“Our weight affects our health in so many ways,” says weight expert Dr. Tiffany Lowe Clayton. “When a person is carrying excess weight, it impacts almost every organ system in their body.”
She explains that fat tissue—known as adipose tissue—isn’t just stored energy. “Adipose tissue is metabolically active,” she says. “If a person is carrying excess weight, it can create inflammatory responses in our bodies that can create things like changes in our immune system or our endocrine system and our metabolism, all of which can create disease.”
That’s why, Dr. Lowe Clayton emphasizes, it’s important to “understand obesity as a chronic and a complex disease. And if a person is carrying excess weight, that they do whatever is necessary to help them get to a healthier weight.”
More Than the Number on the Scale
“When we think about helping a person get to a healthier weight, it’s so much more than pounds on the scale,” she says. “We know that if a person is carrying excess weight, it increases their risk for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and so many others.”
As people begin their weight journey, Dr. Lowe Clayton often hears from her patients that even before major changes show up on the scale, they “just feel better.” She adds: “They have more energy, their blood pressure improves, their blood sugar improves, they’re sleeping better. And so when we talk to patients about success… it’s more than just the scale.”
The Heart Connection
“If a person’s carrying excess weight, we know that there is a clear relationship between obesity and cardiovascular health,” she says. “The Global Burden of Disease study… found that in patients who had early death, two-thirds of them struggled with obesity. Obesity is the leading cause of cardiovascular risk factors in patients.”
Dr. Lowe Clayton explains that both obesity and cardiovascular disease are inflammatory. “When a person has obesity, it can actually increase the risk for heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular disease states,” she says. “Getting to a healthier weight and maintaining that is going to help our patients not just improve their health, but improve their heart health as well.”
Small Changes, Big Benefits
“What we know is that small changes can make a significant difference,” she says. “Even modest weight loss, something as simple as 5 to 10%, can make a significant metabolic difference.”
“When patients start to lose anywhere between that 5 to 10%, we start to see improvement in things like their energy level, their blood pressure, their cholesterol, their blood sugar—all of the things that we know can increase the risk for cardiovascular disease. Not to mention they just feel better overall. Their mood is lifted, and they know that they’re on the path to the healthier self that they want to become.”
Why Now Is the Time
“For so many years, patients have been told just eat less, move more,” Dr. Lowe Clayton says. “That for some reason it’s about calories in versus calories out. And for a long time, there’s been a lot of weight bias—that patients who struggle with their weight feel like it’s something that they’ve done, that it’s a moral failure, that it’s their fault that they struggle with their weight.”
“But the more we actually know about obesity, we understand it as a chronic and a complex disease. And now as healthcare providers, we’re more equipped to be able to treat our patients comprehensively in the way that they deserve to be treated.”
She adds that there are now “FDA-approved medications that we can use as an adjunct to lifestyle modification… to help patients reset their body’s biology and to be able to help them just get to a healthier weight and maintain it in the long term.”
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Diet and exercise alone aren’t enough to help many people reach a healthier weight. Medical treatments are needed to address the biological changes happening in our bodies that can drive weight regain. To find a physician near you who specializes in weight management, click here.
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This article was sponsored by Novo Nordisk Canada. All content is created independently by My Weight – What To Know with no influence from Novo Nordisk.
