The Pediatric Lipid and Weight Management Center
Treatment and hope for pediatric obesity
"You know, 20 years ago we hardly ever saw things like high cholesterol, fatty liver, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea in children—but now, that's all changed," says pediatric gastroenterologist Marc Hofley, MD, about the alarming rise of complications from pediatric obesity.
"While we provide medical therapy as needed, a lot of what we do involves counseling the patient and family about lifestyle changes and giving them 'baby steps' to work on."
Susan Lynch, MD
To address the problem, CHaD recently opened its newly-expanded Pediatric Lipid and Weight Management Center (formerly the LiviNHealthy Program) at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Manchester, creating the state's only Center designed to evaluate and treat cholesterol and weight management problems in children.
"We're focused on helping children with hyperlipidemia (an excess of cholesterol and fatty substances in the blood) or complicated and severe obesity," explains Hofley, who directs the Center. "Our goal is to treat these co-morbidities to try to prevent organ failure and other severe medical complications later on, while educating general practitioners in the state how prevention is the best treatment."
New Hampshire's First Lady, Susan Lynch, MD, a pediatric lipid and obesity specialist, joined the Center's multidisciplinary team in September. "The opportunity to work with other pediatric specialists at CHaD was very attractive to me," says Lynch. "Because there are other complications that accompany obesity and sometimes lipid disorders, it's really helpful to have experts in areas like endocrinology, cardiology, nephrology, and neurology all right in the same location."
The good news is, with early recognition and early changes in lifestyle, many if not all of the complications the Center is treating can be reversed. "While we provide medical therapy as needed, a lot of what we do involves counseling the patient and family about lifestyle changes and giving them 'baby steps' to work on," Lynch explains.
"It's very difficult to make big changes in your life, but most people, if they're motivated, can manage small changes," she continues. "And when they're successful with that, we often see real clinical results such as lowered cholesterol, blood sugar, and BMI (body mass index). This often motivates them to work harder on further lifestyle changes."
