November 10, 2020 — Saxenda (liraglutide) is on the brink of becoming a billion dollar drug for obesity. Yet its effectiveness in obesity is modest. On average, a person taking it might expect that their weight would go down by about eight percent. Of course, some people will have a much bigger benefit. But others will have less or […]
November 9, 2020 — The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the obesity epidemic once again into the spotlight, revealing that obesity is no longer a disease that harms just in the long run but one that can have acutely devastating effects. New studies and information confirm doctors’ suspicion that this virus takes advantage of a disease that our current U.S. […]
November 8, 2020 — Even chaos is a business opportunity. So it seems that the market for calm is booming – both as a state of mind and a popular health app. This week the company behind the health app named Calm seized an opportunity. They sponsored those jarring election news alerts on CNN that were delivering the precise […]
November 7, 2020 — In this world where few of us are traveling, it’s nice to get away. OW2020 offered immersion as a way to get away. This past week, we retreated to our interactive screens and soaked up a lot of new insights about obesity. Thus, many of us found a way to shut out other screens that […]
November 6, 2020 — The Obesity Journal Symposium at ObesityWeek is a reliable source of new insights. This year’s edition was yesterday and it did not disappoint. Four new papers covered a diverse range of topics with excellence. But two of them are especially notable for challenging some popular thoughts about obesity. First, Emma Stinson et al tells us […]
November 5, 2020 — Impressive presentations at ObesityWeek exposed a thread that knits together obesity and COVID-19. But the thread we see is not inflammation – though inflammation is certainly important. Rather, it is disparate outcomes in health and obesity. These outcomes are not by chance. They are by design. In fact, a careful design of social systems ensured […]
November 4, 2020 — Many of us are struggling to hold onto a quaint belief in facts. But we’re also learning to deal with ambiguity. Simply because we don’t have all the facts. So we all, to varying degrees, rely on feelings to guide us. Welcome to the world of obesity, where we cope with an imperfect knowledge of […]
November 3, 2020 — Oddly enough, obesity can be a bit of an abstraction. Everybody thinks they know all about it. But in truth, the smartest people who study know how little we know. At the opening of ObesityWeek 2020, though, all that abstract science came face to face with humanity. Perhaps more than we’ve ever seen before, the […]
November 2, 2020 — Lately, we’ve seen two scientific journals promoting idea that people with obesity are intellectually and morally inferior. This is not OK. Smart people come in all sizes. So do honest and dishonest people. These papers might seem innocent on the surface. But they are nothing but exercises in fishing for correlations. Humans have a history […]
November 1, 2020 — This should be quite a week. Of course, we’re talking about ObesityWeek. Yeah, there’s also some sort of election going on. But we’ve hardly noticed. The real action is online with an all new format for an interactive meeting about everything that’s happening on the subject of obesity and health. Here are a few tips […]
