geoffrey modest medical blogs

  a European group redefined obesity, rejecting BMI as the standard, resulting in a very large number of people in the US being reclassified as obese (see   obesity new defn not BMI JAMAopen2025  in dropbox, or doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.37619). i will state in advance, and explain more later below, that to me this is clearly a valid and clinically important revision....   Background : -- an international commission of 58 experts spanning multiple specialties and countries developed a new definition of obesity that incorporates some anthropometrics and/or direct measures of visceral body fat to better focus on this clinically important adipose tissue excess; these new guidelines achieved a 90 to 100% agreement within the committee and have already been endorsed by at least 76 professional organizations (see  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(24)00316-4/abstract ...

  A recent Gallup poll found that alcohol consumption in the US has reached a new low, both in the numbers of people drinking and the amount drunk:   https://news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-alcohol-concerns-surge.aspx  (this link to the report does give more granular year-by-year reports). go to this article to see all of the graphs. this blogger website is now limiting my ability to include graphs Findings: -- self-reported drinking is down to 54% after consecutive annual declines     -- this is the lowest number in Gallup's 90-year trend     -- of note, there was a bump up in the covid years:  self-reported drinking was 63% in 2018, then 65% in 2019, 60% in 2021, 67% in 2022, 62% in 2023, 58% in 2024, and now down to the 54% in 2025 -- belief that moderate drinking as bad for health has increased to a new high of 53%     -- their graph is quite shocking, increasing numbers of people thought it was bad for one's health...