January 31, 2024 — Obesity is the most prevalent chronic disease in America, so you might think that prescriptions for obesity medicines are relatively common – but only if you are unfamiliar with prevailing attitudes about these medicines. Because in fact, even in a large health system known for excellent care in cardiometabolic health, these prescriptions are rather rare. […]
January 30, 2024 — It created quite a stir last week when Epic Research published an analysis suggesting that weight regain in the real world does not look the same as a placebo-controlled trial. After all, regain is quite an important subject. Obesity is clearly a chronic disease, requiring chronic care. But lots of people try to avoid this […]
January 29, 2024 — Scientific American published an entertaining parody last week. It was a bit extreme and too early for April Fools’ Day, but entertaining nonetheless. This essay wove together a litany of absurd rationalizations we hear all the time to tell the tale of a medical breakthrough in obesity taking us down a road to ruin. Hilarious […]
January 28, 2024 — In public life and unfortunately, in science and health policy, we find too often that contempt takes over from curiosity and reason. It is obvious in politics and likely to get painful this year. But it is not confined to the political realm. In nutrition and obesity research, we find that people are often ready […]
January 27, 2024 — Zeal is thrilling. “The solution is at hand” for type 2 diabetes, says Professor Roy Taylor. “If a person has T2DM, they have become too heavy for their own body.” Losing weight with his very low calorie diet will put that diabetes into remission, he says. “A simple bottom line.” Except that a new study […]
January 26, 2024 — The calls are growing louder and more frequent to include people living with obesity in clinical trials and drug labels. Of course trials and labels for drugs that treat obesity include these patients. But the huge problem is that for everything else, more often than not, drug studies and labels exclude them. Now, the American […]
January 25, 2024 — One of the more annoying generalizations in obesity is the assertion that when people lose weight, everyone inevitably regains it all and perhaps even more. When said about metabolic surgery, it’s utterly false. But that doesn’t stop people from saying it – even people who pose as medical experts. More broadly in the medical management […]
January 24, 2024 — Scientific publications keep sending us signals that all of the plastic we are heaping into our lives may be eating away at our health. Just this month alone, two new publications have us thinking about the disease burden that may result from exposure to the chemicals of plastics. One, in the Journal of the Endocrine […]
January 23, 2024 — A new study of social isolation in people living with obesity tells us that this might be among the most important complications of obesity. In fact, it points to the possibility that reducing isolation could yield longer lives for people living with obesity. These results are nothing more than the observation of an association. But […]
January 22, 2024 — Breastfeeding is such a good idea. But unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to prevent obesity. No matter. On the subject of breastfeeding and preventing obesity in children, we have policy-based evidence – the answer is preset. A new paper in Pediatrics lines up with this. Based on yet another finding of an association between breastfeeding […]
