Posts Tagged ‘obesity’

“Don’t Listen to Those Influencers,” Cries an Influencer

February 16, 2024 — Influencers are not doctors. They can’t understand the science issues with obesity drugs. That’s not what they do. With expressive skill, a leading influencer in the fat acceptance movement put her finger on an important issue in the Washington Post this week. On this, we totally agree. If we listen to many social media influencers, […]

Tracking Obesity into Cellular Mitochondria

February 15, 2024 — Science has come a long way from simplistic assumptions about fat tissue as some sort of fuel depot for the excess calories a person consumes. In fact, adipose tissue is a very active endocrine organ that regulates the use and storage of energy in ways that new research is explaining. At a cellular level, new […]

The Church of There’s No Such Thing as Obesity

February 11, 2024 — Religious tolerance seems hard to find lately. Ample illustrations of intolerance flow from the Middle East, India, and American politics – from all over the world, really. But in an age of less affiliation with organized religions, we also see people seek out other belief systems to latch their passions onto. Health and fitness are […]

Kimchi for the Win in Obesity? Not Really

February 10, 2024 — The setup has been great. Kimchi lands near the top of the list of “must-eat fermented foods for a healthy gut.” On top of that, nutrition gurus advise us “food is medicine” and a fermented food diet “increases microbiome diversity and decreases inflammatory proteins.” So we should be ready to believe when a study tells […]

Patent Thickets to Boost Obesity Medicine Prices

February 9, 2024 — Are patent thickets boosting the prices of obesity medicine prices and putting these important medical advances out of reach for everyone but the wealthy and well insured? A new paper in JAMA this week suggests this is true – at least in part. Rasha Alhiary and colleagues explain: “Manufacturers have secured long periods of market […]

Want to Control Hypertension? Treating Obesity Helps

February 8, 2024 — This is not exactly startling news. But two new studies this week do offer a very clear confirmation of one of the important benefits that comes from treating obesity – unmistakably better control of hypertension. One reason this is important is the substantial amount of disinformation that circulates to suggest obesity is not a real […]

More News Points to Explosive Growth for GLP-1 Medicines

February 7, 2024 — Let’s be clear from the start. Hype about “weight loss” drugs is exquisitely unhelpful. This is because weight loss is only an acute effect of new medicines that act on GLP-1 receptors and related pathways that influence obesity. The real need for these medicines is to control a whole range of chronic health problems that […]

Rethinking the Dosing of Obesity Medicines with AMG 133

February 6, 2024 — We learned recently that questions about the need for ongoing dosing with obesity medicines raise discomforting thoughts. After all, obesity is a chronic disease, so we can’t dispute the need for continued daily or weekly doses with obesity medicines. Or can we? Amgen seems to think we can. Monthly Dosing? Induction and Maintenance? With a […]

Make Believe About Obesity Blended with a Social Agenda

February 3, 2024 — We confess to a significant amount of fatigue with a social agenda related to size and weight getting overlaid on the medical concern of obesity. The bickering of people who want to make believe that obesity is a purely social issue can be too much to bear. This has been one of those weeks. Moral […]

Motivational Interviewing Flunks a Test with Pediatricians

February 2, 2024 — Motivational interviewing is a respected tool for helping people who are seeking care for obesity. It’s  all about listening  to and supporting a person’s motivations wanting medical obesity care. But yet again, we are learning that motivation is not the magic answer for overcoming obesity. This time, in Pediatrics, Ken Resnicow and colleagues have published […]