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Uppers to the Rescue?

Pat Hartman November 12, 2026 No Comments

First of all, it hardly seems possible that two such dissimilar conditions would both be alleviated by the same category of pharmaceutical. An article from the journal Eating Behaviors addressed…

[…] the existing evidence on stimulant medication in the management of patients with bulimia nervosa (BN) or anorexia nervosa (AN) with or without comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Medical journalists looked at 13 pertinent articles concerning mainly patients suffering from bulimia nervosa. All the patients in these studies were treated with various stimulant drugs, and many experienced improvement in their eating disorder symptoms.

At the same time, however, numerous adverse effects tended to occur. These included…

[…] weight loss, decreased appetite, tachycardia, dry mouth, fatigue, insomnia, restlessness, nausea, bruxism, headache, palpitations, blood pressure changes, irritability, anxiety, depressed mood, and diaphoresis…

The use of stimulants was seen to be effective (up to a point) in many cases, but unpredictable and often unacceptable because of all the side issues. This lack of satisfaction led to a recommendation to screen such patients for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The strange part is, other evidence shows that stimulant drugs can be quite surprisingly successful in alleviating ADHD. A connection, albeit far from clear, has been acknowledged.

What a paradox

A short time ago, we looked at the newly explored connection between ADHD and disordered eating. Namely, both conditions are amenable to improvement through the use of stimulant drugs (of which Ritalin and Adderall are two examples).

It seems weird how “uppers” can enable hyper kids to mellow out — but that capacity to develop a bit of calmness has helped a lot of them fit into society successfully enough to avoid juvenile hall. As it turns out, in many cases the same pharmaceuticals can help a different constituency of kids to avoid fat camp.

There is more to be said about both of those possibilities. One is to explore a universal truth. The desire to escape blame (or even its milder cousin, responsibility) is perfectly human. However, although parents tend to find inevitable reasons to explain why things happen to their children, that perfectly natural response is not the preferred scenario.

To look for an “out” is a bad habit that benefits no one, and is in fact a bit too close to pulling the wool over one’s own eyes. For instance, not all chubby kids inevitably settle into lifelong obesity — but their parents might too readily accept that possibility. A parent might say, “Oh don’t worry, I was a fat child, but then we got a pool and started to swim, and I turned out okay.”

Now the other case: A child who seems to experience attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity (also successfully addressed by those same drugs). A parent may tend to say, “Oh don’t worry, when I was a kid I had ants in my pants, could never sit still, and look at me, I turned out fine.” Then again, maybe not.

One way a parent can fail a child is by allotting too much credit and permission to genealogy. Maybe great grandpa Charles was a circus fat man, but none of his descendants need to follow in those ponderous footsteps. The physical traits of one’s ancestors make a big difference, sure, but rarely is a sentence of lifelong obesity carved in stone.

Whatever seems to be “wrong” with a child, please don’t take anything for granted. Maybe he or she does need meds of some kind. Or maybe the family needs an introduction to BrainWeighve.

Moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, don’t fall for the “easy out.” Take a clear-eyed look at where your ideas come from, because maybe it’s time to update. If a child is hooked on eating to the point where it looks like an addiction, please get a clue and communicate clearly with both your child and the other parent and your own inner self.

This stuff is too important to lie to ourselves about. Slide on over to this other Dr. Pretlow website, and check out this post about self-deception.

Find such wisdom as a reminder from the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, one of the smartest humans who ever lived. He said, “You must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” As a parent, please don’t let your kids suffer from your inability to face up to the mistakes and omissions buried in your own past.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Stimulant medications in the management of bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa in patients with and without comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review,” ScienceDirect.com, August 2024
Image by qimono/Pixabay

Eating Disorders and ADHD: The Missing Link

Pat Hartman November 10, 2026 No Comments

At first glance, it probably would not occur to a layperson to suspect that, in children, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) would have any connection with eating disorders. And yet, it appears that a relationship has always existed, although recognition of that fact is characterized as “relatively new.” Here are some words about Harvard Medical School discoveries:

Research has demonstrated that individuals with ADHD have a greater risk for developing binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa than their peers without ADHD… Girls with ADHD were almost four times more likely to have an eating disorder than those without ADHD. Another empirical study found that 11 percent of women with ADHD, compared to 1 percent of women without, reported a history of bulimia nervosa.

Attention deficit implies poor impulse control; so does binge eating (BED). ADHD can make a person feel inadequate and unable to cope with life. Consequently, in an effort to find relief from that situation, plenty of folks see food as the answer. Humans are sadly prone to paradoxes, or psychological wrinkles of which they are unconscious. One of those is the unfortunate belief that eating is a way to exert control over one’s own life, even when it leads to a bad place.

Science backs up the connection:

Both people with BED and people with ADHD have trouble heeding their internal cues of satiety and hunger… A hyperfocus on food may be appealing to individuals with ADHD, since it simplifies their thinking about the subject.

An individual’s development into responsible adulthood requires the ability to devote a boatload of focused attention that nevertheless must be dispersed among an overwhelming number of diverse areas. To name just a few — financial responsibility; accountability when put in charge of other people’s needs; the expectation of showing up for work on time; the ongoing necessity to keep track of objects (like keys and wallets) that must not be lost; the expectation that one can and will respond appropriately to either friendly advances or hostile approaches; the list just goes on and on.

The upside?

Still, a person can usually exert control over what does or does not go into their mouth. Whether someone decides to eat more than is wise, or less than is sane, they still get to be the boss of that department. This can provide a great deal of relief from the stress of paying attention to numerous conflicting demands that not only need to be met, but must be attended to at appropriate times and with the required amount of serious intent.

During a hard day of allotting precious attention to all those extraneous requirements, dominance over the kingdom of the self can be exerted by devouring a large pizza and a quart of ice cream; or maybe by fasting like a medieval saint.

As author Roberto Olivardia, Ph.D., points out, this rats’ nest of avoidance and engulfment can metamorphose into a problem that requires a whole team of medical professionals to sort out. It may even lead to treatment with stimulant drugs. Helpful as that approach sometimes may be, it can also lead to the same hell, only through a different gate.

When it comes to children whose attention capacity is all over the map, a stimulant drug can often help them. Common sense would say, “Wait a minute, wouldn’t that just turn the child into a little speed freak with even less ability to focus her mind enough to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds at a time?” But common sense would be mistaken.

Ritalin, Adderall, and other prescription stimulants “act primarily on the brain’s reward and wakefulness centers, rather than on its attention circuitry,” according to such medical experts as Benjamin Kay, M.D., Ph.D., and Nico U. Dosenbach, M.D., Ph.D. Their work has shown that…

[…] stimulant medications produced patterns of brain activity that mimicked the effect of good sleep, negating the effects of sleep deprivation on brain activity.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Stimulant ADHD medications work differently than thought,” WASHU.edu, 12/24/25
Image by EME/Pixabay

One Organization, One Person, Working It Out

Pat Hartman November 5, 2026 No Comments

For many years, Oprah was assumed to be the literal embodiment of the Weight Watchers credo of self-reliance that included willpower, calorie-counting, and exercise. For people who clung to it faithfully and still failed to lose weight, this mindset left them no choice but to feel inadequate, guilty, and just generally bad about themselves.

At the end of 2023, the news came that jolted Earth from its axis. Oprah was taking The Drugs. One way or another, many people felt betrayed, and understandably so. They had bought into the official do-it-yourself line, and felt they had been used somehow.

Some were mad at Oprah for holding a leadership position for almost a decade. Others were angry about her resignation. It was a classic “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario, and being trapped as the villain in that situation could force a person into stress-related eating in a minute.

Journalist Vanessa Romo noted that Oprah promised to be “a vocal advocate in advancing this conversation” — an equivocal statement if ever there was one. Maybe, at that moment, certainty about exactly what to emphasize did not exist in her own mind. More likely, it was a nagging feeling that she had not quite worked out the most honest and effective way to say it.

The result was one of the least eloquent quotations ever credited to Ms. Winfrey:

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.

Public opinion, AKA “the court of”

Drugs, both legal and illegal, and whatever their intended purpose, are one area of life where people’s deeply held convictions tend to polarize, politicize, stigmatize, and emotionalize. As always, on such a hot topic, public opinion was all over the map, on a runaway bus driven by strong impulses, including opposite feelings within the same person. Oprah’s fanbase, taken as a single entity, was ambivalent (to say the least) about her embrace of the GLP-1 school of healing.

The strain exerted upon any prominent figure whose every word is scrutinized without mercy must be enormous. If Oprah ended her associations with Weight Watchers, that meant somebody had to be wrong, and one trait of “the public” is that it loves to form an opinion based on very slim evidence. But after nearly a decade as a board member, end it she did.

Then, another bomb dropped. As reported by Vanessa Romo,

[…] WeightWatchers unveiled the rollout of WeightWatchers Clinic, which gives members access to doctors who can prescribe weight loss medications… The services were made possible after WW’s acquisition of a telehealth company called Sequence last spring.

Weight Watchers CEO Sima Sistani told the press that the organization’s path had never worked for some aspiring weight-losers, because they were up against “a chronic relapsing condition, with biology and genetics and environmental underpinnings.” Consequently, it was determined that the time had come “to reintroduce ourselves […] to acknowledge the part that we had in the past.”

Parting ways

Nobody wanted to create a perception that something fishy was going on, or that enmity existed between the giant W’s, namely Winfrey and Weight Watchers — but there must be no appearance of inappropriate friendship, either.

The separation happened partly because Oprah was planning a significant TV special about prescription weight-loss meds. Weight Watchers had entered the pharmaceutical business by purchasing a telehealth company and would receive financial benefit from GLP-1 sales. For that and other reasons, it was no longer appropriate for her to be the public face of Weight Watchers; she needed to detach.

Just to make matters even more transparent, Oprah announced that she would donate her share of Weight Watchers income to charity, and the nine remaining members of the board stood behind her because the generous gesture would sweep away suspicions of a conflict of interest.

It took the public a while to digest that much change, but there was more to come. In March, Oprah told TV host Jimmy Kimmel and his audience and the rest of the world that she would now be able to “talk about whatever I want.”

Which, of course, she knew would not stem any of the criticism from the critically-inclined. But it would confirm her own sense of integrity and upright behavior, which, after all, is the most important thing.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “After nearly a decade, Oprah Winfrey is set to depart the board of WeightWatchers,” Wamu.org, 03/01/24
Source: “Oprah Winfrey resigned from WeightWatchers board to ‘talk about whatever I want’ in new special”, FoxBusiness.com, 03/17/24
Image by Lawrence Jackson/Public Domain

Snapchat Settles Teen Addiction Lawsuits

Tatyana Meshcheryakova November 4, 2026 No Comments

Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. has reached a settlement with two teenagers who alleged that the platform encouraged compulsive use and contributed to their mental health struggles, according to a statement from the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The agreement follows earlier settlements with Meta, TikTok and Google’s YouTube, resolving claims against the last remaining defendant in the two teens’ cases. Jury selection had already begun in Los Angeles state court.

The development adds to a growing series of legal challenges focused on how social media platforms are designed, and whether features intended to keep users engaged put young people at risk.

What the teenagers alleged

The plaintiffs, identified as S.J., a 16-year-old from Illinois, and K.D.B., an 18-year-old from Mississippi, alleged that their use of social media began in childhood and developed into compulsive habits. Their claims described depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health injuries they attributed to their experiences across the platforms.

The allegations against Snapchat focused on features including Snapstreaks, Snapscores, push notifications, and filters. The plaintiffs argued that these features encouraged young users to return repeatedly and spend more time on the app.

Across the broader litigation, plaintiffs have also challenged features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling, arguing that platform design can encourage prolonged use. The companies dispute claims that they designed their products to addict children.

From Meta settlements to a Snap agreement

Before Snap’s agreement, Meta had separately settled with both teenagers. TikTok and YouTube had also reached settlements, leaving Snap as the only company still facing their claims at trial.

Meta’s settlement with K.D.B. followed the start of jury selection in late October. Its agreement with S.J. had come earlier.

The subsequent Snap settlement means the cases will not produce a jury verdict against the company. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel had been expected to testify.

Attorneys John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, representing K.D.B., described the settlements as part of their broader effort to hold social media companies accountable for alleged harm to children. The supplied announcement did not disclose the financial terms of Snap’s agreement.

How Snapchat has responded

Snap has disputed the plaintiffs’ characterization of its platform. In an earlier statement, the company emphasized that Snapchat opens to a camera rather than a traditional social media feed.

The company also pointed to its safeguards, safety tools, and educational resources, saying the allegations misrepresented both the plaintiffs’ experiences and the platform’s design.

Meta has previously said that young people’s mental health is shaped by multiple factors. Other companies involved in the litigation have likewise defended their safety efforts and rejected allegations that they intentionally encouraged addiction among young users.

A wider legal challenge for social media companies

These cases are part of thousands of lawsuits brought by individuals, school districts, and government entities over alleged harm to children from social media use. The litigation places particular scrutiny on product design and the companies’ knowledge of potential risks.

In a separate case in March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google negligent in the design or operation of Instagram and YouTube. It awarded a young woman $6 million in compensatory and punitive damages. That verdict concerned a different plaintiff and did not decide the allegations against Snapchat.

For the two teenagers involved in the latest settlements, the agreements resolve their claims against the platforms. The broader debate continues: How should social media companies design products used by children, and what responsibility should they bear when those products allegedly contribute to harm?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Meta settles with second teen in social media addiction lawsuit; case against Snapchat moves forward,” ABC News, 10/30/26
Source: “Snap settles with two teens during trial testing claims social media caused depression, eating disorders,” Yahoo! Finance via Reuters, 11/2/26
Image by Julio Lopez/Pexels

The World and Oprah’s World

Pat Hartman November 3, 2026 No Comments

If we talk about ice skaters, we have to mention Sonja Henie, and if we talk about science fiction writers, we have to mention Harlan Ellison. And people who have occupied the “public figure” stage? Oprah Winfrey, no contest. As one of the most recognizable and respected celebrities on the planet, this woman’s every word and action have been the subject of close scrutiny for decades, especially since everyone who does not happen to be Oprah seems to feel obligated to chime in with an opinion about every breath she draws.

In the USA and even on the world stage, many favorite topics of conversation have been Oprah-centric: her accomplishments, her acting, her generosity, her spirit, her knack for spotting talent, and of course, always and forever, her relationship with her body; specifically its size and weight.

Just when it seemed impossible that fate could provide the opportunity to explore yet another facet of Oprah, it happened. The world had not seen such a scandal since a king of England resigned his position in order to marry a divorced commoner.

The upset

In 2023, the star stated publicly that, for some time after hearing about the new weight-loss medications, she had continued to feel that personal willpower was the only legitimate way to pursue weight loss. But then as the months slid by, her thinking evolved.

In the autumn of that year, the OprahDaily.com website mentioned some of its reasons for existing. One was to banish the idea that obesity can and should only be cured by personal willpower. Using medicine to treat obesity is just as legitimate as using antibiotics to treat infection, and that principle needed to be respectfully brought into the house and given a seat. The text plainly said that the site’s intention was…

To discuss the safety and efficacy of the new weight loss drugs, such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro.

Meanwhile, Oprah had served on the Weight Watchers board of directors for nearly a decade, and a difference of opinion had developed. The people who had been tracking that situation and shaking their heads were proven correct when, at the end of February 2024, Oprah resigned from the board.

Much of the reporting served only to confuse the issue. Oprah’s personal decision, made some months before, to start taking a weight-loss drug was regarded by a segment of the public, including some of her most loyal fans, as a betrayal. It was as if Oprah had been caught stepping out on her long-time gentleman friend.

Some fans were angry, others were sad. But this judgment was complicated by the fact that Weight Watchers had already bought a telehealth platform whose services included “access to healthcare providers who can prescribe weight-loss drugs including Ozempic.”

That development left many Weight Watchers members confused about where to aim their displeasure — at the organization, or Oprah, or both, or neither? Some felt betrayed, without knowing exactly why, or how to react, or which port to seek in this storm. Some critics seemed to base their disapproval on very shaky ground, almost as if they believed as a general principle that no one should ever be allowed to change their mind, even if evidence, experience, and logic might point toward making a behavioral adjustment.

New year, new problems

Meanwhile, as 2025 rolled in, Oprah stated publicly that the existence of medically approved prescription drugs for weight loss felt “like redemption… not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.” The fact that she owned a lot of Weight Watchers stock added to the dismay.

Did that make her a loyal company woman, or a traitor? Did this aspect of her business life define her as an oppressive fat-shamer who profited from the pain of ordinary members, or what?

Plenty of former supporters were unhappy with their fallen hero, even if they couldn’t put their finger on exactly why. It is a human characteristic to admire someone who takes a rigid stand, no matter how harmful that position might be. At the same time, another ineradicable human trait is to scold someone mercilessly for “flip-flopping,” as if changing one’s mind is the worst sin ever.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Pat Hartman

The Family That Haunts Together, Flaunts Together

Pat Hartman October 29, 2026 No Comments

“Mommy, what does flaunt mean?”

“It means to show off, dear. We show off our scary costumes. This year we are ghosts!”

“But it isn’t nice to brag. Remember, you said!”

“Okay then. ‘The family that haunts together, eats croissants together.’ How about that for our slogan?”

“Daddy, now Mommy is trying to brag. Make her stop! Besides, nobody in our neighborhood gives away croissants.”

But Daddy is never at a loss. “You’re right. Hey, I’ve got it. The family that spooks together, pukes together.”

Of course, this is an immediate hit. Except for one thing. After the child’s laughing fit is over, insatiable curiosity remains. “But why do we puke?”

“From eating all the yucky candy the neighbors are giving us instead of croissants, of course.”

Hey, this is supposed to be fun, right?

If childhood obesity were a person, and we bravely asked, “Hey, Childhood Obesity, what is your favorite holiday?,” it’s a pretty good bet that the answer would be, “What are you, crazy? Halloween, of course! No contest!” Because it is all about gobs of sugar in every conceivable shape and form, which (and this is not an inconsequential detail) comes for free.

Adjacent activities

Year after year, Halloween provides a raucous, colorful, and all-welcoming kickoff to the winter holiday season, beginning with supermarkets stocking their shelves with witch and ghost candy before the kids are even back in school. Okay, slight exaggeration. But not by much.

One thing that children can do in the midst of the current year’s activities is to make notes about cool stuff they see other people doing. This will involve such actions as writing down an idea so coherently that it will be understood after 11 months have passed, and storing the information in such a way that it will be easily findable when the time comes. Those are good, useful skills for anyone to develop.

Immediately after the holiday, organize a family trip to a store that wants to move a whole lot of scary merchandise for cheap. Be sure to make it clear, ahead of time, that candy is not on the menu. You are looking for bargain-priced costumes, masks, and items of decor that can be carefully packed up and labeled for next year. And keep an eye out for a fancy, high-quality pumpkin carving kit on sale that could transform next year’s holiday into a fabulous art festival.

Less candy, more fun

And don’t just mull over ideas about what the family could do for next year’s October-ending holiday. Think big! You and your kids could start laying the groundwork to be involved with plans for the school or the community center or the homeless shelter, and create more fun for everybody within miles.

Here is another pre-Halloween warm-up project: Recruit your child or children into composing a super-healthful menu for the evening meal, one that will fulfill so many of the body’s cravings for quality that it won’t even be interested in candy.

Okay, maybe that is too ambitious a goal. But try letting the young folks design the supper and prepare it, or at least help. They are more likely to actually eat something they chose and then cooked themselves, and the end result just might be less resistance to putting the candy away for doling out in an orderly fashion later.

Overall, what a lot of parents would like to do is minimize the caloric intake and maximize the fun. Yes, it’s too late this year to organize something like a costume parade at a retirement community, but make a note for next year, maybe on September’s last day, to get busy arranging some Halloween activities that don’t involve eating — and then, when the time comes, just be sure to follow through!

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by LensPulse/Pixabay

Research, Community Support, and Gaps in Care

Tatyana Meshcheryakova October 28, 2026 No Comments

Let’s take a look at the weekly pediatric and adolescent obesity news roundup from October 20 to October 26.

How can healthcare providers better understand obesity in young people, and how can communities make healthy living more accessible? This week’s research and reporting approached those questions from several directions. A new study examined metabolic differences that BMI may miss, Indiana advocates emphasized everyday barriers to wellness, and professional discussions focused on improving treatment and research.

New research explores metabolic risk beyond BMI

A study published October 21 in the World Journal of Pediatrics suggests that children with similar degrees of obesity can have substantially different metabolic health profiles.

Researchers examined the triglyceride-glucose, or TyG, index alongside glucose-tolerance testing in children and adolescents with obesity. Participants with higher TyG values showed lower insulin sensitivity and less favorable blood-sugar and liver-related markers, despite comparable obesity severity.

The findings suggest that the index could complement BMI-based assessment by helping identify metabolic differences. However, this was a cross-sectional study: It identified associations at one point in time, rather than demonstrating that the index predicts future diabetes or deterioration in health.

Indiana puts community support at the center of children’s wellness

An October 22 report from Indiana News Service highlighted the Indiana Youth Institute’s new wellness series, beginning with physical health. The initiative emphasizes movement, nutrition, sleep, and the role of families, schools, and community organizations.

Tami Silverman, the institute’s president and CEO, described a practical obstacle facing many households:

Healthy foods can be hard to find or afford, especially as food and gas costs rise.

The report also highlighted limited access to safe places for activity. Silverman encouraged a broad view of movement that includes walking, biking, dancing, and play, while calling on schools and community leaders to help create supportive environments. The story brings attention to a central challenge: encouraging healthy routines requires making those routines accessible.

Policy commentary calls for action beyond the clinic

In an October 20 opinion column in The Indian Express, public-health scholar Rajib Dasgupta argued that government policy has a critical role in addressing childhood obesity. His commentary followed the World Health Organization’s October 7 guideline release, an earlier development that continued to generate discussion this week.

“The food environment is the toughest challenge,” Dasgupta wrote, pointing to weaknesses in food marketing controls and front-of-package labeling. He also emphasized school food environments, opportunities for physical activity, and coordination across government sectors.

This was a policy argument, rather than a new clinical study or policy announcement. Its contribution to the week’s discussion was to connect individual care with the broader conditions shaping children’s daily lives.

Pediatric trial design receives renewed attention

An October 22 announcement from Xtalks previewed a November 6 webinar on improving pediatric and adolescent obesity trials. The planned discussion addresses how researchers select outcomes, interpret changes during growth and puberty, incorporate young people’s experiences, and keep participants engaged.

The announcement highlights unresolved questions about translating evidence across age groups and evaluating metabolic biomarkers. Although it reports no new treatment results, it draws attention to an important research priority: designing studies that account for children’s development and families’ circumstances.

Family-centered care features on the professional education agenda

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo listed an October 26 session focused on applying pediatric obesity guidance in practice. Its agenda emphasizes shared decision-making and collaboration among pediatricians, dietitians, psychologists, and other specialists.

The session description brings medical, psychosocial, and environmental considerations into the same conversation. It also includes discussion of behavioral care, medications, and surgery when appropriate. (This is an educational program, not a new guideline or a report of conference findings.)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Triglyceride-glucose index identifies early metabolic stress and β-cell vulnerability in pediatric obesity,” World Journal of Pediatrics, 10/21/26
Source: “Indiana Youth Institute Renews Focus On Kids’ Physical Health,” Indiana News Service, 10/20/26
Source: “In battling childhood obesity, government policy may just tip the scales,” The Indian Express, 10/20/26
Source: “Pediatric & Adolescent Obesity: Closing the Evidence Gap Through Better Trial Design,” Xtalks press release via StreetInsider, 10/22/26
Source: “From Guidelines to Action: Empowering Families in the Fight Against Pediatric and Adolescent Obesity,” Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 10/26/26
Image by Kampus Production/Pexels

Painful and Harsh Truths

Pat Hartman October 27, 2026 No Comments

These words are here to pick up some thoughts dropped a few days ago as “Harsh and Painful Truths,” of the kind that keep coming back to haunt us.

Some realities need to be accepted. One of them is: People resent paying for other people’s mistakes. The average American is generally okay with the idea that tax dollars will help a person who was pushed onto the subway tracks and suffered a leg amputation.

But if the issue is someone who has spent a lifetime becoming corpulent, when that misfortune could have been prevented, it’s a different matter. The idea of contributing to the kitty for a morbidly obese person’s medical expenses just might be considered objectionable.

In many people’s minds obesity is, always and only, a preventable situation. They feel no empathy for anyone who bought a packet of white powder and contracted a major addiction, on the grounds that the person should have known better. Viewed from the perspective of that same mindset, obesity is an almost identical situation. Whether objectively justifiable or not, it is the way a large number of people feel.

Meanwhile, someone with a generous and forgiving nature might hope to convince the hard-hearted to be less critical, and to spare the feelings of addicts who are now trying to change. Another response would be to use that energy in a different way, like by convincing people to not become addicts in the first place. Similarly, those who care about the obesity issue, and who don’t want to see obese people getting their feelings hurt, might choose to support issues connected with the prevention of that condition.

A heavy work

We will not go into the whole text here, but it could be useful to take a peek at a five-author article from Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, with the cumbersome but usefully descriptive title, “Costs of obesity, obesity-related complications, and weight loss in the United States: A systematic literature review.”

The work’s abstract quite usefully states that last year, around 100 million American grownups were obese. (The point we are aiming at is one that should be obvious from the start. Surely, their hundreds of thousands of parents did not mean for that to happen. Those moms and dads never intended for their beloved offspring to become PwO, or People with Obesity!)

Of those hundred million obese American adults, 75% or three-quarters of them also suffer from complications related to that obese condition. Here is a direct quotation pertaining to their condition:

“Related medical spending exceeds $261 billion.”

Subsequent to that thought, we are told that the objective of this study was to summarize the estimates of the direct medical costs incurred by those PwO…

[…] by obesity severity and presence of obesity-related complications and to characterize the impact of weight loss on direct medical cost savings.

The methodology is then explained, and it translates to an understanding that this task involved a lot of complicated work. Before even starting, the individuals concerned were divided into groups (class I, II, or III) according to the severity of their obesity. Anyway, almost 10,000 related records were consulted, and the researchers identified 6.0 of them, or 32 studies, as being useful for their purposes.

Here was some unwelcome news. Obesity-related complications (such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes) do not wind up costing just a little bit more than plain old obesity, but a lot more. And yet, a relatively simple (for some individuals) weight loss of only 5% over a year could lead to “substantial savings.” Weight-loss medications were found to help, too.

Obviously, a lot more facts and figures were involved in deducing numerous conclusions, and not surprisingly,

[L]ongitudinal studies considering a wider range and overlap of obesity-related complications are needed to help document and quantify the current direct cost burden of obesity.

What is the point here? Glad you asked. Most people who read this blog have children, and hold many aspirations for those young lives. We hope to see our kids grow up to be champion athletes, or career-qualified musicians, or dedicated teachers, or farmers who care as much about preserving the land as they do about making profits.

This sort of future-gazing could go on and on, but there is a point. Not one of us, not a single parent among us, is sitting here thinking, “Gee, I hope my kid grows up to be a PwO — especially one with extra-disabling and super-costly complications!”

This suggestion is for anyone whose kids might be headed in an overweight direction: Please consider getting acquainted with a system called BrainWeighve, which could make an enormous difference in the lives of not only our own kids, but also their children — the next generation who are not even here yet.

We have the opportunity to shape and guide the fates of people far into the future. To guarantee that our present-day progeny will not grow up obese could make a difference that reverberates and resonates down through the years. And what have we got to lose by giving it a chance?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Costs of obesity, obesity-related complications, and weight loss in the United States: A systematic literature review,” Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, July 2025
Image by jarmoluk/Pixabay

Harsh and Painful Truths

Pat Hartman October 22, 2026 No Comments

Many of us were brought up to believe that talking about money all the time — “harping” on the subject, as some of our folks might have put it — is in poor taste; a crass and undignified habit. But since when has telling people not to dwell on a topic ever changed what they do in the privacy of their own heads?

Besides, not having money can also be undignified and crass, and it behooves us to give the subject a bit of thought, now and then. Here, in this blog, it is appropriate to think about how much our individual habits and mistakes might penalize society as a whole, causing some members of that society to feel an urge to take revenge on our kids in some way. This is not a good feeling to have, and might even keep some of us awake at night, as well it should.

It fits right in with the “blame and shame” theme

In calculating the economic cost of obesity to society, several factors are considered, of which perhaps the most obvious is direct medical spending. Over the past decade, it has been estimated that an obese adult will rack up almost $2,000 more in yearly medical expenses than a healthy-weight adult, and with severe obesity that excess figure can hit $3,000.

Some factors are harder to pin down or assign precise figures to, but it has been observed that in the workplace, obesity relates to reduced productivity, absenteeism, claims filed for disability, and the depletion of workers’ compensation funds. The three extra workdays per year that an average obese individual misses do not initially sound like much, but they add up. Our source is “Costs of obesity, obesity-related complications, and weight loss in the United States: A systematic literature review.”

A decade past

In 2016, estimated national productivity losses were between $13 billion and (twice that number) $26 billion, depending on which study was consulted. Some researchers found that if they included other factors, like related diseases and premature death amongst workers, the loss could be quoted as more than a trillion dollars annually.

The scholars who write about such matters tend to point out that the price is not always paid by the obese individuals who incur those costs. Sure, the patients often pony up a hefty share, but then so do their employers, and the insurers they work with, along with government programs and the taxpayers who contribute to them. But no matter how you slice it, the bill for a lot of people’s obesity is picked up by the general public.

The bottom line

This is why it is important to remind the parents of children how it all works. We don’t want our kids growing up to be burdens on society. Even if we ourselves do not think of societal responsibility for healthcare as a particularly bad idea, please be assured that plenty of people do feel that way. If we let our kids grow into obese adults, they will always be unpopular with someone, and why on earth would we allow them to slide into such a fate? It seems like we ought to do everything we can to prevent it.

Very few parents would wish for a child to reach adulthood as a shunned and even hated individual. Mothers and fathers who would not have an objectionable picture tattooed onto their child’s face might still unthinkingly participate in facilitating that child’s growth into an obese adult. That is, into a grownup who could one day be scorned, just as sincerely as someone who wears a signed contract with Beelzebub on his or her forehead.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Recent News Highlights the Need for Whole-Family Care

Tatyana Meshcheryakova October 21, 2026 No Comments

Childhood obesity treatment is receiving renewed attention, with news coverage highlighting comprehensive care, family involvement, and access to treatment. A recent report examined the World Health Organization’s new recommendations, while a release from Pennington Biomedical spotlighted efforts to bring evidence-based care into communities. Although the guidelines and conference preceded this week’s coverage, both raise an urgent question: How can families get meaningful help?

The answer starts with understanding obesity as a chronic disease. WHO explains that childhood obesity can affect physical health and emotional well-being, increasing risks such as type 2 diabetes while exposing children to bullying and discrimination. Treatment therefore needs to support healthy development, functioning, and quality of life alongside weight management.

WHO’s guidelines, released on October 7, recommend structured nutrition, physical activity, and behavior-change interventions. These approaches provide an organized treatment plan with professional support. Digital tools may also play a supporting role when parents or caregivers supervise their use. The emphasis is on sustained care that fits each child’s age and family circumstances.

For parents, that means treatment should offer more than brief instruction to improve eating habits. CDC-recognized family healthy weight programs combine nutrition counseling, physical activity, and strategies for changing everyday behaviors. They involve caregivers because children’s routines develop within households. Families work together toward practical changes, with support designed to help them continue over time.

Intensity matters, too. CDC-recognized programs provide at least 26 contact hours over three to 12 months. That commitment reflects the difference between receiving information and having ongoing help putting it into practice. Some studies of these programs have reported improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol, self-esteem, and quality of life, in addition to changes in weight or body mass index.

Medication and surgery remain options for selected patients, but age and clinical circumstances matter. WHO does not recommend weight-management medicines, bariatric surgery, or weight-loss devices for children younger than 10. Its adolescent recommendations allow consideration of approved medicines after a supervised, comprehensive lifestyle program has not achieved the desired results. These global recommendations do not establish local drug approvals.

In the United States, CDC’s summary of American Academy of Pediatrics guidance includes anti-obesity medications for eligible adolescents ages 12 and older, alongside behavioral treatment. It also includes referral for bariatric surgery evaluation for adolescents ages 13 and older with severe obesity. Referral means a specialist assessment; it does not mean every referred teenager should undergo surgery.

Emotional support deserves equal attention. CDC warns that weight stigma can contribute to binge eating, social isolation, reduced physical activity, and avoidance of health care. Respectful conversations should focus on health and achievable goals. A child who feels judged may find it harder to participate in treatment or discuss concerns openly.

Access is another challenge highlighted in this week’s news. Pennington Biomedical’s October 16 conference release described sessions addressing rural care, community strategies, and translating research into practical services. The gathering itself occurred on September 24. Its focus illustrates why effective treatment requires coordination among health professionals, families, schools, and community organizations.

Families concerned about a child’s weight can begin by asking their pediatrician for a comprehensive evaluation and information about available treatment programs. Useful questions include who provides counseling, how often visits occur, whether caregivers participate, and what insurance covers. Progress should be reviewed with the care team, with attention to physical health, emotional well-being, and sustainable routines.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “WHO Issues First Global Guidelines on Child and Adolescent Obesity,” WHO, 10/7/26
Source: “Evaluation and Treatment for Child Obesity,” CDC, 1/28/26
Source: “CDC-Recognized Family Healthy Weight Programs,” CDC, 12/4/25
Source: “170 Million Children Living With Obesity, WHO Issues First Global Guidelines to Tackle Crisis,” NDTV, 10/14/26
Source: “’Be the Reason Kids Greaux Healthy’ Connects Experts to Advance Childhood Obesity Care, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, 10/16/26
Image by Vitaly Gariev/Pexels

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