Young doctors ‘offer less weight loss advice’

Younger doctors offer less weight loss advice to their patients than their older colleagues, a study has suggested.

Researchers from Sapienza University in Rome found that younger doctors are more likely to prescribe cardiovascular (CV) drugs to patients with heart disease risks and older doctors are more likely to recommend these people to make lifestyle changes.

“Although younger doctors prescribed more drugs, this did not result in significantly better control of their patients’ major CV risk factors,” said cardiologist professor Massimo Volpe from the Faculty of Medicine at Sapienza University.

He went on to say that this suggests that other factors, such as changes to diet and exercise levels, have an “important role to play in the clinical management of CV risk”.

The research appears in the June issue of the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

Last week, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and John Hopkins University revealed that obese men who have male GPs are more likely to receive weight loss counselling than obese women seeing female physicians.

Did you know that being overweight increases your risk of heart disease?