March 13, 2025 — Over the last few decades, there have not been a lot of bright spots for metabolic health. But here’s one. A new paper in Diabetes Care tells us diabetes mortality actually dropped between 2000 and 2019. The authors, led by Hasan Nassereldine, suggest that the decline in diabetes deaths could be due to the adoption […]
January 31, 2025 — For persons with obesity and prediabetes, one of the best ways to prevent diabetes onset is quite clear. Treat the obesity to reduce the excess adiposity. The Diabetes Prevention Program established this with a study in the NEJM way back in 2002. A prescription of diet and exercise could cut the risk of diabetes in […]
January 29, 2025 — FDA yesterday approved Ozempic (semaglutide) to prevent kidney failure and death in persons with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. This fits with one of the five trends for this year: the steady expansion of health benefits for advanced medicines used in obesity and diabetes. But note that this approval covers the use of […]
December 6, 2024 — The market for precision nutrition advice is more than six billion dollars today and estimated to double by the end of this decade. Sales of continuous glucose monitoring devices are on their way to $20 billion within three years. But a new study this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that the […]
November 25, 2024 — A new study presented at the Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Gastroenterology tells us receiving a GLP-1 for diabetes with or without obesity is associated with a halving of pancreatic cancer risk. Is this too good to be true? Observational, of Course The first thing to note is that the finding comes […]
November 21, 2024 — Is the glass half full? Or 99% empty? The metaphorical glass in this case is the number of people with a legitimate indication for the remarkable prescription drug generically known as semaglutide. Ivy Shi et al presented an elegant answer at the AHA Scientific Sessions this week and simultaneously published it in JAMA Cardiology. They […]
November 8, 2024 — Amid a steady stream of news from ObesityWeek, the CDC released new NHANES data this week documenting an ongoing rise in U.S. diabetes prevalence. Between 1999 and 2023, the age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes, diagnosed and undiagnosed, in adults rose from 9.7% to 14.3%. The total prevalence in adults between 2021 and 2023 was 15.8% – […]
September 18, 2024 — People who think of obesity simply as a disease of fatness are walking around with a profound misunderstanding of this disease – it is very much a disease of inflammation. This thread of inflammation ties obesity to diabetes and ties both of those diseases to the complications of COVID. New research on COVID and diabetes […]
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 […]
July 29, 2024 — When the subject of equitable access to GLP-1s arises, contrasting perspectives of what is equitable become apparent. Last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, an analysis of prescription data for GLP-1 agonists made two facts about their use very clear. First, their use for obesity is growing much faster than the use for type […]
