Probably the most common reason people want to lose weight is to look better. As the saying goes, beach bodies are made in the winter. So while we still have some winter days left, come see us at Cordova Weight Loss! With phentermine to suppress your appetite, a healthy diet, and some regular exercise, we can have you ready for summer quickly.

A close second reason for losing weight is for improved health. We all know that being close to our ideal weight is good for us, but I’ll bet you didn’t know how good!

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is very common – about 75 million adults, or 1 in 3, have hypertension. It increases your risk of heart disease and stroke, two of the biggest killers in the US. We won’t give you phentermine in our clinic if your blood pressure is over 140/90. It’s easily the most common reason we turn patients away – to go see their PCP to get the blood pressure under control. (Once it is under control, we can then treat you with phentermine.) And yes, according to the NIH (National Institutes of Health) losing weight lowers blood pressure in many people, even with as little as 10 pounds of weight loss.

Diabetes is a huge risk factor for heart disease and stroke, along with many other health problems – kidney disease, eye damage, nerve problems, and infections, to name a few. Type 2 diabetes is something you may have a genetic predisposition for, but we’ve been having an epidemic of type 2 diabetes for a couple of decades now because of obesity, poor diet choices, and inactivity. If you lose weight, you are most likely also developing a couple of other new habits – eating better and exercising. This could keep you from ever developing type 2 diabetes at all. And if you already have it, there is some chance that you can control it much easier, and avoid the bad effects of it as you lose weight.

High cholesterol is associated with obesity and overweight, and it is a cause of – wait for it – heart disease and stroke! Are you starting to see a pattern here? Healthy diet and losing weight will have a positive effect on your cholesterol levels. And exercise increases HDL, the good form of cholesterol.

Even cancers of some types are increased by being overweight. These include esophageal, breast, liver, pancreatic, gallbladder, colon and rectal cancers.

A man once came to see us for weight loss with elevated cholesterol (despite being on a medication for it) and mild hypertension (under 140/90). Hal (not his real name) wanted to change to a statin for his cholesterol because he didn’t like the side effects of his cholesterol med. But Hal had mildly elevated liver enzymes, and those can sometimes worsen on statins, so I was hesitant to give it to him. I told him it was likely that his liver enzymes were up from fatty liver disease, meaning that his liver was obese. But we just didn’t know for sure. However, we agreed that we would recheck his labs after a month of therapy, so I gave him a statin and phentermine. He started eating healthier foods and smaller portions, and he started working out daily. Hal was fed up with these problems, and he was all-in on getting healthy! He returned in a month and we were amazed! He lost over 10 pounds that month, and his liver enzymes actually decreased, and so did his cholesterol. Hal went on to lose about 60 pounds over the next 6 months, and he looked and felt like a new man. And of course, he was much healthier.

If you want to look better, feel better, or be healthier, come see us at Cordova Weight Loss! We look forward to helping you on your weight loss journey.