Clinical Obesity: A New Diagnostic Framework

Obesity is no longer being treated simply as a risk factor—it’s increasingly being defined as a disease in its own right. In this episode, we unpack a major shift in how doctors diagnose obesity, driven in part by the rise of powerful new weight-loss drugs like semaglutide. A new framework from the Lancet Commission moves beyond the blunt tool of BMI, distinguishing between people who are overweight but otherwise healthy and those with clinical obesity, marked by impaired organ function or reduced ability to live normally. The result is a sharper, more medical definition of who actually needs treatment—and who may not—raising big questions about diagnosis, drugs, and how we talk about body weight in the first place.https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/01/15/is-obesity-a-disease