In this episode, MEEDA receives special guest Dr Lily O'Hara, Associate Professor of Public Health at Qatar University and Health At Every Size advocate.
 
In this episode, Dr O'Hara explains what is weight stigma, why she prefers the term "Weight Oppression" and what is the link between Weight Oppression (WO) and Eating Disorders, and why all this made her take the conscious decision not to use the term "Obesity" anymore. Dr O'Hara also debunks the myth of a [higher] weight causing ill health.

More on this in the video "Poodle Science"

She evokes the ubiquity of WO in the Middle East and what the most recent research on the harmful effects of WO implies for Public Health campaigns and Healthcare practitioners - in the Middle East and abroad: Increased mortality (Tomiyama et al. 2018), Increased morbidity from chronic diseases and conditions (Tomiyama et al. 2018), Higher blood pressure (Unger et al. 2017), Type 2 diabetes mellitus (Wirth et al. 2014), Metabolic syndrome (Pearl et al. 2017), Allostatic load (lipid/metabolic dysregulation, glucose metabolism and inflammation) (Vadiveloo and Mattei 2017), Cortisol reactivity (Schvey, Puhl, and Brownell 2014), Oxidative stress (Tomiyama et al. 2014), Higher weight, diabetes risk, cortisol level, oxidative stress level, C-reactive protein level, eating disturbances, depression, anxiety, body image dissatisfaction and negatively associated with self-esteem.

At the end, Dr O'Hara shares what all healthcare professionals can do to avoid WO, and how she aims to train Public Health professionals that are critically aware, and put social justice at the core of their programmes.

You can find Dr O'Hara on Twitter @lilyohara or via Qatar University's College of Health Sciences @chs_qu

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