Dr. Timothy Bartness, a world-renowned obesity researcher and director of the Center for Obesity Reversal at Georgia State University, is available to discuss the nation’s obesity epidemic and the science behind obesity. He has studied obesity for more than 35 years.
Bartness is passionate about tackling and reversing the nation’s obesity epidemic by using a basic science approach. Current treatments for reversing obesity have been ineffective, he said, with the exception of the Roux-en-Y bypass, a drastic surgical procedure that has its problems as well. He believes the solution is to understand the scientific mechanisms involving obesity.
He recently received a five-year, $2.5 million renewal of the MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to study lipolysis, the breakdown of body fat, and thermogenesis, or heat production, from specialized fat cells.
Bartness is the founding director of the Center for Obesity Reversal, a new top-level research center that will foster research projects to help fight the nation's obesity epidemic.
“There is a need for further basic research with clinical significance to help develop potential therapeutic treatments for obesity and related disorders. We actually know the answer to the obesity crisis, eat less and expend more energy, but no one including me likes that answer so we will be searching for a less effortful way, yet effective way, for this to occur,” Bartness said.
Bartness received a Ph.D. in physiological psychology from the University of Florida and teaches obesity-related courses, including The Energetics of Behavior.
For more information about Bartness, visit http://obesity.gsu.edu/center-director/.
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