My Summary of Obesity Summit Conference--Cleveland Clinic

NEAT –non exercise activity thermography—meaning how many calories people burn up by other activities.  For example, in the past there were calories burned off by washing dishes as opposed to dish washer now. And thinner people had more NEAT, they get up more, move around more, go up steps more, etc.  So for those who are having a hard time with exercise at least increase your NEAT.

Gut flora—I thought this one was interesting.  When they took the bacteria out of thin mice guts and put them in fat mice the fat mice lost weight.  They then went on to break it down to one of the compounds and enzymes which seemed to correlate with weight and heart disease.  Where they were making the mistake was to put their energies in trying to make a pharmaceutical that blocked that enzyme as opposed to working on thin people probiotics which to me would be a lower hanging fruit.  I will pass this on to Dr Ng who might be able to pass it on to metagenics to develop it.

Genes, environment lecture—the bottom line of this one is that there are multiple very complex reasons why people are obese.  She presented this one diagram with arrows all over the place and very difficult to read since there was so much on there just to demonstrate the complexity.  Genetics is a potential cause but just the blueprint, it doesn’t mean you can’t beat it, it just means it might give a clue to some other tools to beat it.    Exercise, of course, is helpful and even more important than duration is intensity. We might do better with short bursts of intense exercise as opposed to longer times of mild to moderate exercise.  Of course mild exercise is much better than no exercise, just as increasing NEAT is better than not.  Timing of eating may be important as well—eating breakfast is important for weight loss particularly if it is less carbs and more of the proteins.  Exercise in the evening might be better for burning calories than in the morning.  However, again it is more important to exercise when you can than not exercise.

How to not regain—they basically presented a bunch of reasons why people regain and we somewhat discussed that in a work group.  However, nobody really went through a bunch of ways to prevent it.  There is a National Weight Control Registry with information on people who lost significant weight and kept it off.  I will be trying to get more information on that soon.

They had us watch 3 live bariatric surgeries which that was pretty cool, they had a live camera feed into their laparoscope during the surgery as well as in the OR as well as in the scope they put down their throat into their stomach.  It was cool to watch!  They were claiming that bariatric surgery was the only one “proven” to have significant and sustainable weight loss.  Although there was a significant amount that regained within 2 yrs but they don’t usually regain the full amount and obviously there are some where it just stayed down.  They also claimed somewhere in the neighborhood of an impressive 80% remission rate for diabetes to be no longer diabetes.  I am not sure how sustainable that was however.

They presented a couple new drugs trying to be approved by the FDA.  They were slamming the FDA for discriminating against obesity drugs since they were taking some off the market with a lot less data or danger than other drugs.

Then there was this one endocrinologist who was basically mocking any alternative weight loss ones like HCG or using other hormones.  The funny thing is that he slammed it based on a weak study done in 1995. There were no safety issues; it was more that he thought it didn’t work. This was a metanalysis which means they took several small poorly done studies and tried to make statistical sense of it.  Subsequent to this conference Dr Shari Emma has published some studies showing that with the HCG it helped spare muscle and target fat.  Dr Emma presented this at the bariatric society meeting as well as on Dr Oz show.  I am seeing weight loss in ranges similar or even in some cases better than bariatric surgery results.  Dr Emma has modified the protocol originally presented by Dr Simmeon and I am one of the few authorized providers for the Dr Emma HCG Weight Loss Program.

Then the best recommendation came from a lunch conference there from Dr Roizen who is a buddy of Dr Oz and has worked on wellness programs at Cleveland Clinic as well as nationally.  His take home points were that you need to help obese patients regain respect for themselves, have them get a buddy- someone they communicate with each day re their diet and exercise and if they miss a day the buddy contacts them.  Then the last pearl he gave was to sustain the weight loss you must change your environment!  This last point is why after 3 yrs after losing 80lb I have regained a lot of it ( not all of it but way too much).  I didn’t change my environment for the better, it was changed actually for the worse by adding more hours to work and not giving myself my own respect for myself to make taking care of me a higher priority.  That is going to change soon!

The last tidbit was from outside of the conference in their little presentation tables about overeaters anonymous- similar to alcoholic anonymous it may give the support similar to the Buddy idea above but they won’t hound you down if you don’t show up ( at least I don’t think they will), and has more social support.  Their website is www.oa.org

National Weight Control Registry http://nwcr.ws/

If you are trying to lose weight, check out my Weight Loss Buddy System!