December 6, 2025 — “Supportive human relationships, particularly high-quality marital bonds, may regulate obesity risk through oxytocin-mediated alterations in brain and gut pathways.” This is the bottom line on a fascinating exploration of the biological relationship between emotionally supportive marriages and obesity published this week in Gut Microbes. This finding is not entirely a surprise. Nor is it the […]
November 25, 2025 — Novo Nordisk made a bold gamble on oral semaglutide for delaying the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Yesterday, as can happen with bold gambles, it did not pay off. A daily 14 mg oral dose of semaglutide was no better than placebo for preventing disease progression as measured by the Clinical Dementia Rating – Sum of […]
November 23, 2025 — A new study suggests that, however painful it might be, a root canal might serve to improve a person’s metabolic health. The study appears in the Journal of Translational Medicine, authored by Yuchen Zhang and colleagues from King’s College London and the University of Helsinki. It is observational and thus cannot establish cause and effect […]
November 18, 2025 — An important new study in Nature Medicine yesterday gave us a unique view of food noise at a source deep within the brain. Researchers implanted electrodes in the nucleus accumbens of a single subject to monitor brain activity in that region of the brain. The subject had a history of severe obesity and distressing preoccupation […]
October 30, 2025 — Very often, news reports about obesity rates have more puffery than substance to offer. However, a report this week from Gallup deserves your attention. It tells us that a steady decline in self-reported obesity rates appears to be a genuine trend and that an association with use of GLP-1s may explain it. In fact, for […]
October 8, 2025 — As an article of faith, many people, even some who should know better, dispense advice that sweeteners are bad for metabolic health and weight management. They rely on observational evidence and theories about how they might have subtle effects to undermine health. But no direct evidence. Now, in Nature Metabolism comes a randomized controlled study to […]
September 12, 2025 — Honestly, we share the underlying concern. Rising global temperature are a threat to our health and welfare. But twisting a scientific paper to make the point doesn’t help. It actually hurts the cause. New research in Nature Climate Change documents an association between added sugar consumption and rising temperatures. That’s a fair question to study. […]
September 2, 2025 — It is eye-popping really. Novo Nordisk issued a press release from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress over the weekend, with extravagant claims for Wegovy versus tirzepatide. Specifically, the claim was that “Wegovy cuts risk of heart attack, stroke or death by 57% compared to tirzepatide.” This is quite an amazing claim to make. […]
August 25, 2025 — The evidence keeps building. Broadly, it is telling us that treating obesity is about much more than simply losing weight. It is about gaining health by managing the chronic disease of obesity and controlling it over time. Specifically this week, we have another piece of evidence to suggest that obesity treatment prevents cancer. In JAMA […]
August 9, 2025 — Making America Healthy is an industry with very low barriers to entry. Lots of people have fun with it. They also make lots of noise. The trouble is that because of those low barriers to entry, most of them, including some academics, do very little to actually make Americans healthy. Instead, they generate headlines and […]
