AMA Declares Obesity a Disease

The American Medical Association has officially classified obesity as a disease, a move it believes will spur advancements in treatment and prevention.

The new policy, announced yesterday in Chicago during the group's annual meeting, was adopted after delegates debated, and ultimately rejected, a committee recommendation cautioning against the new designation.

"Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans," said AMA board member Patrice Harris, M.D. "The AMA is committed to improving health outcomes and is working to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes, which are often linked to obesity."

In adopting the new definition, the AMA concluded that obesity meets the criteria used to define a disease, including the impairment of normal body function. It cites an abundance of clinical evidence identifying obesity as a "multi-metabolic and hormonal disease state" that can affect appetite, energy, fertility and blood pressure, among other physiological functions.

The resolution also noted that The World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health recognize obesity as a disease.

The decision will likely draw new attention to the obesity epidemic, which affects 78 million adults and 12 million children in the United States. And it could lead to increased reimbursement for obesity drugs, surgery and other treatments, according to AMA, the nation's leading physician association.

But the association's Council on Science and Public Health, which studied the issue, concluded that the benefits of classifying obese individuals as having an illness rather than a condition are unclear. It advised against a disease classification primarily because there is no widely accepted definition of disease, and because the mechanism for diagnosing obesity, body mass index, is inadequate. (BMI uses height and body weight to calculate a number that indicates a person's fat level. A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.)

"Given the existing limitations of BMI to diagnose obesity in clinical practice, it is unclear that recognizing obesity as a disease, as opposed to a 'condition' or 'disorder,' will result in improved health outcomes. The disease label is likely to improve health outcomes for some individuals, but may worsen outcomes for others," the council wrote.

The council was also concerned that the "medicalization" of obesity could lead people to rely too heavily on drugs and surgery rather than diet and exercise to lose weight.

Another argument against the disease label was the potential for increased stigma. If someone alters their lifestyle but fails to drop weight, they'd be still be labeled as having a disease and might feel pressured to receive medical interventions such as drugs or surgery.

The adopted resolution argued that "the suggestion that obesity is not a disease but rather a consequence of a chosen lifestyle exemplified by overeating and/or activity is equivalent to suggesting that lung cancer is not a disease because it was brought about by individual choice to smoke cigarettes."

(source: www.runnersworld.com)