largely be explained by obesity, the connection between artificially sweetened drinks and type 2 diabetes remained strong even after adjusting for body weight, suggesting a potentially direct effect on metabolism.
Professor de Courten said the findings have important implications for public health policy.
“We support measures like sugary drink taxes, but our study shows we also need to pay attention to artificially sweetened options. These are often marketed as better for you; yet may carry their own risks. Future policies should take a broader approach to reducing intake of all non-nutritive beverages.”
The study analysed data from the long-running Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, also known as Health 2020, involving participants aged 40–69 years, and adjusted for diet, exercise, education, and health history.
Prediabetes affects a third of people in the United States and most of them will develop Type 2 diabetes, yet effective dietary intervention strategies remain limited. Pistachios have shown promise in improving markers of diet quality, yet little is known about how they influence the gut microbiome – a key player in glucose regulation and inflammation.
A new study led by Kristina Petersen, associate professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State, determined that nighttime pistachio consumption affects gut bacteria in adults with prediabetes. Though the potential therapeutic implications of the findings remain unclear, according to Petersen, they may prove significant for people who are working to improve their metabolic health.
The findings, published in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition, suggested that replacing a traditional carbohydrate-based bedtime snack with pistachios may reshape the gut microbiome. A previous study by these researchers demonstrated that pistachios have a similar effect on blood glucose as 15 to 30 grams of carbohydrates.
“Pistachios seem to be able to meaningfully shift the gut microbial landscape in adults with prediabetes especially when consumed as a nighttime snack.”
Kristina Petersen, associate professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State
“A common dietary recommendation for individuals with prediabetes is to consume a nighttime snack consisting of 15 to 30 grams of carbohydrates to help regulate overnight and morning blood glucose levels,” said Terrence Riley, lead author of this research who earned his doctorate in nutritional sciences at Penn State and currently works as a postdoctoral research fellow at Louisiana State University. “As an example, you could eat one or two slices of whole grain bread.”
Researchers observed that consuming about two ounces of pistachios each night for 12 weeks resulted in significantly different stool microbial community profiles compared to those who consumed the recommended 15 to 30 grams of a carbohydrate snack. Specific bacterial groups, including Roseburia and members of the Lachnospiraceae family – known as “good” bacteria that produces beneficial short-chain fatty acids like butyrate – were more abundant following the pistachio condition.
According to Petersen, butyrate serves as a primary energy source for colon cells, helps maintain the gut barrier and supports anti-inflammatory processes.
“Pistachios seem to be able to meaningfully shift the gut microbial landscape in adults with prediabetes especially when consumed as a nighttime snack,” Petersen said. “These microbiome changes may offer other long-term health benefits – potentially helping to slow the development of Type 2 diabetes or to reduce systemic inflammation – which we hope to explore in future research.”
The study involved 51 adults with prediabetes and was conducted over two 12-week periods separated by a break, so the effects of the first part of the trial would not affect the second part. By the end of the study, all participants received both treatments. Stool samples were collected and analysed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, a technique that can help classify bacteria based on their genetic makeup.
Petersen noted that participants who ate pistachios also experienced reductions in several bacterial groups that have been linked to less favorable metabolic outcomes.
“Levels of Blautia hydrogenotrophica – a bacterium that helps produce compounds that can build up in the blood and harm kidney and heart health – were lower after pistachio consumption,” Petersen said. “Levels of Eubacterium flavonifractor, which breaks down beneficial antioxidant compounds from foods like pistachios, also decreased.”
Petersen added that the strength of this study is the design used – a randomised crossover clinical trial, in which all participants receive both treatments in a randomised order. By including all participants in the pistachio group and the standard care group, the study helped the researchers better understand how specific foods like pistachios can influence the gut microbiome.
While the study demonstrated shifts in gut bacteria, it remains unclear whether these changes directly translate to improvements in health – a question that requires further research, Petersen said.
New research from investigators at Mass General Brigham suggests that a commonly used type 2 diabetes medication is linked to a higher rate of heart-related conditions compared to medications that hit other targets. The study examined nationwide data from nearly 50,000 patients treated with different sulfonylureas and found that glipizide – the most widely used drug in the US within this category, but not available in South Africa – was linked to higher incidence of heart failure, related hospitalisation and death compared to dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors. Results are published in JAMA Network Open.
“Patients with type 2 diabetes are at heightened risk of adverse cardiovascular incidents such as stroke and cardiac arrest,” said corresponding author Alexander Turchin, MD, MS, of the Division of Endocrinology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. “While sulfonylureas are popular and affordable diabetes medications, there is a lack of long-term clinical data on how they affect cardiac health in comparison to more neutral alternatives like dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors.”
Turchin and co-authors emulated a target trial by analysing electronic health records and insurance claims data from the BESTMED consortium. The cohort included 48 165 patients with type 2 diabetes and moderate cardiovascular risk who received care at 10 different study sites across the country, including BWH, as well as those covered by two different national health insurance plans.
The researchers studied the five-year risk of major adverse cardiovascular events in patients treated with different sulfonylureas (glimepiride, glipizide or glyburide) or DPP4i in addition to metformin, a primary diabetes medication. They found that glipizide was associated with a 13% increase in cardiovascular risk when compared to DPP4i, while glimepiride and glyburide led to relatively smaller and less clear effects, respectively. The authors propose that further research is needed to uncover the underlying mechanisms.
“Our study underscores the importance of evaluating each drug in a particular pharmacological class on its own merits,” said Turchin.
Children born to obese mothers are at higher risk of developing metabolic disorders, even if they follow a healthy diet themselves. A new study from the University of Bonn published in the journal Nature offers an explanation for this phenomenon. In obese mice, certain cells in the embryo’s liver are reprogrammed during pregnancy. This leads to long-term changes in the offspring’s metabolism. The researchers believe that these findings could also be relevant for humans.
The team focused on the so-called Kupffer cells. These are macrophages that help protect the body as part of the innate immune system. During embryonic development, they migrate into the liver, where they take up permanent residence. There, they fight off pathogens and break down ageing or damaged cells.
“But these Kupffer cells also act as conductors,” explains Prof Dr Elvira Mass from the LIMES Institute at the University of Bonn. “They instruct the surrounding liver cells on what to do. In this way, they help ensure that the liver, as a central metabolic organ, performs its many tasks correctly.”
Changing the tune: From Beethoven to Vivaldi
It appears, however, that it is this conducting function that is changed by obesity. This is what mouse experiments carried out by Mass in cooperation with other research groups at the University of Bonn suggest. “We were able to show that the offspring of obese mothers frequently developed a fatty liver shortly after birth,” says Dr Hao Huang from Mass’s lab. “And this happened even when the young animals were fed a completely normal diet.”
The cause of this disorder seems to be a kind of “reprogramming” of the Kupffer cells in the offspring. As a result, they send out molecular signals that instruct the liver cells to take up more fat. Figuratively speaking, they no longer conduct one of Beethoven’s symphonies but rather a piece by Vivaldi.
This shift already seems to occur during embryonic development and is triggered by metabolic products from the mother. These activate a kind of metabolic switch in the Kupffer cells and change the way these cells direct liver cells in the long term. “This switch is a so-called transcription factor,” says Mass. “It controls which genes are active in Kupffer cells.”
No fatty liver without the molecular switch
When the researchers genetically removed this switch in the Kupffer cells during pregnancy, the offspring did not develop a fatty liver. Whether this mechanism could also be targeted with medication is still unclear. The teams now plan to investigate this in follow-up studies.
If new treatment approaches emerge from this, it would be good news. The altered behaviour of the Kupffer cells likely has many negative consequences. Fat accumulation in the liver, for example, is accompanied by strong inflammatory responses. These can cause increasing numbers of hepatocytes to die and be replaced with scar tissue, resulting in fibrosis. At the same time, the risk that hepatocytes degenerate and become cancerous increases.
“It is becoming ever more evident that many diseases in humans already begin at a very early developmental stage,” says Mass, who is also spokesperson for the transdisciplinary research area “Life & Health” and a board member of the “ImmunoSensation2” Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn. “Our study is one of the few to explain in detail how this early programming can happen.”
Intermittent energy restriction, time-restricted eating and continuous energy restriction can all improve blood sugar levels and body weight in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to a study being presented Sunday at ENDO 2025, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco, Calif.
“This study is the first to compare the effects of three different dietary interventions intermittent energy restriction (IER), time-restricted eating (TRE) and continuous energy restriction (CER) in managing type 2 diabetes with obesity,” said Haohao Zhang, PhD, chief physician at The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in Zhengzhou, China.
Although researchers identified improved HbA1c levels, and adverse events were similar across the three groups, the IER group showed greater advantages in reducing fasting blood glucose, improving insulin sensitivity, lowering triglycerides, and strengthening adherence to the dietary interventions.
“The research fills a gap in directly comparing 5:2 intermittent energy restriction with a 10-hour time-restricted eating in patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes. The findings provide scientific evidence for clinicians to choose appropriate dietary strategies when treating such patients,” Zhang says.
Zhang and colleagues performed a single-centre, randomised, parallel-controlled trial at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from November 19, 2021 to November 7, 2024.
Ninety patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1:1 ratio to the IER, TRE or CER group, with consistent weekly caloric intake across all groups. A team of nutritionists supervised the 16-week intervention.
Of those enrolled, 63 completed the study. There were 18 females and 45 males, with an average age of 36.8 years, a mean diabetes duration of 1.5 years, a baseline BMI of 31.7kg/m², and an HbA1c of 7.42%.
At the end of the study, there were no significant differences in HbA1c reduction and weight loss between the IER, TRE and CER groups. However, the absolute decrease in HbA1c and body weight was greatest in the IER group.
Compared to TRE and CER, IER significantly reduced fasting blood glucose and triglycerides and increased the Matsuda index, a measure of whole-body insulin sensitivity. Uric acid and liver enzyme levels exhibited no statistically significant changes from baseline in any study group.
Two patients in the IER group and the TRE group, and three patients in the CER group, experienced mild hypoglycemia.
The IER group had the highest adherence rate (85%), followed by the CER group at 84% and the TRE group at 78%. Both the IER and CER groups showed statistically significant differences compared with the TRE group.
Zhang said these findings highlight the feasibility and effectiveness of dietary interventions for people who have obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The new implant carries a reservoir of glucagon that can be stored under the skin and deployed during an emergency — with no injections needed.
Caption:A new implantable device carries a reservoir of glucagon that can be stored under the skin and could save diabetes patients from dangerously low blood sugar.
Image: Courtesy of the researchers
For people with Type 1 diabetes, developing hypoglycaemia, or low blood sugar, is an ever-present threat. When glucose levels become extremely low, it creates a life-threatening situation for which the standard treatment of care is injecting a hormone called glucagon.
As an emergency backup, for cases where patients may not realise that their blood sugar is dropping to dangerous levels, MIT engineers have designed an implantable reservoir that can remain under the skin and be triggered to release glucagon when blood sugar levels get too low.
This approach could also help in cases where hypoglycaemia occurs during sleep, or for diabetic children who are unable to administer injections on their own.
“This is a small, emergency-event device that can be placed under the skin, where it is ready to act if the patient’s blood sugar drops too low,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), and the senior author of the study. “Our goal was to build a device that is always ready to protect patients from low blood sugar. We think this can also help relieve the fear of hypoglycaemia that many patients, and their parents, suffer from.”
The researchers showed that this device could also be used to deliver emergency doses of epinephrine, a drug that is used to treat heart attacks and can also prevent severe allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock.
Siddharth Krishnan, a former MIT research scientist who is now an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, is the lead author of the study, which appears today in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Emergency response
Most patients with type 1 diabetes use daily insulin injections to help their body absorb sugar and prevent their blood sugar levels from getting too high. However, if their blood sugar levels get too low, they develop hypoglycaemia, which can lead to confusion and seizures, and may be fatal if it goes untreated.
To combat hypoglycaemia, some patients carry preloaded syringes of glucagon, a hormone that stimulates the liver to release glucose into the bloodstream. However, it isn’t always easy for people, especially children, to know when they are becoming hypoglycaemic.
“Some patients can sense when they’re getting low blood sugar, and go eat something or give themselves glucagon,” Anderson says. “But some are unaware that they’re hypoglycaemic, and they can just slip into confusion and coma. This is also a problem when patients sleep, as they are reliant on glucose sensor alarms to wake them when sugar drops dangerously low.”
To make it easier to counteract hypoglycaemia, the MIT team set out to design an emergency device that could be triggered either by the person using it, or automatically by a sensor.
The device, which is about the size of a quarter, contains a small drug reservoir made of a 3D-printed polymer. The reservoir is sealed with a special material known as a shape-memory alloy, which can be programmed to change its shape when heated. In this case, the researcher used a nickel-titanium alloy that is programmed to curl from a flat slab into a U-shape when heated to 40 degrees Celsius.
Like many other protein or peptide drugs, glucagon tends to break down quickly, so the liquid form can’t be stored long-term in the body. Instead, the MIT team created a powdered version of the drug, which remains stable for much longer and stays in the reservoir until released.
Each device can carry either one or four doses of glucagon, and it also includes an antenna tuned to respond to a specific frequency in the radiofrequency range. That allows it to be remotely triggered to turn on a small electrical current, which is used to heat the shape-memory alloy. When the temperature reaches the 40-degree threshold, the slab bends into a U shape, releasing the contents of the reservoir.
Because the device can receive wireless signals, it could also be designed so that drug release is triggered by a glucose monitor when the wearer’s blood sugar drops below a certain level.
“One of the key features of this type of digital drug delivery system is that you can have it talk to sensors,” Krishnan says. “In this case, the continuous glucose-monitoring technology that a lot of patients use is something that would be easy for these types of devices to interface with.”
Reversing hypoglycaemia
After implanting the device in diabetic mice, the researchers used it to trigger glucagon release as the animals’ blood sugar levels were dropping. Within less than 10 minutes of activating the drug release, blood sugar levels began to level off, allowing them to remain within the normal range and avert hypoglycaemia.
The researchers also tested the device with a powdered version of epinephrine. They found that within 10 minutes of drug release, epinephrine levels in the bloodstream became elevated and heart rate increased.
In this study, the researchers kept the devices implanted for up to four weeks, but they now plan to see if they can extend that time up to at least a year.
“The idea is you would have enough doses that can provide this therapeutic rescue event over a significant period of time. We don’t know exactly what that is — maybe a year, maybe a few years, and we’re currently working on establishing what the optimal lifetime is. But then after that, it would need to be replaced,” Krishnan says.
Typically, when a medical device is implanted in the body, scar tissue develops around the device, which can interfere with its function. However, in this study, the researchers showed that even after fibrotic tissue formed around the implant, they were able to successfully trigger the drug release.
The researchers are now planning for additional animal studies and hope to begin testing the device in clinical trials within the next three years.
“It’s really exciting to see our team accomplish this, which I hope will someday help diabetic patients and could more broadly provide a new paradigm for delivering any emergency medicine,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and an author of the paper.
Other authors of the paper include Laura O’Keeffe, Arnab Rudra, Derin Gumustop, Nima Khatib, Claudia Liu, Jiawei Yang, Athena Wang, Matthew Bochenek, Yen-Chun Lu, Suman Bose, and Kaelan Reed.
The research was funded by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the National Institutes of Health, a JDRF postdoctoral fellowship, and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
A healthy lifestyle has important benefits, but weight alone might not give an adequate picture of someone’s health, say experts
Source: Pixabay CC0
Focusing solely on achieving weight loss for people with a high body mass index (BMI) may do more harm than good, argue experts in The BMJ.
Dr Juan Franco and colleagues say, on average, people with high weight will not be able to sustain a clinically relevant weight loss with lifestyle interventions, while the potential harms of weight loss interventions, including the reinforcement of weight stigma, are still unclear.
They stress that a healthy lifestyle has important benefits, but that weight alone might not give an adequate picture of someone’s health, and say doctors should provide high quality, evidence based care reflecting individual preferences and needs, regardless of weight.
Lifestyle interventions that focus on restricting an individual’s energy intake and increasing their physical activity levels have for many decades been the mainstay recommendation to reduce weight in people with obesity, explain the authors.
However, rigorous evidence has indicated that these lifestyle interventions are largely ineffective in providing sustained long term weight loss and reducing cardiovascular events (eg, heart attacks and strokes) or death.
Even though a healthy lifestyle provides important benefits, acknowledging that weight alone might not give an adequate picture of someone’s health, and recognising the limitations of lifestyle interventions for weight loss, could pave the way for more effective and patient centred care, they say.
Focusing on weight loss might also contribute to societal weight bias – negative attitudes, assumptions, and judgments about people based on their weight – which may not only have adverse effects on mental health but may also be associated with disordered eating, the adoption of unhealthy habits, and weight gain, they add.
They point out that recent clinical guidelines reflect the growing recognition that weight is an inadequate measure of health, and alternative approaches, such as Health at Every Size (HAES), acknowledge that good health can be achieved regardless of weight loss and have shown promising results in improving eating behaviours.
While these approaches should be evaluated in large clinical trials, doctors can learn from them to provide better and more compassionate care for patients with larger bodies, they suggest.
“Doctors should be prepared to inform individuals seeking weight loss about the potential benefits and harms of interventions and minimise the risk of developing eating disorders and long term impacts on metabolism,” they write. “Such a patient centred approach is likely to provide better care by aligning with patient preferences and circumstances while also reducing weight bias.”
They conclude: “Doctors’ advice about healthy eating and physical activity is still relevant as it may result in better health. The main goal is to offer good care irrespective of weight, which means not caring less but rather discussing benefits, harms, and what is important to the patient.”
