Archive for March, 2025

Are We Flipping the Script on Obesity? Really?

March 31, 2025 — A new interview with ConscienHealth founder Ted Kyle offers a long view of more than two decades of work on obesity. The interview explores a core question that people ask all the time: Are we making progress in flipping the script on obesity? Or are we still fighting the same misunderstanding of obesity that has […]

Good News on Semaglutide from the Cardiology Meeting

March 30, 2025 — The opening of the American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago yielded good news on semaglutide from two major studies. A morning presentation  and simultaneous publication in Lancet showed semaglutide reduces symptoms of peripheral artery disease in persons with diabetes. Then, in the afternoon, researchers presented data and published it in the New England Journal […]

A Positive Trend in Metabolic Surgery for Teens

March 29, 2025 — These are indeed interesting times for folks who care about the need that so many people have for obesity care. Medicines for obesity, with the advent of GLP-1 agonists, have become much better. Thus the demand for metabolic surgery has slipped a bit. Most metabolic surgeons have seen this in the volume of cases that […]

$200 Million Cash Up Front for a Triple-G Agonist

March 28, 2025 — Novo Nordisk went shopping this week and brought home a super-early-phase triple-G agonist for the low low price of $200 million in cash up front. On top of that, Novo will pay another $1.8 billion plus royalties if all goes well. That’s a tidy sum to pay for rights to a drug – UBT251 – […]

Older Americans Say Medicare Should Cover Obesity Medicines

March 27, 2025 — Yesterday in JAMA Network Open, researchers from the University of Michigan published a finding that older Americans say Medicare should indeed cover obesity medicines. Authors Lauren Oshman and colleagues present straightforward conclusions: “In this survey study of older US adults, most participants agreed that Medicare should cover weight management medications and more than half of […]

Compounding, Generic Drugs, and Dietary Supplements

March 26, 2025 — In the U.S., we are at a critical point for the sourcing obesity medicines. March 19 was the last day that FDA would tolerate large scale compounding of tirzepatide on account of the now resolved shortage of that drug. The same milestone for semaglutide is coming up on May 22. Some people are not happy. […]

Burning Down Medical Science at the NIH

March 25, 2025 — People who know describe the National Institutes of Health as the crown jewels of American biomedical research. It is the biggest public funder of medical research in the world. It appears that our government is in the process of burning down a great deal of medical science at NIH. This is becoming obvious, even though […]

Access to Care for Obesity: Steps Forward and Back

March 24, 2025 — There’s no denying it. More people are getting access to care for obesity than ever before. In part this is because health professionals have a range of tools for providing that care. GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide and tirzepatide are a big part of that.But those drugs carry a price tag that is blowing up pharmacy […]

Making French Fries Healthy Again!

March 23, 2025 — The campaign to Make America Healthy Again is cranking up with some eye-opening messaging. An early leader in this campaign turns out to be a burger chain, Steak ’n Shake. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised the chain last week for making french fries healthy again: “Congratulations @SteaknShake for being the […]

Is the Fashion Industry Abandoning Size Diversity?

March 22, 2025 — In her Critic’s Notebook for the New York Times, Vanessa Friedman makes the case that the fashion industry is abandoning any pretense of embracing size diversity. Ultrathin is in, she says. All signs point to the political and cultural winds blowing in a different direction: “Peer pressure to diversify the runway in the wake of […]