Many people think of obesity as just a problem in the US, while Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, FAAP, FACP, FTOS, challenges this notion, as over 10% of the world's population has obesity, making it pandemic in nature. Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey, and New Zealand have over a 30% prevalence of obesity.

Dr. Cody Stanford encouraged the use of patient-focused language regarding obesity, during her talk at the Epidemics Science Lecture Series at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

"Often we refer to patients as 'obese patients.' We use words like 'morbid,' 'fat'... I want us to change that thinking, our language in of itself promotes weight bias and stigma. Obesity is a disease process like any other, we talk about these as 'patients with obesity' or 'severe obesity' we remove the term 'morbid,' because we don't use it with cancer or heart disease or any other disease that can kill patients."

Dr. Cody Stanford is on a mission to address and understand the differences in the prevalence of obesity by race and ethnicity in the US.

She discussed the complex relationships between the regulation of food intake, as it relates to brain processes, hormones, intestines and other organs.

"One of the untapped mechanisms of controlling obesity here in the US and around the world is the concept of development-fetal programming as it relates to obesity," she added.

If a mom goes into pregnancy overweight or with obesity she has increased inflammation, increased insulin resistance, breakdown of cholesterol, and inflammatory markers that are elevated, Cody Stanford said. 

"Which then exposes the fetus to lipids and it reprograms their gene targets. They have increased cholesterol in the liver, struggle with issues in skeletal, adipose tissue, the brain, the pancreas, and a risk of childhood disease, insulin resistance, hyperphagia and diabetes.

A prospective study is looking at children born to the same mother and father, one child before the mom had weight loss surgery and one born after surgery.

BMI, weight, body fat percentage, insulin levels and glucose levels were all lower in the children born after a mother's weight loss surgery. A three-fold decrease in the prevalence of severe obesity was found for those born after maternal surgery (weight loss surgery).

"The metabolic profile has changed just by modifying the mother and by modifying the mother we have modified her entry environment and then the long-term consequences of the obesity within the population."

Genetics contributes to 60 to 70% of obesity in the country.

"We try to generalize and it's important for me, when I'm working with patients is to personalize. I have to listen to the nuance of what they are telling me when I'm treating patients," Cody Stanford said.


Video Content: Harvard University
Video Source: YouTube