April 18, 2023 — Consider these two competing headlines. In the Washington Post, Kate Cohen tells us “It’s time to cancel diet culture.” Then with a press release about new papers in Nature Medicine, researchers tell us “Most new Type 2 diabetes cases attributable to suboptimal diet.” It’s a fascinating mashup of causality, attribution, and diet culture. On one […]
April 15, 2023 — New surveillance data from the U.S. Defense Health Agency tells us that the pandemic brought a large jump in diabetes, obesity, and eating disorders in the military. Between 2018 and 2021, the prevalence of obesity rose from 16 percent to 19 percent. The incidence of type 2 diabetes jumped by 25 percent and new cases […]
April 10, 2023 — Writing in the Guardian, Jon Ungoed-Thomas tells us he’s stumbled upon a simple solution for diabetes and obesity. A low-carb diet will cure them both! In an observational study of patients in a general practice who volunteered to religiously follow a low-carb diet, they found that patients could lose weight and put diabetes in remission. […]
April 3, 2023 — This is a merger that has taken decades – the merger of obesity and diabetes. Ethan Sims first coined the term diabesity in 1973. Even five decades ago, the coincidence of diabetes and obesity was unmistakable, but the standards of care for obesity and diabetes did not reflect the recognition of obesity as anything other […]
March 17, 2023 — “Coffee could slash obesity,” says the New York Post. Now you might think that cynical folks at the Post just make this stuff up because it’s so obviously false. But in fact, they have help from PR by the BMJ, and they’re not alone. The BMJ managed to induce quite a few news outlets last […]
March 6, 2023 — For the health of the U.S. population, this is a bad sign. While healthcare has done well to bringing down the prevalence of high cholesterol in young persons, diabetes and obesity are surging. Hypertension? It’s in between – neither rising nor falling in persons 20 to 44 over the timespan from 2009 to 2020. These […]
February 3, 2023 — This is a story that’s been on repeat for well over a year. Novo Nordisk announced its business results for the full year of 2022 this week and declared that supply issues with Wegovy are over – almost. But the fact is that it’s not at all clear that the problem of supply shortages for […]
December 24, 2022 — For some of us, gaining weight (especially at this time of year) is a metabolic curse. But there are individuals for whom gaining weight is a metabolic gift and, in fact, essential for surviving in good health. In this case, we are thinking about grizzly bears. These animals gain tremendous amounts of weight every year […]
November 18, 2022 — It is already starting. Here in North America, the weather is becoming crisp and winter holiday preparations are underway. The traditional feast of Thanksgiving is coming upon us next week. So a recent analysis of copious continuous glucose monitoring data from a small group of diabetes patients offers relevant insight into the challenge of metabolic […]
August 26, 2022 — Progress keeps coming in the pharmacotherapy for obesity. This week, Novo Nordisk announced that its new combination therapy of semaglutide and cagrilintide hit all its marks in a 32-week phase 2 study of patients with diabetes and excess weight. The combination – Novo is calling it CagriSema – worked better than either semaglutide or cagrilintide […]
