Should doctors tell obese patients to lose weight?

[Guest guest]

Heavy weight match-up

Should doctors tell obese patients to lose weight?

STORY

MSNBC

 

 

 

 

It's been nearly two years since a federal judge threw out a class-action

lawsuit against McDonald's. Two obese teens had claimed the fast-food chain

made them fat. Back then, the number of overweight Americans was still less

than 24 percent of the population.

 

A new study by the organization Trust for America's Health suggests we're at

24.5 percent obese now, the number more startling if you weigh just adults.

That's 64.5 percent.

 

The organization's data drawn from the Centers for Disease Control, also shows

that the percentage is unchanged in Oregon and up in all 49 other states. The

state of Mississippi weighed in as the net heaviest, Colorado the average

lightest.

 

The researchers remind us that health is only the first casualties. Then it's

wealth. Obesity will soon strain the collective wallet of the health care

system, although it will always make lots of money for people who invest in

companies specializing in bigger seats on buses and door widening.

 

As the community waistline expands, so, too, does the potential for health

risks. But if you're a doctor, and you try to tell those facts to a patient

straight on, you might get sued.

 

One female patient filed a complaint with the state of New Hampshire after her

doctor told her she was obese and needed to lose weight. The state board of

medicine investigated and turned it over to New Hampshire‘s attorney general,

which asked Dr. Terry Bennett to take a medical education course and

acknowledged he had “made a mistake.”

 

Dr. Bennett says he doesn't think he had done anything wrong. Now, he talks to

Countdown host Keith Olbermann about the complaint and the massive issue in

America.

 

KEITH OLBERMANN, 'COUNTDOWN' HOST: This sounds, on the whole, nuts. What is she

complaining about? I mean, if you call her fat, fat, the water rat or

something, I could understand this. But what happened? What did you say?

 

DR. TERRY BENNETT, OBESITY ADVICE ANGERED PATIENT: You are running down a razor

blade when you're talking to an obese patient of either gender. They wouldn't

be obese if they weren't really good at ignoring reality. So, you have to

overcome that mind-set and deliver the news without making somebody angry,

because, if they're angry, you lose them.

 

So, you're running right down a razor blade: too little, they don't buy it; too

much, they‘re mad. That's the case every time. So, I always have to look at

their face and figure out what's going on. And I thought I was doing that.

 

This woman walked out of my office, did not appear to be unhappy, went to get

her husband, who is also grossly obese. I had talked about the future for the

both of them to her. And, blindside, three weeks later, I get notice from the

board that I have got a complaint. Well, I have hundreds of obese patients.

There was one that's been on this television circuit with me, Linda Haney, who

has been very articulate.

 

She says, take a good look at me through the camera. Take a good look at me,

because you, Mr. and Mrs. America, are paying for me with your increased

insurance premiums. And it is going up and up.

 

Well, OK, it is time. But, if you look at the facts now, 60 percent, 65

percent, whatever number you want, are obese adults. More than 70 percent of

physicians no longer address this at all, because they're looking at the same

kind of mind-set and the behavior that I have gotten here.

 

Now, the regulations of New Hampshire say that the board does not address

insult, does not address fees, does not address bedside manner. Where do you

think this falls if it is not amongst the insult bedside manner contingent?

 

OLBERMANN: Yes, people who don't want to hear it. But, now, you said that, you

mentioned the razor's edge here.

 

BENNETT: Yes.

 

OLBERMANN: I have went overweight in varying degrees since I had my tonsils out

when I was six. I know exactly what you‘re talking. I had one doctor, a

cardiologist, who asked me, did you ever notice you don't see a lot of fat old

people, which I thought was a heck of a way of getting the point across without

basically saying, you're fat, buddy?

 

But I had another doctor who, when I told him that I had put some of the weight

back on because I had had this leg injury and I hadn't been able to do workouts,

he said, you know, being overweight has nothing to do with exercise.

 

I never went to see him again. Is there enough sensitivity to how much of a

razor's edge that is in the medical community, do you think?

 

BENNETT: Well, let me explain the exercise part, because it is interesting. If

you eat a teaspoon of sugar, you have got to brisk walk a mile-and-a-half to

burn it off. If you didn't eat it and you brisk walk, you burn off a teaspoon

of fat.

 

So, your weight is really starch-in-your-diet dependent. And Atkins, in so far

as he carried that concept, is right. If you eliminate all the junk, all the

stuff that Atkins was trying to peddle and simply look at the two fuels we begin

— starches, fats — you don't eat starches, you burn fats, you can't eat them

fast enough. You burn you. We call that losing weight.

 

That's a simple concept and that is the one I try to get patients to buy into.

But they deny that they eat starches. So, you have got to overcome all of that

and get past it. Then you can get them to lose weight.

 

OLBERMANN: Was this woman a regular patient of yours? Had she been there

before?

 

BENNETT: She had been five or six times. I could never get her to step on my

scale, so there is not a recorded weight in my chart. I mean, it's that level

of denial.

 

OLBERMANN: Obviously, there is need for oversight at all times of the medical

profession by government at each level. But, do you feel like you're in a

spider web here because of how this has spun out?

 

BENNETT: The reason that I have gone public here is that, already, 70 percent,

certainly, 70 percent of pediatricians — there's a Harvard released study — 70

percent of pediatricians do no confront the parents of obese kids in America

now.

 

I think it is about 70 percent of adult practitioners will write in your chart

morbidly obese and not mention it to you, because, if they do, their 15 minutes

expands to 20 or 30, they have got you unhappy and they may get a complaint, as

I have had. Well, that's a brave new world.

 

I mean, if a doctor can't tell you the truth and expect to be defended in his

right to do that, you can always change doctors. It's not like I hold a gun to

people's heads and make them come see me.

 

They need to get value when they come to see me, in my view.

 

I have a lot of knowledge. I have spent 40 years at this. I have a prepared

spiel that incorporates all these horrible facts. And I tell them, look, this

is going to be horrible. This is what's going to happen, OK? The future is

clear. If I can get to you believe, we choose a different future and you get to

walk through the tulips with somebody that you love for a lot further in this

life.

 

Those are the choices. It's that important. If I can't do it, what do I do?

Talk about the weather?

 

OLBERMANN: Yes. How is this case going to end, do you think?

 

BENNETT: If I have it my way, and if the patients — there's more than 100

patients that have signed a petition to the governor that he should fire our

attorney general. The attorney general could have shut this off at any point in

time.

 

There's no crime here. I have broken no law. You cannot say that I have done

anything offensive in the greater scheme of things. Certainly, I'm not an

addict. I'm not an alcoholic. They've tried to make me admit that I'm a

disruptive physician. Not true. Not happening. Thanks.

 

OLBERMANN: Dr. Terry Bennett, well, I guess at least the petition from the 100

patients must be the silver lining in this. Our great thanks for your time and

good luck getting the message out.

 

Watch 'Countdown' each weeknight at 8 p.m. ET

 

© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

 

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9077164/

 

 

 

" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix

 

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