Are Your Medical Problems Making It Hard To Lose Weight?

Approach to Weight Treatment 0:00

Doctor Frank Avila here. And I want to talk to you about how I approach treating my patients. Wait. There are five components to what I do. And the first is looking for underlying causes.

Finding Underlying Causes 0:24

And then, of course, I utilize nutrition, exercise behavior and medications in my treatment plan. But addressing underlying causes is something that I think is really important when it comes to helping people lose weight. Because while there are some things that are universal about why people struggle with their weight, everyone has lots of different individual reasons why they are struggling with weight and why it may be more or less important for them to lose weight. So when I evaluate for underlying conditions, I'm looking for things like sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is one of the many things that is by directional with weight, meaning it's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation when you have sleep apnea. It makes it a lot harder to lose weight. But sleep apnea can also make you gain weight. And so treating sleep apnea is a path to often helping with weight loss. Same things with hormones. This could be low teeth for men and very commonly perimenopause and menopause for women.

Sleep Apnea and Hormonal Factors 1:18

And you are going to hear from a whole host of experts on that during the summit, because treating menopause is very important to helping women feel better, which is what I'm all about. But it also does make it a little bit easier to maintain muscle and keep off that visceral body fat right around the middle. And so it is a time when people often gain weight. Another thing for women is PCOS, or polycystic ovarian syndrome. This often correlates with weight, and it's another chicken in the egg situation where PCOS can make you gain weight, and gaining weight can make your PCOS symptoms worse.

And so treating that underlying PCOS often can be really helpful to treating weight. Type two diabetes. Type two diabetes is a huge passion of mine, because it is so common in the United States, about 1 in 9 adults has. It actually runs in my family.

PCOS, Diabetes, and Insulin Resistance 2:12

And so it's something I'm very passionate about preventing because type two diabetes, causes so many health problems for people makes it really challenging our way to live, but is often reversible and it's very often preventable. In fact, a 10% weight loss for people at risk of type two diabetes decreases their chance of getting diabetes by 90%. So just a 10% weight loss when you have pre-diabetes decreases the chance of progressing to diabetes by 90%. But when you have diabetes or prediabetes, you have this insulin resistance.

And it's insulin resistance is something that makes it a lot harder to lose weight. So that's something that's very important for me to address for my patients. Is treating that insulin resistance to help them lose weight, other things that can certainly affect your weight or joint problems, inflammation, those can make it harder to lose weight. Those are also bidirectional, and make it harder to lose weight, but also make it, a lot, a lot of impact from the weight as well. And then eating disorders is another thing.

So, diagnosing binge eating disorder is a common thing in my clinic.

Other Medical Contributors to Weight 3:18

And when we treat that either with cognitive behavioral therapy, nutrition support, and medications, we really can see people have a huge transformation in their relationship with their weight, their body and food. So eating disorders is another underlying cause. Hypothyroidism is another common cause, of weight struggles. And that needs to be optimized in order to support health. And it's really quite a long list. And that's why you'll see many different experts on this summit who talk about that relationship, things that weight makes worse.

But also if we treat can help you lose weight. We also know that having excess weight can be a risk factor for many diseases. And so that also wraps in with this underlying causes is what are we trying to treat here. Are we trying to prevent a heart attack which is the number one killer of both men and women in the US? Are we trying to prevent diabetes? Are we trying to improve fertility? So we have a whole host of experts

Health Risks and Overall Goals 4:18

that are going to talk about those related disease states, and how losing weight can help you prevent those as well. So again, a really important part of my approach is not just focusing on weight loss, but trying to figure out why do you struggle and what other medical problems can we treat or prevent through weight loss. So as I always say, I help people lose weight to treat and prevent medical problems so they can live longer and live better. And that's really the approach of looking at these underlying conditions.

What are these conditions related to your weight that are making it hard to lose weight? And what are these conditions related to weight that may be increasing your long term health risks? And when we're really able to get to the bottom of that, we can truly improve your overall health.