LINDA OMICHINSKI, BSN
Linda Omichinski tenets of HUGS, the Canadian-based advocacy organization founded by Omichinski in 1987. (The HUGS program, as noted on its Web site, is “Health focused, centered on Understanding lifestyle behaviours, Group supported, and Self esteem building.”) Omichinski began her career as a dietician equating body weight with health. “For awhile I had listened uncritically to my clients as they told me how happy they were with the individualized diets I designed for them,” she recalled on the HUGS Web site. “‘I never feel deprived,’ they would claim. Or they’d tell me: ‘I’m really losing weight on this plan.’ But then, one day, it hit me: sooner or later I’d lose contact with them for awhile, only to run into them in the local grocery store—where they were invariably embarrassed because they’d gained the weight back.” Omichinski realized that dieting failed to meet the needs of her patients by forcing them to adhere to unnatural patterns of restriction and indulgence. “Diets don’t work,” she told Johanna Burkhard for the Montreal Gazette (March 24, 1993), “and over 95 percent of all dieters regain the weight they have lost and even more within a two- to five-year period.” Omichinski believed that the key to breaking this cycle was to promote physical and emotional health rather than weight loss; this became the foundation of HUGS International.
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BILL FABREY, BSEE
Bill is a retired biomedical engineer with a BSEE degree in electrical engineering (1966), and is the proprietor of Amplestuff (www.amplestuff.com), a US-based mail order and web-based catalog with non-clothing items to assist larger people in their everyday lives. He co-founded Amplestuff in 1988, and retired as an engineering consultant in 2004 to devote his full-time efforts to the company, which ships internationally to countries as diverse as Canada, UK, and Australia.
Bill is also the founder (1969) and a life member of NAAFA (www.naafa.org), leaving leadership in that organization in 1991. From 1989-2001, he wrote the "Big News" column in Radiance magazine, for large women (www.radiancemagazine.com), until it ceased print publication.
As one of several founding directors of the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination (www.cswd.org), which began in 1990, Bill works on their media project. Since 2008, he has also served as the chair of the membership committee of the Association for Size Diversity and Health (www.sizediversityandhealth.org), an international professional organization primarily for those who employ the HAES (Health at Every Size) philosophy in dealing with clients in healthcare, research, or eating disorder settings, or who wish to advance the HAES tenets in other ways.
PAUL ERNSBERGER, PhD
Paul Ernsberger, currently an associate professor with Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1978. In 1984, Paul earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Department of Pharmacology at Northwestern University in Chicago, with a thesis entitled: Neural mediation of genetic and nutritional effects on blood pressure: Role of adrenergic receptor regulation in kidney, brain, and heart.
After receiving his postdoctoral training at the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Cornell University Medical College in New York City, he continued at Cornell until he became an Assistant Professor in 1988. Subsequently, in 1989, he came to CWRU as an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Neuroscience.
In January 1998, his primary affiliation was changed to the Department of Nutrition.
His honors include National Science Foundation Fellowship(1981), M. Robert Gallop Fellowship of the New York Heart Association (1984), Young Investigator Award from the Eastern Hypertension Society (1987), FIRST award from the National Institutes of Health (1990), DuPont/Merck FASEB Travel Award (1992), Member of the Subcommittee on the Imidazoline Receptor of the Committee on Receptor Nomenclature and Drug Classification, International Union of Pharmacological Sciences (1994), Member of the International Advisory Board to the Third International Symposium on Imidazoline Receptors (1997).
Dr. Ernsberger was the first to describe “refeeding hypertension” –the elevation of blood pressure as a result of yo-yo dieting. He has done extensive research on cycles of weight loss and regain in the laboratory and in human data. He is an advocate of weight stability and improvements in the health of obese people through means other than weight loss –the essence of the Health at Every Size approach.
RICHARD J. KOLETSKY, MD FACP
I began my research career as a young child in the laboratory of my late father, Dr. Simon Koletsky, Professor of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). I learned how to do surgical procedures on rats to produce experimental hypertension and to measure blood pressure. I also learned how to design and execute experiments. I worked with the late Dr. Robert Tarazi at the Cleveland Clinic in a similar capacity as I completed my medical residency. My endocrinology fellowship was with Dr. Gordon Williams at Harvard Medical School where I did both basic and clinical research. I was involved in some of the first human studies to understand the mechanisms of action of the then new antihypertensive drug class known as converting enzyme inhibitors.
I returned to Cleveland after my fellowship and inherited the colony of SHROB (Koletsky) rats, which are a model for the metabolic syndrome and are the subjects of study in this grant. I began my collaboration with Dr. Paul Ernsberger shortly after his arrival at CWRU. Together we have used the SHROB to study the adverse effects of weight cycling (yo-yo syndrome) using our animal model. We have also characterized the effectiveness of various diets and pharmacologic agents, as well as some of the mechanisms behind their actions, on metabolic syndrome using this animal model.
As both a clinical practitioner and researcher I think I have both unique training and perspective on the complicated issues underlying treatment choices for the metabolic syndrome. These experiments will help develop drug protocols for this complicated and every increasing clinical problem. Together with Dr. Ernsberger we have an established track record and complimentary backgrounds and training to use this unique animal model, SHROB, to help understand the underlying mechanisms of, and develop treatments for, the metabolic syndrome.
As a practicing clinical endocrinologist for almost thirty years, I am well aware that treating metabolic syndrome requires the use of multiple medications. Selecting the proper drug combinations is often a daunting task, given the complex interactions between the various agents, including their effects on each component of the metabolic syndrome, individually and collectively. For example, while many classes of antihypertensive agents are effective in lowering blood pressure, some may aggravate diabetes or hyperlipidemia. Our next studies will help establish which drug combinations are most beneficial for treating metabolic syndrome and will investigate the underlying physiologic mechanisms as to how they work.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, and Consulting Endocrinologist for Cleveland Clinic Health Systems both Eastern and Western Regions, Cleveland, Ohio. Fellow in the following organizations: American College of Physicians, American College of Endocrinologists, American Heart Association, American College of Nutrition, Obesity Society.