Breaking Through the Diet Culture: Medical Care for Every Size

May 22, 2020

Kira Furie earned her BS in Biological Sciences and her BA in Dance, graduating from UC Santa Barbara in 2018. She spent time dancing professionally in New York City and is currently working on a research project with an Addiction Medicine MD based in Los Angeles, California. Her interdisciplinary background, personal experience with injuries, yoga teaching, and research have given her a specific interest in Integrative Medicine, which she hopes to implement in her future medical practice.

On this podcast, Megan Hall interviews Kira about the series of injuries that led to her interest in physical therapy and later to medicine. Influenced heavily by the prevalence of eating disorders and the Health at Every Size movement, Kira discusses her current plans to bring prevention and wellness aspects to medical practice, while promoting a body-positive environment. She also describes “thin privilege” - an aspect of the current medical system that many of us take for granted.

Here’s the outline of this interview with Kira Furie:

[00:01:23] Kira's background and interest in medicine.

[00:05:27] An untreated hip injury leading to more problems.

[00:10:40] Video: Brené Brown on Empathy.

[00:11:10] Psychology and yoga.

[00:12:39] The Minimalists Podcast.

[00:13:47] Sports and Performance Psychologist Simon Marshall, PhD. 

[00:14:20] Prevention.

[00:14:43] Jeffery N. Wilkins, MD, Addiction Medicine Specialist in LA.

[00:15:17] Primary vs. Secondary Prevention.

[00:17:34] Lack of connection as the greatest factor leading to addiction.

[00:19:00] The importance of connection; Podcasts on social connection: Building Compassionate Communities to Improve Public Health, and Maintaining Social Connection in the Era of COVID-19, both with Julian Abel.

[00:19:37] Health at Every Size (HAES).

[00:19:51] Book: Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.

[00:19:57] Book: Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand About Weight, by Linda Bacon, PhD. and Lucy Aphramor, PhD. Read the intro to the book.

[00:21:11] Lindo Bacon (formerly Linda); Review: Bacon, Linda, and Lucy Aphramor. "Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift." Nutrition journal 10.1 (2011): 9.

[00:23:22] Thin privilege.

[00:25:19] Body Mass Index (BMI) as a health marker.

[00:26:40] People in "overweight" category live longer; Study approved by CDC: Flegal, Katherine M., et al. "Excess deaths associated with underweight, overweight, and obesity." Jama 293.15 (2005): 1861-1867.

[00:28:14] Looking ahead as a future physician.

[00:32:41] Physicians for Ancestral Health.