Maybe My Vitamin D is Low...

Why is a weight loss program supervised by a medical professional thought to have higher success rates than individual efforts taken by those who want to lose weight? Most patients who are looking to lose weight with supervision have already tried to do so on their own and were not successful. A program that is supervised by professionals allows patients to ask questions, receive counseling and be guided in regards to their diet, exercise, medications. Let’s talk about some data . An article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in April 2015 compared various commercial weight loss programs such as Weight Watchers or Atkins. Researchers have found that supervised weight loss programs where patients were held accountable for their nutritional intake and exercise, were most successful. Such programs include Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. So this tells us that you don’t have to necessarily go to a doctor’s office to lose weight, right? Well, let’s look at some other stu...

At the end of June, our clinic will be offering a medically supervised weight loss program. You may be wondering; why is mental health clinic offering such a program? Unfortunately, obesity and mental health difficulties sometimes go hand in hand. A meta-analysis of various studies published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2010 (JAMA of Psychiatry), discusses the link between obesity and depression. If you wondering what a meta-analysis is, simply put, authors of the paper combine a whole bunch of studies into one group, analyze the outcomes from each study and then compile them together into one article. That way, we have a better understanding of a certain topic because it takes into account several different studies. In aforementioned article, authors found that obese patients have a 58% increased risk of developing depression. Now, why would that be? One theory is that obesity, being an inflammatory state, can cause depression because inflammation alone been associa...