Groundbreaking findings and the knowledge gained from them not only make it clear that (severe) obesity is a serious disease with multifactorial causes, but also point to new treatment options. Patrick Schuster introduces the topic.
The big WOMAN themed special for your feel-good weight
abhaben.at/woman
Noticed? Not? Yet again! We blink - every four to six seconds on average. Mostly involuntarily and completely unconsciously. Such a blink of an eye takes just around 150 milliseconds. We decide just as quickly and unconsciously, our subconscious decides whether we should give our counterpart the predicate "sympathetic" the first time we meet - or not. Whether we speak for or against a person. A selection mechanism comes into effect that rejects around 50 percent of our body-centered society. The reason: you are overweight or even obese.
Similar to the book purchase (Never judge a book by its cover!), They did not make it onto the shortlist due to superficial factors. Because in a society in which “slim” defines the common ideal of beauty, the desirable “norm”, obvious otherness is apparently fundamental enough to categorically reject. We selectively attribute negative characteristics to a group of people and condemn them in a generalized way as “stupid”, “lazy” and “your own fault”.
Through this targeted stigmatization, we seem to make reality easier for ourselves: The ready-made opinion, the image anchored in our heads, trivializes one of the greatest health problems of our time, creates distance from the stigmatized and thus from the actual topic, which we do not yet fully understand. Instead of understanding, we refuse.
What is urgently needed is a rethink. A rethink that has already begun over the last few years of intensive research in the field of obesity. Groundbreaking findings and the knowledge gained from them not only make it clear that (severe) obesity is a serious disease with multifactorial causes, but also point to new treatment options. What is this new knowledge about and what does it feel like to live as an overweight person in a body-centered society? We report on this in this supplement. Because it takes knowledge to create awareness.
Sincerely, Patrick Schuster
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