Grey's Anatomy, Medical Discrimination & HAES®
Last week's I wrote about BMI and why it's not a useful measurement, and if you follow me on Instagram, you know I was pleasantly surprised to see my words echoed in last week's episode of Grey's Anatomy.
Check it out below!
As nice as it was to see BMI called out for being bogus on a prominent tv show, this is unfortunately not one of Grey's Anatomy's wild or ridiculous storylines.
Missed diagnoses, misdiagnoses, and discrimination because doctors relied on looking at someone's body size and numbers on a chart, rather than listening to their actual concerns, are too common.
Part of the problem is the current healthcare system. It's really difficult to build a strong doctor-patient relationship when appointments are crammed into tight time windows and electronic software flags patients in advance when their weight is above a certain threshold.
As Dr. Bailey said in the clip above: "Stop looking at 𝘪𝘵 and examine the patient.”
Some insurance companies and hospital systems do require physicians to address patients' weight, but those doctors are often not given the time or the tools to do it effectively.
A 2015 study found that 71% of U.S. medical schools provide less than the recommended nutrition education and concluded:
"It cannot be a realistic expectation for physicians to effectively address obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hospital malnutrition, and many other conditions as long as they are not taught during medical school and residency training how to recognize and treat the nutritional root causes."
It should, however, be a realistic expectation for physicians to effectively examine their patients and address actual symptoms, rather than simply counseling them to lose weight.
In last week's Grey's Anatomy episode, a patient complained of shooting knee pain and was advised by a young, smiling doctor to just take some walks and lose weight. Only an intervention by a more sympathetic physician, also in a larger body, got the patient the surgery she actually needed.
It shouldn't take doctors who have experienced weight stigma themselves to be compassionate to patients in larger bodies. And no one -- physician, personal trainer, well-meaning relative -- should provide a blanket recommendation to "just lose weight" without having an understanding of a person's current nutrition, movement, stress, and other symptoms.
I know people who have felt ignored at doctor's offices, who felt their concerns were overlooked because of their weight and BMI, who felt their healthcare provider was phoning it in.
There have been countless people who were brave enough to start going to the gym only to have a trainer shame them because of their weight, and there are too many trainers who inadvertently turn clients away by immediately putting them on the scale and assuming they only want a weight loss program.
If this has happened to you, I'm so sorry. You deserve better. And whether you're looking for medical care or fitness guidance or nutritional support, I hope you're able to find a provider who will truly listen to you and respect your needs.
That's what the Health At Every Size® (HAES)® movement is about.
Many people misinterpret it to mean that everyone in every size body is healthy and think it "promotes obesity," but HAES® principles actually promote healthy behaviors in people of all sizes. (I talked about why behaviors are better to focus on than outcomes here!) It acknowledges that people come in different shapes and sizes, and that while we often stop at "diet and exercise," there are many other societal, economic, and environmental factors that affect health.
HAES® practitioners are size inclusive, meaning they provide quality care to everyone, regardless of body size, weight or BMI, so the scenario that was recently dramatized on television stops happening over and over again in real life.
**I am not an expert on HAES® or weight-inclusive medical care. I'm just a personal trainer and nutrition coach who wants every person I interact with to feel valued and respected.
To learn more about the topics discussed in this email, I recommend the 2018 article "Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong" (citation below) as well as the Association for Size Diversity & Health website.
Hobbes, M. (2018, September 19). Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong. Highline. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/.
