The Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry is kicking off its 100th birthday a bit early. Interim dean Verna Yiu introduced a new lecture series called the Centennial Lectures on Monday.
"We thought we would start the celebrations early this year with the Centennial Lectures," said Yiu to a large group in the Allard Family Lecture Theatre. "These are meant to be translational lectures that highlight some of our fabulous faculty."
The first lecture series highlighted the ongoing obesity research at the University of Alberta. The first speakers were Arya Sharma who looked at the clinical work being done for obese patients, and Bill Colmers who talked about his basic science research in to obesity.
Sharma, a world-renowned expert in obesity, stressed that fighting fat is more than just a lifestyle change. There are many things to consider when dealing with patients who have excess weight. He says what they do isn't so much the problem, as understanding why they do it. They could have a history of mental illness or childhood trauma; perhaps they have osteoarthritis and can't work out; or maybe they have a metabolic disorder like diabetes or take medications that promote weight gain. Multiple causes also mean that different patients need help from different health professionals.
"How's your dietician going to help with back pain," asks Sharma to over 160 people in the audience. "How is your dietician going to help you with binge eating because of childhood trauma? How is the dietician going to fix the medication that you're on? That's not her job. This is the prototypical multi-disciplinary condition."
Sharma went on to talk about the need for lifelong treatment for the condition because it isn't about weight loss, it's about keeping the weight off.
"We have to start thinking about obesity treatment in the same way we think of treating any other chronic condition," said Sharma. "From the health system perspective... you're going to have to put in place the same infrastructure, the same resources, the same everything that you would put in place for any chronic disease."
Sharma finished with sobering statistics regarding weight loss. Diet and exercise on average will get you about five per cent sustainable reduction in body weight. However, he adds that while this may look small, a five percent reduction in body weight can reduce the chance of a patient developing type 2 diabetes by 58 per cent. Unfortunately, larger sustainable weight loss (20-30%) may require bariatric surgery, which in turn can reduce cardiovascular and cancer mortality.
Bill Colmers, in the Department of Pharmacology, took the podium to talk about his basic science research. He looks at the neurological mechanisms behind overeating and weight gain.
"You're fighting an uphill battle and the reason you're fighting an uphill battle is because your body is very well designed," said Colmers. "Sadly, it doesn't work in the way that we'd like it to work under the conditions that obtained in modern life and the western world."
Tasty, high-calorie food is available on every street corner now, unlike our hunter gatherer ancestors who could only eat when they had the opportunity to.
"Our brain simply didn't evolve to cope with this," said Colmers, who talked about the body's 'eat system' which is the hedonic system and the 'stop eating system' which is called the homeostatic system.
Laboratory models that were put on a high fat diet and then taken off it, gained a lot of weight and then their bodies fought to keep the weight on. This is because the weight gained under the influence of the hedonic system resets the homeostatic system, so it thinks this is now normal. The lab models stop eat system was still not working one month after being taken off the high fat diet.
"The more weight they gain, the less their stop response," said Colmers. "They're not burning energy and they're not stopping eating. This is very much the wrong response if you want to stop the excess weight gain."
Colmers believes that overeating causes plasticity in a hormonal system in parts of the brain called the melanocortin system. He now wants to find out why this occurs and if it can be reversed.
The next Centennial Lectures are set for May 28.