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8 months, 3 weeks ago

Laparoscopic Hernia Surgery

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
Directory:
Weight Management
Tags:
best hernia surgeons
best hernia surgeons near me
hernia surgeons
hernia surgery
laparoscopic hernia surgery

Even though you may have become accustomed to dealing with the discomfort associated with a hernia, that’s no reason to suffer. You can get help by searching for experienced hernia surgeons near me. Additionally, if left untreated, you may develop serious complications that could cause an emergency medical situation. Instead, take the safe, effective route. When you look for the best hernia surgeons near me, call on the doctors at Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA. They offer a minimally invasive, low-risk procedure called laparoscopic hernia surgery that can end your suffering for good. Don’t postpone relief; call today for an appointment.
Hernia surgery done laparoscopically is a minimally invasive technique for hernia repair. A hernia occurs when an organ or other structure herniates, which means it pushes through muscle or tissue that is supposed to support it, producing a bulge. Most hernias happen in the abdominal area, where they may be mildly irritating or extremely painful.

Hernias can happen to people of any age to both men and women. They can develop gradually or appear suddenly. When you need expert hernia repair surgery, the doctors at Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA (ASBNJ) are among the best hernia surgeons. They serve patients in northern New Jersey, southern New York and eastern Pennsylvania.

Read more: https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/general-surgery-new-jersey/hernia-surgery/

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics

81 Veronica Avenue, Suite 205,
Somerset, NJ 08873
Office Tel # (732) 640–5316
Fax 800–689–2361
Web Address: https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/

https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/contact/somerset-nj-office/ 

Our location on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/Z4oK7ZV4xGXSm6VHA

https://plus.codes/87G7FGF4+WP

Nearby Locations:

Somerset | Hillsborough | Franklin Park | North Brunswick | New Brunswick | Piscataway
08873 | 08844 | 08823 | 08902 | 08901| 08854

Working Hours :
Monday: 9AM–5PM
Tuesday: 10AM–5PM
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 9AM–6PM
Friday: 9AM–4PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

Payment: cash, check, credit cards.

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8 months, 3 weeks ago

Gastric Banding Surgery

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
Directory:
Weight Management
Tags:
gastric band
gastric banding surgery
gastric band surgery
gastric bypass revision
gastric bypass surgery

Obesity leads to a host of physical and psychological complications. In addition to low self-esteem, you could be in danger of developing or worsening high blood pressure, digestive issues, back pain, and joint problems. You don’t have to suffer due to the failure of past dieting techniques. The weight loss experts at Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA are here to help with safe, effective surgical and non-surgical treatments. Although gastric banding is no longer a main stay in our bariatric repertoire, it still has value in certain situations. It’s a minimally invasive procedure that allows you to restrict your caloric intake while developing a healthier lifestyle with the help of your professional weight loss team. Call today to find out if it’s a good solution for you.

What is Gastric Banding?

Placement of a laparoscopic adjustable gastric band is one of the safe and effective. It was first performed in 1978. The initial procedures used a non-adjustable band around the top part of the stomach to divide it into two pouches. Unfortunately, the pouches gradually dilated, and the operation proved ineffective for long-term weight loss.

By 1986, scientists had developed an adjustable band lined with an inflatable balloon, which proved much more effective at reducing weight for patients. If you’re considering having an adjustable gastric lap band placed, the surgical practice at Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA (ASBNJ) enjoys a world-class reputation. Their commitment to quality patient care is second to none, and they have six convenient locations in central New Jersey to serve you.

Our practice uses the LAP-BAND ™ gastric banding system. We implant two devices in the abdomen: a silicone band and an injection port. The silicone band is placed around the upper part of the stomach, creating two connected chambers of the stomach. The injection port is attached to the abdominal wall underneath the skin and connected to the lap-band with soft, thin tubing. The lap-band is adjustable and several adjustments will be made periodically after the procedure is completed to assure the appropriate level of restriction. The physician uses a needle to inject saline solution into your band through the port, increasing the amount of restriction provided by the band, which in turn can help you feel fuller.

Read more: https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/bariatric-surgery/gastric-banding-surgery-new-jersey/

 

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
81 Veronica Avenue, Suite 205,
Somerset, NJ 08873
Office Tel # (732) 640–5316
Fax 800–689–2361
Web Address:
https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/

https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/contact/somerset-nj-office/ 

Our location on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/Z4oK7ZV4xGXSm6VHA

https://plus.codes/87G7FGF4+WP

Nearby Locations:

Somerset | Hillsborough | Franklin Park | North Brunswick | New Brunswick | Piscataway
08873 | 08844 | 08823 | 08902 | 08901| 08854

Working Hours :
Monday: 9AM–5PM
Tuesday: 10AM–5PM
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 9AM–6PM
Friday: 9AM–4PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

Payment: cash, check, credit cards.

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8 months, 3 weeks ago

Advantages of Services in Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
Directory:
Weight Management
Tags:
bariatric medicine doctor
bariatric medicine doctors
bariatric surgeon
bariatric surgeons
gastric bypass revision
gastric bypass surgery
mini gastric bypass
weight loss surgeon

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA (ASBNJ) is a multi-location medical practice specializing in surgical and non-surgical bariatric medicine, hernia repair and acid reflux solutions. From their New Jersey offices, these bariatric specialists serve patients in southern New York, northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania for:
Weight loss
Bariatric issues
Hernias
Esophageal diseases
Acid reflux problems

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
81 Veronica Avenue, Suite 205,
Somerset, NJ 08873
Office Tel # (732) 640–5316
Fax 800–689–2361
Web Address:
https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/

https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/contact/somerset-nj-office/ 

Our location on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/Z4oK7ZV4xGXSm6VHA

https://plus.codes/87G7FGF4+WP

Nearby Locations:

Somerset | Hillsborough | Franklin Park | North Brunswick | New Brunswick | Piscataway
08873 | 08844 | 08823 | 08902 | 08901| 08854

Working Hours :
Monday: 9AM–5PM
Tuesday: 10AM–5PM
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 9AM–6PM
Friday: 9AM–4PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

Payment: cash, check, credit cards.

 

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joined 8 months, 3 weeks ago

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics

Dr. Ragui Sadek, MD
Directory:
Weight Management
Expertise:
Bariatric surgery
Surgeon

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA (ASBNJ) is a multi-location medical practice specializing in surgical and non-surgical bariatric medicine, hernia repair and acid reflux solutions. From their New Jersey offices, these bariatric medicine doctors serve patients in southern New York, northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania for:

Weight loss
Bariatric issues
Hernias
Esophageal diseases
Acid reflux problems
Staffed by some of the most respected doctors in the region and the entire country, ASBNJ has built a practice with the latest equipment and most up-to-date techniques. The staff welcomes you to the practice as family, giving you the attention you desire while answering all your questions. The celebrated medical staff specialize in:

Weight loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery
Gastric bypass revision, also called gastrojejunostomy
Laparoscopic surgery, or simply laparoscopy
Best hernia surgeons near me

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA was built from the ground up to accommodate bariatric procedures. Established as a state-of-the-art facility, it’s one of the safest bariatric surgery programs in the tri-state region. The staff includes everything you may need during your treatment. ASBNJ maintains five offices in Somerset, NJ. Find the closest bariatric center to you in:

East Brunswick
Edison
Marlboro
Princeton
Somerset, the main office
If you’re trying to lose weight through bariatric surgery, you deserve to be nurtured through the process. Each of the bariatric surgery centers is equipped with cutting-edge technology and staffed with compassionate caring professionals. Every office is staffed with all the trained specialists you may need during your treatment. They all work together to provide award-winning patient care.

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA is a premier bariatric center in northern New Jersey. Performing weight loss, esophageal and hernia procedures, the internationally recognized specialists help you reach your health goals in an optimal way. We dedicated to continuing education and refinement of the most cutting edge surgical techniques in the field, punctuated by Dr. Sadek’s experience and development of safety protocols leading to one of the lowest complication rates in the Northeast. This dedication to quality care has changed the lives of thousands of patients throughout the NY/NJ area. This bariatric center, with offices near you, performs teen weight loss procedures — as one of the few places in the country to treat teens for obesity. So call today for the appointment that can change your life.

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
81 Veronica Avenue, Suite 205,
Somerset, NJ 08873
Office Tel # (732) 640–5316
Fax 800–689–2361
Web Address:
https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/

https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/contact/somerset-nj-office/ 

Our location on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/Z4oK7ZV4xGXSm6VHA

https://plus.codes/87G7FGF4+WP

Nearby Locations:

Somerset | Hillsborough | Franklin Park | North Brunswick | New Brunswick | Piscataway
08873 | 08844 | 08823 | 08902 | 08901| 08854

Working Hours :
Monday: 9AM–5PM
Tuesday: 10AM–5PM
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 9AM–6PM
Friday: 9AM–4PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

Payment: cash, check, credit cards.

Our social links:
https://www.facebook.com/AdvancedSurgicalAndBariatricsOfNJ/

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Find us at: https://www.vitadox.com/practice/somerset-nj-08873/advanced-surgical-bariatrics/VMCiQnhtfGkhsYo9RHg5ab

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8 months, 3 weeks ago

Gastric Bypass Surgery in New Jersey

Dr. Ragui Sadek, MD
Directory:
Weight Management
Tags:
gastric bypass revision
gastric bypass surgery
mini gastric bypass

After you’ve tried countless diets, joined a few gyms or visited alternative medicine providers, you’re ready to listen to a licensed doctor about how to lose weight. Turn to the weight loss surgeons at Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics of NJ, PA for advice on how you can successfully reach your weight loss goals. Gastric bypass surgery — considered the gold standard of weight loss treatments — is a safe but effective form of surgery that often results in drastic weight loss. Moreover, you can expect healthier outcomes for any underlying conditions you may have, such as high blood pressure, reduced activity levels, low energy, sleep disorders, back pain and cardiovascular disease. Contact our experts weight loss doctors today to find out how you can take control of your eating and finally lose weight.

When you’re struggling with obesity and haven’t been able to lose weight through diet and exercise, it’s time to consider gastric bypass surgery. Gastric bypass is a common form of bariatric surgery that involves creating a small pouch from your stomach. Then your bariatric surgeon connects this pouch to part of your small intestine. After this procedure, the food you eat passes through the new pouch, bypassing part of your stomach and the first section of your intestines.

The gastric bypass procedure is also called Roux-en-Y because it was developed by Swiss surgeon César Roux, who described it with a stick-figure Y. Although normally an irreversible procedure, gastric bypass surgery can successfully help you lose weight. The Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass creates a smaller stomach. This gastric bypass weight loss occurs because the pouch restricts the amount of food you’re able to eat, so you get that full feeling sooner. The procedure also forces your digestive system to absorb fewer calories from the food.

Read more: https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/bariatric-surgery/gastric-bypass-surgery-new-jersey/

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics

81 Veronica Avenue, Suite 205,
Somerset, NJ 08873
Office Tel # (732) 640–5316
Fax 800–689–2361
Web Address:
https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/

https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/contact/somerset-nj-office/ 

Our location on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/Z4oK7ZV4xGXSm6VHA

https://plus.codes/87G7FGF4+WP

Nearby Locations:

Somerset | Hillsborough | Franklin Park | North Brunswick | New Brunswick | Piscataway
08873 | 08844 | 08823 | 08902 | 08901| 08854

Working Hours:
Monday: 9AM–5PM
Tuesday: 10AM–5PM
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 9AM–6PM
Friday: 9AM–4PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

Payment: cash, check, credit cards.

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joined 8 months, 3 weeks ago

Dr. Ragui Sadek, MD

Surgeon
Directory:
Weight Management
Expertise:
Bariatric Surgery

Dr. Ragui Sadek’s career has been one of significant experience and distinction. Dr. Sadek is a premier surgeon in the New York and New Jersey area. A Clinical Assistant Professor of surgery at RWJ Medical School and the Director of bariatric surgery program at RWJ University Hospital, Dr. Sadek has established a state-of-the-art and one of the safest bariatric surgery programs in the state. His program has a complication rate far below the national average, while providing a cutting edge variety of laparoscopic, robotic, and bariatric surgery techniques.

Dr. Sadek initiated the Bariatric Surgery program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital where, prior to his arrival, weight loss surgery was not performed. He is now the senior most minimally invasive bariatric surgeon. Dr. Sadek assumed a leadership role as the Director of Bariatric Center of excellence at RWJUH and oversees all of the care rendered to the hospital’s bariatric patients, including anesthesia, radiology, floor and preoperative nursing, and myriad of consulting services.

Dr. Sadek has completed his residency and an advanced laparoscopic and bariatric surgery fellowship at SIUH. Later, he went on to finish a surgical critical care and trauma fellowship at UMDNJ Newark campus. Dr. Sadek joined a private practice in 2006 and performed a wide variety of advanced laparoscopic and bariatric procedures. More than three thousand advanced surgical procedures later, he has established a strong patient satisfaction rate and a solid reputation among the surgical community.

Advanced Surgical & Bariatrics
81 Veronica Avenue, Suite 205,
Somerset, NJ 08873
Office Tel # (732) 640–5316
Fax 800–689–2361
Web Address:
https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/

https://www.bariatricsurgerynewjersey.com/contact/somerset-nj-office/ 

Our location on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/Z4oK7ZV4xGXSm6VHA

https://plus.codes/87G7FGF4+WP

Nearby Locations:

Somerset | Hillsborough | Franklin Park | North Brunswick | New Brunswick | Piscataway
08873 | 08844 | 08823 | 08902 | 08901| 08854

Working Hours:
Monday: 9AM–5PM
Tuesday: 10AM–5PM
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 9AM–6PM
Friday: 9AM–4PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

Payment: cash, check, credit cards.

Find us at: https://www.vitadox.com/doctor/somerset-nj-08873/ragui-sadek-md/F666CbpjZXfKd5Ua6TF4oK


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5 years, 6 months ago

Eat like Greeks, live healthier lives and save our planet

HealthPad
Directory:
Weight Management
Tags:
commentary
eating disorders
food insecurity
healthy diet
healthy lifestyle
low fat diets
Mediterranean diet
NCDs
obesity
  • Each year unhealthy diets are linked to 11m deaths worldwide a global study concludes
  • Red and processed meat not only cause disease and premature death from chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) but also put the planet at unnecessary risk
  • Evidence suggests that the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of NCDs and is better for the Planet

Eat like Greeks, live healthier lives and save our planet

 
Findings of an international research project about the relationship between diet and chronic diseases are reported in a paper entitled, “Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries 1990-2017. A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017”, which is published in the April 2019 edition of The Lancet. The paper suggests that millions of people throughout the world consume an unhealthy diet comprised of  too much processed meat, sodium and sugar and too little plant-based foods, such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains and nuts. This results in a significant increase in the prevalence of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as coronary heart disease, cancer and diabetes and  each year causes some 11m avoidable deaths worldwide - 22% of all adult deaths: 10m from cardiovascular disease, 913,000 from cancer and some 339,000 from type-2 diabetes. According to the paper’s authors, “A suboptimal diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risks globally, including tobacco smoking, highlighting the urgent need for improving human diet across nations”.
 
In this Commentary
 
This Commentary reviews evidence of recent large-scale epidemiology studies, which suggest that “you are what you eat”.  Not only do unhealthy diets cause ill health and premature death for millions, they also harm the environment and push the Earth beyond its planetary boundaries. All the studies we describe conclude that we know the answer to this vast and escalating health problem: eat like Greeks or indeed the Japanese. Notwithstanding, changing the way populations collectively eat is a massive challenge facing governments, healthcare systems and individuals.
 
The Global Burden of Disease project
 
The Lancet paper’s findings described above are based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) enterprise, which is one of the world’s largest scientific collaborative research projects, which was started in the early 1990s by the World Bank to measure the impact of disability and death from hundreds of diseases worldwide. Over the past two decades its work has grown, and the endeavour has become institutionalized at the World Health Organization (WHO). Today, the GBD project is an international consortium of more than 3,600 researchers, its findings are updated annually and they influence health policy throughout the world.
 
Red meat and bowel cancer
 
Findings of a more narrowly focussed but nonetheless significant study, published in the April 2019 edition of the International Journal of Epidemiology warn that red-processed meat consumption is linked with bowel cancer.  According to Tim Key, the study’s co-author, Professor of Epidemiology and Deputy Director at Oxford University's Cancer Epidemiology Unit, “Results strongly suggest that people who eat red and processed meat four or five times a week have a higher risk of developing bowel cancer than those who eat red and processed meat less than twice a week . . . . There’s substantial evidence that red and processed meat are linked to bowel cancer and the World Health Organization classifies processed meat as ‘carcinogenic’ and red meat as ‘probably carcinogenic’”. Notwithstanding, Key warns that, “Diet studies are problematic because those who take part often either forget what they have eaten or fail to tell the truth”. Key also suggests that, “Most previous research [on diet and cancer] looked at people in the 1990s or earlier and diets have changed significantly since then”.
 
Chronic non-communicable diseases
 
Chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) are largely caused by humans and are therefore preventable. Notwithstanding, they account for more than 70% of all deaths globally and emergent NCDs pose significant systemic challenges for both nation states and individuals. Forty percent of all adults in the world are overweight and 1.4bn suffer from hypertension: both critical risk factors of NCDs. In 2016, 18m people died from cardiovascular disease (CVD), representing 31% of all global deaths. In the US an estimated 92m adults are living with CVD. By 2030, 44% of the US adult population is projected to have some form of CVD. There are around 7m people living with heart and circulatory disease in the UK. Worldwide some 0.5bn people have diabetes and in 2018 there were 17m new cases of cancer worldwide. Although there are some encouraging signs associated with the slowing of the prevalence rates of NCDs globally, prevalence of NCDs is expected to rise because of population growth and aging, misaligned healthcare policies and institutional inertia.
 
The paradox of food insecurity and obesity
 
Paradoxically, food scarcity and obesity are both forms of malnutrition and represent a vast and escalating burden on the worlds limited and diminishing resources. This is because food insecurity can contribute to people being overweight and obese. Nutritious fresh foods often tend to be expensive, so when household resources for food become scarce, people choose less expensive foods that are often high in calories and low in nutrients. As a result, adult obesity rates continue to rise each year, from 11.7% in 2012 to 13.2% in 2016. In 2017 the World Health Organization estimated that more than one in eight adults, or more than 672m people in the world, were obese and 2bn were classified as overweight. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank based in Washington DC, US, suggests that worldwide each year, "Malnutrition costs US$3.5trn, with overweight- and obesity-related NCDs, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, adding US$2trn”.
 
The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet and Health
 
Not only do unhealthy diets result in NCDs and premature death, but they also harm the environment. The dual aspects of unhealthy diets causing disease and harming the planet are described in research conducted by the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet and Health, and reported in the January 2019 edition of  The Lancet.
EAT is an independent non-profit organisation based in Oslo, Norway, dedicated to food-system reform, which collaborated with The Lancet. The report took 3-years to complete and brought together 37 world-renowned scientists from 16 countries with expertise in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, food systems, economics and political governance; and tasked them with reaching a consensus that defines a sustainable “healthy planetary diet”, which the authors suggest approximates a Mediterranean diet, see below.

The EAT-Lancet research, financed by the Wellcome Trust,analysed the diets of people in 195 countries using survey data, as well as sales data and household expenditure data to estimate the impact of unhealthy diets on the risk of death and morbidity from NCDs. The Commission’s authors provide a comprehensive picture of the consumption of 15 dietary factors across nations and quantify the potential impact of suboptimal intake of each dietary component on NCD mortality and morbidity among 195 countries. Also, researchers calculate mortality related to other risk factors,such as smoking and drug use, at the global level.

 

You might also be interested in:

Obesity: is processed food the new tobacco? 
Criticism of the EAT-Lancet Commission
 
The EAT-Lancet Commission’s report has its critics. One is the UK’s National Farmers’ Union whose Vice President Stuart Roberts said, “Scientific communities agree that red meat plays a vital role in a healthy, balanced diet as a rich source of essential nutrients, minerals, amino acids and protein. It is overly simplistic to target one food group for a significant reduction in consumption, and it ignores its medically accepted role as a key part of a healthy, balanced diet   . . . It is clear that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and British farmers are continuing to take action. A combination of policies and practises will be needed to enable farmers to meet their ambitions, but we must not forget the impact of a changing climate on food production”.
 
Benefits of red meat
 
Roberts is right to point out that red meat has health benefits. Heme iron, which is found in red meat (also in poultry, seafood and fish) is easily absorbed by your body and is a significant source of your dietary iron. Red meat also supplies you with vitamin B12 and zinc. The former is required for red blood cell formation, neurological function and DNA synthesis, and the latter helps stimulate the activity of at least 100 different enzymes and helps to keep your immune system working effectively. Further, red meat provides protein, which helps to build your bones and muscles. People have been eating meat for millennia and have developed digestive systems well equipped to handle it.

Notwithstanding, the overwhelming majority of red meat consumed in the developed world today is processed: raised in a factory environment, fed grain-based feed and given growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics and some animals, after being slaughtered, are further treated with nitrates, preservatives and various chemicals. The findings of all three studies described above demonstrate the harm of eating too much red and processed meat and stress the health and environmental benefits of a Mediterranean diet.
 
An urgent challenge
 
According to the EAT-Lancet Commission’s authors, “Providing healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an urgent and pressing challenge”. As the global population continues to grow - projected to reach 10bn by 2050 - and become wealthier, there is expected to be a concomitant increase in unhealthy diets comprised of red meat, processed food and sugar. To address this vast and escalating challenge, populations will need to combine significant dietary changes with enhanced food production and reduced food waste.
 
The impact of food waste
 
Before broaching some of the challenges associated with changing the way we eat collectively let us briefly describe the magnitude and effect of food wastage. According to the United Nation’s (UN) 1.3bn tonnes of food are wasted every year, which is about 33% of the total produced. The cost of global food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$990bn and yet some 800m people worldwide do not get enough to eat and 2bn people are overweight.
 
Further, food wastage is estimated to release the equivalent of 3.3bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. The total volume of water used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted (250km³) is equivalent to three times the volume of Lake Geneva. Similarly, 1.4bn hectares of land - 28% of the world's agricultural area - is used to produce food that is lost or wasted. And agriculture is responsible for a majority of threats to at-risk plant and animal species tracked by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 
 
Changing what we eat and how we produce food will save lives and the planet
 
According to Alan Dangour, Professor in Food and Nutrition for Global Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), “The EAT-Lancet Commission’s analysis demonstrates that shifts in our diets can have enormous beneficial effects on health and also substantially reduce our impacts on the environment.  This significant ‘win-win’ for health and the environment is not a new finding, but this analysis, which for the first time defines environmental boundaries for the food system, is the most advanced ever conducted”.
 
In a similar vein, Tara Garnett, a contributor to the EAT-Lancet Commission and a principal investigator of another research project on the future of food, also suggests that there’s nothing new in the Commission’s report but its fundamental message is that, “We’re not going to address our environmental problems unless we address the problems caused by the food system and we’re not going to address the problems caused by the food system unless we shift the way we eat collectively and globally”.
 
Rebalancing unhealthy diets is a significant challenge
 
Changing how we eat collectively, which Garnett and others suggest is necessary to reduce NCDs and enhance our environment, is not going to be easy. This is because it would involve cutting by half our consumption of red meat, processed food and sugar, and doubling our consumption of vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts. For people living in the US and UK it would be even more challenging because the EAT-Lancet Commission ranks the US 43rd and the UK 23rd for their respective unhealthy diets out of the 195 nations in its study. It is suggested that in order to adopt a healthy diet Americans would need to eat 84% less red meat and six times more beans and lentils, and British people would have to eat 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds.

Countries with the lowest rates of diet-related deaths are Israel, France, Spain and Japan. The highest rates are reported to be found in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and the Marshall Islands. According to the Commission’s authors a Mediterranean-type-diet, “is what we should all be eating if we are concerned about our health and that of the planet”: it lowers the incidences of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, enables more environmentally helpful use of land and reduces carbon emissions.
 
The Mediterranean diet
 
The Mediterranean diet has been around for millennia and tends to be more of a lifestyle than a diet. It entails significantly lower amounts of beef, dairy products, sugar, soft drinks, pastries and processed foods; higher amounts of fish, fruit, nuts and salads, and no pasta, French fries and pastries. Unlike fashionable commercial diets associated with the weight management market, the Mediterranean diet does not have a set of specific rules that focus on losing weight, but instead emphasises eating fresh food over a lifetime. Also, the Mediterranean diet has been well studied. Research suggests that it is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease and cardiovascular mortality because of its significantly lower amounts of oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, (the "bad" cholesterol) which is more likely to build up deposits in your arteries. Other benefits include reduced incidence of cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Further, women who follow a Mediterranean diet have a reduced risk of breast cancer.
 
The PREDIMED study
 
Findings of a landmark clinical trial, entitled “Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet”, was published in the June 2013 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Popularly known as the PREDIMED study (Prevencion con Dieta Mediterranea), it tested the impact of two Mediterranean diets on cardiovascular risk. The first included a Mediterranean diet plus 30 grams of mixed nuts per day and the second was a Mediterranean diet plus at least four tablespoons a day of extra-virgin olive oil. The two diets were then compared to a low-fat diet, which is popularly advocated and pursued in the US and UK and among other developed nations and discourages the consumption of any high-fat items such as butter, cheese, oil, meats and pastries.
 
The low-fat diet
 
In the 1960s low-fat diets as opposed to high-fat, high-cholesterol diets were considered to promote heart health. By the late 1980s and early 1990s the low-fat diet was advocated by doctors, policy makers, the food industry and the media although there was no hard evidence to demonstrate it prevented heart disease and promoted weight loss. Notwithstanding, the low-fat-diet became an important part of the large and rapidly growing global weight management market, which is valued at some US$169bn and projected to grow at a CAGR of 2.4% and reach a value US$279bn by 2023. Interestingly, in the 80s and 90s, as the low-fat diet became an institution in the US and UK so the prevalence of overweight and obesity increased. Only recently has the low-fat diet been challenged as scientific evidence about fats increased.
 
A significant study with some methodological challenges
 
The PREDIMED study involved 7,447 people between 55 and 80 who were free from heart disease, came from 11 study centres across Spain and were randomly assigned to one of the three diets for five years. Findings suggested that the Mediterranean diet significantly reduced the risk of heart attack, stroke and cardio-vascular mortality compared to the low-fat diet. However, researchers discovered flaws with the study’s methodology and withdraw their findings. Most significantly, not all participants were randomly assigned to their diet and this could have influenced their findings.
 
Revised study of the Mediterranean diet
 
Researchers adjusted their methodology for its "irregularities in the randomization procedures" and published “new” findings in the June 2018 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), which confirmed the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet for adults at high risk for heart disease and found that the Mediterranean diet, plus olive oil or nuts, reduced risk for heart events by 30% compared to a low-fat diet. Lead author Miguel Ángel Martínez-González suggested that only about 10% of participants were affected in their earlier study reported in 2013, and their 2018 analysis made researchers, "More convinced than ever of the robustness of the protection by the Mediterranean diet against cardiovascular disease”. According to Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the NEJM, "Medical professionals and their patients can use the republished information with confidence". While reaction to the study’s initial findings was disappointing, experts are encouraged by the adjusted findings, which confirm the heart-health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, particularly in adults at high risk for heart disease. Notwithstanding, experts emphasise the significance of sustaining a healthy diet over time.
  
The health benefits of the Japanese diet
 
The Mediterranean diet is not the only diet, which has proven to have significant health benefits. The Japanese diet, which is low in calories and saturated fat and high in nutrients, especially phytonutrients such as antioxidants and flavonoids, found in different coloured vegetables, also has considerable health benefits. Findings of two studies; one published in the April 2017 edition of PLOS.ONE, and another published in the March 2016 edition of the British Medical Journal demonstrate that, closer adherence to a Japanese diet resulted in a significantly lower risk of death from NCDs and in particular from cardiovascular disease or stroke. Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country: 90 years for women and 84 for men. Okinawa, in southernmost Japan, has the highest number of centenarians in the world as well as the lowest risk of age-related diseases such as cancer and heart disease. There are nearly 800 centenarians in Okinawa, which has a population of 1,368,000. The diet of the Okinawan people has been little influenced by the dietary changes influenced by western culture, which also have been seen in more urban Japan.
 
Takeaways
 
All the research findings we describe in this Commentary confirm the adage that, “You are what you eat”. Nutrients from the food you eat provide support for all the cells in your body, which have different “shelf lives”. For example, your skin cells live for about a month and your red blood cells for about four months. So, your body is constantly regenerating new cells to replace those that have “expired”. The health of your new cells is partly determined by how well you have been eating. A diet high on processed red meat and low on nutrients does not help in this regeneration process. But a nutrient rich, whole food diet can help to build your cells so that they work better to help you recover from common illnesses and the wear-and-tear of everyday life and make you less susceptible to disease.
 
Although our concern about healthy eating has intensified in recent years, the phrase, “you are what you eat” is not new. In 1826 Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es" [Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are]. However, the phrase did not emerge in English until the 1920s when nutritionist Victor Lindlahr, who believed that food controls health, developed the Catabolic Diet. According to Lindlahr, "Ninety per cent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat". And in 1942, he published a book entitled, “You Are What You Eat: how to win and keep health with diet”. Eat like the Greeks, live healthier lives and save our planet.
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6 years, 8 months ago

Excess weight and type-2 diabetes linked to 16% of cancers in the UK

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  • 16% of cancers in the UK are linked to excess weight and type-2 diabetes (T2DM)
  • 62% of adults are overweight or obese in England
  • 4m people are living with T2DM in the UK and another 12m are at increased risk of T2DM
  • Prevalence rates of both obesity and T2DM are rising
  • Ineffective prevention initiatives should be replaced with effective ones if we are to dent the vast and escalating burden of obesity, T2DM and related cancers
  • Public health officials, clinicians and charities need to abandon ineffective inertia projects embrace innovation and look to international best practice 

 
Excess weight and type-2 diabetes linked to 16% of cancers in the UK
 
 
Being overweight and living with type-2 diabetes (T2DM) is a potentially deadly combination because it significantly increases your risk of cancer and contributes to the projected increase in cancer cases and deaths in the UK. Findings of a study published in the February 2018 edition of The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology suggest that a substantial number of UK cancer cases are linked to a combination of excess body mass index (BMI) and T2DM, which here we refer to as diabesity. To lower the growing burden of cancer associated with diabesity, more effective prevention strategies will be required. To achieve this, clinicians, public health officials and charities will need to reappraise their current projects, innovate, and learn from international best practice. 
 
BMI, obesity and T2DM defined
 
Body mass index (BMI) is a simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight and obesity in adults. It is a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in meters (kg/m2). Overweight is a BMI greater than or equal to 25; and obesity is a BMI greater than or equal to 30. T2DM is a long-term metabolic disorder characterized by high blood glucose (sugar), insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas, which is used by the body to manage glucose levels in the blood and helps the body to use glucose for energy.

 In this Commentary
 
This Commentary describes the findings of a study reported in a 2018 edition of The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, which suggests that current initiatives to prevent and reduce the burden of diabesity are ineffective. Previous Commentaries have described the Mexican Casalud and the Oklahoma City projects, which have successfully reduced obesity and type-2 diabetes (T2DM). These represent innovative international best practice, which have been largely gone unnoticed by the UK’S diabetes establishment. Also, we describe findings of a study published in the May 2017 edition of Scientific Reports, which suggests that although Google trend data can detect early signs of diabetes, they are underutilized by traditional diabetes surveillance models. The prevalence of diabesity in the UK is significant and growing so fast that public health officials, clinicians and charities will have to replace failing inertia projects with more effective ones if they are to dent the growing burden of cancer linked to a combination of obesity and T2DM.
 
The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology study
 
A comparative risk assessment study published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology was carried out by researchers from Imperial College London, Kent University and the World Health Organization. It suggests that in 2012, 5.6% of all cancers worldwide were linked to the combined effect of obesity and diabetes, which corresponded to about 0.8m new cancer cases. 25% of these account for liver cancer in men, and 38% account for endometrial cancer, which affects the lining of the womb in women.
 
Obesity T2DM and cancer
 
There is a close association between obesity and T2DM. The likelihood and severity of T2DM are closely linked with BMI. If you are obese your risk of T2DM is 7-times greater than someone with a healthy weight. If you are overweight your risk of T2DM is 3-times greater. Whilst it is known that the distribution of body fat is a significant determinant of increased risk of T2DM, the precise mechanism of association remains unclear. It is also uncertain why not all people who are obese develop T2DM and why not all people with T2DM are either overweight or obese. Also, the link between obesity and some cancers is well established. More recently, researchers have linked diabetes to several cancers, including liver, pancreatic and breast cancer. The 2018 Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology study described in this Commentary is the first time anyone has calculated the combined effect of excess BMI and T2DM on cancer worldwide.
 
Findings

According to the Lancet study’s findings, cancers diagnosed in 2012, which are linked to diabesity are almost twice as common in women (496,700 cases) as men (295,900 cases). The combination of excess BMI and T2DM risk factors in women accounts for the highest proportion of breast and endometrial cancer: about 30% and 38% respectively. In men, the combination accounts for the highest proportion of liver and colorectal cancers. Overall, the biggest proportion of cancers linked to diabesity is found in high income western nations, such as the UK (38.2% of 792,600 cancer cases diagnosed in 2012), followed by east and southeast Asia (24.1%). 16.4% of cases of cancer in men and 15% in women in high income western nations are linked to being overweight, compared to 2.7% and 3% respectively in south Asia. Researchers suggest that on current trends, the number of cancers linked to a combination of excess BMI and T2DM could increase by 30% by 2035, which would take the worldwide total of these cancers from 5.6% to 7.35%. 
Uneven prevalence of cancers resulting from diabesity

While cancers associated with diabesity are a relatively small percentage of the total - the global 5.6% masks wide national variations of cancer prevalence resulting from diabesity. For example, in high income western nations, such as the UK, 16% of cancers are linked to excess BMI and T2DM, which suggests a potentially significant trend. As known cancer risk factors such as smoking tobacco have declined in the UK and other wealthy nations, so diabesity has increased as a significant risk factor.
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According to Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard,of Imperial College London and lead author of the 2018 Lancet study, the prevalence of cancer linked to excess BMI and diabetes is, “particularly alarming when considering the high and increasing cost of cancer and metabolic diseases. As the prevalence of these cancer risk factors increases, clinical and public health efforts should focus on identifying optimal preventive and screening measures for whole populations and individual patients”.
 
Risks of cancer and their vast and escalating costs

Clinicians, public health officials and charities are mindful of the vast and escalating risks of excess BMI and T2DM on cancer. According to Diabetes UK, 4.5m people are living with diabetes in the UK, 90% of these have T2DM, and another 11.9m are at increased risk of T2DM. Research published in the May 2016 edition of the British Medical Journal reports that prevalent cases of T2DM in the UK more than doubled between 2000 and 2013: from 2.39% to 5.32%, while the number of incident cases increased more steadily.
 
According to a 2014 report by Public Health England entitled “Adult obesity and type-2 diabetes”, the direct annual economic cost of patient care for people living with T2DM in 2011 was £8.8bn; the indirect costs, such as lost production, were about £13bn, and prescribing for diabetes accounted for 9.3% of the total cost of prescribing in 2012-13. The Report concludes, “the rising prevalence of obesity in adults has led, and will continue to lead, to a rise in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. This is likely to result in increased associated health complications and premature mortality . . . Modelled projections indicate that NHS and wider costs to society associated with overweight, obesity and type 2 diabetes will rise dramatically in the next few decades”.
 
Preventing excess BMI and T2DM as a way to reduce the burden of cancer

Because of the increasing prevalence of diabesity clinicians, healthcare providers and charities have invested substantially in programs to prevent obesity and T2DM. Notwithstanding, the UK’s record of reducing the burden of these disorders is poor. According to the authors of The Lancet study, “Population-based strategies to prevent diabetes and high BMI have great potential impact … but have so far often failed.” Despite an annual NHS spend of £14bn on diabetes care, and over £20m spent annually by Diabetes UK  on “managing diabetes, transforming care, prevention, understanding and support”, over the past 10 years people with diabetes have increased by 60%.
 
Healthier You a national diabetes prevention program

Healthier You, a joint venture between NHS England, Public Health England and Diabetes UK was launched in 2016 and aims to deliver evidence-based behaviour change interventions at scale to people at high risk of T2DM to support them in reducing their risk. In December 2017, an interim analysis of the program’s performance was published in the journal Diabetic Medicine. Findings suggest that Healthier You has achieved higher than anticipated numbers of referrals: 49% as opposed to 40% projected, and the, “characteristics of attendees suggest that the programme is reaching those who are both at greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and who typically access healthcare less effectively.”
 
Cautionary note
 
Notwithstanding, the study’s authors conclude with a cautionary note and say that when data become available from the 2019 National Diabetes Audit (NDA) they will be better positioned to assess the program’s performance. Specifically, whether Healthier You participants changed their weight and HbAc1 levels over time. (HbA1c is a blood test that indicates blood glucose levels and is the main way T2DM is diagnosed). We are mindful that earlier National UK Diabetes Audits suggest there are significant challenges associated with incomplete and inconsistent patient data at the primary care level, and also significant variation in diabetes care across the country. It seems reasonable to assume that incomplete and inconsistent data will present analytical challenges.
 
Outcomes as key performance indicators
 
Notwithstanding, the authors of the interim appraisal of Healthier You are right to attempt to link key performance indicators (KPI) with patient outcomes rather than provider activities, which tend to be the preferred performance indicators used by public officials, clinicians and charities engaged in preventing obesity and T2DM. At the population level, there is a dearth of data that associate specific prevention programs with the reduction of the prevalence of obesity and T2DM. Until actual patient outcomes become the key performance indicators, it seems reasonable to suggest that inertia rather than innovation in prevention and care of T2DM and obesity will prevail, and year-on-year the burden of diabesity and associated cancers will continue to increase.
 
Casalud

Two significant and effective innovations to reduce excess BMI and T2DM, which have been largely ignored by the UK’s diabetes establishment are the Casalud and Oklahoma City projects. Casalud is a nation-wide online continuing medical education program launched in Mexico in 2008, which has demonstrated influence on the quality of healthcare, and subsequent influence on patient knowledge, disease self-management, and disease biomarkers. Casalud provides mHealth tools and technical support systems to re-engineer how primary care is delivered in Seguro Popular (Mexico’s equivalent to NHS England) primary health clinics.  By focusing on prevention and using technology, Casalud has increased the number of diabetes screenings and improved clinical infrastructure. An appraisal of the program published in the October 2017 edition of Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity suggests that the Casalud program successfully impacts changes in obesity and T2DM self-management at the primary care level throughout the country.
 
Oklahoma city’s transformation

Oklahoma is a city of about 550,000 people. In 2007, it was dubbed America’s “fast food capital" and “fattest city". A decade later, the city was in the middle of a transformation. While the state still has among the highest adult obesity rates in the nation – climbing from 32.2% to 33.9% between 2012 and 2015 – obesity rates in Oklahoma City dropped from 31.8% to 29.5% during that time frame, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The city’s transformation started with city’s Mayor Mick Cornett. Cornett, who has been in office since 2004, brought notoriety to the city’s public health efforts beginning at the end of 2007 with the goal to collectively lose 1m pounds. The people of Oklahoma City met that goal in 2012, but have not slowed down their efforts. What began as a campaign to promote healthy eating and exercise became a citywide initiative to, "rebuild the built environment and to build the city around people instead of cars," Cornett says.
 
Underutilized data that detect early people at risk of T2DM
 
Findings of a study published in the May 2017 edition of Scientific Reports suggest an innovative way to improve early diagnosis of excess BMI and T2DM when the diseases are easier and less costly to treat, but so far these data are underutilised. The study reports that increasingly people are searching the Internet to assess their health and records of these activities represent an important source of data about population health and early detection of T2DM. The study based on data from the 2015 Digital Health Record produced by Push Doctor, a UK based online company, which has over 7,000 primary care clinicians available for online video consultations. According to the study, which is based on 61m Google searches and a survey of 1,013 adults, 1 in 5 people chose self-diagnosis online rather than a consultation with their primary care doctor. The study makes use of commercially available geodemographic datasets, which combine marketing records with a number of databases in order to extract T2DM candidate risk variables. It then compares temporal relationships with the search keywords used to describe early symptoms of the T2DM on Google. Researchers suggest that Google Trends can detect early signs of T2DM by monitoring combinations of keywords, associated with searches. Notwithstanding, the value of these data they are underutilized by clinicians, public health officials and charities engaged in reducing the risks of excess BMI and T2DM, which can lead to cancer.
 
Takeaways

Over the past decade, NHS England has spent more than £100bn on diabetes treatment alone, and Diabetes UK has spent some £200m on education and awareness programmes, yet diabetes in the UK has increased by 60%. 90% of diabetes cases are T2DM, which is closely linked to obesity. The combination of excess BMI and T2DM causes some 16% of all cancers in the UK. The burden of these diseases destroys the lives of millions and cost billions. It is imperative that this vast and escalating burden is dented. This will not be achieved if clinicians, public health officials and charities continue with ineffective inertia projects. They will need innovate and embrace best practice if they are to prevent and reduce the vast and escalating burden of excess BMI, T2DM and cancer.
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7 years, 6 months ago

Orthorexia: when eating healthily becomes unhealthy

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  • Orthorexia nervosa is the term used to describe a growing serious 'health food eating disorder'
  • The number of people suffering from the condition is believed to be millions and increasing
  • Orthorexia often begins by cutting out certain food groups and only eating 'clean' foods in an attempt to become healthier
  • Sufferers become obsessed with ‘clean’ food, often feel superior to people with different eating habits, and indulge in excessive fitness routines
  • Experts warn that orthorexia can lead to malnutrition, social isolation and depression.  
     
Orthorexia: when eating healthily becomes unhealthy

Have you encountered someone who genuinely wants to live a healthier life by eating well, but then becomes so obsessed with “healthy” food that they become unwell and socially isolated?
 
If you have, then the person is likely to be suffering from orthorexia nervosa, an emerging dietary disorder in which an individual restricts intake to include only “healthy” foods, such as vegetables or organic foods, but in doing so develops an obsession with eating food believed to support “clean living”. Clean living is being mindful of the food's pathway between its origin and your plate, and eating food that is un- or minimally processed, refined, and handled, making them as close to their natural form as possible.
 
Having said this, it is important to mention that some restrictive diets can be healthy, and even necessary, for medical, ethical or religious reasons. Also, being mindful about what you consume is a positive way to live a healthy life: there is nothing wrong with eating healthily. However, orthorexia is different: becoming fixated on “clean” food can result in serious health problems.
 
Orthorexia is not anorexia

Unlike anorexics, orthorexics are preoccupied with the quality of food they consume rather than its quantity. The condition usually starts in a quest to be wholesome, when a person cuts out a food group, such as sugar, pulses, dairy products and processed food, but over time ends up with a diet so restrictive, that it contains only a limited number of ‘safe foods’, that the person becomes malnourished.
 
Orthorexia nervosa
 
Orthorexia nervosa describes a pathological obsession with “clean” nutrition, which is characterized by a restrictive diet, ritualized patterns of eating, rigid avoidance of foods believed to be unhealthy or impure, and excessive exercise. Although prompted by a desire to be healthy, orthorexia may lead to nutritional deficiencies, medical complications, and a poor quality of life.
 
Social isolation

Typically, orthorexics spend significant amounts of their time scrutinizing the source of food, and how it is processed and packaged to ensure that it is “clean”. The self-esteem of people with orthrexia becomes associated with their ability to stick to their diet of “clean food”, and they often feel guilty and angry with themselves if they stray from their strict list of acceptable foods.  Orthorexics may develop feelings of social superiority to others, and judge those who indulge in “unclean” foods. Their obsession with specific foods often stops them socializing with family and friends, as social events frequently involve drinking and eating “unhealthily”.  Also, excessive exercising plays an important role in relation to orthorexia. 
 
Because orthorexics are “addicted” to thinking they are doing the right thing, they tend not to question whether their diet and lifestyle might have a negative impact on their health. Sufferers often take their eating habits to dangerous levels, cutting out food groups and combining their strict diet with too much exercise. In the video below, Dr Seth Rankin, founder and CEO of the London Doctors Clinic suggests that, “denial is the hallmark of an obsession”, and that you cannot treat someone with an obsession unless they recognize that they have a problem.
 
 
 
First diagnosed sufferer

Steven Bratman, a physician who coined the term orthorexia nervosa in 1997, diagnosed himself with the condition after he became obsessive about clean eating. According to Bratman, “Eventually orthorexia reaches a point at which the orthorexic devotes much of his life to planning, purchasing, preparing and eating meals.” Bratman developed 10 questions based on his experience to show how people with the condition could be identified: see below. Bratman’s work has not been validated as indicative of a syndrome; and therefore the diagnostic criteria for orthorexia are still uncertain.
 
Bratman’s 10-point test for orthorexia

Do you spend more than 3 hours a day thinking about your diet?
Do you plan your meals several days ahead?
Is the nutritional value of your meal more important than the pleasure of eating it?
Has the quality of your life decreased as the quality of your diet has increased?
Have you become stricter with yourself lately?
Does your self-esteem get a boost from eating healthily?
Have you given up foods you used to enjoy in order to eat the 'right' foods?
Does your diet make it difficult for you to eat out, distancing you from family and friends?
Do you feel guilty when you stray from your diet?
Do you feel at peace with yourself and in total control when you eat healthily?
RESULTS
Yes to 4 or 5 of the above questions means it is time to relax more about food.
Yes to all of them means a full-blown obsession with eating healthy food.
 
Orthorexia is not officially recognized
 
One of the reasons you might not have heard of orthorexia is because it is not officially recognized as an eating disorder. It is not mentioned as a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association, and popularly known as  “The Psychiatrist’s Bible”. Neither is the condition included in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Disease. Its lack of recognition leads primary care doctors to refer sufferers to nutritionists, which is a mistake because orthorexics require therapy that de-emphasizes food.
 
Prevalence difficult to determine

Without being officially recognized as a disease there has been no epidemiological studies on the condition. Notwithstanding, orthorexia is believed to affect millions and be on the increase. Some psychiatrists are beginning to study the condition and offer treatment to patients. In a recent survey of healthcare professionals, 66% reported having observed patients presenting with clinically significant orthorexia; and 66% suggested that the syndrome deserves more scientific attention.
 
The American National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders suggests there are some 30m people in the US suffering from eating disorders. Instagram has 26m posts with the #eatclean hashtag. According to the UK’s National Osteoporosis Society, 20% of people under 25 are cutting out or reducing dairy from their diets. A 2016 National Diet and Nutrition Study undertaken by Public Health England found that the calcium intake of 1 in 6 women under 24 was “worryingly low”.
 
The ORTO-15 test and research beginnings

Orthorexia’s lack of formal status also means that there is a dearth of research on the condition, although published literature and research data have increased in the past few years. In 2005 a group of Italian scientists modified Bratman’s criteria for detecting orthorexia, and developed the ORTO-15 questionnaire, which identifies how far such criteria can be used for psychometric and specific diagnosis. Researchers enrolled 525 participants; 404 were used in the construction of the ORTO-15 test, which comprised 15 multiple-choice questions; and 121 people participated in the ORTO-test’s validation. A score below 40 implies the presence of an obsessive pathological behavior characterized by a strong preoccupation with “clean” eating. Findings from this validation study reported that the ORTO-15 test has an efficacy of 73.8%, a sensitivity of 55.6%, and a specificity of 75.8%.
 
At least four studies have used the ORTO-15 test to evaluate the prevalence of a preoccupation with “clean” food. A 2010 Turkish study published in the journal of Comprehensive Psychiatry found that 43.6% of medical students showed a preoccupation with healthy food. A large Hungarian study published in 2014 in the journal BMC Psychiatry used the ORTO-15 test on 810 predominantly female (89.4%) university students, and found that over 70% had orthorexia tendencies. American studies have reported a prevalence of orthorexic behaviours ranging from 69% to 82.8% among undergraduate students.
 
The first study to examine the prevalence of orthorexia nervosa in athletes was completed in 2012 and showed a high frequency of orthorexia across both male (30%) and female (28%) athletes who were largely professional athletes involved in a range of sports. In 2013 a meta study published in Eating and Weight Disorders reviewed 11 studies of orthorexia. Findings suggest that the average prevalence rate for orthorexia was 6.9% for the general population, 35% to 57.8% for high-risk groups such as dieticians, other healthcare professionals, and artists. Risk factors were suggested to be obsessive-compulsive features, eating-related disturbances, and higher socioeconomic status.
  
Takeaways
 
Orthorexia appears to be on the increase at a time when the vast and escalating healthy lifestyle-information industry is complemented by the rapid exchange of ideas via social media. This means that individuals are regularly bombarded with dietary and healthcare advice, which they can share instantly. Orthorexia seems yet another serious condition of affluent societies, which is growing in significance.
 
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7 years, 11 months ago

Weight loss surgery to treat T2DM

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  • Obesity is one of the most serious global public health challenges of the 21st century and a major cause of type-2 diabetes (T2DM), a life-threatening illness, which costs billions
  • 60% of adults in the UK are either overweight or obese, 74% in the US
  • Low calorie diets and exercise are difficult to sustain and therefore tend to fail as treatment options 
  • Conventional treatments for T2DM have failed to dent the vast and escalating burden of the condition, so interest is increasing in alternative treatment options
  • Bariatric (stomach reduction) surgery is a therapy for obesity, which has been shown to “cure” T2DM
  • In 2016, 45 international health organizations called for bariatric surgery as a treatment for T2DM
  • Is bariatric surgery the biggest step forward in T2DM treatment in 100 years?
 

Weight loss surgery to treat T2DM


It is five minutes to midnight for healthcare systems struggling in vein to reduce the vast and escalating burden of type-2 diabetes (T2DM). Doing more of the same is no longer an option. Given the lack of alternatives, experts are calling for an increase in bariatric surgery because it has been shown to “cure” T2DM.
 
Bariatric surgery not only reduces weight, it also improves glycemic control by a combination of enforced caloric restriction, enhanced insulin sensitivity, and increased insulin secretion with a consequent reduction in the symptoms of T2DM.
 
In the video below Kenneth D’Cruz, Senior Consultant Gastroenterological Surgeon at Narayana Health, India describes bariatric surgery, which refers to a range of procedures including gastric bypass, gastric sleeve, gastric band, and gastric balloon. Such procedures are often performed to limit the amount of food that an individual can consume, and are mainly used to treat those with a body mass index (BMI) of above 40, and in some cases where BMI is between 30 and 40, if the patient has additional health problems such as T2DM.
 
 
Epidemiology of obesity

Overweight and obesity are principal risk factors of T2DM. In the UK, the number of people classified as obese has doubled over the past 20 years and continues to rise. According to data from the 2014 Health Survey for England, 24% of adults in England are obese and a further 36% are overweight. In 2015, there were 440,288 admissions to England's hospitals for which obesity was the main reason or a secondary factor.
 
Data from the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), suggest 10% of children in the UK are obese by the time they start primary school, and 25% are so by the time they finish. 6% of people in the UK are living with diabetes of which 90% have T2DM. Over the past decade the incidence rate of T2DM has increased by 65%.
 
The situation is similar in the US, where 36% of adults are obese, and 6.3% have extreme obesity. Almost 74% of adults are considered either overweight or obese. Over the past 30 years, childhood obesity has more than doubled, and it has quadrupled in adolescents. The percentage of children who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. 9.3% of people in the US are living with diabetes.
 
The World Health Organization warns that obesity is, “one of the most serious global public health challenges of the 21st century”.
 
Causes of obesity

There are many complex behavioural and societal factors that combine to contribute to the causes of obesity. At its simplest, the body needs a certain amount of energy (calories) from food to keep up basic life functions. When people consume more calories than they burn, their energy balance tips toward weight gain, excess weight, and obesity. In the videos below Mohammed Hankir, Department of Medicine, University of Leipzig, Germany, describes what causes obesity, and the relationship between obesity and T2DM:
 
What are the causes of obesity?
 
What is the relationship between obesity and type-2 diabetes?
 
The cost of diabesity

Obesity costs the UK £47bn every year. The medical care costs alone for obesity in the US are estimated to be more than US$147bn. Diabetes treatment and indirect medical costs run to £10.3bn in the UK and US$176bn in the US, representing significant increases over the past five years. The medical costs for an individual with diabetes are typically 2.5 times higher than for someone without the disease. As prevalence of obesity increases these costs will rapidly rise.
 
T2DM prevention and treatment

NHS England, Public Health England and Diabetes UK’s National Diabetes Prevention Program is based upon diet and exercise-induced weight loss, which sometimes remedies insulin resistance. For obese people dietary and lifestyle therapies have limited short-term and almost non-existent long-term success records. According to Professor John Wilding, Head of the Department of Obesity and Endocrinology at the University of Liverpool, UK; the problem with low calorie diets, “is that most people will lose weight, but most people will also regain much of that weight that has been lost.” The UK’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) does not support the routine use of low calorie diets.
 
Once an overweight or obese person has T2DM the stakes change. With the limited success of conventional medical therapies, bariatric surgery has become an increasingly popular treatment in the war against obesity and latterly also for T2DM. The 2014 UK National Bariatric Surgery Registry reported that there is good evidence from randomised controlled studies that surgery is superior to medical therapy in improving diabetes control and metabolic syndrome. Surgery lowers the number of hypoglycaemic medications needed, including some people no longer needing insulin. It also means many people living with T2DM going into remission, and it markedly lowers the incidence of T2DM compared to matched-patients not having surgery.
 
NICE guidelines for bariatric surgery as a therapy for diabesity

Concerned about the rising prevalence of diabesity (obesity and diabetes) and the limited success of conventional strategies, in 2011, the International Diabetes Federation endorsed bariatric surgery as a T2DM treatment for obese people. The Federation’s endorsement is a validation of research and medical experience showing that surgery to reduce food intake can alter the biochemistry of the entire body. It also marked the beginning of a major new assault on diabetes.

In 2014, NICE introduced guidelines for bariatric surgery as a treatment option for obese adults, and suggested that it would greatly help T2DM. Current NICE guidelines state that bariatric surgery should be offered to anyone who is morbidly obese (a BMI of 40 or over), to those with a BMI over 35 if they have another condition, such as T2DM, and to those with a BMI of at least 30 with a recent diagnosis of diabetes.
 
In the UK only about 6,500 people each year have bariatric surgery. This is significantly lower than other European countries, which perform on average about 50,000 stomach reduction surgeries each year. Under the NICE guidelines, up to 2m people would be eligible for free bariatric surgery on the NHS, which would cost the taxpayer £12bn.
 
Biggest breakthrough in diabetes care since the introduction of insulin
 
In 2016 a review written by a group of researchers led by David Cummings, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington set out guidelines for bariatric surgery as a treatment option for diabetes. Francesco Rubino, one of the experts behind the guidelines and professor of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King's College London, said: “This is the closest that we have ever been to a cure for diabetes. It is the most powerful treatment to date.” Other doctors who drew up the guidelines said such changes could amount to the most significant breakthrough in diabetes care since the introduction of insulin in the 1920s.
 
The modern Roux-en-Y gastric bypass

The ‘gold standard’ bariatric surgical procedure is the Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass, which is the most commonly performed bariatric procedure worldwide, named after a 19th century Swiss surgeon César Roux, who first performed the surgery to reroute the small intestine. The modern version of the procedure involves reducing the stomach to a little pouch, to curb eating and appetite, and then connecting that pouch to a lower section of the intestine. By using less of the intestine, fewer nutrients are absorbed, and the patient loses weight.
 
Until recently it has been poorly understood why, after bariatric surgery, a significant proportion of patients with T2DM leave hospital either needing no insulin, or lower doses, before ever losing any weight. Re-plumbing the GI-tract appears to reprogram the body’s hormones and resets its metabolism.
 
Advances in bariatric surgery

Thirty years ago there was little interest in bariatric surgery, which was risky, and not widely practiced. It involved a large, bloody incision, the prising apart of the heavy, fatty abdominal walls with metal arms, which then had to be held in place while the surgeon carried out procedures deep in the gut. Patient recovery times were long, and the risk of complications high.

By the first decade of the 21st century, when obesity became an epidemic in advanced economies the relationship between bariatric surgery and T2DM was given more attention. The medical device industry developed new surgical tools to facilitate blood free minimally invasive procedures for obese people, but researchers were still struggling to understand why bariatric surgery “cured” diabetes.
 
Understanding why bariatric surgery cures diabetes

One of the scientists to discover why bariatric surgery cures T2DM is Blandine Laferrère, an endocrinologist at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center at St. Luke’s. Our gut hormone ghrelin signals to our brain that we are hungry and to start eating. Receptors in out GI tract signal to our brain that we are full and to stop eating. In obese people such signalling malfunctions, and leaves them perpetually hungry. According to Laferrère, “It just happened that the surgeons did this type of surgery for weight loss, and that turned out to have a spectacular effect on the remission of T2DM.”

Further research was undertaken by Laferrère and influenced by Werner Creutzfeldt, a German doctor who published work on gut hormones that increased stimulation of insulin secretion, which he called an “incretin effect”. According to Laferrère, bariatric surgery, rather than actual weight loss, stimulates the incretin effect, which boosts the production of insulin while lowering the symptoms of diabetes. She concluded that the surgery itself triggered the hormone network, which diet-induced weight loss could not provide.
 
Takeaways

Scientists claim that bariatric surgery is the biggest step forward in diabetes treatment in 100 years, and suggest we are no longer talking about the treatment of obesity, but treatment of diabetes.
 
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