Tag Archives: weight management

Assuring there will be a ‘tomorrow’s pharmacist’

Vending machines for prescription drugs are already here. How much longer will you be here?If you intend to be a pharmacist of tomorrow, you need to start acting today. Delivering a professional weight management service is a good place to start

By Dr Stephen Kreitzman Ph.D, RNutr and Valerie Beeson, of Howard Foundation Research

THE ROYAL PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY has set out best practice standards for pharmacies delivering public health services in England and Wales. The ‘Professional standards for public health practice for pharmacy’ were created in partnership with the Department of Health, Royal Society for Public Health and Faculty of Public Health, and focus strongly on backing up services with data. They call on pharmacists to ensure their public health offering is evidence-based, tailoring it to local needs wherever possible, and to gather data that proves the value of services
Of all the important services being offered in pharmacy, it could be argued that weight management is the most valuable and documentable. It is valuable because controlling weight prevents and can even treat type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, sleep apnoea, poor fertility and a host of other health issues that are prevalent in the community. It can even impact on services such as smoking cessation, since the possibility of weight gain is often a reason for failure to stop smoking.
A weight management service is readily documentable, since tracker software is available that will instantly provide evidence for weight loss achievements and medical benefits from the weight loss. If you can’t produce data, you have no proof of your pharmacy’s accomplishments.

The not-yet-obese
Treating overweight, but not-yet-obese, people in pharmacy, is obesity prevention on the high street. There are over 30 million overweight and obese people in the United Kingdom. Since no one ever became obese without first being overweight, it is important to provide real help to people at this stage. It is much less problematic to help people who do not have a massive amount of weight to lose and who also do not yet have some of the serious medical consequences associated with excess weight.

Helping people lose weight is not just about making them feel good but is also about preventing major long-term health problems, such as type 2 diabetes. A recent article in GP magazine reported a staggering seven-fold rise in insulin use in type 2 diabetes over a nine-year period. An effective pharmacy weight management service could have an enormous and immediate benefit.

But it seems that it’s not just the NHS that needs to hear what pharmacy has to say. The public do, too. North London LPC was inundated with enquiries about a newsletter it had produced raising awareness of pharmacy services in the area.

Promote your service

So what does that mean to you as a pharmacist with a team already offering an established weight management service? Promote your service far and wide and show the public and the NHS what you’ve been doing to improve the health of the nation.

Fin McCaul, for example, is first and foremost a community pharmacist practising in Manchester. He is also the chairman of the Independent Pharmacy Federation and works for Bury CCG one day a week as its long-term conditions lead.

Fin’s passion for independent pharmacy is second only to helping patients lose weight and stop smoking. With an average of 100 quits per year and well over 1,000 patients helped through the weight loss service in his pharmacy, there is nobody better placed to talk about the opportunities and challenges for pharmacy now that public health commissioning has moved into the care of local authorities.

Delegation, motivation and marketing skills and advice for pharmacists and their team are just some of the benefits from his stop smoking/weight loss clinics. At the 2013 Pharmacy Show Mr McCaul organised a series of patient services workshops delivered by pharmacists who were successfully running weight services in their local community and wanted to share their knowledge and expertise. At the March 2014 Independent Pharmacy Federation conference, Fin again provided the opportunity for training in critical pharmacy services and the weight management clinic run by author Valerie Beeson was well attended and appreciated.

A giant change in practice

NHS England’s education arm has launched new standards for pharmacists delivering patient consultations, which have been hailed as a “giant change” in pharmacy practice. Health Education England (HEE) called on pharmacists to ensure they were educating patients, building a relationship with them and respecting their individual needs when conducting consultations.

The Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum seminar, held in London in February, kicked off with the staggering statistic that more than half of the UK population could be obese before 2050. This could create costs of £50 billion a year to the NHS, warned speakers, who included representatives from NHS England, Public Health England, NICE, the Department of Health, CCGs and the nutrition sector.

The speakers agreed that primary care is the key battleground for tackling the issue. But with GPs and pharmacists at the frontline of delivering public health services, who is better placed to keep the nation’s waistline under control? It is clearly pharmacy.

There was no doubt that pharmacy should offer obesity services. Ash Soni, pharmacist and vice chair of the RPS English Pharmacy Board argued that most overweight people did not feel unwell so would usually fail to see the point of visiting their GP. Mr Soni believed using a medical model was the wrong starting point. Most people visited pharmacies for multiple reasons, which presented an “ideal opportunity.”

Effective weight management

Pharmacy is an excellent provider of weight services for the community. Many overweight people in the BMI 25-30 range take advantage of pharmacy weight loss programmes, recognising that they really work and feeling confident that they are being monitored by healthcare professionals. Pharmacists’ expertise in weight management, however, has proven extremely valuable for the treatment of obese and even morbidly obese people. This is a group who could have qualified for bariatric surgery at great expense and risk.

There are multitudes of patients taking drugs with a very narrow safety spectrum, such as warfarin or lithium. Dieting can alter the absorption of these drugs, so dosages need to be carefully monitored. There are some people who really should not be dieting at all. Pregnant women, patients with a recent history of surgery, stroke or heart attack are not logical candidates for weight loss.

Weight maintenance requires attention and is not usually possible in a busy medical practice. Long-term support in a pharmacy increases the weight maintenance prognosis for dieters.

Now or never

According the the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, it is ‘Now or Never’. “Pharmacists need to become first and foremost providers of patient care, rather than dispensers and suppliers of medicines This is central to securing a future in which the profession can flourish,” it says.

To be a ‘Today’s Pharmacist’ and have your pharmacy remain a valued destination on the high street, start developing and promoting your one-on-one services now. For patients to recognise and value your services, use your consultation room for patient services and not storage space. Be properly equipped for a weight management service by having weighing scales comparable to the ones we provide, that can weigh patients up to 32 stone. Have a chair in the consulting room with no arms that is strong enough to support an obese patient. Be professional, knowledgable, understanding and effective with your weight service.

The pharmacists of tomorrow will have a much greater opportunity to make use of their extensive pharmacy education, long after the vending machines have dominated the prescription business.

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OBESITY PREVENTION AND TREATMENT ON THE HIGH STREET

S. N. Kreitzman Ph.D, R.Nutr.

Howard Foundation Research

Treating overweight, but not-yet-obese people, in pharmacy, is obesity prevention on the high street. There are over 30 million overweight and obese people in the United Kingdom. Since no one ever became obese without first being overweight, it is important to provide real help to people at this stage. It is much less problematic to help people who do not have a massive amount of weight to lose and who also do not yet have some of the serious medical consequences associated with excess weight.

Pharmacy has become the prime location for weight management in the UK and Ireland. With the NHS ‘Call to Action’, pharmacy professional bodies are urging pharmacists to make their voices heard and shout about the good they do in improving people’s health. Take weight management for example. Helping people lose weight is not just about making them feel good but is also about preventing major long-term health problems, such as type 2 diabetes. This point was very well illustrated in a recent article in GP magazine that reported a staggering sevenfold rise in insulin use in type 2 diabetes over a nine year period.

But it seems that it’s not just the NHS that needs to hear what pharmacy has to say. The public do too. North London LPC was inundated with enquiries about a newsletter it had produced raising awareness of pharmacy services in the area.

Fin McCaul, for example, is first and foremost a community pharmacist practicing in Manchester. He is also the Chairman of the Independent Pharmacy Federation and works for Bury CCG one day per week as its Long Term Conditions Lead.

Fin’s passion for independent pharmacy is second only to helping patients lose weight and stop smoking. With an average of 100 quits per year and well over 1000 patients helped through the weight loss service in his pharmacy, there is nobody better placed to talk about the opportunities and challenges for pharmacy now that Public Health commissioning has moved into the care of Local Authorities.

Delegation, motivation and marketing skills and advice for pharmacists and their team are just some of the benefits from his Stop Smoking/Weight loss clinics. At the 2013 Pharmacy show he organised a series of Patient Services Workshops delivered by Pharmacists who are successfully running weight services in their local community and want to share their knowledge and expertise.

Fin’s expertise and results are not just anecdotes. He, along with many of the pharmacies treating overweight and obesity are generating extensive audit data from their weight management services. Results from one of his pharmacy audits below show the percentage of initial weight lost by over 1100 of his patients.

Pharmacy is an excellent provider of weight services for the community. Many overweight people in the BMI 25-30 range take advantage of pharmacy weight loss programmes recognising that they really work and confident that they are being monitored by healthcare professionals. Pharmacists’ expertise in weight management, however has proven extremely valuable for the treatment of obese and even the morbidly obese people. This is a group who could have qualified for bariatric surgery at great expense, risk and often compromised future life.

Effective weight loss absolutely needs to be monitored by knowledgeable healthcare professionals, because real weight loss is not benign. Type 2 diabetics, for example, who lose weight by compliance with a total food replacement diet programme, will induce remission of their diabetes within a few days and therefore continuing with hypoglycaemic medication can get them into serious difficulty. There are multitudes of patients taking medications such as warfarin or lithium, drugs which have a very narrow safety spectrum. Dieting can alter the absorption rate for these drugs so these patients need their dosages to be carefully monitored. There are some people who really should not be dieting at all. Pregnant women, patients with a recent history of surgery, stroke or heart attack are not logical candidates for weight loss. Effective weight loss should not be left to amateurs or internet sales. Healthcare professionals are needed, especially in pharmacy where continuous care can be provided even after the weight is lost, because weight maintenance requires the greatest attention and is not usually possible in a busy medical practice and appears to be almost impossible without professional help.

Although it is traditional to show successful dieters proudly occupying trousers which are now several sizes too large, there isn’t enough space to print over 13,000 examples. Results from this single audit of a group of pharmacies out of a collection of more than 2000 UK and Irish pharmacies currently treating overweight and obesity, is a vivid demonstration of the evidence base being accumulated for this absolutely essential community service from pharmacy.

Pharmacy is the only reliable community service providing and documenting long term weight management without the need major research grants or health service funding. Although there has been widespread press coverage for a £2.4 million grant by Diabetes UK to attempt to demonstrate that type 2 diabetes can be put into remission by effective weight loss, a fact that has been repeatedly reported in the medical press for over 30 years, pharmacies have been quietly and routinely succeeding with diabetes prevention and remission in their high street branches. Unlike bariatric surgeons, who need to justify the cost and risk of providing weight loss by surgical means on the basis of the phenomenal cost savings on the treatment of diabetes alone, weight loss in the pharmacy can accomplish the same results without massive expense and risk. And since total food replacement methods remove the substances of abuse for prolonged periods of time from those who may be suffering from a dopamine response to eating excess in their nucleus accombans , they don’t show the common addiction transfer syndrome that seems to be so common after bariatric surgery.

While activists continue to bellow about the size of soft drink containers, pharmacists are demonstrating how much their education and skills can be amplified by the convenience of access on the high streets of the UK. Pharmacy stands alone among the healthcare professionals in providing fantastic public health services such as smoking cessation, weight management, diabetes recognition, prevention and even treatment, medicines review, hypertension assessment and a host of other essential services very much needed in the real world. A major thank you is overdue.

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Positioning pharmacy as an effective option to bariatric surgery

Nov 2012

Recent NHS figures show that the number of people undergoing bariatric surgery has quadrupled in the last 5 years – from 1,573
people in 2006-07 to 6,723 in 2011-12.
Although bariatric surgery is very effective at producing rapid weight loss that causes type 2 diabetes to go into remission, it comes with a multitude of problems including high morbidity and mortality risk, prohibitive initial and followup costs and limited availability. However, there is a readily available alternative to bariatric surgery that is evidence-based, safer, much
more cost-effective and one where pharmacies are playing an active part: Very Low Calorie Diets (VLCDs) properly monitored by healthcare professionals.
The rise in bariatric surgery has led to prominent pharmacy figures Mike Holden, chief executive of NPA, and Ajit Malhi, AAH
Pharmaceuticals’ head of marketing services, arguing the case for pharmacy which is playing an increasingly prominent role in tackling obesity in the community, as part of the public health and Healthy Living Pharmacy drive.
With over 2000 pharmacies offering the Lipotrim VLCD programme, overweight people have ready access to a pharmacist who can not only help them reduce weight, but also assist them adopt healthier lifestyles, change eating and exercise habits and pre-empt or control existing diabetes.
Pharmacists therefore deserve considerable recognition for providing a service capable of promoting remission of type 2 diabetes and relief of co-morbidities, where present, without depleting the assets of the NHS. And, crucially, praise for the effective reatment of excess weight in hundreds of thousands of patients, where documentation of weight loss represents evidence for the value of pharmacy.

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Support GPs in tackling obesity

Feb 2013

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) suggested in a report last month (Action on obesity: comprehensive care for all) that GPs
should direct obese patients to community services, including pharmacies, rather than offering in-house clinics. The report pushes for multi-disciplinary teams with pharmacists working alongside GPs, dieticians, counsellors and physiotherapists, and called for a national model for the commissioning of community services for obese patients.

This is further testament that pharmacists must be doing something right here.
Pharmacies have been running dedicated weight management services for over a decade. In the last couple of years the Royal
Society for Public Health has become more involved in pharmacy, and the NHS has given the nod to the Healthy Living Pharmacy initiative.
The big sticking point for pharmacy has been demonstrating value. But this has all started to change over the last couple of years with the introduction of the Lipotrim Patient Tracker, an online IT programme that keeps patient records for their weight management service and provides for comprehensive audits to be produced.
The evidence produced so far from Lipotrim pharmacies clearly shows that pharmacy offers a very successful and costeffective
service that will make a big impact in reducing the obesity epidemic and the costs to the NHS.
With only two months until clinical commissioning groups (CCG) take over from PCTs, it’s crucial that pharmacists embrace
and push for the RCP model to work and shout out about the evidence.

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Offering pharmacy support behind VLCDs

Oct 2012

Not all Very Low Calorie Diets (VLCDs) are the same, and not all VLCD programmes are the same. Customers need to be made aware that some online VLCDs come without the proper formulations or essential support of a healthcare professional.
VLCDs should use nutritionally complete food formulas designed to replace all regular meals with no additions. The professional weight management programmes are especially valuable for the obese where the excess weight has led to co-morbidities such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension and mobility problems. They are not for the casual dieter who wants to shed a few pounds before going on holiday, but can help prevent overweight from progressing to obesity.
but weight loss can have an impact on existing medical conditions. Real weight loss should be managed in a healthcare setting where knowledgeable screening and weekly monitoring are routine.
Lipotrim is a professional VLCD programme that is only available from pharmacies and GP surgeries. The initial consultation involves screening for suitability and taking a careful medical and drug history. In some cases GP involvement is required, e.g. for stopping drugs in patients with type 2 diabetes. Patients are required to return to the pharmacy weekly for monitoring, counselling if necessary and to collect the next week’s supplies. People nearing their target weight are given lifestyle advice on
maintaining their weight and offered the followon maintenance programme.
Online VLCDs cannot replace the comprehensive care, support and expertise provided by a pharmacy‘s professional weight
management service. And importantly, online purchases cannot guarantee the compositional integrity of products that have at times been known to violate international standards for total food replacement products and programmes. Caveat emptor!

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Promoting adherence to your weight management service

Jun 2012

Adherence is an area that pharmacy is claiming for its own. The New Medicines Service (NMS) and Medicines Use Reviews (MURs) are both based on promoting adherence to prescribed medication.
But what about adherence to weight loss? The principles of adherence are the same and the semi structured questionnaire used in these services could be adapted for your weight management, for example by asking the customer how they are getting on, if they are having any problems, if they think it’s working, if there have been any lapses and if there is any further information or support they need.
However, weight loss, like smoking cessation, are complicated by an addiction element (one to food, the other to nicotine) so
any counselling will also take into account motivation and willpower.
The Lipotrim Pharmacy Programme has been designed to help patients adhere to the diet and maintain their weight afterwards. Total Food Replacement with Lipotrim uniquely allows the dieter to totally stop the substance of abuse, which is an essential component of addiction management. The initial consultation and subsequent weekly visits help you to educate and encourage dieters and address any concerns. This gives dieters confidence in your service and also means you can help them maintain their target weight, such as with Lipotrim maintenance products.
The programme also comes with resources and tools which include factsheets, patient progress cards and a new engaging patient DVD that uses the latest animation to explain weight loss and the Lipotrim programme. The Lipotrim Pharmacy Patient Tracker has a patient interface, complete with graphs and charts, which means patients can login securely into their records and monitor their own progress to keep motivated.

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Conducting your own audit of evidence

Apr 2012

Getting evidence from services is no longer a luxury for pharmacy. With the new NHS bill, every healthcare professional and service will have to demonstrate value if they want a future.
However, collating evidence has been a particular challenge for pharmacy – pharmacists are not in the habit of documenting the value of their services and they often don’t have the means to do this efficiently, relying too much on paper.
Conducting an audit and gathering evidence for your service is easier if you have an online recording system and the PSNC are going that way with Pharmabase.
When it comes to your weight management service, the evidence from your audit can be compelling. Using the Lipotrim Patient Tracker, you can pull off data to demonstrate benefits using a range of criteria, for example by gender, BMI, age and co-morbidities such as hypertension and diabetes, all at the click of a button. It allows you to continuously audit your pharmacy service for evidence based commissioning while at the same time monitor and support your patients and cut down on paperwork and filing.
Getting started is easy. Draw up objectives and then decide on what evidence you want to present, to whom and for when. Set aside time to become familiar with the Lipotrim Patient Tracker or simply book a quick 20-minute online demo to see it in action and get your first patient record in place.

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Setting up a successful weight management service

Feb 2012

A weight management service can help you meet both your professional and business objectives. The first step to setting up your service is to recognize the business opportunity as well as the professional contribution you can make to the health of your community. Pharmacy is a primary healthcare provider for weight management services and the widespread need for effective weight control will direct customers to the pharmacy providing the most effective service. Properly run, a weight management programme will substantially increase footfall and lead to extended customer loyalty. Decide on a service specification that will provide the evidence of efficacy, the equipment you need and the SOPs, staff training and continued support for your programme.
You need to think about how you bring the customers in. In-store posters and leaflets, local GP surgeries and sports centres and tie-ins with national campaigns are all good sources of new business, but the best source of new people is the impact successful dieters have on their relatives, friends and acquaintances. Paying proper attention to the protocols of the programme will pay off big time.
And don’t forget about evaluating your service and the positive health outcomes to your population. Gathering evidence for this puts you in a strong position for further funding from local commissioning groups and getting involved in the Healthy Living Pharmacy initiative.
Lipotrim Pharmacy supports you in all the above, from training and CPD, to tools to promote your service and right through
to evidence gathering thanks to the Lipotrim Patient Tracker.

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Worth the weight

The market for weight loss products is moving in the direction of a personalised, supportive and structured service offer, says Christine Michael

At New Year millions of people are likely to resolve to lose weight and get fitter, but all too often their good intentions prove short-lived, and obesity remains an intractable public health problem. Data compiled by the World Cancer Research Fund show that in 2010 in England, 62.8 per cent of adults were overweight or obese, and the direct cost of obesity related illness to the NHS was estimated at £5.1bn a year. In Scotland, 65 per cent of adults were overweight or obese, while the figures for Northern Ireland and Wales are 59 per cent and 57 per cent respectively.
For pharmacies, January and February are key times of the year to engage with customers who want to slim, whether on an opportunistic basis, as part of a broader healthy lifestyle offering, or as a commissioned enhanced service.
Keeping track
NPA Board Member and Alliance Healthcare Awards Welsh Pharmacy of the Year shortlisted nominee,

Chris Jenkins, of St Clears Pharmacy in Carmarthenshire, introduced a weight loss service earlier this year, and says it has created a “virtuous cycle” for the pharmacy as a whole. “We enjoy a positive reputation for our successful weight management service, strengthening our position and creating a benchmark in customer care within the local community,” he says. “More than 50 people have enrolled, and some travel up to 30 miles for the service; it even has a local Facebook page.”
One advantage of offering a service based weight loss programme rather than a more ad hoc approach is the opportunity it provides to compile data for potential commissioners. This lies behind the introduction of a ‘Patient Tracker’ audit tool, a new feature of the Lipotrim VLCD programme, which has been running for 25 years and is now available in nearly 2,000 pharmacies. “It is important to have the tools that can satisfy the need for documentation of achievement in this era of evidence-based treatments,” says Gareth Evans, a community pharmacist who offers the Lipotrim programme in East Anglia. His analysis shows that the mean weight loss of 382 people who completed three or more weeks on total food replacement was around 10kg, from 91kg to 81kg on average. “The Patient Tracker software allows me to present evidence not only of individual patients’ experience but also the achievements of cohorts of patients, which has become important for commissioning – for example, to show that successful weight loss is found even in patients with extremely high BMI,” says Mr Evans.

Diet demand
Market analysts Euromonitor International sees growth in `one stop shop’ weight loss services like the Lipotrim programme, as consumers “shift away from weight loss tablets and pills, and towards meal replacement programmes and holistic diet alternatives… due in part to the prevailing economic conditions”.
Its analysis shows some volatility in the retail weight loss category, explained mainly by the dramatic impact of Alli, from GlaxoSmithKline Healthcare (GSK), from its launch as an OTC product in 2009, to a subsequent fall off in sales in 2011.
However, having resolved difficulties with supplies of the product, GSK relaunched Alli in time for the 2012 Christmas and New Year market. Their major campaign of press and online advertising and in-store support, was primarily aimed at females aged 35 and over, with a BMI of 28 or more.
Nevertheless, Euromonitor still forecasts virtually flat sales in the category between 2012 and 2016, with compound annual growth of only 0.4 per cent, rising to an annual total of £128.6m by 2016.
One catalyst for change in the slimming supplement market is the latest batch of claims guidelines from the European 27Food Safety Agency (EFSA), which came into force in December 2012, and which may now lead to some products that make unapproved claims being withdrawn or relaunched with amended packaging.

Products with approved claims are likely to benefit, says Sanjay Mistry of Inovate Health. His company markets Slimsticks, a product containing konjac mannan, a vegetable fibre that the EFSA approves for “weight loss in the context of a hypocaloric diet”. Launching with a short term listing in selected Boots stores, Slimsticks will be rolled out to independent pharmacies through 2013. Other products that have EFSA approved claims are also now likely to want to push their advantage.
Compared with offering slimming products, introducing a personalised service may seem onerous in terms of time and training, but Chris Jenkins believes it is still worthwhile.
“Two members of staff have taken full responsibility for the weight loss service and have great pride in doing this,” he says. “They have the chance to develop new skills, and although it takes time to run such a service it is well invested time – time to care for patients and to make a real difference in their lives.”

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LIPOTRIM PHARMACY WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAMME : EVIDENCE BASE

Providing routine clinical evidence documenting efficacy in pharmacy under real life conditions

There is probably no current medical discipline more in need of evidence of efficacy than the field of weight loss, especially when the patients are obese and/or with co-morbidities. There is now overwhelming experience with total food replacement programmes (VLCD) , nutrient complete formula diets that are essentially low fat, very low calorie enteral feeds. Over the past four decades, these have gained recognition and acceptance as safe and effective where they are supervised by healthcare professionals, people who are medically experienced so that they can restrict access to the diets or modify treatments when necessary. Real weight loss, beyond simply depleting stored glycogen and water, has physiological implications and the real weight losses due to VLCD programmes, such as Lipotrim, are rapid and substantial. These programmes, run by trained pharmacists and GPs, compete with bariatric surgery in the magnitude of the losses routinely achieved, but without the negatives of substantial costs, higher risks and post weight loss addiction transfer,

EVIDENCE BASE

While a total food replacement formula diet can obviously not be blind to the dieter and a placebo would be unsafe, an innovative patient tracker system introduced into the Lipotrim pharmacy weight loss programme, allows for on demand, virtually instant, assessment of the secure data kept by the pharmacists offering the service. Statistical evidence can be provided for an individual patient or all the patients from a particular medical practice. Evidence can be provided for a single pharmacy or a pharmacy group or, as required, any selected collection of pharmacies, If necessary evidence can be provided from all the pharmacies in an area, as was recently reported for 150 pharmacies in Northern and Southern Ireland by pharmacist Brendan Feeney.

The flexibility of the tracker is such that statistics can be obtained, for example, within a defined BMI range, such as above BMI 40 or perhaps between BMI 25 and 30, or a defined age range or by gender. It can compare the first dieting period with that of subsequent dieting intervals. It can provide statistics on long term weight maintenance after dieting and the stability of the weight during transition from dieting to maintenance.

Critically, it is possible to quantify the dieting successes of people with concurrent medical issues – diabetes, high blood pressure, hypothyroid, depressive illness or any medical condition where weight loss will have an impact on the condition or treatment protocols. The Ireland assessment, previously referred to, provided statistics of the magnitude of the weight losses, the percent of initial weight lost and BMI changes for a cohort of type 2 diabetes patients – all of whom stopped oral diabetes medications prior to dieting, and remained in remission long after the documented weight loss.

Pharmacist Fin McCaul of Prestwich pharmacy and chairman of the Independent Pharmacy Federation, recently presented data to a National Obesity Forum Conference based on a successful cohort with an initial BMI in excess of 40. At Prestwich 1148 patients with a median BMI of 33.6 kg/m²used the Lipotrim weight management service. 25% were morbidly obese with a BMI > 40 kg/m². At the time of audit, during which many patients were still dieting, the median BMI had decreased to < 30 kg/m². 94% of the dieters lost more than 5% of their pre-diet weight, 47% lost more than 10% and 21% of the patients lost more than 20%. Importantly, all patients with type 2 diabetes had their medication stopped by their GP.

Providing clinical evidence of efficacy under real life conditions, is now routine for pharmacists offering the Lipotrim weight loss service and documenting results with the Patient Tracker software.

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Lipotrim Resources

VLCD diet resources from Lipotrim