Coronavirus Chronicles — With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

September 4, 2020
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Obesity and the novel coronavirus are besties. They seem to have made some kind of “ride or die” loyalty pledge, with the dying being done by humans.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Kids, Schools, and Transmission

September 3, 2020
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Coronavirus is still with us, and this blog has been looking at transmission and how to stop it, especially relative to schooling.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Transmission, Crux of the School Debate

August 31, 2020
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Since the crux of the school debate is coronavirus transmission, no child’s obesity is going to improve until we get it figured out.

Pets Count on Us to Keep Them Healthy

August 28, 2020
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Pet obesity might serve as an ideal test bed for the treatment and prevention of child obesity, with focus primarily on parental behaviors.

European and International Congress on Obesity Goes Virtual

August 27, 2020
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Dr. Pretlow presents “The displacement mechanism: a new explanation and treatment for obesity” at the upcoming European and International Congress on Obesity.

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Long, Winding Road Continues

August 24, 2020
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Immunity? Nobody knows. Human behavior? Nobody knows. It’s the engine that drives history. Most mysteries boil down to human behavior, and people are crazy.

Coronavirus Chronicles — What We Know About Transmission

August 20, 2020
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It sure does seem like coronavirus is a sentient being, capable of learning, growing, adapting, and diversifying as it goes along.

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Many Factors in School Reopening

August 13, 2020
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At first, people believed, against all reason, that children possessed something close to immunity to the coronavirus. Then the evidence started to come in.

Coronavirus Chronicles — What If Summer Slide Never Ends?

August 11, 2020
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The prospects for resumption of full-time in-person school, in most of the U.S., do not look promising.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Will Summer Slide Be a Permanent Condition?

August 10, 2020
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One argument in favor of schools reopening, some say, is the risk of the so-called “summer slide” — both physical and intellectual — becoming permanent.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Factorial Multiplicity

August 7, 2020
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How the virus acts and how humans react turns out to be multifactorial, and people should probably know more about that before reopening schools.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Physical, In-Person, On-Site School

August 6, 2020
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Any problem that children ever run into is magnified by also being uncomfortably or dangerously overweight. This includes obesity as a COVID-19 risk factor.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Schools Must or Must Not Open

August 4, 2020
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Decisions need to be made on every level. Teachers are maximally vulnerable, and have to make heavy choices regarding risk, job security, responsibility, etc.

Coronavirus Chronicles — United Kingdom Meets COVID-19

August 3, 2020
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What has been happening in Europe’s second-fattest country? COVID-19 a is wake-up call which makes “tackling the obesity time bomb” more urgent than ever.

Coronavirus Chronicles — School and the Covid-19 Catch-22

July 30, 2020
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The debate about in-person school epitomizes the very serious catch-22 that schools are enmeshed in.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Can Obesity Be Solved Without Addressing Coronavirus?

July 15, 2020
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COVID-19 and obesity were made for each other, and people carrying extra weight are more likely to get the virus.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Closed for the Longest Summer Ever?

July 7, 2020
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For some kids, from ethnic minorities and lower income families, the experience of online learning can range from disastrous to nonexistent.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Is School Out Forever?

July 2, 2020
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Aside from disordered eating and education itself, there are plenty of reasons to hope that schools reopen and society renormalizes in other ways.

Talk About the Animals

June 30, 2020
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Dr. Pretlow will speak at the annual (virtual) meeting of the American Society of Animal Science on Monday, July 20, on the topic of obesity in pets.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Getting It and Not Getting It

June 25, 2020
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School closings and home confinement steal opportunities for physical exercise. As the pounds pile on, the pandemic and the obesity epidemic feed on each other.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Obesity, Poverty, Race

June 18, 2020
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Today’s topic is the intersections between obesity, poverty, race, and coronavirus.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Three Plagues

June 17, 2020
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Despite loose talk of an impending “second wave,” it is clear that the country is still in the midst of the first wave. Sheer desperate denial does nothing.

Coronavirus Chronicles — If Only We Had Listened

June 9, 2020
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Obesity exacerbates coronavirus, and at the same time, the virus worsens the obesity. That’s bad enough, but the immune system also goes into overdrive.

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Research Realms

June 8, 2020
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Despite all the current research, we face the sad truth: Relative to how much there is to know about COVID-19, very little is known.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Cross-Addiction Creep

June 5, 2020
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Impacted by food shortages and isolation, some people who suffer from eating disorders are adopting new displacement behaviors as vessels for their anxiety.

Coronavirus Chronicles — It’s Hard to Maintain

June 4, 2020
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In the course of struggling with food issues during the pandemic, someone who never before experienced an alcohol or drug problem could develop one.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Displacement Is Substitution

June 3, 2020
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Displacement activity occurs in many forms, of which eating is one. But what happens when there just isn’t any food?

Coronavirus Chronicles — People Still Confined and Troubled

June 2, 2020
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No two people have quite the same eating disorder. There are a thousand ways to suffer, and a thousand ways to cope — most of them detrimental.

Coronavirus Chronicles — Stuck at Home Inside Your Head

June 1, 2020
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For someone struggling with substance abuse isolation and boredom are very hazardous conditions, and recovery could be a matter of life or death.

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Curse of Uncertainty

May 29, 2020
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It is a truism that a person can tolerate just about anything, if they know how long it will last. With COVID-19, we just don’t know the end point.

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Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Obesity top bottom

The Book

OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say explores the obesity problem from the often-overlooked perspective of children struggling with being overweight.

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Dr. Robert A. Pretlow is a pediatrician and childhood obesity specialist. He has been researching and spreading awareness on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US for more than a decade.
You can contact Dr. Pretlow at:

Presentations

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the American Society of Animal Science 2020 Conference
What’s Causing Obesity in Companion Animals and What Can We Do About It

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the World Obesity Federation 2019 Conference:
Food/Eating Addiction and the Displacement Mechanism

Dr. Pretlow’s Multi-Center Clinical Trial Kick-off Speech 2018:
Obesity: Tackling the Root Cause

Dr. Pretlow’s 2017 Workshop on
Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation for
TEC and UNC 2016

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the 2015 Obesity Summit in London, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s invited keynote at the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Salzburg, Austria.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2013 European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2010 Uniting Against Childhood Obesity Conference in Houston, TX.

Food & Health Resources