Chapters Transcript Video Provider Profile - Robin S. Baines, M.D. Meet Bariatrician, Robin S. Baines, M.D. Dr. Baines discusses her area of focus, medical weight loss, and how this field continues to evolve. Hello. I'm dr Robin Danes. I'm a family medicine and obesity medicine provider and our practices interior comprehensive weight loss solutions. At this point in my career I treat patients for medical weight loss so that being in opposition of surgical weight loss. I'm not a surgeon. Um So we do metabolic evaluations for patients. We look at the many contributors to excess body fat or obesity and we help patients to reduce those comorbidities, reduce those contributors and reduce their weight. This is a really exciting time to practice weight loss medicine because we have so many new medicines um the latest medicine we can actually almost match surgical weight loss um powerful power almost. Um but we have more medicines now that are actually indicated for weight loss than we've had at any time in the past. Um So it makes it very exciting of course nutrition science is always developing. So we're always learning more too. So the more we know the more we can do. Yeah. So I started working with Sentara in 2013 just doing primary care and I've done several things. I've done kind of a concierge practice at a senior facility. It's been a great time with Sentara. Just this year though I started doing only medical weight loss. So back in 2014, 15 16. Somewhere in there, the american Medical Association deemed obesity and chronic disease until itself. So before then we were thinking okay it's a contributor but we were not thinking of it as its own distinct disease and that was a major paradigm shifter for me. So um we think of hypertension with a chronic disease model. We think of diabetes with a chronic disease model and beginning to think that way about obesity um kind of completely changes the approach. So, as I dug more into that and made me dig more into nutrition science, because if we can get the obesity part right, we can impact so many health problems, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes as the reflux joint pain. Um and so just digging deeper than in 2016, I got board certified in obesity medicine Between 16 and this year, I was just using it as part of my primary care treatment plans. Um, but I'm excited now to just only do medical weight loss. So it's good. So, I think it's really important to kind of give our bodies what they need to perform at its best before adding something to it. I think if we um so diet, you know, I think if we can get the diet piece together, that's a big hunk. But it's not everything right. So there's genetics, there's environment, there's a lot that contributes. But if we could get the diet piece together, that's a big chunk. So I think we should first give our bodies what it needs to perform well if it doesn't and their adjuncts, you know, so there are medications can play a role. I don't think of medications as the numero UNo they're not number one for weight loss, but definitely they play a role, especially by the time a person sees me, they probably tried different diets. They probably tried exercise and that's not the solution for them. And so we're moving on to the next thing. Published January 4, 2023 Created by Related Presenters Robin Baines, M.D. Bariatric Physician View full profile