The Latest in Obesity Treatments

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Kenneth Fujioka, MD
There is some good news here in, really, the last couple of years that have changed the landscape of how we’re looking at weight loss treatment. Probably the biggest one is that we now understand it. So, doctors again were taught that it’s calories in, calories out, it’s very simple, everybody should be able to lose weight. Well, we’ve changed that. We said, you know what, I think we were wrong, in the sense that really, it’s more complicated. So one, the body’s trying to hang on to calories. So it’s hard to lose weight. And it’s hard to maintain that weight loss because the body’s trying to drive up by two methods. One, lowering your metabolism, but two, driving up your appetite because all the hormones that are supposed to tell you you’re full, aren’t coming up to where they’re supposed to be, so we now understand why it’s so hard. And again, this is all new, it’s just getting started. So one, we have the knowledge Obviously you have to do the diet and exercise, but we can help you out now. So we had two medications approved last year, two very likely will get approved at the end of this year. So, all of a sudden, I have tools, and I’ve not had tools to treat the weight for ages, and we’re talking 20-30 years, we really had nothing. We had two choices. diet and exercise and surgery and that was it. And don’t get me wrong, surgery is very appropriate for some people, but now I have something in the middle. Somebody who needs to lose 30, 40, 50 pounds, I have a treatment now which I haven’t had before.