Elevate Your Health Colorado Troy Donahoo's blog

In my last blog, I presented the idea of a set of Thrive Vital Signs as a way to determine an overall healthy lifestyle, a lifestyle that we “know” to decrease the risk of multiple diseases and even death. However, it can be difficult to remember with the five “vital signs” even are, not to mention the goal of each.

There is often a view of medicine, and especially with medical advice around diet and exercise, that if you wait long enough, what we used to say was good for you we will soon be saying is bad for you (and vice versa). But I believe we finally really do know exactly what to recommend. And just like we have the traditional vital signs of breathing rate, pulse, blood pressure and temperature to monitor acute risks to health, these "things we know" can be seen as “Thrive Vital Signs” to monitor long-term risks to health.

In the previous blog, we discussed using BMI as a marker for healthy weight. A reader posed an interesting question to the blog asking about fat weight versus muscle weight. It is true, a pound of fat weighs the same as a pound of muscle, but since muscle is much more dense than fat (as a visualization, muscle is about the same as water and fat is oil so fat would “float” on muscle), in a given volume, muscle weighs more than fat. Obesity risk is best related to the fat amount, so given this density issue, sometimes weight is not a good measure of amount of fat.

After the request for the “magic pill for weight loss”, the next most common question I get is “what should I weigh” or “how much weight do I need to lose”? It might surprise you to know that, if you are overweight or obese, we do not know the definite answer to these seemingly simple questions.

It has been very difficult to be active outside much of these last few months due to weather, but I have come to appreciate how much of a support my dogs have been at keeping me going. After hanging out in a relatively small space during my long work days, the dogs are ready to get out and walk or run, they don’t care what my day was like, what the weather is like, or that it is now often very dark out. Many days they have been the reason I was active. I also hear from many of my patients that walking their dog is an important way they are able to continue to be physically active.

For the most significant event in nutrition, activity and weight management in 2010, I have chosen the 2,500 anniversary of "the marathon" from the city of Marathon Greece to Athens. The significance of this event goes far beyond the current race we call the marathon. In 490 BC a small force of citizen soldiers from Athens and Plataea defeated a Persian army over ten times the size, and some believe this was the birth of Western culture.

Unfortunately, the obesity numbers for 2010 have continued to climb according to a report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Although here in Colorado we have the lowest rate of obesity at about 19.5%, we are far from the "Healthy People 2010" goal of 15% and according to this report, over the past year, obesity rates increased in the majority of states and only decreased in the District of Columbia. 

Regardless of your position on the issue, the biggest health care story overall for this year has almost certainly been the health care reform bill, known as the Affordable Care Act.  Although there are many parts to this bill, the most significant and relevant issues with nutrition, activity, and weight management are the new preventive services coverage.

I have chosen as the fourth most significant event in nutrition, activity, and weight management the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans with a specific focus on the recommendations about sodium, potassium, and water.  These guidelines are important in that “The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are the cornerstone of Federal nutrition policy and nutrition education activities”.

For the fifth most important event in nutrition, activity and weight management, I have chosen the rulings from the FDA and their advisory committees on weight loss medications and on the Lap Band.