Obesity Medicine Summit Highlights

Are you ready to hear the latest and greatest in the world of obesity medicine? Our team had the privilege of attending The Fall Obesity Summit 4 weeks ago in San Antonio. We’ve brought back information from top researchers and clinicians from around the country for you. Here is our top 10 list of take-home points we wanted to share with you.

1. Obesity is an epidemic – more costly than the Opioid Epidemic

2. Obesity is a multi-system disease involving many of your body systems including your brain, endocrine, and gastrointestinal system, just to name a few!

3. Sleep matters – As discussed in last month’s blog, Liz made us well aware that the amount of sleep we get per night can have a huge impact on hunger hormones and we can actually be hungrier if we aren’t sleeping enough.  Aim for 8 hours of sleep nightly.

4. Get moving – Exercise does matter, particularly to prevent weight regain!! Take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk instead of drive…Just get moving.

5. Medications can affect weight loss – there are many groups of medications that can make losing weight more difficult as well as make you gain weight.  The can include those such as certain diabetes medications, blood pressure medications, seizure medications, mood medications and many others.

6. Are you losing weight, but have hit a plateau?  There are many issues at play when this happens.  It may be attributable to medication, nutrition, metabolic abnormalities, certain behaviors or even psychological factors.  Your team is trained to help identify these and give you strategies and tools to combat them!

7. Non-nutritive sweetened beverages – are they good or bad for you...the answer is we don’t know.  We know sugar-filled beverages are bad for your health and we know that water is good for your health.  Let’s stick with what we know…DRINK YOUR WATER!

8. Children with obesity are more likely to become adults with obesity.  The team at WellessenceMD is trained to treat children.

9. Medications can help – there are safe and effective medications to help treat obesity, each which target different causes or contributing factors.

10. Mindfulness Practice– Let’s face it, we knew this was important!  A mindfulness practice helps to reduce stress and decrease cortisol levels, which can increase visceral fat stores and activate our reward system.  It also creates a better awareness and those with higher awareness reported: “lower eating in response to food cues or particular emotions”.  We could go on for days discussing the health benefits that mindfulness provides.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss any of these topics further please ask your team at WellessenceMD.

Author

Heidi R. McClain, NP Nurse Practitioner