Dr. Igel’s distinguished career spans both academia and clinical practice. As a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Weill Cornell Medicine, and an Attending Endocrinologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Igel has demonstrated unparalleled expertise in the management of a wide range of endocrine disorders, with a specific focus on weight management, post-bariatric surgery care, type 2 diabetes, and other related conditions.

His commitment to advancing diabetes care is evident in his innovative approach, particularly in addressing the often-overlooked connection between diabetes and obesity. Dr. Igel emphasizes a weight-centric approach to diabetes treatment, advocating for medications that are either weight-neutral or lead to weight loss. This approach challenges the status quo in healthcare, where the impact of certain diabetes medications on weight gain is often disregarded.

“The link between diabetes and obesity is complex, and addressing it requires a comprehensive approach,” says Dr. Igel. “We know that over 11% of Americans have diabetes, and a large percentage are actually undiagnosed. Many individuals are in a progression towards diabetes, and much of that progression is closely tied to weight gain that occurs throughout someone’s lifetime. This is why we are committed to continuing our work to improve diabetes care and raise awareness of the critical connection between obesity and diabetes.”

“It is a privilege to recognize Dr. Leon Igel as the Medical Honoree of the Year,” said ADA’s Research Dinner Executive Committee Chair Gil Bashe, Finn Partners. “Obesity is a common, chronic, and progressive disease that is linked to a significant number of diabetes cases every year, and Dr. Igel’s dedication to reshaping diabetes care through his groundbreaking work in obesity management will help improve the lives of many people. His innovative approach and unwavering commitment are invaluable contributions to the field.”

As part of the Intellihealth team, Dr. Igel’s contributions extend beyond clinical practice. Intellihealth is at the forefront of leveraging innovative solutions to improve patient outcomes. Dr. Igel’s work with Intellihealth underscores the company’s dedication to advancing healthcare through research, technology, and patient-centered approaches.

For more information, sponsorships, and tickets, please go to www.diabetes.org/researchdinner2024.

About Intellihealth
Intellihealth is changing the perception of obesity and redefining how it is treated. We offer evidence-based medical obesity treatment that is three times more effective than lifestyle intervention alone. Our product, Evolve^™, enables health care providers to offer effective medical obesity treatment both via telehealth and in person. Our clinical services affiliate, Flyte^™ Medical, provides businesses and healthcare systems the services of experienced clinicians who are passionate about obesity medicine, including physicians, nurse practitioners and registered dietitians. More about Intellihealth, Evolve and Flyte Medical may be found at www.intellihealth.co.

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Katherine Saunders, MD: Let’s start with the big picture. What’s the greatest change you’ve seen in Obesity Medicine over the last 10 years?

Louis Aronne, MD: The biggest change is a change in the attitude of the public about taking medicine to treat obesity. And I think that’s come about because of the development of new, highly effective treatments and their increased use. It’s now clear that obesity can be treated, and doing so brings enormous benefit.

Saunders: How much of this willingness to take medication for obesity do you attribute to the growing recognition of obesity as a disease?

Aronne: I think it took having a treatment to really convince people that obesity is a disease. Before, even though obesity had been declared a disease by numerous organizations, people still didn’t believe it. People didn’t believe that there were medical treatments that would work. However, I also think that if we had the treatments but didn’t have the support of the major medical organizations like the AMA, we wouldn’t be where we are today. I believe it’s really the combination of the two that’s catalyzed this dramatic change in the way people view obesity.

Saunders: You’ve been arguing since the 1980s that obesity is a disease, but it took a long time for the rest of the medical community to come around. And now it seems like we’ve gone to the other extreme, with so many people taking these medicines whether they’re indicated or not.

Aronne: True, but in the future, we may treat people at lower BMIs. I like to use the analogy of blood pressure: maybe the right thing is to treat earlier. If we treat someone with a BMI of 25 and reduce it to 23, they’ll need less medication and they’ll end up with fewer side effects. There are a number of reasons why the treatment paradigm of using medications earlier could be a good thing.

Saunders: What do you think it will take for treating earlier — treating pre-obesity — to become the standard of care?

Aronne: The first step will be outcome studies showing that people live longer if they lose weight. Once we have that data, it will make sense for insurers and employers to cover these treatments. It will make more sense to treat people earlier to prevent them from having heart attacks or strokes or developing diabetes, which are all very expensive. We already know that losing weight makes people much less likely to develop diabetes, and that 15% weight loss can produce diabetes remission in the vast majority of cases. I think these dramatic health benefits will be apparent to insurers and employers.

Saunders: To improve access, we need better insurance coverage, and we also need medications to be less expensive at some point.

Aronne: We really need to make larger, systemic changes to bring down prices and improve coverage. These issues are not specific to anti-obesity medications — all new medicines are expensive when they come out, and most of them don’t have the potential benefit that an anti-obesity medication has. My hope is that the prices will come down, but the system will have to change as part of that effort.

Saunders: Let’s talk about the science of obesity. We’ve learned so much in recent years, but there’s still so much that we don’t know about this complex, chronic, heterogenous, relapsing disease. If you could snap your fingers and magically have the answer to one question, or clarify one aspect that we still don’t understand about the science of obesity, what would it be?

Aronne: One fascinating question relates to the heterogeneity of responses to treatment. You can use the same treatment on a thousand people, and some will lose 30%–40% of their body weight or more, and some won’t lose any weight. What causes that difference? What are the characteristics of someone who loses a lot versus someone who doesn’t? That would be incredibly useful to know.

Saunders: There’s been a great deal of progress in anti-obesity pharmacotherapy in the decade since the AMA’s decision to recognize obesity as a disease. What do you think we’ll see in this area in the next 10 years?

Aronne: I think we’ll see many more compounds affecting many more targets. Right now, we’re focusing on the hormone GLP-1, and now with tirzepatide we have GLP-1 plus GIP, but in the future there will be many potential targets. There is already evidence that the efficacy of some drugs will rival that of bariatric surgery. We already have compounds in the pipeline that will be more effective than the best current medications. We’ll also see oral agents that are as effective as injectables.

Another area of work will involve lean mass preservation. When you lose weight, optimally you lose three-quarters fat and one-quarter lean mass, but there’s evidence that preserving muscle may help in a number of ways. Now, we expect patients to start regaining weight right away when they stop taking a medicine, but if muscle mass is preserved, the weight doesn’t seem to go back up right away.

And finally, I think the model for pharmacotherapy for obesity will eventually be similar to what we see for hypertension. We’ll have a medicine that’s readily available, and you’ll have access to it as soon as your weight goes over a certain threshold, which could be based on weight, BMI, waist size, blood sugar, or other complication. We’ll be treating people with prediabetes and pre-pre-diabetes, which will dramatically reduce the need for diabetes medicines and prevent other health problems that we spend a lot of money on. Just imagine if we could stop 80% of people from developing diabetes! And it definitely looks like that’s possible.

Saunders: Now that we have more effective medications, we’ll need even more trained providers who understand obesity. How are we going to meet that need?

Aronne: Ultimately, obesity is such a large problem that treating it has to move into primary care. I’ve been around long enough that I remember hypertension being a disease that was treated by specialists. Hypertension medicines were hard to use, and they had a lot of side effects. You didn’t prescribe them lightly because it wasn’t clear how much benefit they offered. As it became evident that treating hypertension could prevent strokes, heart attacks and heart failure, interest grew. But it wasn’t until we had better medicines — medicines that had fewer side effects, were more effective and were easier for people in primary care to use — that treatment in the primary care setting really took off. Looking at that experience, I think that now that we have these treatments for obesity, it will move into primary care.

Saunders: We’ve made steady progress over the past 10 years, but recently developments seem to suddenly be snowballing. Is this the start of exponential growth? In another 10 years, will we be significantly further along?

Aronne: I think this is the very beginning. Remember that just a few years ago, only 2% of the population that qualified for anti-obesity medication was being treated according to guidelines. Now, as people see the benefits, they’re demanding these medications. The number of prescriptions has skyrocketed and the supply can’t keep up with the demand for them. We need to figure out the cost issue, but we also have to take into consideration how badly people want this. People don’t want to have the disease of obesity, and they will do what they can to avoid it. The demand is only going to grow from here.

A leading authority on obesity and its treatment, Dr. Louis Aronne is the Sanford I. Weill Professor of Metabolic Research at Weill Cornell Medicine and he directs the Comprehensive Weight Control Center (CWCC), a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary obesity research and treatment program.  He is the Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Advisor at Intellihealth.

The post The AMA Recognized Obesity as a Disease in 2013. How Far Have We Come in the Last 10 Years, and Where Are We Headed? appeared first on Medika Life.

Let’s start with Allyson’s work outside of her practice and the organizations and foundations, some of which she has co-founded, that focus on cancer patients, on care, aftercare, and support for a sector of the community that is so often left rudderless after the devastating and dreaded diagnosis of cancer. We’ve focused on two of the site she helped found and is prominently engaged with.

Michael’s Mission

Michael’s Mission was formed as a way to honor and remember Michael Soussa. Michael was a vibrant young man when he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at the age of 30. He underwent multiple surgeries and almost 40 months of chemotherapy and radiation. After nearly three and a half years of fighting, Michael passed away at the age of 33. Here’s a brief summary of what Michael’s Mission is about.

Our mission is to improve the quality of life and treatment options for colorectal cancer patients, particularly young people like Michael. Michael always said that when he got better, he would give back to others diagnosed and living
with colorectal cancer. What Michael found most difficult to deal with was the lack of relevant and quality information about the disease, the inability to interact and share experiences with other patients, and the lack of funding for research trials and patient support services.

He was also incredibly frustrated with the lack of attention and information regarding the side effects and quality of life issues associated with colorectal cancer—the focus was on treating the disease and not on helping people live their lives.
One of our core values – enhancing quality of life – allows us to help patients regain some control in a very uncontrollable situation. Having observed Michael fighting for his life and knowing what was missing to support his struggle, our goals include creating programs and providing services that will help patients and families navigate this difficult journey.

You can visit Michaels Mission by clicking on the image above, or follow them here on Twitter @MMfightsCRC

Let’s Win! Pancreatic Cancer

Let’s Win! Pancreatic Cancer is an unprecedented platform that enables doctors, scientists, and patients to share fast-breaking information on potentially life-saving pancreatic cancer treatments and clinical trials. Our goal is to inform, enable, and educate patients and caregivers, providing easy-to-understand, actionable information. In this way we can help people find the best treatment options available.

In May 2014, Anne Glauber learned she had stage IV pancreatic cancer. She and her family were stunned and devastated, not knowing where to turn but knowing they had to do something urgently. That overwhelming fear and confusion became the genesis for Let’s Win.

Anne gathered a team to develop her idea: her oncologist, Dr. Allyson Ocean, her dear friend Willa Shalit, social entrepreneur and philanthropist; and Kerri Kaplan, President and CEO of the Lustgarten Foundation. Anne and her team imagined an online community sharing new science-driven treatments to help patients and families have a say in their treatment plans, uncovering new possibilities, and finding new treatment options. When Cindy Gavin joined the team as Founding Executive Director, the vision took wing.

In 2017, Anne passed away after living three times longer than originally predicted. Today, Let’s Win is Anne’s legacy, and it stands as a valued resource in the pancreatic cancer community. It is a living testimony to Anne Glauber’s commitment that no one would ever again need to face a diagnosis like hers without resources and hope.

You can follow Let’s Win by clicking on the image above or connecting with them on Twitter @letswinpc

Meet Allyson Ocean

Allyson Ocean is a medical oncologist and attending physician in gastrointestinal oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center; Associate Professor of Medicine at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University; and medical oncologist at The Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health.

She graduated cum laude from Tufts University and with honors from the Tufts University School of Medicine and completed residency in internal medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Allyson was chief fellow during her fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and abstracts and is an active member of several professional societies, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Hematology, and American Association for Cancer Research.

Allyson Ocean is on a mission to educate the world about pancreatic and intestinal cancers, focusing on innovation and emerging treatments, both in the form of treatment and prevention, and she is all about patient support, throughout the entire process of diagnosis, treatment, and beyond. We cannot think of a finer example of real, ethics-driven compassionate healthcare in action.

It should come as no surprise that she’s racked up the following distinctions on top of her cancer advocacy.

• New York Magazine: Top Doctors: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
• Castle Connolly Regional Top Doctors: 1st Edition
• Top Doctors New York Metro Area (digital guide): 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021
• Exceptional Women In Medicine: 2019, 2020

If you’d like to reach out to Allyson, support her projects, or connect with here professionally, you can do so via the links provided below.

Getting in touch with Allyson

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