Losing Weight Can Mean Fewer Pills
By: Stephanie Jackson, KARK 4 News
Updated: May 23, 2007
Even if you're not affected, many health experts say you still should be concerned about the growing obesity rate in A recent report shows 65 percent of the population is obese or overweight.
For many of these people, extra weight also comes with other health complications, like diabetes, as was the case with our former governor, Mike Huckabee.
But losing the weight can translate into fewer illnesses.
George Ellis today is 75 pounds lighter than a year ago.
Along with being obese, at 265 pounds, he was also a diabetic, with high blood pressure and taking six medications every day.
Ellis says he knew his health was in jeopardy, but it was what he didn't know that worried him.
"If your health is bad enough, and you are diabetic, you begin to think about, when it's gonna happen," Ellis said. "I was gonna start losing toes and feet if I didn't do something, and I knew I would. I knew the diabetes was gonna kill me too. And just sitting and waiting for it, for death to come."
So last August, Ellis turned to UAMS' Weight Control Program for help.
Within only a few days, he says he began to notice a change, and after five months, Dr. Vitaly Kantorovich, who runs the program says, Ellis' need for those six drugs, went away.
"The weight control program is extremely efficient in not just changing the weight itself but improving very much the quality of life and the amount of medications people take,” Dr. Vitaly Kantorovich of the UAMS Weight Control Program said. "People who are on medications most of them, all of them improve, most of them significantly."
Good news for those fighting the battle of the bulge, like George, who admits he has one small problem to deal with.
"The problem with this diet, is it's left me with a turkey neck and there's not anything in the gym, the treadmill, anywhere you can do about that."
If you need help losing weight, you can get more information about the UAMS Weight Control Program by clicking here.
