Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful start to the new year! As for me, 2015 started off busy with work, life, and preparing for a week long continuing education seminar, which had two days of day long lectures. In those two days, I was exposed to a wealth of good information about obesity and its management. One of the biggest nuggets of information that I took away from this conference is the re-emphasis that obesity is not just a "label" but in fact meets the criteria for the American Medical Association to, as of 2013, recognize it as a complex, inflammatory disease state in itself. During the seminars, I also learned about the roles that genes, hormones, and even gut microbes can possibly play in the development of obesity as well as the use of pharmacotherapy, and bariatric surgery in helping to manage it. I'm hoping to be able to utilize the information that I learned in this conference to better able to help my patients (as well as myself) with their weight loss efforts and how to approach such a daunting task. Because of this conference and the ever changing as well as massive amounts of new information about obesity and weight loss that seems to come out on a daily basis, I have made it one of my resolutions for this new year to try to attend more educational bariatric conference and seminars. Since not all of the information that comes out regarding obesity and weight loss is based on facts or research or is greatly exaggerated to help sell numerous products, I think broadening my knowledge base on this complex disease will benefit me, both clinically and personally, to better weed out what information has some merit and what is more hype or fake. In all, when it comes to the new findings and constantly changing view on weight loss and the obesity epidemic, I feel one of the best way to manage it as a provider is to always keep learning about it. In fact, I always constantly remind myself to never stop learning-it will always be worth it,.
