The government funded and controlled the two-year long study which involved 347 random participants. The patients were surveyed and questioned about their relationship with the doctor under whose guidance they were trying to shed the extra weight.
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On the contrary, people who rated their doctors with a low helpfulness ranking only lost an average of 5 pounds over the two-year period.
Notwithstanding the fact that the general rate of weight loss was modest, participants who answered that the primary care physician’s support did specifically help lost twice the number of pounds as compared to those who did not reckon the physician’s support as helpful.
Physician-guided programs are generally not reimbursed by private insurance provider or Medicare.
Researchers have concluded that their scientific paper has proven the hypothesis according to which, physicians can improve their patients’ condition by simply showing support towards them.
The study has found out that weight loss was greater in obese patients almost double on average for the patients who found their doctors helpful when compared to the patients who thought their doctors were not of much help.
When it comes to weight problems, we are eager to try everything: diets, pills, exercise, programmed sleep, special cures, large quantities of water, alternative programs, even prayer to make the gods look in our direction and give us a helping hand in managing our weight issues.
A conclusion to this study would be that primary care physicians should pay a more central role in weight loss programs.
Medical Daily quoted Bennett as saying she hopes the results of the Johns Hopkins study will spur insurers to rethink their reimbursement policies about weight-loss related doctor visits because “incorporating physicians into future programs might lead patients to more successful weight loss”.
Though all of the respondents considered their relationships with their primary physicians to be high in quality, those who rated their doctors the “highest” in the study’s “helpfulness” category enjoyed the most weight loss.
More than 33 percent of adults in the United States are now obese, according to the National Institutes of Health statistics. Weight loss is a personal activity that could be done without the help of anyone.
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Surely, the physician-guided weight loss regimes bring in better results.
