 Jordius for tonight's Your Health segment is Kim West, a certified registered nurse practitioner at the University of Maryland, St. Joseph Medical Center, Hereford Health Park. Kim, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. We want to talk about chronic conditions. I was surprised to read that half of Americans have a chronic condition, and I guess that's not just like old folks. It's everybody. It's everybody. So in your practice, you see lots of people coming through, lots of chronic conditions. Well, we see a lot of hypertension, a lot of diabetes, obesity, cancer, high cholesterol. Those are the big ones that are leading to... So how do you think, and you treat all those, how people manage that, but how do you think about whether we can prevent some or maybe all of them? Well, I, of course, the glass is half full. I believe that we can definitely do a much better job controlling chronic disease. Specifically, I think if everyone just really focuses on setting a goal, setting just one goal, and then making a plan to achieve that goal. So that's what I do most of the time when I'm in the rooms with my patients is just meet them where they are so that we can set a realistic goal. And it's easy to think about goals in the context of weight because it's easily measurable, nobody has to draw blood, you just step on a scale, and weight feeds into some of the other conditions that we were talking about. So tell me about that conversation with somebody in a clinic room where you say, here's the BMI, and you need to be here and you're there. What do you tell them? Well, first of all, I tell them the hard news of exactly what their BMI is. A lot of times we, in the past, have kind of scurried about it, but now I think it's best to just... It's not a secret, here's the number. Yeah, here's the number, you're obese, or overweight. I think that just helping the patient to realize is just the facts that can help them, such as there's 3,500 calories in a single pound, right? So let's just start with trying to doing a little bit of exercise, 30 minutes every day, or even let's just start at 10 minutes a day. Can you do that? Or meet, like I said, meet them where they are. Sometimes it's just a matter of them trying to find time with busy moms and busy dads and people working and everybody's stressed out, just making themselves and their health a priority. So the idea that the 3,500 calories is one pound, meaning that if you eat an extra 3,500, you're gonna gain a pound. If you can somehow shave that off, maybe exercise a little bit, that'll help too, you could lose a pound. Exactly. And you see it work. Yes. And then into a virtuous cycle. Yes. I think that just staying positive, no matter what the goal is, whether it be, I mean, making a simple list, if a patient perhaps has a barrier, say they are having cravings, they might not know how to deal with a craving. How do you deal with a craving? Well, first off, yes. So educating patients that the craving's only gonna last. Some cravings only last a minute, other cravings can last up to three to five minutes, but that's one of the longest cravings. So just what you can do during that timeframe, whether it be journaling or going for a walk or again, coming up with creative solutions. Glass of water sometimes. Yes, glass of water. So the other thing about chronic conditions is, most people know if they're a bit overweight. There's some things that'll sneak up on you. Early stages of diabetes, high blood pressure, silent, but you want people to know so you can deal with it. Right, right. So I was reading some interesting numbers today and I was amazed that there are, over what their estimate is, 63 million Americans that may not even know that they have diabetes or pre-diabetes. I think that is just mind-boggling to me. So I encourage all patients to get in and see their primary care doctor and be screened for these conditions that can be prevented. Elevated blood pressure, you're not gonna feel the blood pressure most of the time. It's insidious, it's sneaky. And so you need to get in, you need to get screened. Before the show we were talking, I was assuming that summertime was a quiet time at the clinic because it's not the cold and flu season yet, but it's not a quiet time, you're busy. Yes, well, another interesting factoid that 73% of our visits throughout the year are to manage chronic conditions and 91% of prescriptions written in this country are to manage a chronic condition. I just find that absolutely amazing. All right, in a couple of seconds, give me the argument for somebody to come in and just get a general checkup to find out what they might have going on. Well, we're always looking at the obvious, the weight and the blood pressure and such, but we also wanna make sure our patients are up to date with all their routine vaccinations. We're gonna leave it right there. We're out of time. Kim West, University of Maryland, San Jose Medical, thanks for the time. Thank you. Your health segments are a co-production of Maryland Public Television and the University of Maryland Medical System.