Fat Reform is Healthcare Reform: Obesity, Food Politics And The Cost Of Healthcare. Jeffry N Ge**er, M.D., Board Certified Family Physician We have been helping our patients improve their health and optimize their weight with prescribed lifestyle modification. We redefine healthy nutrition and teach patients about the relationship between unhealthy refined and processed foods, dietary carbohydrate
s, inflammation and chronic illness. Dietary carbohydrates are the optional fuel and most people consume too much. Teaching patients how to make better food choices based on the carbohydrate content controls hunger, promotes weight loss and improves health. Dr. Ge**er has years of experience treating patients using carbohydrate restriction with low-carb high-fat (LCHF), Ancestral, Paleolithic and Primal diets as primary interventions. He maintains a database following patients weight, cardio-metabolic markers, and other health parameters, demonstrating the benefits of carbohydrate restricted diets. Nutrition and its effects on health have always been areas of interest. Obesity and overweight are truly the resultant symptoms of chronic metabolic disease, ultimately caused by the many inflammatory foods in our diet. Blaming behavior (that we eat too much and exercise too little) for why we get fat is a short sighted explanation, especially when considering our present day understanding of metabolism. The science of insulin resistance helps us to understand the epidemics of overweight, obesity and type II diabetes in our country. Fueled by dietary carbohydrates, insulin resistance promotes inflammation and leads to many other chronic diseases, including the metabolic syndrome, lipid and cholesterol disorders, hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart attack, stroke, premature aging, cancer, dementia, depression, cancer, liver and GI disease, leaky gut, adrenal fatigue, thyroid disease, arthritis, impotence, PCOS and infertility, just to name a few. Obesity rates have doubled in adults and tripled in children and adolescents since the official USDA dietary guidelines for Americans were released in 1980. We are one of the heaviest countries in the world. Presently two thirds of adults are overweight and or obese and one third of children and adolescents are overweight and or obese. Although Colorado remains the thinnest state in the country overweight and obesity remain significant health issues. Within our lifetimes we are witnessing these epidemics for which we can only blame a shift in nutrition over the past century. The production and sale of manufactured and industrial food has steered us away from consuming whole, unprocessed and nutrient dense foods. Consumption of sugars, high fructose corn syrup, grains such as corn, wheat and rice, starchy vegetables, legumes and industrial vegetable oils are to blame. Profitable to the food manufactures these refined and processed foods, containing mostly carbohydrates and or manufactured oils, wreak havoc on our health and make us hungrier. A physical examination and blood work, including a two-hour glucose tolerance test, will help to detect insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome. Advanced cardiovascular screening including Berkeley Heart Lab LDL particle size sub-classification and Vasolabs Carotid-IMT testing. Dr. Ge**er speaks frequently about these important issues to patients, the community and other healthcare professionals. Dietary Tools
Low-Carb High Fat Diet For Beginners
Glycemic Index Chart I
Glycemic Index Chart II
Glycemic Index Chart III
Glycemic Index Explained @ Mendosa.com
New Atkins Carbohydrate Gram Counter Chart
Duke University Low Carb Meal Plans
Macronutrient Ratio Calculator: Carbs-Protein-Fat
Body Mass Index Table (BMI)
My Fitness Pal: Free online tool to track your progress
* The glycemic index of animal proteins are zero and are not always listed on the glycemic index charts. *
Food Politics
Fat reform is healthcare reform. By addressing the epidemics of overweight and obesity, we can prevent and treat associated chronic diseases and save billions of dollars in healthcare expenditures. This sounds like a simple solution, but federal policy, the food industry and some of the fundamental principles of supposed healthy nutrition stand in our way. Most of us are familiar with the traditional USDA dietary guidelines developed over past decades. Regarding nutrition and health, there are three basic principals: 1- The lipid hypothesis tells us that eating saturated fat in our diet, raises blood cholesterol and leads to heart attack and stroke. Manufactured polyunsaturated vegetable oils and carbohydrates should be consumed instead. 2- Eat fat and get fat, implies that we should avoid caloric dense foods containing fat and consume carbohydrates and proteins instead. 3- Eat less and exercise more, a recommendation based on the first law of thermodynamics, blames behavior for obesity. One problem with this simple law, it does not explain what makes us hungry. What causes hunger and obesity is a complex derangement of various metabolic pathways leading to such conditions as insulin and leptin resistance. These traditional dietary guidelines, the basis of the USDA food pyramid and now the food plate, promote a diet low in saturated fats, low in calories and relatively higher in dietary carbohydrates. This type of diet is difficult to sustain for any length of time simply because it makes us hungry. It is easy to observe that in 1980, when the federal government began publishing the official dietary guidelines, we see these epidemics of overweight and obesity mushroom. We jump to implicate these dietary guidelines as causing the obesity epidemic, but the scientific evidence (or lack of it), provides us with further insight. In the 1950's Ancel Keys, performed several observational studies looking at the relationship between saturated fat in the diet and heart disease. Some dispute his methods and findings, but based on these studies the lipid hypothesis was born. There have been many observational and head-to-head clinical trials since Keys work, but despite what he observed (and what most healthcare professionals still believe today), the studies continue to refute a causal relationship between saturated fat in the diet and heart disease. In recent years there have been several dozen well done head-to-head clinical trials comparing low-carb high-fat diets to traditional low-fat low-calorie diets. In virtually all of these studies LCHF diets show a greater and sustainable weight loss and more importantly, favorable cholesterol, lipid and blood sugar profiles compared to low-fat diets. These studies demonstrate how insulin metabolism and other metabolic pathways regulate food energy. Dietary carbohydrates, rather then saturated fats, appear to be the unhealthy inflammatory fuel. We hope to see long-term head-to-head outcomes studies (with hard endpoint data like heart attack and death from heart attack) but until that time the best data at this time support low-carb diets in the overweight, obese and diabetic. What is difficult for most to acknowledge is the notion that the nutritional guidelines, the basis of the low-fat and carbohydrate heavy food pyramid and now what is called My Plate, are actually causing disease rather than preventing it. The USDA, supported by the food industry, have created these nutritional guidelines, in part to promote the sale of the most abundant (and yet unhealthy) food commodities such as sugars, corn, wheat, soy legumes, starchy vegetables and industrial vegetable oil seeds. Natural dietary saturated and mono-unsaturated fats were never unhealthy. We know that early civilizations and primal man were healthy and ate much differently, a diet based on whole and unprocessed foods such as animals including fish, seasonal nuts, roots, vegetables, fruits and natural fats. Ancestral Health teaches us about the relationship between whole foods and wellness throughout the ages. Medical Advances And Updates
Although the right foods control appetite, for some, medication addressing appetite suppression, weight loss and insulin resistance have proven useful. Newer and smart hormonal drugs, called GLP1 analog's and Amylin mimetic's, restore normal physiology and suppress appetite. Byetta, Symlin,Victoza and Bydureon used in diabetics are now being studied for weight loss in the general population. Insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome are new rapidly evolving areas of medicine. Stay tuned for the latest updates as they become available. See Dr. Ge**er's Fox 31 news interview - The new weight loss drug Qnexa
Most Health Insurance Plans Accepted
We provide long term solutions for weight loss and diet, but we are not a traditional medical weight loss clinic. We refer to these traditional programs as pay-per-pound weight loss. Clients are required to pay out of pocket with a guarantee of rapid weight loss. If and when the goal is reached, usually the client runs out of money and most regain the weight. Unfortunately these clinics contribute to the unhealthy yo-yo effect of dieting. In contrast, our program works with your health insurance, accepting most plans. The goals are long-term, treating associated and coexisting medical conditions along with any weight issues. We are re-defining the delivery of quality healthcare itself by placing nutrition center stage, thus addressing the true cause of chronic diseases. Maintaining ideal body weight for life is critical because there is no medication or medical therapy that will treat and prevent disease as well, period! Physicals, preventive services, counseling and referrals from your other doctors are usually covered within our program. Although weight loss may or may not be specifically covered, in the context of treating your total health, health insurance plans will cover these services. We also accept self pay if you do not have insurance.