‘Fully vaccinated’ doctor: ‘It is okay to not be healthy’

A California physician and influencer known for her promotion of pharmaceutical products is telling the public there is nothing wrong with being unhealthy.

Dr. Nicole Van Groningen, MD is an internal medicine physician at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and has described herself as “fully vaccinated.” Her opinions have been published in several mainstream publications such as the Rolling Stone and the Daily Mail. In a recent Newsweek article, Van Groningen is quoted as saying that natural remedies are inferior to pharmaceutical ones.

“You know what happened back in those natural times before the era of vaccines and antibiotics and other aspects of modern medicine? Nature dictated that a lot of people died,” the doctor said.

In a recently resurfaced video, Van Groningen told her more than 46,000 followers on TikTok that “it is okay” to be fat and not healthy.

“It is okay to be fat,” she said. “We don’t say that enough but it needs to be normalized. If you are fat, that is okay. It is typically not a problem that requires immediate solving. It is not an emergency. You don’t have to drop everything in the pursuit of being not fat.”

“It is okay to not be healthy,” she added. “We act like it is this moral failing, this cardinal sin, that you deserve a scarlet letter if you are not healthy. And there’s a name for that, and it’s called ‘healthism.’”

The physician clarified that while doctors are “there to be supportive” of patients’ health decisions, “a good doctor will not judge you for being fat.”

“They will not judge you for being unhealthy,” she continued. “They will not judge the decisions that you made or the decisions that were made for you, which is a much more likely scenario, that got you to the point where you are right now.”

Van Groningen added that “there are certain scenarios where losing weight can be health promoting” and physicians like herself “are here to help you with that.”

“We’re also here to help you if you decide to not make any changes at all,” she concluded.

In a follow-up video, the fully vaccinated doctor doubled down on her approval of obesity and opposed the notion that “shaming patients is a good way to inspire behavior change.”

Van Groningen has been promoting fatness for years.

In 2022, the physician responded to an influencer who criticized Sports Illustrated for featuring an obese woman named Yumi Nu on the cover of its swimsuit edition. 

“Let’s be clear this man is not a healthcare professional and truly has no idea how healthy Yumi is,” she tweeted. “If she loves herself, there’s a high likelihood that she’s healthier than some dude criticizing people on the Internet.”