The Obesity Podcast Ep.1: Decoding a chronic disease | J&J MedTech

Hosts Professor Paulina Salminen (Finland) and Professor Marco Bueter (Switzerland) introduce the new Obesity Podcast, setting the stage for open, stigma-free discussions around obesity as a chronic disease. They share personal backgrounds as bariatric surgeons and researchers, reflecting on their work in metabolic surgery, clinical trials, and eating-behavior research. Both emphasize that the podcast is not about promoting surgery but about offering an evidence-driven platform to discuss all treatment options, highlight current projects, and fight stigma around patients and therapies. The episode outlines their vision: data-driven dialogue, expert guests, and contributing to global understanding of obesity care.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the very first episode of the Obesity Podcast. My name is Paulina Salmanen, and together with my friend and colleague, Professor Marka Bucher, we wanted to create a place where we can talk openly about obesity, not only as doctors and scientists, but also as people who care deeply about our patients. Our goal is simple: to break down the stigma around the disease, the people who live with it, and the treatments that are available. So, Marco, maybe you start by telling a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

So I'm 50 years old. I'm a baratic surgeon, born and raised in Germany, but I uh actually practice in Switzerland. My background is not only clinical, but also uh I have a very significant interest in research, and I spent uh a long time of my career doing research. Uh, I started as a PhD student between 2008 and 2010 in London, uh, where we investigated the mechanisms of uh gastric bypass surgery, and I took this further. And currently, my group um and I investigate the changes in eating behavior after baratic surgery. Where are you located?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

I'm located in Turku, Finland, and I was actually born there and I uh live there and work there. So uh I am an upper GI surgeon. I used to do a lot of other surgeries, oncological surgery, also, but for the past 10 years or so, my elective practice is due to the lack of time, no extra hours in the 24 hours that you get every day. So the focus is on elective surgery, is mainly metabolic batteryetic surgery. And I still do uh also acute care surgery. So on call practice, so I do uh everything else as I think also you do.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Absolutely. I'm the head of the department of this uh small district hospital, and we do the complete basic surgery care that needs to be done. Um basically minimal invasive surgery, which um I would say 90% of the procedures we do, we do minimally invasive. And we also take care of um cancer cases, um, hernias, you know, uh umbilical hernias, inguinal hernias, you know, all the good stuff that actually belongs to the clinical all day of a visceral surgeon. Um despite being a surgeon, and despite being one of the best known researchers in the field of visceral surgery, not only baratic surgery, you're also very active in different societies, are you?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yes, for uh currently I am the uh president of Ifso European chapter, and I've been uh really honored to serve uh the chapter for quite some years already, and now of course also within Big Ifso, because I firmly believe that uh the society actually is a very good means to take uh a lot of the things forward that we actually want to uh improve. So I'm a firm believer of uh working within the society and networking because that ultimately ends up uh as the benefit of the patients. And uh and it's of course it's also fun.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, I I I can't agree more. It's uh one of the reasons why we met each other. Um, my role in the IFSO is to chair the scientific committee, which is a relevant committee in the context of IFSO because we contribute to creating programs of the upcoming meetings, uh, making sure that the right speakers are invited, that the program is considered to be attractive enough to travel partly around the globe to visit that conference. And I'm very grateful for the opportunity. And on a national level, I also um are still a current president of the Swiss Multidisciplinary Obesity Society, um, where we where we basically do similar stuff like if so, but just on a national level, and the exchange of national societies with if so apparently is very important as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

And the European chapter is very happy to have you chairing the scientific committee, that's good. And and also for the national level, I am still, after the 20 years, the current president. I was not the president for the whole two decades, but there are so few bariatric surgeons in Finland, so it's kind of a rotation. I've been doing it uh for a few times, but uh now hopefully getting younger colleagues to uh to participate. So maybe maybe a few words about our research. You already said that you do kind of eating behavior stuff. Uh, that's is that only basic research, translational, partly clinical?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

It it started preclinically with red models, and then we started to translate that approach into humans. And currently we do a lot of studies trying to directly measure the eating behavior in humans, which is much harder than it sounds, because what baretic research in the context of eating behavior usually measured was um how much was eaten and what was eaten, but not necessarily how it was eaten. And how people consume their energy can tell you a lot about the underlying motivation, can tell a lot about the mechanisms in the brain actually that interfere with uh the decisions on which calories we want to consume and how we would like to consume. Um, that's a very fascinating and exciting area of research, and I'm very glad that we can do that together with my team. Yourself are more in clinical research active, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

My uh research, I do a lot of uh translational research within my clinical research projects, but I'm uh I'm a huge fan of uh clinical trials. So I've currently I think now I'm up to my randomized trial number eight.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

So that is that is if we have colleagues who have not read eight randomized clinical trials in their career.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

So, but that's always uh I tell people to ask uh ask tips and tricks if you're planning an RCT, because I mostly probably already have made that mistake. So uh it's really uh important. But I that's what I do. So uh my main research fields are the same that I do on a clinical basis. So it's metabolic bioritic surgery uh as a PI of the sleeve patch trial and with a lot of international collaboration. And then kind of my sacred life within this field is that I do a lot of work on acute appendicitis and uh the non-operative treatment of uh uncomplicated acute appendicitis, with the idea that we can then take the OR time that is saved from the appendectomies into something more useful, which could be metabolic biarethic surgery, as we don't need to operate on every single appendicitis case. So uh that's what we're currently doing. So that is that is that's probably my hobby. So before you ask, that would be randomized trials, right? Is that does that qualify as a hobby?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Um no, I'm afraid. No, let me think about it. No, no, it no, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

How about you?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Um well, actually, you know, I'm in a comparable situation that our daily work as a surgeon, researcher, and also policymaker, and you know, in a bigger term, eats up a lot of my time. So there's not much time for hobbies. And um, given that I really enjoy my work, I really enjoy working with patients, I enjoy exchanging ideas and concepts with my fellow research colleagues. Um, that actually sometimes feels like a hobby, you know. I it it sounds too good to be true, but in in my case, it's actually true. Uh, and in the spare time that is left, I I like to spend time with my family. I have two kids, a boy who is 15, Moritz, and a daughter, Madita, who is 14. And together we like to spend time. We every now and then we like to play games, and I like to do sports, and I also like to watch sports, predominantly football. I'm a big football fan.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

We have that in common.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

That's very good. Um I think now that the people and the listeners and viewers know each know us um a bit better, it's important to emphasize that although you and I are surgeons, that this this format, this uh obesity podcast is not meant to be a surgery promoting platform. You know, we don't want to sell surgery and we don't want to diss all other therapies. We would like to offer a platform where we can objectively, honestly, and critically discuss treatment options in the field of obesity, whether they are surgical or non-surgical doesn't really matter. But we want to inform about ongoing projects, new developments. And on top of that, we also would like to help destigmatizing the disease, not only the disease, but also the stigmatization of the people affected by the disease. And I personally believe that the treatment is also stigmatized, so that also needs to be uh destigmatized. So I think that's important to mention for everyone out there.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Definitely we want to increase awareness of the of the fact that obesity is a chronic disease, so that's that's really what we're aiming for. And we're both based on our uh research background, we're very data-driven people, so we want to actually discuss about things that uh are going within the field. And I think we will be able to get interesting guests here to kind of open up their projects and whatever they have been doing, uh, they have been doing for the field, for the more general public, in addition to our surgical listeners. So I'm really looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Absolutely. Share their views, share their data most importantly, and discuss the data. And I personally think that the podcast is the perfect platform to do this. I think in the US, more than 55% of the population actually listens regularly to podcasts. So it's it's the common medium to use. People like to listen to good conversations and to get trustworthy information. And we want to contribute with our podcast to the big field of other podcasts, and we would like to invite all listeners and all viewers to follow us for the upcoming episodes, to share them, to comment on them, and give us some things and uh help us becoming better and become a regular contributor to information in the field of obesity. Thank you very much for listening.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Thank you very much.