Dr. Hunter Yost Offers the FirstLine Therapy Program in Tucson

FirstLine Therapy is a therapeutic lifestyle change, or lifestyle modification, program. Designed by health care professionals, FirstLine Therapy has been shown remarkably successful in helping individuals like you return to a path of extended health. This is not primarily a weight reduction program—it is primarily a disease reduction program. While weight loss often occurs, it's only secondary to the primary goal helping you achieve and maintain a healthy body composition (lean-muscle-to-fat ratio) to improve health, manage disease, feel better, and reduce your risk to more serious conditions.

Some facts about the scope of chronic disease related to overweight and obesity:

• In the United States (U.S.), chronic disease is the principal cause of death and disability, and consumes 78% of health expenditures.

• According to the CDC, approximately 65% of U.S. adults—or about 129.6 million people—are either overweight or obese. Obesity and overweight cost the U.S. an estimated $117 billion in direct medical costs and indirect costs such as lost wages due to illness.

• Heart disease and stroke are the first and third leading causes of death, respectively, for both men and women—accounting for nearly 40% of all annual deaths, and more than 910,000 Americans die of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) each year, or 1 death every 35 seconds. More than 70 million Americans currently live with CVD and over 6 million hospitalizations each year are due to CVD.

• Close to 21 million people, or 7% of the U.S. population, live with diabetes whereby approximately 15 million individuals have been diagnosed while close to 6 million people have not.

• Of 44 million Americans—or 55% of the people 50 years of age and older—10 million individuals already have osteoporosis and almost 34 million more are estimated to have low bone mass, placing them at greater risk for this disease.

FirstLine Therapy You Make Lifestyle Changes to Improve Health

Everyone knows that eating right and staying in shape are important for overall health. But life's everyday pressures—hectic schedules, work deadlines, family issues, etc.—can make it difficult to find the time for good nutrition, exercise, and adequate rest.

Whether you suffer from a lifestyle-related chronic disease, or have been advised by your doctor to eat right and exercise more, the FirstLine Therapy lifestyle medicine program can help.

Getting the Support You Need to Succeed

In truth, most doctors don't have the time, skills, or resources to provide you with effective lifestyle counseling. And so their patients—even those at high risk of disease—are often left to "figure it out" by themselves.

FirstLine Therapy is different. It's structured with professional supervision to help you:

• Establish realistic, personalized goals to improve health

• Monitor your progress and help you stay on track

• Learn how to eat and shop for healthy, nutritious foods that manage (not increase) cravings

• Exercise in a way that builds muscle and gets rid of unwanted fat

• Relax and manage unhealthy stress

• Feel better and do more!

Personalized Medicine-Tailored to You

After an initial evaluation with Dr. Yost to get the health history, examination, and determine what tests are necessary to document risk factors like cholesterol, blood sugar, inflammation, vitamin D, liver test and others if necessary, the next appointment will be with the certified Lifestyle Educator who will run the bioimpedance analysis machine, a non-invasive test to determine muscle mass, body fat, water distribution and basal metabolic rate (BMR). The BMR is then used to calculate the daily calorie level for the meal planning. A Mediterranean Diet of three meals and three snacks is developed with specific portion sizes of the major food categories of proteins, grains, good fats, limited dairy, beans, nuts and seeds, vegetables and fruits. The FirstLine Therapy program emphasizes body composition rather than weight loss. This means a focus on improving muscle mass while losing fat. This is measured each time a person comes in for an appointment, about every 2-3 weeks. Body composition analysis is a major difference between FirstLine Therapy and commercial weight loss programs. Adequate daily protein is also a major difference.

Every three months the initial blood tests will be repeated to measure progress. The office visits to our therapeutic lifestyle program are usually covered by major insurance companies for many of the conditions mentioned above. Please call us today and make an appointment for your pathway to a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Hunter Yost is interested in personalized medicine. Each person is unique in terms of biochemical makeup, environmental influences and lifestyle choices.Dr. Yost now offers the FirstLine Therapy Program in Tucson. Firstline Therapy is a specialized therapeutic lifestyle change program unlike any other in that the program targets the underlying causes of chronic illnesses by incorporating a sensible eating plan, exercise, nutritional supplementation, and stress management.