Journal ArticleA physician who doesn't recommend that a patient stop smoking is hard to find. Few, however, try to help patients lose weight, even though a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) study showed that at least 300,000 deaths each year can be attributed to being overweight, obese or severely overweight. "While being overweight is known to play a role in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, arthritis and colon, breast, uterine and prostate cancer, and puts nearly every organ system at risk, medical schools provide practically no training in recognizing and treating the condition
