News Archive for February, 2024

What could explain the observation that self-reports of exercise predict less of a benefit for men than women? In the Journal of the American College of Cardiology researchers nimbly leap to a conclusion that women get greater gains in mortality risk reduction from “equivalent doses” of physical activity. But would men exaggerate their self-reports? When […]

We are getting a bit fed up. This impatience comes with the presumption that people owe the world an explanation for their body. Is it fit enough? Is it fat enough? Are we wearing the right kind of body positive attitude? This comes from living in an excessively fat-conscious culture. But it also comes from […]

Yet another GLP-1 agonist in development for obesity – survodutide – showed promising results yesterday from a phase 2 clinical trial in MASH. In case you missed the notice, MASH is the new acronym for what we used to label as NASH. We also note that MASLD has replaced NAFLD in the nomenclature alphabet soup […]

We are in the midst of a great leap forward in pediatric obesity – from knowing to doing what we should in caring for the young persons with this chronic disease. ATPO 2024 at the University of Minnesota Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine (CPOM) last week made this clear. We know much more about how […]

Are we cynical? We can surely find excuses to be. Examples of cynicism pop up at every glance. Certainly we see it in politics and public policy. Closer to home at ConscienHealth, people routinely find reasons for cynicism about all kinds of medical research and advice – especially nutrition and obesity. This is a real […]

This sounds like a godsend. “Weight loss jabs could be a more effective and cheaper treatment for drug addiction than rehab, a study suggests.” So says the Telegraph of London. The “weight loss jabs” they’re talking about are liraglutide 3 mg daily injections, also known by the brand name of Saxenda. Sad to say, they […]

Scholars have noted that in lower income countries, obesity can be taken as a signal of wealth. This observation in turn fuels a presumption that weight stigma might not be a problem in countries of the Global South. But a new scoping review in Obesity Facts suggests this presumption is likely false. Laura Eggerichs, Oliver […]

“Is the Atlantic diet the new Mediterranean miracle?” This headline (and a host of others like it) says a lot about the ultra-processing of nutrition research by consumer media. It takes a fascinating study about the health effects of a traditional pattern for eating called the Atlantic diet and removes all the nuance. The product […]

Should this be surprising? Probably not. It had to come to this. But this is a pleasant bend in a long arc toward a more realistic approach for obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three leaders at CDC write in Health Affairs Forefront that we need both prevention and care to […]

The potential for benefits to brain function with effective obesity treatment is becoming difficult to miss. In particular, a new observational study of brain function in a cohort of patients receiving metabolic surgery for treatment of obesity is drawing much attention right now in JAMA Network Open. It suggests the possibility of a lasting benefit […]