Obesity Treatments
When we are treating obesity as a disease, we have multiple options. Unfortunately, we don't have a blood test or a question me that can tell us which of these treatments is the right treatment for you at the moment.
So we want to present all the treatment options and allow you to choose the right one for you to start. But say, for example, you begin treatment A, and it doesn't work. Then please come back because we can change to the next treatment. We can either escalate or change within the same class to allow us to find a treatment that will work for you.
We can think about the treatments for obesity in four different classes.
The first is using nutritional therapies.
The second is using exercise therapies.
The third is using pharmacotherapies.
The fourth is using surgical therapies.
From my perspective, all these treatments are equally valid, but they have different risks and different advantages.
And it would be best if you worked out where you would like to start. Suppose we think about nutritional therapies. They are incredibly safe. But they are not as effective for eight out of ten people, but two in ten have an excellent response to these nutritional therapies.
It is essential to know if it is not smart people who listen to us who are more successful than those who don't listen to us. Nutritional therapy is a biological treatment for the disease of obesity, and it works if the biology connects.
The same is true for exercise therapies that again work in about two every ten people, so the eight and ten people where it does not work, it's not because the people have done anything wrong or the exercise therapy is not a good treat. It just means that it doesn't work for them.
Pharmacotherapies work in about five in every ten people, and these patients tell us that when they have a successful pharmacotherapy, all that happens is that they feel normal.
They don't have to try extra hard. They don't have to do anything extraordinary. They are no longer hungry all the time. They're not thinking about fuel food all the time, yet they're able to get on with their lives.
Finally, we also have surgical therapies. Surgical therapies work in about nine in every ten people, and you can think that even after an operation. Why don't some people respond? and of course, it is because obesity is a biological disease, and surgical therapies are biological treatments. When we don't have the right biological treatment for the right biological disease, it will not work. I want to emphasize it's not the people who listen to us. That was more successful with any of these treatments. It is biology.
But you can decide where you would like to start; whatever your decision is, it is the right choice. But I wanted to know that all these options remain on the table.
And there may be some people that will say I would never consider surgical therapy, or they will say I would never want another nutritional therapy again. I urge you to be open-minded and allow yourself to start wherever you are ready to enter.
But again, keep an open mind so that we should either increase or decrease the intensity of treatment to find the right treatment for you.
