With obesity levels rising sharply in Australia and throughout all Western countries, the American Medical Association (AMA) has recently released new guidelines for dealing with this growing epidemic. These guidelines have been developed by the AMA to assist doctors in better managing patients who require weight loss for managing health and reducing the risks associated with chronic disease. The focus of the guidelines is to implement better monitoring strategies, and to improve the clinical assessment of obesity to ensure doctors are diagnosing unhealthy weight gain earlier.
The new guidelines acknowledge that ongoing assistance and support is required by patients in managing obesity. Furthermore, this assistance should come more often from external health care practitioners. Doctors play a vital role in managing the medical needs of patients, but they don't often have the time to provide the lifestyle modification counselling and exercise strategies that patients need to reduce weight. Dealing with obesity levels with this structured and multifaceted approach will assist patients to improve their weight loss outcomes, and ultimately their health.
The many risks to an individual's health associated with obesity are serious and can be chronic (long-term or lifelong). Obesity is associated with a greater risk of type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases. Yet surveys in the US show that only one third of doctors speak with their obese patients about their body mass index (BMI, a common assessment tool used to specify healthy and unhealthy weight ranges), nor do they actively counsel patients on weight loss.
Lifestyle modification and exercise play a vital role in managing weight loss and will prevent the medical complications associated with a high BMI. If you would like assistance in losing weight, our experienced team of Exercise Physiologists can help. You can call Inspire Fitness on (03) 9857 3007 to arrange a consultation today.
Written by Brendan Rigby, Accredited Exercise Physiologist.
RSS Feed
