Media and Press

Why Does Our Metabolism Work Against Us After We Lose Weight?

Champions fighting obesity: collaborating with Michelle Bridges

Discussing how to keep weight off with Michelle Bridges, September 21st, 2017.

2017_KS+MB_cropped_1

For so many people, losing even just a couple of kilograms is such hard work: careful attention to everything we eat, increased physical activity. Blood, sweat and tears. But the challenge starts only when we reach some weight loss. How do we keep it off? For so many people this is a tearful journey: all the ground lost as the lifestyle changes are unsustained 95% of the time.

Michelle’s team contacted me to try and understand more about the scientific background of why so many people find it so difficult to keep their weight off. It was a privilege to meet and discuss the science and the physiology of weight regulation with Michelle. Our conversation is captured in part of her latest book.

For part of an interview I gave to 60 Minutes on Sunday October 29th, 2017 on obesity and why it is such a problem follow the link below to Extra Minutes for the program:

 

 

ABC Radio: With Margaret Throsby, Discussing Gut Health and Music

ABC Radio

Click here to listen to the ABC Radio Podcast on gut health, the food we eat and how.  Broadcast 12:00pm, Tue 09 Sep 2014

Presented by Margaret Throsby

According to the latest grim statistics, sixty percent of Australians are now overweight or obese. But while the focus continues to be on the evils of junk food and sedentary lifestyles, new research indicates that many serious conditions including asthma, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis could be prevented, and in some cases reversed, simply by a change in diet. And more specifically, by eating foods that promote healthy gut bacteria.

Professor Katherine Samaras is a senior staff specialist in endocrinology and metabolism at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and group leader in Clinical Diabetes and Obesity at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. She is also the Founder and Director of the Australian Centre for Metabolic Health (St Vincent’s Campus) addressing the diseases of diabetes and obesity, their treatment and prevention. Her research is helping to unravel the mysteries of fat tissue and how it affects our health, particularly how inflammation promotes different diseases, including diabetes, heart failure, cognition and dementia.

Her research collaborations outside Garvan include research on the impact of diabetes and obesity on ageing and cognition, epigenetics in diabetes and obesity, diabetes and metabolism in HIV, and diabetes and obesity prevention in mental illness.

 

 

Make Healthy Normal, NSW Health

2

Championing education and self-empowerment for health and disease prevention, Professor Samaras has long advocated for better eating choices and increased physical activity.
In 2015, she was invited by NSW Health’s Population Health to participate in a campaign called “Make Healthy Normal”, for which she is Clinical Spokesperson. NSW Health’s program contained rich treasures and resources aiming to educate and assist people in NSW make better choices in eating and physical activity. These simple choices can life-defining for health.
Links to NSW Health’s  Make Healthy Normal commercials:
Link to NSW Health’s Make Healthy Normal website for recipes, advice and tips for healthy lifestyle habits:
Website photo

 

Starve to Survive TEDx Sydney 2011

Professor Samaras delivers a missive from the front line on the impact of obesity on our health.  She discusses the factors, including ancient genes and modern envirommental shifts, that have led to the modern epidemic of obesity and its physical, mental and sociodemographic complications. She asks “whose fault is it”, examines individual choices and political, corporate and economic culpability. The challenge for  inspired thinking and determined brave collaborative efforts across these domains is made.

 

HeAL: Healthy Active Lives for People Living with Severe Mental Illness

“Imagine a world where young people experiencing psychosis have the same life expectancy and expectations of life as their peers who have not experienced psychosis.”
HeAL arose out of an international working party established to tackle clinician concerns about the unmet physical health care needs of people with severe mental illness. It became quickly apparent that most of these physical illnesses that rob people with severe mental ilness of 20 years of life (through premature heart disease and diabetes), are preventable. The Declaration was established to protect the physical health youth with mental illness have, and mandate preventative measures.
The HeAL statement reflects international consensus on a set of key principles, processes and standards. It aims to combat the stigma, discrimination and prejudice that prevent young people experiencing psychosis from leading healthy active lives, and confront the perception that poor physical health is inevitable.
HeAL was internationally launched at the International Early Psychosis Association meeting in Tokyo in 2014. It has been accepted across many countries and became policy in NSW soon after.
Download the HeAl Declaration:        heal-declaration
Link to iPHyS for more information:    https://www.iphys.org.au