Endocrinology

At Children’s, we believe in innovative programs that treat the person as well as the disease:

• Our Optimal Weight for Life (OWL) Program has been recognized as one of the most comprehensive pediatric obesity programs in the country in CHILD Magazine's surveys of the best U.S. children's hospitals.
• Our Thyroid Program is one of the only centers in the United States exclusively devoted to the care of children with thyroid diseases.

Our team also includes researchers devoted to finding new treatments and cures, whohave:

• sparked new hope for a treatment for obesity by regulating leptin levels
• identified new genes never before thought to be linked to obesity
• helped explain an important paradox in the relationship between insulin level and longevity

Nicole Maines, here with her twin brother Jonas, received puberty-suppressing medication at the GeMS Clinic after being diagnosed with transgenderism. In this Boston Globe article, the Maines family talks about their experience at Children's  and how Dr. Norman Spack helped Nicole affirm the gender she always identified with. 

Reduced insulin signaling hampers insulin’s ability to manage the transfer of energy from the bloodstream to the cell. But a study led by Children’s researcher Morris White, PhD, indicates that this may be true only in the body—in the brain, reduced insulin signaling is linked with increased longevity. What is the easiest way to keep insulin signaling in the brain low? Good old-fashioned exercise.

Our taste for sugar evolved as a response to the drive of plants to reproduce. Seed-bearing fruits were infused with sugar, rich in available energy and used by every cell in the body, in an effort to keep the fruit-eaters strong. Humans grew to associate sweetness with goodness, and the “sugar tooth” was born.