Dr Christine Cheng

Rimonabant (trade name “Acomplia”) is a new slimming pill that suppresses the appetite is said to have metabolic effects over and above weight loss.

The manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis claims that the drug has beneficial effects on the blood glucose and cholesterol levels, thus can modify a patient’s risk of heart disease and diabetes! They claim that this is from the drug altering the metabolism of the fat cells.

There has been some dispute about this. Cynics wonder if the improved blood profile is from the lifestyle changes recommended by the manufacturer. There has also been no direct comparison with the other popular slimming tablets Reductil and Xenical.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

My friend’s son is a genius at multi-tasking. He can watch a video and play on his gameboy at that same time as entertaining his friends. He is a typical 10-year old who needs constant visual stimulation. Part of the new computer-crazy generation. Essentially a couch-potato kid.

A new British study has shown that such lifestyle habits, coupled with junk food and lack of exercise, has reached epidemic proportions in the UK. Over a quarter of the 3500 inner-city secondary children studied were overweight. Only half walked to school. Half of them spent 4 hours a day, or more, watching TV or playing computer games.

In the last decade, the number of obese children has doubled. Since obesity is linked with heart disease and diabetes, this equates to a huge number of children who will not live past the age of 50!

Good lifestyle habits start from childhood. These include eating good food and regular exercise.

Source: Daily Express

Experts have recently linked obesity with cancer, stating that up to a staggering 40% of cancers can be prevented by simple lifestyle changes!

With obesity affecting increasing numbers of the population worldwide, plus the general ageing of the developed world, the incidence of cancers caused by obesity is set to sky-rocket!

And we thought diabetes melliltus and heart disease being linked to obesity was bad enough.

Moral of the story: eat less, exercise more. Stay trim, stay fit.

Source: Daily Mail

Someone who appears to be thin may have a large amount of fat internally (TOFI). The fat infiltrates the liver, underused muscles and wraprs around organs like the pancreas.

TOFIs are at high risk of insulin resistance, to the same degree as someone who is obese. That puts such slim individuals of diseases associated with obesity such as diabetese melliluts and heart disease.  What a shocker!

So what causes TOFI?

Internal fat is measured by MRI scanning. The fat is seen as yellow in the image, which is of a 28-year old sedentary male who eats healthily.

TOFI is associated with lack of activity. Controlled food intake will results in low subcutaneous (skin) fat thickness. However, only exercise will eliminate internal fat.

It is not important to just look thin. Regular exercise is essential for optimal health.

Source: Associated Content

Obesity is a huge problem for doctors, not just in terms of the health implications. Diagnosis is also more difficult. Physical examination is hampered by the think layer of fatty tissue. Now even radiological diagnosis is said to be less accurate.

I had a few “memorable” encounters with morbidly obese patients when I was an Anaesthetic Senior House Officer in Wales.

 The first was a lady who suffered from severe depression and ate herself to the point where she could not get out of bed. She ended up breaking her leg (can’t remember how) and needed surgical fixation.

She was too large to fit onto the standard operating table. Fortunately the obstetric delivery bed was able to take her weight. She was admitted to the intensive care unit after the operation so as to ensure she didn’t stop breathing when she was asleep.

The other lady needed an epidural for labour. When I saw how huge she was, I freaked and ran for a consultant’s help. I was in Swansea’s Singleton Hospital then, and I had only just started doing labour epidurals.

My consultant struggled to get an epidural in, and eventually succeeded. The midwives spent ages after that trying to find the foetal heart again. They eventually got worried and decided to call the obstetricians in to do a caesarean section.

The baby was stillborn.

No one knew when the baby had died. Monitoring was just so difficult because of her weight.

Morbid obesity is just such a disaster. Find the help. Lose the weight. Regain health. Your life depends on it.

US scientists have devised a drug that can switch on a gene to burn body fat, offering hope of an exercise pill. This exercise pill tricks cells into thinking they are undergoing serious exertion and so helps the body burn extra fat.

Mice given the drug burned off fat, even when they did not exercise, and were resistant to weight gain despite a high-fat diet.

The ultimate use would be to treat people at risk of obesity-related diseases like diabetes, rather than offer a “no-work six-pack” pill. This radical new potential treatment for obesity may allow fat people to use drugs to slim down rather than dieting or exercising. The drug, a synthetic form of fat, has only been tested on animals. It appears to work by flicking a master switch within cells that regulates the storage or burning of fat.

Ronald Evans, the researcher who created the drug, told the Experimental Biology conference in Washington DC over the weekend that such drugs could lead to new treatments for human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndromeX, this consists of obesity and its consequences, such as high blood pressure, elevated levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, diabetes and resistance to insulin.

Dr Evans, of the Salk Institute, in San Diego, California, found the drug activated the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise, increasing the amount of calories burnt with no apparent effort. This made the mice resistant to weight gain even on a high-fat diet. The drug mimics normal fat and chemically triggers a gene switch called PPAR-delta. Turning on this switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise.

The potential of chemical metabolic engineering is extremely promising, particularly since we live in a society where too few people get an ideal amount of exercise.

Such a drug could reduce fatty tissue, lower amounts of fat circulating in the blood, cut blood glucose levels and reduce resistance to insulin, limiting the risks of heart disease and diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity, and experts believe up to half of all cases could be prevented through changes to diet and exercise.

There are already a range of anti-fat drugs on the market, but they are criticised by nutrition researchers, who point out that people who take such drugs may lose weight at first, but without appropriate lifestyle changes, inevitably pile it back on soon after.

UK expert Dr Fredrik Karpe, from the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, is hoping to start human testing of this drug in the near future.

Commenting on the work, he said: “There has never been a method to ‘medically’ switch on fat burning before.

“The finding that PPAR-delta co-ordinates this process, not only by switching on fat burning, but also to rebuild the muscle in a way making it more fit for fat burning, is of major interest, not least as a completely novel approach for the treatment of the metabolic derangements accompanying obesity.”

But he cautioned; “Although this might become an ‘exercise pill’, it is unlikely to provide all the other benefits of real physical exercise.”

By Dr Christine Cheng

As many as 80-90% of us have some form of adverse reaction to one or more foods or additives. Eating the offending foods can result in a broad range of symptoms such as migraine headaches, weight gain, chronic exhaustion, hyperactivity (ADD), arthritis, respiratory and skin disorders.

The food types we can react to include many foods generally considered to be healthy and nutritious. Many of these are consumed whilst on a weight loss regime: lettuce, cucumber, tuna, chicken and lemon being examples. This may explain why so many of us starve on a low calorie, low carbohydrate diet and yet fail to lose weight. To make matters worse, many of the foods that we are intolerant of are the very foods that we are addicted to!

When the offending food is consumed, an inflammatory reaction occurs, with the body mounting an immune response towards it. This can produce a multitude of reactions within the body. Changes in brain serotonin levels mimics depression and triggers a craving for sweet foods. Eating these simple sugars produces temporary relief, but brings with it an insulin surge that causes further craving for sugars. It is this vicious cycle that results in the failure of so many attempts at losing weight.

Once the trigger foods are identified, simple elimination of these substances could result in weight loss, particularly when combined with an exercise regime. The ALCAT Test is a simple blood test that can check an individual’s reaction to 150 common food substances and 20 chemicals/food additives. Dietary elimination of your favourite foods may not be easy initially, but these foods can be re-introduced after 3 to 6 months. The eating plan is unique to your specific body physiology, and it avoids the needless elimination of entire food groups or calorie counting.

Clients who stay on the new eating plan benefit from weight loss, increased energy and improved well-being. There is at least moderate improvement with obesity (98%), migraines (78%), arthritis (77%), eczema (67%), chronic fatigue (71%), chronic sinusitis (62%), diarrhoea/constipation (73%)

Food intolerance testing and the elimination of trigger foods can be the solution to the many people who have found it difficult to lose weight despite making appropriate dietary and lifestyle changes.

Dr Christine Cheng is an Aesthetic Physician at Simply Aesthetic Rejuvenation & Contouring Clinic (http://www.simply-aesthetic.com) in Singapore. She runs an effective slimming program combining the Food Intolerance Test with Mesotherapy and Advanced Contouring techniques to speed up the fat melting process. She is the Aesthetics Contributor for Gethat Magazine.

Simply Aesthetic Rejuvenation & Contouring Clinic provides non-surgical solutions to enhance physical beauty. Treatments available include mesotherapy for fat melting, cellulite, stretch marks, alopecia and rejuvenation, botox, fillers and chemical peels. Their cellulite program (http://www.we-treat-cellulite.com) shows reduction after 3 sessions, with elimination of moderate cellulite after just 5 sessions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christine_Cheng

Singapore (PRWEB) April 13, 2007 — Simply Aesthetic Rejuvenation & Contouring Clinic is the first and only medical aesthetic clinic in Singapore to offer the new fat-melting treatment with the “Diamond Contours Biomesosculpture” system.

Created by Australian company Diamond International, Biomesosculpture is a painless and swift detoxification procedure that enhances the entire face and body without invasive surgery. Using principles based on the old Chinese art of cupping, this modern technology increases the microcirculation to reduce the congestion under the skin.

Cellulite is the bane of many women, even those who are extremely slim. With lifestyle and genetic components to its development and severity, cellulite responds poorly to weight loss and exercise. There are two stages to cellulite development; the first is tissue congestion, the second is cellulitus. Stagnation occurs when fat cells get enlarged, which in turn causes septa — fibrous structures — to tighten, resulting in a dimpled appearance. The Biomesosculpture treatment acts by increasing circulation and detoxifying the extra-cellular matrix, which allegedly can counteract these stagnation effects.

Biomesosculpture uses 100% safe and natural principles to detoxify the extra-cellular matrix (ECM), which is the gel-like substance in which all cells sit, and through which the cells communicate with the rest of the body. The natural accumulation of toxins in the ECM leads to sub-optimal cellular metabolism, and the accumulation of cellulite and fat.

Biomesosculpture, in combination with a luxurious custom-blended chocolate, dandelion, ivy and juniper treatment cream, detoxifies the ECM and encourages the drainage of toxins into the lymphatic system. The cream has anti-oxidant properties that continue the detoxification process after the treatment is completed. With a clean ECM, the appearance of cellulite is reduced. The mechanical action of the treatment head breaks up the fat cells, leading to inch loss, often noticeable after the first treatment.

Dr Christine Cheng of Simply Aesthetic Rejuvenation & Contouring Clinic describes the treatment as filling in a vacuum in the slimming market in Singapore. Technology meets medical reliability in fat melting and skin rejuvenation. We finally have a totally safe and natural treatment which produces the results without discomfort or the need for prolonged recovery. For fat melting particularly, the rate of fat destruction can exceed mesotherapy and liposuction. The other advantage is skin toning during the fat melting process. Loose skin can be a major problem with other fat melting treatments.

We have a client who flies in from Manila every week for treatment. He has reduced his waist circumference by 10 sessions after a mere 13 treatments, and sculpted his chin and neck area. The fat from his neck area melted away very quickly. We are now lifting the skin with the Biomesolifting lotion.

Each Biomesosculpture session lasts for 45-60 minutes. For cellulite, 10 sessions are needed to see results. For waist reduction, 5 sessions should produce a 5 cm loss. Recommended treatment frequency is alternate days, but the treatment is safe enough to be used daily for faster results.

A medical study looked at the MRI scans taken before and after treatment and these confirmed a reduction in abdominal fat over the course of treatment. Whether fat is destroyed through mesotherapy, liposuction, or any other technique, fat loss is considered permanent. The combination of Biomesosculpture with a healthy lifestyle can result in permanent fat loss. The reduction of stagnation, stimulation of lymphatic drainage is detoxifying and promotes the reduction of cellulite.

In addition to fat melting and cellulite reduction, Diamond Contours, when used with a Biomesolifting Cream, has a natural skin tightening effect. Brow, face and neck lifting is visible after a single session. Décolletage rejuvenation with smoothening of the skin texture and breast rejuvenation (lifting, firming & enhancement) are part of this versatile machine’s treatment portfolio.

As with all non-invasive aesthetic treatments, a few sessions are needed to see the best results, and regular sessions will be required for maintenance.

“Our early experience with this machine has been very encouraging,” said Dr Cheng. “We have a client who flies in from Manila every week for treatment. He has reduced his waist circumference by 10 sessions after a mere 13 treatments, and sculpted his chin and neck area. The fat from his neck area melted away very quickly. We are now lifting the skin with the Biomesolifting lotion.”

Simply Aesthetic Rejuvenation and Contouring Clinic is located at 230 Orchard Road, Faber House #04-230, Singapore 238854. Simply Aesthetic is a medical aesthetic clinic that offers non-surgical aesthetic treatments such as Botox, chemical peels and mesotherapy for rejuvenation, physical enhancement and body contouring. Our slimming program includes detailed personal testing for food intolerances (Food Intolerance Test) and Personal Genetic Screening for the Obesity Gene. Detailed information about the range of services offered can be found at www.simply-aesthetic.com.