January 14, 2025 — It’s too dangerous, say some. In fact, quite sincerely, smart physicians have told us that the widespread use of compounded semaglutide represents a public health crisis. Others have told us that, yes, there are risks. But because of drug pricing and health insurance practices, it is the only option for many patients and they have […]
January 10, 2025 — Let’s talk selfies. For me, they were my reality check. Full-body shots? Forget it. Every milestone photo with my family got run through every beautification filter the App Store could throw at me, but nothing could match the image I wanted to see staring back. That’s when I knew – it was time for a […]
January 8, 2025 — Drug development for obesity may well be in a golden age. In large part, this is because the scientific understanding of obesity has grown exponentially in the past two decades. Unfortunately, little or none of that is reflected in new draft guidance from FDA, issued yesterday for public comment, on developing the next generation of […]
January 7, 2025 — It used to be that this was the time of year when popular culture turned its attention to weight loss season. The release of U.S. News rankings of “Best Diets” commanded media attention. Weight loss tips were everywhere. But no more is this true. No, idle talk about weight loss has not disappeared. But it […]
December 5, 2024 — Bragging rights. Yesterday, Lilly claimed them for its obesity medicine, the Zepbound brand of tirzepatide. The company announced topline results from a head-to-head trial of tirzepatide vs semaglutide for weight loss in persons with obesity or overweight and at least one obesity-related complication. It should be no surprise that tirzepatide won this narrowly-defined contest. In […]
November 2, 2024 — As we travel to San Antonio for ObesityWeek 2024 (OW2024) one of the principal threads we want to explore is the expanding scope of GLP-1 therapy benefits. The narrative is a moving target. We won’t have the abstracts in hand for another day. But news this week makes it clear that we have barely gotten […]
October 28, 2024 — “Our results provide a national contemporaneous estimate of the decline in metabolic bariatric surgery associated with the era of GLP-1 RAs.” Writing in JAMA Network Open last week, Kevin Lin, Ateev Mehrotra, and Thomas Tsai say rates of metabolic surgery dropped 26% in 2023 as use of GLP-1 medicines for obesity more than doubled. Nonetheless, […]
October 20, 2024 — Headlines and health plans depict the demand for advanced obesity medicines in terms of mania or a stampede. “The Ozempic craze is booming in the United States,” says the University of Kentucky healthcare system. But is it reasonable to describe the people seeking these medicines as crazed? Or is this really an expression of false […]
October 10, 2024 — After a recent cascade of diverse studies yielding seemingly different answers about time-restricted eating, FNCE this week provided an excellent opportunity to gain perspective from researchers who are serious about this subject. Krista Varady, Shuhao Lin, and Vicky Pavlou brought a much needed focus on the science behind this pop nutrition phenomenon. A Helpful Alternative […]
October 5, 2024 — The remarkable power of an open-label placebo comes through in a new study appearing in Scientific Reports. The power is remarkable simply because “open label” means that everyone receiving a placebo knew that it had no medicinal effect whatsoever. And yet, compared to usual care for overweight and obesity, people lost more weight after four […]
