Health Watch is a Public Service of the Office of News and Publications and is intended to provide general information only and should not replace the advice of a medical professional. You should contact your physician if you have questions about any of these topics.
Weight loss and gain has a very simple formula: Use more calories than you eat and you lose weight; Eat more calories than you use, and you gain weight. But there’s a lot more going on to explain why excess weight is harmful, as well as the chemical processes in the body that relate to weight loss or gain. This week on Health Watch, we’ll look at the science of weight.
Patients with type 2 diabetes may resist taking insulin because of fears that it will make them gain more weight. There are also myths that needing to take insulin means the patient is about to die. But Dr. Ildiko Lingvay, a diabetes expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says patients who received insulin as the first line of treatment did just as well as or even better than patients who didn’t. Patients taking insulin along with oral medicines to regulate blood sugar gained less weight and had fewer low-blood-sugar incidents.
Visit www.utsouthwestern.org/endocrinology to learn more about UT Southwestern’s clinical services in endocrinology.
