Solving Obesity: New Drugs Can't Change How Little We Know

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It sounds simple...but in fact the obesity crisis may be one of the most complicated medical problems humans have ever faced. MedTwitter

The craze began when word leaked about Hollywood types using Ozempic and Wegovy to drop weight. Like a Southern California wildfire, news spread: These injectable drugs could help people lose 10%, 15%, or even 20% of their body weight.

"The most effective drug we have for obesity was developed by accident," said Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, a cardiologist and nutrition professor at Boston's Tufts School of Medicine."That right there should be a clear sign of how little we understand about obesity."More than 40% of American adults live with obesity. Sixty years ago, that number was 13%.

There is. Picture a chart with three lines. One line represents total food intake, and another our total food supply. A third line — the obesity rate — rises sharply, ultimately surpassing the other two, which stay flat."By two independent measures, calorie intake has been flat in the U.S. for 20 years while obesity has skyrocketed," says Mozaffarian."That single point should call into question everything we think we know." he wrote last year.

Mozaffarian acknowledged these limitations in his paper but said"discarding all these data because they do not fit a conventional theory of obesity would be imprudent; and other hypotheses must also be considered." Arguably the biggest landmark was the discovery of leptin, a fat hormone that regulates body weight, in 1994.

 

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