Helping Employees Tackle Obesity & Take Control of Metabolic Health

Dr. Tro Kalayjian’s Innovative Employee Wellness Program Improving Lives and Productivity for Global Manufacturing Company based in Louisiana 

Imagine if your employer gave you the tools and the time you needed to get into shape…

“That’s exactly what one local company is doing, and it’s working… helping employees get off medications and transform their lives…”

That was the lead-in to a recent news segment broadcast by 4WWL, the CBS TV affiliate in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The nearly five-minute segment described the innovative employee wellness program implemented by Laitram, a global manufacturing company based in Harahan, LA, and included interviews with employees who experienced life-changing results, including two who each lost more than 100 pounds.

For the past two years Laitram has been working with Dr. Tro Kalayjian, board certified in both obesity medicine and internal medicine, and founder of Dr. Tro’s Medical Weight Loss & Direct Primary Care, to provide their employees with medical weight loss and metabolic health services, and the results have been promising. Dr. Tro is also a founding member and board member of the Society for Metabolic Health Practitioners (The SMHP).

“We wanted to give people the tools, because as a business, what we’re trying to do is attract talented, committed, self-managed people,” said Laitram President Jay Lapeyre, who reached out to Dr. Tro two years ago in an effort to help his employees improve their health and fitness.

Laitram already had an onsite doctor’s clinic for physical and mental health care, a pharmacy, a dentist, and a state-of-the art gym with trainers and classes, but Lapeyre wanted Dr. Tro to help take it a step further.

Dr. Tro and his team have provided patients with continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), scales that measure fat and muscle mass, blood pressure cuffs, all of which can be monitored remotely. Laitram’s employees also have access to the Doctor Tro app, which allows for seamless engagement with physicians, certified health coaches and personal trainers.

The Doctor Tro app also offers community chat, weekly meetings, virtual courses, lectures, self-guided curriculum, podcast recordings, and more.

“We started with 15 patients, and the rest of the people who were interested got access to the app,” said Dr. Tro. “And six months went by and we assessed how we were doing, and we gradually opened enrollment to more and more people.”

The news segment featured patients Greg, Barbara, and Daniel, who lost 115, 132, and 60 pounds, respectively, but Dr. Tro pointed out that the benefits have gone far beyond weight loss.

“The average employee dropped their A1C by more than a percentage point, and we have been able to de-prescribe medications. And this is Louisiana, the second most obese state in the nation.”

Laitram has made CGMs and Keto-Mojo blood glucose and ketone meters available to their employees at a discounted rate.

“I’ve never seen a company so invested in their employees’ health,” said Dr. Tro. “I’ve worked in hospitals and other large companies and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

But Dr. Tro said he expects to see more companies adopt similar programs as the costs of metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, continue to climb.

“The costs of these diseases are skyrocketing,” said Dr. Tro. “Companies are finally beginning to take notice and we’re going to see more and more of them take actions to address these costs. 

“A program like this is a win for the employees and organization as a whole,”said Dr.Tro. “When you consider the savings on prescriptions and the improvements in productivity, we are basically free. We don’t cost them a dime.”

Dr. Tro has long advocated for preventative measures to be made available to patients as a way of avoiding the high costs, both in dollars and in human suffering, of metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes.

“I have a serious problem with the term ‘pre-diabetes,’ Dr. Tro recently tweeted. “The prefix ‘pre’ is used to describe what comes before something. In reality, ‘pre’-diabetes is actually AFTER or ‘post’ 15 years of the high insulin levels & inflammation associated with the modern lifestyle.”

Dr. Tro’s practice recently added Laura Buchanan, MD, to the team. Dr. Buchanan is also on the The SMHP board of directors.. The practice also currently has three certified health coaches on the team: Amy Eiges, Brian Wiley, and Alice Smith.

Dr. Tro was featured in a past article on The SMHP website: Low-Carb Lifestyle Helped Board Certified Obesity Medicine Physician Change His Own Life & Lives of Countless Patients

Dr. Tro was a 350-pound physician who went back to the medical literature in a quest for the knowledge that would allow him to break free from the shackles of obesity and metabolic disease. Dr. Tro used therapeutic carbohydrate reduction to sustainably lose 150 pounds and improve his own health, and in the years since, he’s been helping a fast-growing number of patients do the same.

Dr. Tro is also committed to helping raise awareness about the importance of metabolic health within the medical community, something he illustrates through his ongoing work with The SMHP. Dr. Tro continues to devote his efforts to helping his fellow doctors learn how to help themselves and their patients achieve better metabolic health with innovative resources and tools.