About
Dr. Jeffrey Pua, M.D.
Born and raised from Westmont, Illinois. The son of two immigrants from the Philippines. He was the valedictorian of his grade school in Downers Grove, and then attended Benet Academy and graduated in the top 2% of the class in 1998, with multiple honors in Science and Math. He competed in the Science Olympiad and won awards in state Science and Math Competition. He was a National Honor Society Student and Illinois State Scholar he had perfect attendance in high school with a 4.0 GPA and was a Westmont Rotary Club honored student.
He went onto the University of Chicago for his undergraduate studies in Biology graduating with a specialization in neuroscience and was on the dean's list in 2001. He completed years of research in multiple sclerosis studies at the Arnason Lab at the University of Chicago neuroscience department.
Dr. Pua attended medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2002 and completed his medical doctorate and was licensed to practice medicine in 2006. He went onto Rush University and completed his Internal Medicine training with board certification in 2009 winning Intern of the Year previously, and was awarded Chief Resident status 2009-2010. He has been an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at Rush University from 2009-Present.
He worked as an Internal Medicine Primary Care Physician from 2010-2017 at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Illinois serving on the governance council of the hospital and as EMR Medical Director, and winning several teaching awards.
At present he receives patients everyday Monday-Saturday at Duly Health in Westmont, Illinois and has been full time board certified by the American Board of Obesity Medicine since 2017, seeing over 125 patients each week and 400 new patients every year. He has treated over 5000 patients in obesity medicine in full time clinical practice. He performs medical research in the field of obesity medicine and continues to teach medical students in Internal Medicine.
Clinical Practice
An obesity medicine expert must have the clinical experience to manage complex medical problems that coincide with obesity. When looking for a weight loss expert it is important to look at their credentials but also the breadth of their clinical experience to understand how the science translates to real world patient care. Only a full time practicing clinician has the hands-on experience to explain how sustainable metabolic health and long term weight loss is achieved in the context of complex cases with wide ranging variety.
Personal Journey
During my youth and high school years I had only one mission which was to focus on my academics. I made it my mission to eat as many frozen pizzas and reheat processed foods as much as possible in the 1990s to maximize my study time. Doing this caused 30 lbs of fat weight gain but gave me straight A's.
I was able to lose this weight by following a body building regimen from my father who was a champion bodybuilder and former Mr. China. I was able to further my understanding of human nutrition through education in obesity medicine. I became enamored with metabolic health and nutrition after learning about low carbohydrate nutrition from Dr. Jason Fung, M.D. and Dr. Eric Westman, M.D..
I joined the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners in 2018, and have been performing research in clinical practice on my own patients in the field of obesity medicine. This has enabled me to use the paleo, atkins, low carbohydrate, ketogenic, ketovore, and carnivore dietary patterns for the benefit of my own health as well as thousands of patients in clinical practice.
Exercise
The ability to burn glycogen as well as ketones for fuel is the hallmark of good metabolic health.
This is only achieved with increased insulin and leptin sensitivity which can be measured on labwork.
Metabolic health comes with physical fitness as muscle improves your basal metabolic rate.