A Solution For The Obesity Crisis In America:The American Association of Bariatric Counselors.

A solution for the obesity crisis in America can be found in many disciplines,for example:going to a pshychologist for counseling, visiting a dietician,starting an exercise program with a qualified personal trainer,and now you can also go to a bariatric counselor!I found this website offering a bariatric counseling course. You can now become a dietician,nurse,educator,social worker,etc with a speciality in bariatric counselling.
Visit their website and see how you can become a bariatric counselor and register at the American Association of Bariatric Counselors.

Before And After Bariatric Surgery

http://aabc-certification.org/why-become-certified.html
Call 1-866-284-3682 or email: info@aabc-certification.org

Why Become Certified?

Obesity in the US

The crisis of obesity in the US has risen sharply since 1980s. The statistics are alarming. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website reports the most current statistics concerning obesity in America:

National Obesity Trends show that about one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese.
Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents ages 2-19 years are obese.
During the past 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the US and rates remain high. In 2010, no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty-six states had a prevalence of 25% or more; 12 of those states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) had a prevalence of 30% or more.

Obesity (or "Globesity") has become the critical health issue around the world. The United States has the highest percentage of obese citizens of any country. Who are the trained specialists that will combat obesity in America in the 21st century?

Emerging Bariatric Science fostered the development
of the American Association of Bariatric Counselors

Evidence-based research and interventions for the full spectrum of obesities and metabolic disorders have emerged into bariatric science. The increased prevalence of obesity in the U.S. fostered a need for bariatric science trained health and education professionals and led to the development of the American Association of Bariatric Counselors and its Bariatric Certification Program.

Who are the Specialists that will combat
obesity in America in the 21st century?

While many American professionals have been faced with declining opportunities, reduced incomes and unemployment, there are increased opportunities for dietitian jobs, social worker jobs, nursing jobs and other health-related and education professional jobs with a specialty in bariatric science. For example, dietitian jobs such as Bariatric Dietitian are in high demand in hospitals and clinics.

Why Become a Board Certified Bariatric Counselor
or Board Certified Bariatric Educator?

Becoming a BCBC or BCBE:

is a secure investment in your career, livelihood and future
allows for public recognition of competence, stature and knowledge
identifies you as a specialist in the emerging discipline of Bariatric Science
safeguards the public from unscrupulous practices by providing evidence-based and research-tested best practices, AND
the M.D., R.N., Ph.D., R.D., MSW, M.A. or other professional credential that follows your name identifies your profession, the BCBC (Board Certified Bariatric Counselor) or BCBE (Board Certified Bariatric Educator) credential identifies your specialty.

Solution for Obesity Not To Be Found in Obesity Drugs

The solution for obesity can not be found in obesity drugs.This is the conclusion of this  this expert .This is a lifestyle driven situation and should be addressed by changing your lifestyle! If the obese population can merely grab a pill to solve the problem,this will be an easy way out.What is not clearly spelled out ,is that each and every drug has side effects. The truth is that by simply changing obese causing habits you can cure obesity.Forget the drugs and choose the right food.Choose to exercise , choose to "Think Thin."As the article states "the cure for obesity is at the end of your fork!

Pharmageddon: Can a New Weight Loss Drug Really Save Us?

Posted: 02/27/2012 9:20 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/qnexa_b_1303050.html

Mark Hyman, MD

Practicing physician

"This week, in an act of desperation to turn back the tide of the obesity epidemic that now affects almost seven out of every 10 Americans and more than 80 percent of some populations (African-American women), the advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 20 to 2 to recommend approval of Qnexa, a "new" obesity drug that is simply the combination of two older medications, phentermine (the "phen" of phen-fen") and topiramate (Topamax).

It is a misguided effort at best, and a dangerous one at worst. Mounting evidence proves that the solution to lifestyle and diet-driven obesity-related illnesses including heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and even cancer won't be found at the bottom of a prescription bottle.

By 2020, more than 50 percent of the U.S. adult population will have Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, with annual costs approaching $500 billion. By 2030, total annual economic costs of cardiovascular disease in the U.S. are predicted to exceed $1 trillion. By 2030, globally we will spend $47 trillion, yes trillion, to address the effects of chronic lifestyle-driven disease.

Prescription medication for lifestyle disease has failed to bend the obesity and disease curve. Statins have been recently found to increase the risk of diabetes in women by 48 percent. And large data reviews by independent international scientists from the Cochrane Collaborative found that statins only work to prevent second heart attacks, not first heart attacks, which means they are not helpful and most likely harmful for 75 percent of those who take them.

Avandia, the No. 1 blockbuster drug for Type 2 diabetes, has caused nearly 200,000 deaths from heart attacks since it was introduced in 1999. The drug was designed to prevent complications of diabetes, yet heart attacks are the very disease that kills most Type 2 diabetics. In 2011, the FDA issued stricter prescribing guidelines for Avandia, but the drug is still on the market.

The large ACCORD trial found in more than 10,000 diabetics that intensive blood-sugar lowering with medication and insulin actually led to more heart attacks and deaths.

Something is deeply wrong with our medical approach.

The problem of chronic disease, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, is not a medication deficiency, but a problem with what we put at the end of our fork.

The emperor truly has no clothes. Why would good men and women of science vote to approve a medication for a condition that is a social disease and requires a social cure? The social, environmental, economic, and political conditions of America and increasingly the global community have created an obesogenic environment.

Clearly we need to do something. But it is not better medication or surgery or more angioplasties and stents, which have no proven benefit in more than 90 percent of those who receive them. The data show they work for acute coronary events, but not stable angina or blockages.

We continue to pay for expensive treatments for chronic disease, despite the fact that they don't work, while insurance does not pay for nutrition counseling unless the patient has kidney failure or diabetes.

Chronic disease is a food-borne illness. We ate our way into this mess and we must eat our way out.

Every year the average American consumes 24 pounds of French fries, 23 pounds of pizza, 24 pounds of ice cream, 53 gallons of soda (or a gallon each week), 24 pounds of artificial sweeteners, 2.7 pounds of salt, 90,700 mg of caffeine, and about 2,700 calories a day. And that's just the average.

Do we really think that we can medicate our way of this problem with a repackaged old diet drug (phentermine), combined with an older anti-seizure medication (Topamax)? Both these drugs have concerning side effects, including increased heart rate, heart attacks, and birth defects such as cleft lip.

I recently saw a patient on 26 medications and 450 units of insulin. This is Pharmageddon. His physicians were treating the downstream symptoms, not the causes. They were mopping up the floor while the sink was overflowing.

Large studies published over many decades show that 90 percent of coronary heart disease cases, 90 percent of Type 2 diabetes cases, and one-third of cancers can be avoided by maintaining a healthier diet, increasing physical activity, and stopping smoking. We must treat the cause, not the symptoms.

Mounting evidence points to the power of food to reverse heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and even to lengthen our telomeres, slowing the aging process. In a recent study, intensive dietary change reversed advanced Type 2 diabetes in only 12 weeks. There is no medication that can achieve those results.

The science of epigenetics and nutrigenomics documents how food regulates gene expression and can upgrade our biologic software, reversing obesity, Type 2 diabetes and chronic disease.

There is a solution to our obesity epidemic. But it is not at the bottom of a pill bottle. It is at the end of our forks. It is simply more effective than any medication and works better, faster, and cheaper, not just as prevention, but also as treatment for what ails us in the 21st century. We can change our obesogenic environment through individual small choices we make every day, and by making changes in our homes, our families, our schools, our workplaces, our faith-based communities. We have the power to take back our health. Let's start today.

My new book The Blood Sugar Solution is a personal plan for individuals to get healthy, for us to get healthy together in our communities and for us to take back our health as a society. Obesity and diabetes is a social disease and we need a social cure.

My personal hope is that together we can create a national conversation about a real, practical solution for the prevention, treatment, and reversal of our diabesity epidemic.

To learn more and to get a free sneak preview of the book go to www.drhyman.com."

Obesity and Hypertension.

The relationship between obesity and hypertension is an established fact. What you are going to do about it is up to you.I found this juicing Recipe For Hypertension, that contains some of the natural substances mentioned at the end of the article.

Use a juice extractor not a liquidiser.

Make:
8 cups of carrot juice
2 cups of spinach juice
1 cup celery juice
3 cups grape juice(use 100% grape juice with no additives or sugar)
2 cups beetroot juice
3 cups of cabbage juice.
3 cups green bean(string bean) juice

Boil 3 chopped onions in 4 cups of water for 30 minutes.Let it cool by placing cooking pot in cold water.Strain and use only the water.

Mix all of the above juices and freeze in 200 ml containers.

EVERY DAY:

Take one cup ( 200ml) of the frozen juice
Mix with five cups of water
And two cups of fennel tea.

Drink one cup of this mixture plus minus every hour.
The more closely you adhere to these times and quantities the sooner your hypertension will be a thing of the past , and you will lose weight as a bonus!!!!
Read this article .It tells you why you should find a solution for obesity and the hypertension that goes with it:

"New Research Takes Slight Increases in Blood Pressure Seriously

By MEG JORDAN, professor and chair of the Integrative Health Studies Department. She is a clinical medical anthropologist, behavioral health RN, author, and international lecturer.

I was always in the camp that considered the less medical intervention, the better, especially when it came to blood pressure readings that were a little above the ideal. It was easy to accuse Big Pharma of simply pulling off one more marketing ploy to get millions more on anti-hypertensive drugs when new recommendations came out to consider treatment for "prehypertension."

Hypertension (same thing as high blood pressure) is diagnosed when the pressure across the arterial walls increases beyond an optimal level. This number has increased over the past decade as research indicated that pre-hypertensive levels would benefit from earlier pharmaceutical management. Before the mid-1990s, a blood pressure of 140/90 was considered on the high end of normal, but not worthy of drug treatment.

Normal is 120/80. Prehypertension is a systolic of 120-139, and a diastolic between 80-89. But it's hard to argue with a well-conducted study by the CDC that is reporting a rise in strokes, especially in the under-50 age groups and in children.

In addition, a University of California, San Diego, study looked at over one-half million records, and concluded that individuals with this slightly higher reading (prehypertensives) had a significantly higher risk of strokes—by almost 50 percent. That is troubling indeed. For most folks walking around with a blood pressure of 139/89, they have no idea that their pressure is high. No obvious symptoms send you running for a check-up or blood pressure reading.

What causes high blood pressure? Any number of risk factors have been implicated, from physical inactivity, metabolic syndrome, obesity/overweight, kidney disease, family history, advanced age, to one of the more serious risk factors—smoking. Some of these risk factors such as obesity make the heart work harder, pumping circulation around more miles of adipose and body mass. A build of plaque in the coronary arteries is blamed for narrowing the pipes, also increasing pressure. Cigarette smoking is implicated with arteriosclerosis or hardening of the arterial walls. As the wall become less flexible, the pressure builds up.

Another cause of high blood pressure is compromised kidney function, resulting in a retention of fluid and mineral or electrolyte imbalance. With more fluid in the circulatory system (less urine output), the pressure also increases.

Reduction of high blood pressure is critical in order to prevent the debilitating consequences caused by chronic pressure to arteries, capillary beds, and surrounding tissues. Chronic hypertension can damage the arterial system in the retina area causing loss of vision, or it can lead to damage in the kidneys. The most serious consequences of hypertension are heart attack and stroke.

Most cases of hypertension build gradually over time as readings become progressively higher, but not all. Intermittent hypertension reveals itself as occasional spikes in blood pressure, causing emotional unsteadiness, headaches, and insomnia. In these cases, doctors look for psychological problems that could aggravate an organic cause of hypertension, but root causes are difficult to pinpoint. A combination of drug treatment with lifestyle management is the preferred course of action by most integrative practitioners and medical doctors. This prudent course can be supplemented by complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches listed below.

Always talk to your doctor about the safest, most effective way for you to manage hypertension. And if you suspect that your blood pressure is increasing, get it checked as soon as possible. There are free checks at most drug stores.

Customary drug treatment includes:

• Beta blockers (which decrease the force and rate of the heart beat)
• Calcium channel blockers (which prevent muscular restriction of arterial walls)
• ACE inhibitors (which also relax arterial walls, creating a wider pipe effect)
• Diuretics (which work to relieve excess fluid in the circulatory system)

Lifestyle management approaches include:

• Decreasing your reactivity to stressful events
• Enhancing skills for optimism and positivity
• Practicing meditation or guided imagery on a daily basis
• Daily exercise, especially outdoors, for at least 30 minutes per session
• Losing weight if you're carrying too many pounds and maintaining a healthy weight
• Stop smoking immediately
• Dietary management: less salt, alcohol, and an investigation of food sensitivities
• Developing and following an overall wellness plan, working with an Integrative Wellness or Health Coach.

CAM Supplemental natural approaches include:

• eating celery (unless salt intake must be limited)
• magnesium supplements
• hawthorne berry dietary supplements
• passionflower, chamomile, valerian relaxing herbal teas
• omega-3 fatty acids
• proteolytic enzymes
• biofeedback
• Traditional Chinese Medicine acupuncture sessions"

Start addressing the obesity and hypertension problem today,your life depends on it.

Will Qnexa Be The Solution For Obesity?

I found this article which describes the Qnexa drug for obesity.It gives all the facts so you can make up your mind if this drug is the way you want to go to cure the obesity epidemic in America.

As you will see it has dangerous side effects.In spite of that the FDA has given it the go ahead.

Qnexa: Is the new anti-obesity drug too risky?
http://theweek.com/article/index/224841/qnexa-is-the-new-anti-obesity-drug-too-risky

"The FDA hasn't approved a new weight loss drug in 13 years. Now, an advisory panel is endorsing a previously rejected diet pill. What changed?
posted on February 24, 2012, at 3:15 PM

"In a 20 to 2 ruling, an advisory panel overwhelmingly recommended the anti-obesity drug, Qnexa, for approval by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has not approved a weight loss drug in the past 13 years, and has removed similar diet pills from the market over concerns about heart risks and other adverse side effects. What makes Qnexa any different? Is it an important step forward in the fight against obesity, or another "quick fix" for Americans who refuse to make healthier lifestyle choices? Here's what you should know:

What is Qnexa?
It's a prescription medication for weight loss. It helps users shed pounds by suppressing appetite and speeding up metabolism. If approved by the FDA, it would be the first anti-obesity drug to be approved for medical use since 1999. When Qnexa's manufacturer, Vivus, first presented it before the agency in 2010, the FDA denied approval in a 10 to 6 vote.

Why was it rejected previously?
For weight loss drugs, side effects are a major issue. "Several potential medications for obesity and other metabolic diseases have floundered because they raise the risk of heart problems [palpitations, increased heart rate] even while causing weight loss," says Shari Roan at the Los Angeles Times. Qnexa posed many of the same risks for patients, but was also found to be linked to birth defects. ("An FDA expert on birth defects estimated there would be five babies born with a cleft lip defect for every 1,000 women who became pregnant while taking Qnexa," says the Associated Press.)

Why is the panel recommending it this time?
With so few weight loss medications on the market and obesity at epidemic levels in America, the panel agreed that the risks posed by obesity outweighed the drug's side effects. "This is far from a great drug," Dr. David Katz of the Yale Prevention Research Center tells ABC News. "The FDA panel recommended approval of Qnexa only because the ranks of useful weight loss drugs are so thin, and desperate times call for desperate measures."

Will it be approved?
Though the FDA isn't required to follow the recommendations of its special panels, it often does. If Qnexa ends up being approved, "FDA scientists said they would require Vivus to train prescribers to educate patients on the pregnancy risks of Qnexa," says the AP, and only 10 mail-order pharmacies would be permitted to sell the drug.

If it is approved, is that a good thing?
Qnexa "could re-energize the pharmaceutical industry after several years of disappointment in trying to develop anti-obesity drugs," says Roan. One analyst thinks it could very well be the next Lipitor, says Melanie Halken at Forbes, "resulting in millions of prescriptions." Critics of the drug argue that Qnexa is nothing more than a "magic bullet," and the search for an anti-obesity drug shouldn't replace "the need to make difficult lifestyle changes," says Carrie Gann at ABC News. A final decision is expected to be made by the FDA by mid-April."