January 1, 2025 — Thankfully, 2024 is behind us now and we have a blank slate for a whole new year ahead of us. But what can we expect? Well, proverbial (probably Danish) wisdom tells us “prediction is difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Nonetheless, here are our top five predictions about what we will see in 2025 […]
November 14, 2024 — In the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday, detailed results of a three-year study showed that tirzepatide was 99% effective in preventing diabetes in people with prediabetes and obesity. This was a placebo-controlled trial. Every person in the study, whether they received tirzepatide or not, received regular lifestyle counseling. Compared to the control group getting […]
November 5, 2024 — This should not be so hard. New research at ObesityWeek 2024 tells us that chronic care for the chronic disease is truly compelling. Specifically, we are talking about the results of three years of treatment with tirzepatide presented yesterday from the SURMOUNT-1 study. In this study of more than a thousand adults with pre-diabetes, three […]
August 28, 2024 — Type 2 diabetes prevalence is up and the Lancet Regional Health has a simple way to reduce it. Daniel Windred and colleagues write: “Advising people to turn off their lights at night, or use lights that reduce the circadian impact (dim and “warm” light), is a simple, cost-effective, and easily-implementable recommendation that may promote cardiometabolic […]
August 22, 2024 — From time to time, nutritional epidemiologists take themselves entirely too seriously. This week is one of those times. Health reporting is full of warnings that your lunch sandwich might give you type 2 diabetes. The senior author of the paper in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology causing this stir, Professor Nita Forouhi, expresses no caution about […]
August 21, 2024 — Yesterday, Eli Lilly and Company announced an impressive topline number from the results of a three-year study of tirzepatide in adults with obesity or overweight and prediabetes. That number was 94% prevention of progression from prediabetes to diabetes with tirzepatide. No, it was not 100%. But this is awfully close. Historical Context We will have to […]
April 3, 2024 — We’re stuck. This assessment sums up frustration with efforts to reduce the harm of obesity and diabetes in public health. For many decades we have remained fixated on a paradigm that tells us obesity and diabetes are rising because our patterns of diet and exercise are all wrong. Writing in the Guardian, Amy McLennan tells […]
August 29, 2023 — Bet you never saw this one coming. We did not. But a new RCT published in Nature Communications suggests that hookworms might have benefits for the metabolic health of people with insulin resistance that puts them at risk for type 2 diabetes. This was a phase 1 study with the primary aim of confirming the […]
February 9, 2023 — Vitamin D is an illusory panacea. Popular fascination with this “sunshine vitamin” has drawn people to latch onto associations that it has with many conditions. But those associations, when tested, often turn out to be confounded. So does a new systematic review and meta-analysis of vitamin D in prediabetes tell a different story? Anastassios Pittas […]
February 1, 2022 — It is a familiar pattern, but no less disappointing because of that. A government commission issues a report and cries out for action. “Another health crisis challenges the U.S.: diabetes mellitus,” says the report issued yesterday by the National Clinical Care Commission. The report correctly identifies obesity as a key driver of rising deaths from […]
