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Achieving healthy body composition and long-term health involves a balanced lifestyle, good nutrient intake and the proper hormonal symphony to maintain it. Even small adjustments in these interrelated factors can lead to big improvements. For instance, you can:
Eat a healthier diet. Research suggests that a diet rich in vegetables (especially the dark-green leafy variety), legumes, and whole grains is not only a good source of essential nutrients and fiber, but it also has a beneficial effect on muscle mass, blood lipids and blood pressure.
Start a daily exercise regimen. Exercise will help you build muscle and increase your body’s metabolic rate, enabling you to more effectively burn calories. Even low to moderate intensity activities such as walking the dog, stair climbing, and gardening can provide significant benefits.
Take quality supplements. Supplementing your healthier diet with certain nutrients—at doses that are difficult to obtain from diet alone—are beneficial in supporting your overall health.
Learn to manage stress. Change of any kind, even if beneficial, is stressful. Eating in response to stress (i.e., “emotional” eating), can undo all your good dietary and fitness efforts. For these and other reasons, stress management techniques such as breathing exercises, meditation, biofeedback and yoga are invaluable for good health.
Correct your hormone imbalances. Incorporating the principles above can improve suboptimal hormonal states. When needed, proper hormone supplementation will help lead to optimal body composition.
Oregon Optimal Health’s FirstLineTherapy Program—better health now and for a lifetime Oregon Optimal Health's FirstLine Therapy (FLT) is a medical therapeutic lifestyle change (TLC) program patterned to target the National Institutes of Health recommendations and developed to help you usurp the underlying causes of disease and lead a healthier, more vibrant life. The basic principles of our First LineTherapy that you will learn—healthy eating choices, regular exercise, nutritional supplementation, and stress management—are foundational to anyone wishing Optimal Health. You will have a program tailored to your specific needs and medically supervised. Oregon Optimal Health's FirstLine Therapy is the better answer and only comprehensive medically guided program of its kind. We can get you started on this new path to Optimal Health now. The science-based concept that led to the development of the OOH FLT program is the fact that mere symptom suppression treatment does not correct the progressive declining health and disability in patients with body compositional change needs. Patients do not need to become more reliant on more pharmaceutical prescrptions that fail to reverse the fundamental underlying imbalances. With the Oregon Optimal Health's First Line Therapy intervention, better health and better function are improved well into old age. The years of otherwise lingering infirmity and compromised function can be delayed and compressed into the final years of life. “Chronic illness may presumably be postponed by changes in life style, and it has been shown that the physiologic and psychologic markers of aging may be modified. Thus, the average age at first infirmity can be raised, thereby making the morbidity curve more rectangular.” ~ N Engl J Med 303:130-35 (1980) ~ “Persons with high health risks…had twice the cumulative disability of those with low health risks.” ~ N Engl J Med 338:1035-41 (1998) ~ What Makes the FirstLine Therapy Program Different? It’s not just a weight loss program While most programs are focused on weight, FLT is a comprehensive TLC program, best used as a first line treatment for common, chronic health problems. The FLT program is the perfect prescription for conditions such as obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, hormone imbalances and many others. It works because it addresses the underlying causes of these conditions, such as unhealthy body composition (lean mass to fat mass ratio), insulin resistance, hormone imbalance, inflammation, and other physiological issues. The FLT dietary plan is different FLT uses a low-glycemic-load diet that is consistent with current research. New research has shown that low-glycemic diets are more effective than lowfat diets in treating obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. Patients report less hunger, more energy, and higher compliance with the FLT diet than with commonly recommended lowfat diets. FLT incorporates medical foods and nutraceuticals Medical foods are designed to address the unique nutritional needs of patients with specific health problems. Nutraceuticals provide targeted nutritional support for specific functions, such as supporting insulin sensitivity, managing blood lipids, slowing glucose uptake, etc. Their appropriate use can improve patient compliance, enhance program effectiveness, and shorten the time it takes to achieve risk reduction goals. FLT Brings Hormones into Harmony
We work to balance and restore your vital hormones back to optimal levels in an integrated and comprehensive fashion. FLT has been demonstrated to be effective in controlled clinical trials Most other diets have not. FLT provides everything you need to implement your success. Are you ready to get off the diet merry-go-round and get on the road to optimal health? Weight Loss and Body Composition The problem with most popular weight loss programs is that they focus on weight loss alone, resulting in an unending merry-go-round of fad diets. Little or no emphasis is placed on healthy body composition (fat-to-lean muscle ratio), even though healthy body composition is widely recognized as being more crucial to long-term success than just dropping pounds. Unhealthy body composition refers to carrying too much fat in comparison to lean (i.e., muscle) tissue. Diet programs that focus only on weight loss can help you look thinner, but they can also lead to muscle loss and retention of excess fat. So even if you do lose weight, an unhealthy body composition will still leave you at risk for a wide range of serious health concerns, such as Diabetes Heart disease High blood pressure Stroke Certain types of cancer Metabolic syndrome Osteoarthritis Kidney disorders Depression The Oregon Optimal Health's FirstLine Therapy healthy body composition program focuses on losing excess fat while retaining lean muscle producing significantly better overall health, and will help prevent the onset of these diseases. Determining Your Body Composition Your bathroom scale alone isn’t a good indicator of body composition. Even if your weight is within normal range, you might still be considered over-fat. Several simple non-invasive methods are available that can estimate body composition. These include waist-to-hip ratio, skin-fold thickness, and most accurately bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). Are you an “apple” or a “pear”? Where your fat is located is just as important as how much fat you have. Excess fat located near the waist—a condition referred to as central adiposity or an “apple shape” (as opposed to excess fat located on the hips or thighs or “pear shape”)—greatly increases your risk of disease. The FirstLine Therapy Difference—It Works There are four key reasons that make Oregon Optimal Health's FirstLine Therapy® (FLT) different than conventional lifestyle programs: 1. FLT is about more than just weight loss: FLT can help you lose unhealthy fat while retaining healthy, lean muscle. FLT integrates body composition testing (fat & lean tissue ratios)-because being thin doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy. An imbalance in body composition (gaining too much fat or losing too much muscle) can lead to serious health problems such as high blood pressure, altered cholesterol levels, etc. Loss of muscle results in loss of ability to burn calories, which makes it much more difficult to maintain weight loss over time. FLT focuses on lifestyle factors that are the underlying cause of many health problems. 2. The FLT eating plan is different. Most diets focus on NOT eating: -not eating fat, not eating carbs, or just plain not eating much of anything. With most diets, success is based primarily on will power. The FLT eating plan emphasizes the need to eat, and to eat frequently. The focus is on eating THE RIGHT KIND OF FOODS-the right kind of fat, the right kind of carbohydrates, and the right kind of protein-all in the right portion size. FLT incorporates a low-glycemic-index eating plan based on the latest scientific research that will help you maintain stable blood sugar and energy levels. According to recent studies, low-glycemic diets are more effective than lowfat diets in treating obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. People report less hunger and more energy, making it much easier to stick with the program. 3. FLT incorporates medical foods and dietary supplements. Using appropriate medical foods and dietary supplements as part of this program can improve the effectiveness of the program for you and help you achieve your health goals. Medical foods are designed to address the unique nutritional needs of patients with specific health concerns. Dietary supplements provide targeted nutritional support for specific functions, such as healthy blood cholesterol or blood sugar levels, joint function and mobility, or healthy hormone metabolism. 4. FLT has been demonstrated to be effective in controlled clinical trials. Most other diets have not.
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