Scale it down

Beat the bulge

If the number on the scale isn’t budging as much as you’d like, there’s still some good news. Research shows that even modest weight loss can have a long-term positive effect on your overall health.

Research has shown that even a 5 to 10 percent loss of the initial body weight can greatly reduce health risks and improve general well being

Worth the weight (loss)

By losing 20 pounds or 10 percent of a 200-pound person's body weight, overweight and obese individuals can reduce their risk of Type 2 diabetes by as much as 58 percent. It can also benefit sleep apnea, hypertension, quality of life and mobility as people age. Additionally, the health benefits from losing the weight can last up to about 10 years, even if the individual gains the weight back, according to the behavioral study on 3,000 participants who changed their eating habits by tracking everything they ate and keeping unhealthy foods out of the pantry.

Researchers will also examine whether these healthy habits will decrease the risk of heart attacks and heart disease, and ultimately, whether it can prolong your life.

Make it Happen

The time to start losing weight is now. It’s never too late to become a healthier you. Call Dr Oksana Aron Medical Weight Loss Center at 718-491-5525 or visit WeightLossNYC.com to schedule your appointment.

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Are your favorite foods making you sick?

A study in the journal Nature suggests that emulsifiers—commonly used ingredients in many favorite processed foods—may be interfering with bacteria in our digestive tracts and causing increases in metabolic syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, and obesity.

Ingredients such as lecithin, carrageenan, polysorbate80, polyglycerols and xanthan and other “gums” improve the texture and shelf-life of many supermarket foods and keep ingredients such as oils and fats from separating. They are found in many ice creams, baked goods, salad dressings, veggie burgers, non-dairy milks and hamburger patties.

Several commonly used ingredients in many popular processed foods could be interfering with bacteria in our digestive tracts yielding increases in obesity, metabolic syndrome, IBS and more. Dr Oksana Aron can help you address many of these health concerns.

In the study, when fed emulsifiers, the mice who had normal immune systems developed mild intestinal inflammation and a metabolic disorder that led them to eat more. They became obese, hyperglycemic and insulin resistant. The mice with abnormal immune systems developed chronic colitis.

Food additives could be inducing inflammation

Emulsifiers seem to change the gut microbiota (or environment) and how bacteria interact with the intestine. This paves the way for inflammation. While emulsifiers may not be the sole cause of the rise in obesity, they could very well be a factor.

Many emulsifiers and food additives are considered safe by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the FDA has not determined safe levels of consumption, particularly because people consume emulsifiers in so many different foods.

Additional studies on humans are needed to better understand how emulsifiers impact humans.

Do you need to lose weight?

Oksana Aron, M.D. is a bariatric physician and internist, specializing in medical treatment of overweight and obese persons:

“Through our comprehensive program, many individuals have lost well in excess of 20% of their initial body weight using a combination of appetite suppressants and a low calorie diet, while eating just regular grocery store foods.”

You can visit Dr. Oksana Aron’s website at WeightLossNYC.com

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Acknowledgements

• Sima Michaels Dembo, MPH, Public Healthcare consultant and writer is a guest contributor to this blog.
• Chassaing, Benoit, et. al., Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome, Nature, 519, 92-96, Published online 2/25/15. Accessed 3/5/15.
• Grossman, Elizabeth., How Emulsifiers Are Messing with Our Guts (and Making Us Fat), Civil Eats, February 25, 2015. Accessed 3/5/15.

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Smart Food Choices

Every day we make food choices, and for those of us seeking healthy options often find ourselves tripped up by seemingly safe if not favorable choices, only to find, well, read on…

Men’s Health exposed unhealthy ingredients lurking in many popular foods, serving up a reminder that we should always read the labels when buying any packaged foods.

Read Nutritional Labels

For regular readers of Dr Oksana Aron’s weight loss blog, you already know to read nutritional labels with special attention to sodium, sugar and fat, and especially artificial sweeteners especially high-fructose corn syrup.

She’s even advised that certain organic foods aren’t always good calories.

Make Smart Choices

Here are a couple more key examples of how food labels can expose the hype:

Duck the Dip

Even seemingly healthy avocado goes incognito when packaged as “guacamole dip” — watch out for such products offering even as little as two percent avocado. (Do you even want to know what the other 98% is?)

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that American men eat 7% more calories than they did in 1971; American women [are eating] 18% more—an additional 335 calories a day!”

Low Hanging Fruit

Popular yogurt cups with fruit on the bottom are often really laden with so much sugar negating any real benefit of favoring yogurt for your diet. Consider adding your own fresh fruits to healthier yogurt brands.

Get More Help

Dr. Oksana Aron is here to help. She can help you make smart choices with your diet plan, and lose weight quickly under physician supervision.

Consider Antoinette who recently shared with us how her love for her native foods were adapted to suit her weight loss plan.

Visit WeightLossNYC.com for more information about Dr Oksana Aron and her medical weight loss program.

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Food labels often don't tell the full story. Viewing the ingredient list can often give you more details than the numerical summaries indicate.

Many foods are marketing as having less sugar than they do by using other names for the sugars that are added. Dozens of terms including fruit juice concentrate, beet sugar, [barley] malt syrup, evaporated cane juice, corn sweeter (and many other corn syrups including the nefarious HFCS) are just some of the more innocent sounding names of added sugars.

Despite attempts back in 2016 to have FDA mandated labeling for added sugar, efforts have stalled:

“Currently, the official Nutrition Facts Label does not require disclosure of the amount of "added sugar" in a product. "Added sugar" is the amount of sugar in a food or beverage item beyond what naturally occurs in the item.” ^[1]

Ultimately the best plan is to seek and eat least-processed foods and prepare them with ingredients you fully know. Barring that, start to take note of the colorful names in your ingredient labels and start to educate yourself on what items are really in your foods and if they are counter-productive to your goal to lessen sugars in your diet.

As always, you can discuss your food concerns with Dr. Aron during any of your visits. She can help you make healthy food choices for your weight loss dieting needs.

Labels: calories, carbs, diabetes, diet, snacks, sugar

What’s the Health Risk?

Excess sugar can not only lead to weight gain, but you also have other health concerns to worry about. People who drink 1 to 2 cans of soda a day can increase their risk for Type 2 diabetes by 26%. Additionally, daily sugary drinks can also increase your risk of heart attack, death from heart attack and heart disease.

—Oksana Aron,M.D.
Bariatric Physician

The Not-So-Sweet Side of Sugar

We all know that sugar isn’t good for our health, waistline or teeth. But what we don’t know about it—including where it’s coming from—can be even more important. Additionally, many contain genetically modified sugars (GMO) and are often unlabelled as such, yielding further obscurity.

Consuming sugary drinks such as sodas and fruit drinks were once thought to be the main source of sugar in our diet, but the latest from the U.S. CDC shows that Americans are getting their sugar mainly from their food, not drinks.

Without knowing this fact, many people may be unwittingly be consuming a lot more sugar than they think and are scratching their heads as to why they can’t lose those last few pounds.

How sugar sneaks into your diet & How to prevent it.

Where’s the sugar?

A whopping 70 percent of added sugars in the American diet comes from processed foods such as:

• Breads
• Jellies and Jams
• Cakes
• Ice Cream

Where else is there sugar?

Some Less obvious sources of sugar in popular foods include:

• Tomato Sauces
• Salad Dressings
• Condiments
• Cereals
• Multigrain Crackers

Healthy Tip

When checking the ingredients list on food packaging, make sure that sugar or its other names (such as high-fructose corn syrup HFCS or corn syrup, etc.) isn’t one of the first few ingredients. That way you’ll know that the food isn’t mostly sugar.

Medical Weight Loss Consultation

Lose the weight to reveal a healthier body. Stay motivated and keep the weight off with a healthy weight loss plan. Call 718-491-5525 to schedule your consultation with Oksana Aron, M.D., Bariatric Physician at WeightLossNYC™.

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Know your Omega-3s and 6s

Have you discovered the fat-melting qualities of fish oil yet in your quest to lose weight? If not, don't just give it a try — make it a mainstay in your diet.

Also known as Omega fatty acids, fish oil can help your health in many different ways and should be an important cornerstone of your everyday diet. Read on for more information on how you can benefit from fish oil.

Burn fat faster

You need fat in order to lose weight — the good, healthy kind. This includes Omega-3 and Omega-6. We need these fats to promote our health and facilitate weight loss, but most Americans do not get enough.

Sometimes a supplement is necessary to make sure you're getting a balance of these healthy fats. Results from a daily dose of Omega-3 can be seen in anywhere from a few days to several weeks, but it's no quick fix. It's important to take it every day on a long-term basis for the best results and overall health.

Health benefits

Fish oil can improve so many aspects of your health, there are almost too many to count. Some of these include your heart, vision, joints, immune system, digestive system, pancreas, blood pressure, cholesterol, hormones, mood, energy and more.

Additional benefits of omega supplements:

• Moderate amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids in your diet have shown to reduce your risk of a first heart attack by 30%.
• Symptoms in such inflammatory diseases as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease are also decreased.
• Omega-3 fatty acids also prevent artery-hardening and heart disease-causing plaques

Omega Fish Oil

Stock up on fish oil at your next visit. Contact WeightLossNYC or call 718-491-5525

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• Saturated fat and cholesterol found in red meat are linked to coronary heart disease.

• Eating processed meats such as bacon, sausage or hot dogs once a day can double your risk of Type 2 diabetes.

• Heme iron, which is found in red meat, is associated with heart attacks and fatal heart disease.

• Red meat may increase your risk of colorectal and other types of cancer.

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New weight loss pill

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration just recently approved another prescription medical weight loss drug, Qsymia (previously named Qnexa), which is said to produce significant weight loss.

Qsymia: The facts

In clinical trials, patients experienced a more dramatic weight loss with Qsymia than with Belviq, another weight loss drug that recently got FDA approval*. Patients in the trial went from an average of 227 pounds to 204 pounds while on Qsymia. Those on Belviq went from an average of 220 to 207.

Meant for obese or overweight patients with a BMI of 27 or greater who suffer from hypertension and diabetes, Qsymia’s benefits include lowered blood pressure and cholesterol levels in obese people and less chance of getting Type 2 diabetes while on the drug. It also contains phentermine, an appetite suppressant.

Possible side effects include an increased heart rate and birth defects when taken by pregnant women. Qsymia is expected to be available soon, while its manufacturer, Vivus, will conduct a study on its cardiovascular effects, as required by the FDA.

Consult with Dr Aron

Speak with Dr. Aron before trying any weight loss pills to find what’s safe and works best for you.

Visit her website WeightLossNYC™ today, or call 718-491-5525 for your first appointment with a knowledgeable medical weight loss physician, Oksana Aron MD.

Sources: cnn.com, Images: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

*Belviq withdrawn from market Feb 2020.

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The general nature of Americans’ responses -- eating less and working out -- shows that most people find weight-loss success by maintaining good overall health habits, not by relying on quick fixes -- 1% said they had gastric bypass and 4% said they used diet pills/drugs.

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• 83 percent of men and 72 percent of women will be overweight or obese.
• 77 percent of men and 53 percent of women will have dysglycemia (either diabetes or pre-diabetes).

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"We are able to show that caloric restriction slows down aging by preventing an enzyme, peroxiredoxin, from being inactivated. This enzyme is also extremely important in counteracting damage to our genetic material," says Mikael Molin of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology.

By gradually reducing the intake of sugar and proteins, without reducing vitamins and minerals, researchers have previously shown that monkeys can live several years longer than expected.

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No Secret

Researchers uncovered a reason why obese people have a higher risk for health complications — a protein called pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF) that is secreted by fat cells.

Research on mice shows that if some of PEDF’s action are blocked, it may reverse some complications for obese individuals and also opens up new drug opportunities.

PEDF is produced by fat cells in overweight people with higher levels of protein in the bloodstream. The protein can trigger insulin resistance, which can lead to type 2 diabetes in the bloodstream and liver and also increases risk for heart disease.

However, tests on the obese lab mice found that treatments that blocked PEDF’s action resulted in lowering blood fat level and reversed some of their insulin resistance. As the mice lost weight, their PEDF levels fell.

She lost 40 pounds

Medical Weight Loss Program

Consulting with Dr. Aron can provide you with valuable insights into your weight loss struggles and how you can convert them to weight loss success.

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Eat Natural Foods

Grilled BBQ Veggies

Dieting to lose weight should not mean depriving yourself of foods that taste good. In fact, eating healthier means you get to eat a lot of richer, better-tasting foods that just so happen to fight fat.

These are just some of those foods that can help you maintain your figure:

Weight Loss Nutrition

Dr Aron can provide you with more personalized dietary program, along with proper nutritional guidance to help you reach your healthy goal weight.

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Manage Your Weight

Obesity Health Risk

Public Health

Childhood obesity is not only on the rise — it has tripled over the past 25 years.

According to a report in Academic Pediatrics by an obesity expert at Brenner Children’s Hospital, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, children are not just becoming overweight and obese. Many more are becoming severely obese, which can greatly impact their health. Severe childhood obesity is classified as a child with a body mass index (BMI) that is at least or greater than the 99th percentile for age and gender.

Researchers found the following facts in the study:

• Severe obesity among children jumped from 0.8 percent in 1976-80 compared to 3.8 percent in 1999-2004. There are now more than 2.7 million severely obese children in the U.S.
• The highest increases in severe childhood obesity occurred among blacks and Mexican-Americans and those who live below the poverty level. Severe obesity rates for Mexican-American children went from 0.9 percent in 1976-80 to 5.2 percent in 1999-2004.
• A third of the children considered severely obese were classified as having metabolic syndrome, which is a group of risk factors such as higher-than normal blood pressure, cholesterol and insulin levels that make them more susceptible to experiencing heart attack, stroke and diabetes.

Dr Aron can help

Dr Aron is a bariatric physician — specialist in treatment of overweight and obese persons. Her medical weight loss clinic focuses on the factors contributing to and resulting from excessive weight gain. Her programs are designed to help people lose weight fast, under medical supervision.

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The twin epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes will continue to fuel an explosion in heart failure, already the world's most prevalent chronic cardiovascular disease, according to a professor of cardiology.

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