Louis J. Aronne is an American physician and author who is an obesity medicine specialist. He is quoted in the news media as an expert in the field of weight research. He is perhaps best known for diagnosing David Letterman's heart condition in 2000.[1] His book, released in 2009, The Skinny on Losing Weight Without Being Hungry is a NY Timesbest-seller.[2] His book, The Change Your Biology Diet: The Proven Program for Lifelong Weight Loss with a foreword by David Letterman was published on January 5, 2016.[3]
In 2008, Aronne founded BMIQ, which is now Intellihealth Evolve, a SaaS platform designed to treat obesity within a medically supervised setting. The Evolve platform provides clinical decision support tools for physicians, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, exercise physiologists, and behavioral psychologists with evidence based diagnosis, treatment recommendations, and telehealth/telemedicine tools to remotely monitor patients with obesity as a disease.
Medical philosophy
Aronne supports the creation of the obesity medicine sub-specialty within the American Board of Internal Medicine. Aronne's core belief is that obesity is a progressive metabolic disease of weight-regulating mechanisms, which leads to a deterioration in fullness and satiety. Wherein the "feed-forward" phenomenon, caused by leptin resistance, appetite is stimulated, rather than inhibited, by eating. The final stage of the fullness mechanism breakdown, which Aronne has termed "fullness resistance", is the delayed or nonexistent sensation of fullness.[13]
His approach towards obesity treatment is to first diagnose and treat sleep disorders and review patients' medications. He has found that many patients take common medications that neither they, nor their doctor realize cause weight gain.[13] He substitutes these with weight-neutral or weight-reducing medications. This is the basis of his "weight-centric", as opposed to the dated "gluco-centric", approach to Type 2 diabetes.[15]
Aronne’s first book, Weigh Less Live Longer, from John Wiley & Sons, Inc., was published in 1996.[4] His second book, The Skinny on Losing Weight Without Being Hungry, from Broadway-Random House, published in March 2009, is a NY Times best-seller.[18] Aronne's third book, The Change Your Biology Diet: The Proven Program for Lifelong Weight Loss was published on January 5, 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[citation needed]