Weight Loss

October 9, 2017

Many of our patients who don’t usually partake in the practice of medicine other than their regularly required annual physician visits, would be appalled to learn the truth about the lack of nutrition training in medical school.

Our A4M fellows and faculty assure us every day that most traditional physicians practicing medicine in our country today are not given ample time or training on nutrition during their many years as students.

Globally, studies indicate that more than two billion adults and children across the globe are overweight or obese, and suffer from related health problems. This number equates to one-third of the world’s population.

The saddest part about this topic is that our own country is suffering from an obesity epidemic where more than one in three U.S. adults and one in six children (ages 2-19) are obese; this data includes that one in 11 young children (ages 2-5) are obese.1

Obesity is one of the leading causes of preventable death and as physicians, we would be lying if we did not say these numbers do not reflect in our practices.

How many obese patients do you see? How many of your patients are overweight?

Do you feel fully equipped to discuss eating, diets, and exercise with them?

We know from experience that this is not an easy topic. Harvard Medical School published an article on habits to encourage weight loss that we have shared with our community. It brings to light the fact that “eating healthier” is not so much the mystery here; it is more the changing of a person’s everyday habits that make them able to combat being overweight.

Eating slower, consuming more even-sized meals and making the time to prepare healthier meals while at home were among the likely habit-changing suggestions in this article2. A daily weigh-in on a digital scale was suggested as more effective than calorie tracking since evidence of weight loss on an actual scale proved to remove weight and keep it off. But the most surprising habit listed was regarding sleep.

Sleep, another topic we have covered in our education at A4M was classified as a habit tied to weight loss. Studies show that the shorter time someone sleeps, the more at risk they are to becoming obese or overweight. Recent articles suggest that these people are up eating…and those same people who are up and eating, are not eating kale and nuts. They are eating the things that hurt like ice cream, chips, and cookies.

If you want to learn more about fighting weight and helping your overweight patients with their related health issues, we can help. We will provide you with proven clinical strategies that can be used to optimize your patients’ health and provide diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic interventions. Visit us this December at our 25th Annual World Congress and get actively involved in fighting this epidemic and ultimately changing your patients’ lives.

1National Center for Health Statistics. NCHS Fact Sheet: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/factsheets/factsheet_nhanes.pdf. January 2016. Accessed October 4, 2017.
2Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School. 5 Habits that Foster Weight Loss. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/5-habits-that-foster-weight-loss? February 2017. Accessed October 4, 2017.

No More Pricks: Trading blood tests for tear tests?

October 2, 2017

Here at A4M, we are all about moving forward into the future of medical care. How many years have we been drawing blood to detect health and nutritional deficiencies in our makeup?
Too many.

We are actually starting to see that this may now change. We may have figured out that we may not need to be pricked by a needle to get tested.
A study now suggests that tears could be considered an alternate source of diagnostic fluid for testing for nutritional deficiencies.

Researchers from Michigan Technological University in partnership with UP Health System -Portage in Michigan have determined that tears are not only easier to produce than blood, but tears are also easier to work with when analyzing as a fluid.

Maryam Khaksari, study author and research specialist at Michigan Tech, said studies show that people with nutritional deficiencies blink more than those without deficiencies. “We hypothesized that nutrients are transferred to the living cells of your cornea through your tears,” Khaksari said. “We would like to translate the information we have for blood to tears. In this paper, we did show that there are correlations between vitamin concentrations in tears and blood – so it’s possible.”

The researchers involved in this study retrieved samples of both tears and blood from 15 different families that each had a four-month-old child. The samples taken from a child and a parent were then compared between tears and blood, infants and their parents, and against self-reported dietary intakes.

Multiple vitamins were all detected in both the tears and blood, and although Vitamin A was only found in the blood samples, researchers claim this is only the beginning. This project is the first step which proved vitamins are detectable in tears, and that they do correlate with blood levels. “Our goal was to seek the viability of establishing measurable vitamin concentrations in tears for nutritional assessments,” Khaksari said. “Your body cannot manufacture vitamins, and vitamins reflect available food sources in your body. That’s what makes them good indicators of nutritional health.”

We fully understand that this is only the start of the discussion regarding the trade of blood for tears, but we are very excited to follow this research and report back to all of our followers that there may be a day where we don’t have to have a needle draw blood to determine everything!

Mental Illness & Physical Disease

September 21, 2017

At A4M/MMI, we believe that all of the body’s systems are interrelated, and function through a consistent mind-body connection. Indeed, recent research indicates that the intimate ties between mental health and physical disease represent a dual diagnosis rooted in concrete, tangible evidence.

While doctors once believed that the link between mental and physical health problems was purely behavioral, scientists are now learning that “seemingly unrelated psychological and physical issues” may have close connections and correlations. There is a physiological change that additionally occurs: a new study that focuses on the physical and mental health of people afflicted with psoriasis, a dermatological autoimmune disease that results in red, flaky scales and patches on the skin’s surface, demonstrates that depression is common among these people, due to social stigma and discomfort.

Still, researchers also found that patients with psoriasis and a diagnosis of depression were 37% more likely to develop psoriatic arthritis—a complication that involves joint inflammation—than those without depression. Authors articulate that depression can spur behaviors that act as triggers for the condition, or exacerbate pre-existing causes. For those with a genetic predisposition to the disease, factors such as poor nutrition and physical inactivity can negatively impact the severity of the symptoms. Yet the association still held when authors controlled for many of these behaviors, which suggests that the root cause of the depression has a direct influence on the development of psoriatic arthritis.

Research over the last several decades has demonstrated that inflammation in the body—one of the primary triggers of psoriatic arthritis—can also drive the development of depression. The processes are now known to be similar to those that drive some physical illnesses, as well. Moreover, elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol may link psychological and physical conditions, as high levels of cortisol areas associated with depression and can likewise contribute to an inflammatory state—and conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

Previous studies have confirmed the link between depression and an increased risk of conditions like stroke and diabetes, while a study last year found that depressed mood was as strong a predictor of heart disease as other well-known risk factors, like high cholesterol and obesity. Other mental-health diagnoses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, have synonymously been associated with increased risks of physical health problems.

The silver lining, however, is that treating depression and other comorbid mental health conditions may help improve overall physical symptoms, or reduce the risk of future problems—particularly if doing so can ultimately lower cortisol levels, and other markers of inflammation. Correspondingly, treating physical illnesses and controlling symptoms can help improve general mental health.