Liesbeth van Rossum

At a glance

• Liesbeth van Rossum is a Dutch internist-endocrinologist and professor of obesity at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, where she leads the Centre for Healthy Weight.
• She specialises in hormones and body weight, especially the stress hormone cortisol.
• Her group measures cortisol in scalp hair, which reflects stress-hormone levels over months. People with higher long-term levels more often had obesity and abdominal fat.
• She stresses that obesity is a chronic disease with many causes: besides diet and exercise, stress, sleep, medication, hormones and genetics all play a part.
• With Elisabeth van den Akker she wrote the book Vet belangrijk (2021, ‘Fat matters’), which received wide attention in the Dutch media.
• For longevity, her work shows that a healthy weight is not just a matter of willpower, and that stress and sleep count.
• Takeaway: if you can’t lose weight despite your efforts, look at sleep, stress and medication too, and discuss them with your doctor.