For years, I followed a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic approach with consistency. This was not a temporary phase or a cyclical strategy. It was a sustained, deliberate way of eating grounded in clinical experience and personal results. Then life changed. Not in a minor way. Not a bad week or a difficult stretch, but sustained, cumulative stress: Stroke. Cancer.… Continue reading What Stress Quietly Changed: An Experiment and 10 Pounds Lost
Our skin and our gut are how our bodies connect with the world. They absorb sunlight and nutrients. But they also absorb toxins, heavy metals, plastics, parasites, and chemicals. So why are we putting harmful substances on our skin or into our mouths that might damage this essential connection? Personal care products like shampoo, lotion,… Continue reading If You Wouldn’t Eat It,
Why Put It on Your Skin?
We’ve identified five essential steps for starting your fasting journey. If you’re interested in learning more or want continued support and accountability to help you implement and sustain fasting in your lifestyle, Health Coach Alice Smith will be leading our next Fasting (no lunch) Small Group course from August 3 – August 23 on our… Continue reading Fasting in 5 Steps
Over the past several years I have focused on empowering patients both with education and real-time biofeedback. In our office, we have embraced the use of remote monitoring, including an array of tools from home sleep studies, to continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). After reviewing over 10,000 CGMs, I wanted to share some of the lessons/insights… Continue reading 8 lessons after reviewing 10,000 CGMs
Testosterone is a steroid, anabolic hormone made in the testes and ovaries. There are specific cells, called Leydig cells, which sit in the testes that are the predominant manufacturing cell of testosterone in males. Cholesterol is the precursor to testosterone production and starts when cholesterols enters the mitochondria of the Leydig cells. There are… Continue reading Low carb diets can help testosterone function
I have a serious problem with the term “pre-diabetes.” The prefix “pre” is used to describe what comes before something. In reality, “pre”-diabetes is actually AFTER or “post” 15 years of the high insulin levels & inflammation associated with the modern lifestyle. Prediabetes is usually diagnosed by checking an a1c level, which is the percentage of… Continue reading Pre-diabetes is a lie…
A new paper recently co-authored by Dr. Tro Kalayjian, DO, found that having lower BMI and a lower TG/HDL ratio was associated with larger increases in LDL when beginning a low-carbohydrate diet. The paper also included a case series highlighting that this phenomenon may be at least partially reversible. According to Dr. Tro, “This study is the… Continue reading New Study: Outlining the Impact of Low-Carb Diets on Cholesterol
One of the most pervasive public health messages in the past 30 years has been to eat “less and exercise more.” Unfortunately, this message has been an overwhelming failure. We are often advised to exercise, however, if we are severely overweight this can be quite challenging. I typically advise patients to focus on fixing their… Continue reading My Approach to Exercise…
As I sit here writing this year-end review for our practice, a member of my staff has literally been waiting on the phone for three hours with an insurance company, to provide them with the information needed to get an urgent test approved. The insurance company wanted the notes from the specialist who was co-managing… Continue reading A Year-in-Review and Update on Dr. Tro’s Medical Practice & Clinical Operations
I wanted to share some thoughts as many questions are coming into my office about COVID. The issue with COVID is not necessarily what the virus will do to young & healthy people, the real issue is overwhelming/taxing a limited healthcare system with severe respiratory disease & deaths (the complications of COVID typically seen in… Continue reading Update on COVID
By Dr. Tro Kalayjian It’s Thursday night, and I’m sitting in an airplane, about to take off for New York. I’m heading home from Las Vegas after attending Obesity Week 2019, the world’s largest obesity medicine conference, a collaboration between The Obesity Society and The American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons. I don’t quite… Continue reading Obesity Week 2019: Why is it So Hard for Doctors to Admit Their Failure?
By Dr. Tro Kalayjian Opening my own medical practice was truly a humble beginning for me. When I left the large hospital system I was working for, I was not allowed to practice in my geographic area because of a non-compete clause. I had elderly patients I would often visit at their homes, as well… Continue reading New Beginnings: How I Selected the Location for My Medical Weight Loss Practice
By Dr. Tro Kalayjian While very few physicians have embraced remote monitoring, our practice has been thriving on the use of remotely monitoring patient biometric data. In our clinic, almost all of our patients have smart equipment in their homes which wirelessly sync with our practice. We monitor body weight, fat mass, water weight,… Continue reading Stress: The Leading Cause of Weight Regain
By Dr. Tro Kalayjian I was in the middle of writing a blog post about last Tuesday’s highly successful low-carb/keto event when I saw a tweet linking to an article in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) entitled “The Miracle Cure. “ People often ask me why I occasionally lose my composure on Twitter… Continue reading It’s a Miracle I Haven’t Started Tweeting Obscenities About This…
Dr. Tro Kalayjian has devoted his career to helping people lose weight and improve their health, not just for a few months, but for a lifetime. Kalayjian—who is board-certified in Internal Medicine & Obesity Medicine—received his medical degree from Touro College of Medicine and completed his Internal Medicine Residency in the Yale New Haven Health… Continue reading Touro Prepared Dr. Kalayjian to Help Patients Tackle Obesity
While many dietitians and nutritionists who keep up with the medical literature have become more accepting of low carb & ketogenic diets, many still hold on to their biases. Many dietitians, nutritionists and physicians are not aware that low carb and ketogenic diets are now an ADA recommended medical nutrition therapy for diabetes and high… Continue reading Do Athletes Need Carbs?
On Thursday, June 13th, 2019, Dr. Tro Kalayjian presented at Virginia Commonwealth University, to the Department of Medicine at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds. The presentation was made to the Department of Medicine staff, including attending physicians, residents and medical students as well as the VA and satellite offices. The title of the presentation was “Questioning… Continue reading Grand Rounds Presentation on Hunger & Obesity at Virginia Commonwealth University
Patients ask me all the time… “Is fruit is healthy?” Many patients are shocked to discover that my recommendations are NOT to eat as many fruits and vegetables that you possibly can. Particularly when patients are diabetic, pre-diabetic or have fatty liver disease, I may in fact recommend that some patients REDUCE all of their… Continue reading Is Fruit Healthy?
One of the cornerstones of any healthy lifestyle change is increasing the amount of real food and thus limited the amounts of processed food. Undoubtedly some may ask, what exactly is processed food? After all, isn’t cheese and yogurt processed? By and large, when we talk about “processed food”, we are talking about cookies, crackers,… Continue reading Avoiding Processed Food
Many evidence-based proponents will be quick to judge clinicians who claim that food can “improve symptoms of mental health disorders”, or when clinicians say that a good diet can “reverse” or even “cure disease”. Let’s take a look at some of the literature to see what the “evidence” tells us. Does food/glycemia/nutrition affect mood, depression,… Continue reading Can food be thy medicine?
