I hope you all had a lovely break over the holiday season. Of course now is the time of year for New Year's resolutions. Two of the most popular resolutions are to lose weight or to stop smoking. The huge health benefits of stopping smoking are now familiar to most particularly in reducing incidence of cancer and improving the health of your heart and lungs. The health benefits of losing weight are just as significant but have generally been less well publicised. This does seem to be changing now though and the topic has been in the news quite a lot lately particularly in relation to the increase of diabetes in the western world. Due to less active lives and richer diets this condition is becoming more prevalent. Weight loss can also benefit your heart, breathing and joints. Stopping smoking and weight loss both can give you more energy and help you lead more active and fulfilled lives. If you are one of many who have these targets please come and see us at Totley Pharmacy for help and advice. To help you stop smoking we stock a full range of products which will make quitting easier. There is plenty of evidence showing that people who quit with the help of Nicotine Replacement Therapy and a support program have far higher quit rates at 4 weeks and 12 months. It is also a very expensive habit, and the cost of NRT nowadays is cheaper than smoking. Indeed a very useful motivator can be to put the money you save towards a reward such as a holiday. While it can be difficult to achieve in practice, weight loss is a simple matter of using more calories than we consume. Sensible dietary changes and modest changes to your activity levels can achieve weight loss although results may be modest too. We can advise you on such changes. To help achieve greater and quicker results we stock a variety of supplements and meal replacement products. Our meal replacement products are very high qualty and high in protein with a low glycaemic index, and so keep you satisfied for longer. This means you eat lighter meals and snack less. If you wish to lose a large amount of weight or wish to lose weight quickly we offer the Lipotrim Pharmacy Programme. This involves a Very Low Calorie Diet which replaces meals with Lipotrim Total Food Replacement formulas. These are low in calories but nutritionally complete, so they will keep you healthy, well nourished and comfortable while you lose weight. Lipotrim products are only available to buy from pharmacies participating in the Pharmacy Programme so that you have a highly trained healthcare professional on hand for information, advice and encouragement. When followed properly you can expect to lose a stone a month (a stone and a half for men). We have many patients who have achieved this rate of weight loss with quite a few going on to lose as much as four stone each. I'm sure you will agree these are fantastic results. Compared to this programme, trying to eat a healthy nutritious Very Low Calorie Diet with foods is almost impossible. The benefits of this programme have also been proven by studies which show that they can reverse the symptoms of diabetes. It can also be enormously beneficial for blood pressure problems. So the benefits can be long lasting and far more than just cosmetic. We will make sure any products you use or changes you make are compatible with any medication you may be taking. We may even help ensure you can stick to your New Year's resolutions longer than the apparent average of 10 days! Taj