Posts Tagged ‘weight loss’

“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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The abrupt and immediate departure of Sima Sistani as CEO of Weight Watchers prompts us to ask: Is the diet industry dead? Weight Watchers grew from its origins in the early 1960s to become the iconic brand that dominated this field. For decades now, the popular impulse to reject diet culture has been growing. In […]

“If we were just to get a fraction [of potential members] to engage in the way that we do things differently with GLP-1s – it’s an insane opportunity for the company.” These words come from the Life Time chain of fitness clubs about the “Miora” wellness clinics they are now putting inside their facilities. It […]

Reuters has a news flash for us. People are quick to quit taking GLP-1 medicines. In an “exclusive” story, the Reuters report comes from a analysis from Prime Therapeutics and Magellan Rx (Prime/MRx) – a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM). The headline finding is that 85% of people who start on GLP-1 medicines have quit taking […]

The headline is compelling. “Zepbound outperforms Ozempic and Wegovy in head-to-head weight loss study.” It certainly confirms the bias of a lot of people in the field. But is it true? Did tirzepatide (Zepbound) really beat semaglutide (Wegovy) in a head-to-head comparative study for obesity? In a word, no. Uncontrolled, Observational, and Inequivalent Dosing The […]

In a certain way, Ozempic and TikTok were made for each other. One is the most viral social media of the moment. The other is an omnipresent sensation in medical therapy. Both of them fill a vacuum in popular culture. For TikTok, the vacuum might be boredom – though we admit that this assessment comes […]

Zeal is thrilling. “The solution is at hand” for type 2 diabetes, says Professor Roy Taylor. “If a person has T2DM, they have become too heavy for their own body.” Losing weight with his very low calorie diet will put that diabetes into remission, he says. “A simple bottom line.” Except that a new study […]