- Novo Nordisk snaps up Inversago Pharma for up to $1B+ on the back of megablockbuster Wegovy sales Endpoints News
- Novo Nordisk to acquire obesity drug developer Inversago Reuters
- Novo Nordisk bets $1.1B on Canadian biotech buyout, adding an old approach to obesity pipeline FierceBiotech
- Novo Nordisk to acquire Inversago Pharma to develop new therapies for people living with obesity, diabetes and other serious metabolic diseases GlobeNewswire
- Novo acquires Inversago for up to $1 billion, spotlighting troubled weight loss approach STAT
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Pharma
‘Reverse Dieting’ Is Not a Weight Loss Cheat Code
To hear the TikTok girlies tell it, there’s a hack that will let you EAT MORE FOOD! While NOT GAINING WEIGHT! And it’s great if you are SICK OF DIETING! Never mind that one can achieve all those goals by a simple trick called “not dieting anymore.” No, it needs a name and a strict protocol: reverse dieting.
The basic idea of reverse dieting is that you slowly add a few more calories to your diet every week. So s you normally maintain your weight on 2,000 calories per day, but you’ve been eating 1,500 calories to lose weight. You might then “reverse diet” by eating 1,600 calories a day next week, 1,700 calories a day the week after that, and so on. Eventually you’ll be back up to 2,000 calories, or maybe even more.
This is not a trend that originated on TikTok. The term seems to have come from bodybuilders, whose sport requires that they engage in extreme cycles of bulking (gaining weight to gain muscle mass) and cutting (losing as much fat as possible before stepping on a stage). While the process can create dazzling physiques, it also fucks with your metabolism and overall health.
Reverse dieting is one approach for transitioning from an extreme cut, to maintenance or bulking: Instead of just pigging out the day after your bodybuilding show, you might rather slowly increase the amount of food you eat as you find your maintenance calories again.
This idea spawned the current trend of influencers pitching reverse dieting as the cure for all your diet-related complaints. But it doesn’t work that way.
The science behind reverse dieting
Some of the claims you’ll hear from thin women flexing their abs on TikTok, and from the bodybuilders saying to just trust them, bro, are true. Among them:
G/O Media may get a commission
health
The Lyma Supplement
10 ingredients. One super-supplement.
Lyma makes the next generation of supplements—peer-reviewed and formulated to unlock your potential.
- Your metabolism adapts to dieting, so over time you have to eat less and less food to keep losing weight (this is a known thing).
- After dieting a long time, you may be eating a miserably low number of calories.
- Eating more food will allow your body to stop being so stingy with the calories, and can increase the number of calories your body burns.
- After increasing your calories, someday you may be able to lose weight again while eating more food than when you were in the depths of your diet.
There are also a number of untruths and half-truths that come up. You may hear that increasing your calories too fast after a diet will make your body pack on fat, or that you can add 1,000 calories and still be losing weight, or something something hormones something cortisol. (Scroll long enough on fitness TikTok and somebody will explain that all your problems are due to cortisol. Take a drink.)
In any case, this is where “reverse dieting” comes in. Supposedly the cure to all of these ills is simply that you need to add 50 to 100 calories to your diet each week. The process is slow and requires patience, but stick to it and you too could look like this girl (imagine me moving my head to point at the before-and-after photos I’ve greenscreened behind me) on 2,400 calories instead of 1,200.
So what’s actually true about reverse dieting, and why is everybody so into it? Let’s take a closer look.
When it goes right, “reverse dieting” is just “not dieting” but with more rules
After reading all of those bullet points above, you might think, OK, so why not just stop dieting? You’ll get to eat more food, your body will burn more calories, and from there you can either diet again or—crazy idea here—just not diet anymore. Heck, you could give gaining weight a try.
And that is, in fact, the real answer. Just stop dieting. The world will not end. You can eat food again, and you will be fine. So why reverse diet?
As Eric Trexler, a nutrition and metabolism researcher, puts it here, the original reverse dieters’ goal was to smoothly transition from a calorie deficit, to maintenance, to their first bulk after a bodybuilding contest without gaining any more fat than they needed to. One problem with this approach is that after bodybuilders diet that hard, they need to regain fat. You can’t stay dangerously lean forever, and that’s true whether you’re a meathead or a TikTok girlie.
On social media, reverse dieting is often described as a way of continuing to diet while eating more calories. It’s true that if you’re in a 500 calorie deficit and you’re only adding 50 calories a week, you’ll continue to be in a deficit for a very long time—10 weeks, at that rate. Trexler notes that “this would serve only to delay even the most basic and immediate aspects of recovery, and make [the dieter’s] life unnecessarily difficult.”
Reverse dieting is not a cure for chronic dieting
There are two things going on here, I think. One is relatively harmless. Let’s say you’ve been on a diet and you’re ready to start gaining weight. Instead of eating an extra 1000 calories each day (to go from a 500 calorie deficit to a 500 calorie surplus), you can eat an extra few hundred this week, and add a few hundred more next week, and so on. You’ll be less surprised by changes in your weight (eating more food means there’s more food in your belly, so the scale might tick up a bit just from that) and it may be easier to figure out approximately how many calories you should eat going forward.
But that’s not how it’s being described on social media. Thin women are telling chronic dieters that they can eat more food while continuing to be very thin, if only they follow a strict reverse dieting protocol. But the strictness and the expectations can be damaging on their own.
For an extreme example, check out this video from a registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist. She describes a woman who was getting help for eating disorder recovery. The woman had such a low body weight, with associated health issues, that the dietitian says she “need[ed] to gain weight immediately.” But instead of following guidance from her care team that would have her gaining a pound a week, she secretly put herself on a reverse diet protocol. By adding just 50 calories each week to the too-low amount she was already eating, it took her three months to gain a whole pound of body mass—basically delaying her recovery by three months.
And here’s where I think we need to take a closer look at why reverse dieting posts are so popular in corners of social media that are focused on weight loss. While eating more sounds healthier—it’s a good start!—following a strict reverse diet is just another way of restricting.
Reverse dieting is sometimes just a way to restrict more
Let’s say, as in many of the examples on TikTok, that you are somebody currently eating 1,200 calories (officially a starvation diet) and no longer losing weight. Even if you are a small woman who never exercises—maybe because you don’t have the energy?—a healthy amount of daily calories will likely be 1,600 or more. So you’re supposed to eat 1,250 next week? And then 1,300 the week after that? At that rate, it would take eight weeks to get you up to the number that should be mere maintenance for you. Even if you don’t have an eating disorder, you’re creating the same problem for yourself as the ED patient in the dietitian’s case study.
What’s even more concerning to me is that 50 or even 100 calories is an extremely precise amount. If I’m aiming to eat 2,000 calories a day, maybe some days I’ll have 1,950 and some days I’ll have 2,100. Over time it balances out. But if you’re trying to hit exactly 1,850 and not 1,900 (because 1,900 is next week’s target) you’ll have to track your food meticulously. This is the kind of lifestyle where you’ll be weighing your toast before and after you spread the peanut butter, and you won’t want to eat at a restaurant, because how many calories are in each menu item? What if they’re heavy handed with the sauce?
In my scroll through #reversedieting TikTok, I found women saying that they had to miss out on family meals and deal with concern from their friends during their reverse diet. Clearly, they have not taken a step very far out of diet-land. For these folks, it actually seems like the “reverse” is essentially a way of extending their diet. You could be eating at maintenance for those eight weeks, but you’re restricting instead. And then what? Reverse dieting is often described as a way of increasing your calorie burn so you can diet again.
Even when the influencers show themselves gaining muscle and eating genuinely healthy numbers of calories (assuming that the numbers they cite are true), it’s still all couched in language around leanness and thinness, and features photos of their abs. Prioritizing leanness even while gaining muscle is some backwards-ass shit. It’s okay to not be able to see your abs while you are trying to make yourself bigger. As strongman JF Caron famously put it, “abs is not a thing of power. Is just a sign you don’t eat enough.”
Super Gonorrhea Has Reached the U.S.
Super gonorrhea has infected people in the United States for the first known time. This week, Massachusetts public health officials announced the discovery of two gonorrhea cases appearing to display increased resistance to all known antibiotic classes that can be used against it. These cases were thankfully still curable, but it’s the latest reminder that this common sexually transmitted infection is becoming a more serious threat.
Gonorrhea, caused by the namesake bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is the second most commonly reported STI in the U.S., with 677,769 cases documented in 2020. Many infected people don’t experience illness, but initial symptoms can include a discolored discharge from the genitals, painful or burning urination, and rectal bleeding if caught from anal sex. When gonorrhea is left untreated, it raises the risk of more serious complications, like damage to the reproductive tract in women and swollen testicles in men, both of which can lead to infertility. And when it’s passed down from mother to child, the infection can be fatal or cause blindness in newborns.
While gonorrhea was once easily treatable with a simple pill of penicillin or other antibiotics, the bacteria has steadily learned to resist almost every drug put in its path. These days, only one or two antibiotics taken at the same time (depending on the region) are considered reliably effective against gonorrhea and are recommended as front-line treatments. But in recent years, doctors have seen cases of gonorrhea where it’s started to evade even these drugs. These extensively hardy, or pan-resistant, infections have been documented in parts of Europe and Asia to date, but at least two similar cases have now been identified in Massachusetts.
According to the state health department, the strain of gonorrhea isolated from one case clearly showed resistance or a reduced response to five classes of antibiotics, while the strain pulled from the second case was genetically close enough that it would likely have similar resistance. A common genetic marker seen in these cases was previously identified in a case reported in Nevada, but that strain still responded normally to at least one class of antibiotics. As far as health officials know, these are the first documented gonorrhea cases to show increased resistance to all of the drug classes known to treat it ever identified in the U.S.
“The discovery of this strain of gonorrhea is a serious public health concern which DPH, the CDC, and other health departments have been vigilant about detecting in the US,” said Public Health Commissioner Margret Cooke, in a statement from the agency.
G/O Media may get a commission
Up to $100 credit
Samsung Reserve
Reserve the next gen Samsung device
All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
Growing rates of resistance to the antibiotic azithromycin led the U.S. to stop recommending it for gonorrhea in late 2020. Now, only the drug ceftriaxone—taken as an injection—is considered a frontline option in the country, and at a higher dose than before. Luckily, despite the reduced response to ceftriaxone, both cases were successfully cleared after patients took these higher doses.
These cases are likely only a warning of what’s to come. Some of the important genetic markers seen in this novel strain have been spotted in pan-resistant cases from Europe and Asia, which shows that these mutations are continuing to spread around the world. Gonorrhea rates in general have increased year after year in the U.S. And perhaps most worryingly, no clear connection between the two Massachusetts cases has been found, indicating that these strains may already be circulating past the point where they could be easily contained.
There are ongoing efforts to develop vaccines and novel antibiotics against gonorrhea, but it may take years before any of these come to fruition, if any do. So it’s only become more important to take precautions against contracting and spreading these STIs in the first place. Health officials are now alerting doctors and testing labs in Massachusetts to look out for and report any similar cases.
“We urge all sexually active people to be regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections and to consider reducing the number of their sexual partners and increasing their use of condoms when having sex. Clinicians are advised to review the clinical alert and assist with our expanded surveillance efforts,” said Cooke.
Intermittent Fasting May Not Affect Your Chances of Weight Loss, Study Suggests
New research casts doubt on certain claimed benefits of intermittent fasting, finding no link between a person’s timing of meals and their chances of long-term weight loss. The frequency and size of people’s meals, however, was linked to modest changes in weight.
Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recruited adult patients from one of three major health care systems to use an app (“Daily 24”) where they would report their sleeping and eating habits for up to six months. These reports were then used as a barometer for people’s routine eating and sleeping behavior. The researchers also kept track of the volunteers’ health outcomes, including weight, before and after the study began through their electronic medical records. About 550 people used the app during the study period, and the researchers were able to track these people’s weight over an average length of six years.
The team found no significant association between the timing of meals and annual changes in weight in their study sample. People who reported skipping breakfast or taking long breaks between meals, for instance, didn’t noticeably lose or gain any more weight on average than those who didn’t do that. The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
This type of study is known as observational research, which can only be used to find correlations between two variables, not necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship. And this study in particular wasn’t measuring what might happen to people who newly decide to start intermittent fasting, but rather the possible effects of someone’s regular eating habits on their weight over time. That said, several small trials, including one published last April, have tracked people as they started dieting and have found that intermittent fasting may not provide any added weight loss over a typical eating schedule.
“Based on other studies that have come out, including ours, we are starting to think that timing of meals through the day most likely doesn’t immediately result in weight loss,” lead author Wendy Bennett, an associate professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, told CNN.
G/O Media may get a commission
Up to $100 credit
Samsung Reserve
Reserve the next gen Samsung device
All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
Bennett and other researchers studying the topic have cautioned that their results don’t necessarily rule out that intermittent fasting can have some unique positives. It’s possible that some populations, such as those with type 2 diabetes, could experience greater weight loss than they would otherwise while fasting. And for some people, intermittent fasting might simply be easier or preferable as a way to keep track of their eating.
Still, for those who are trying to diet, these findings suggest that there are other patterns they should be more mindful about than timing. The study found that people who ate more frequent medium or large meals during the day gained modest amounts of weight over time (up to two pounds a year linked to every extra meal a day on average). Conversely, eating many small meals throughout the day was linked to a small amount of annual weight loss.
The Benefits of Taking Vitamin D Might Depend on Your Weight
The potential benefits of taking vitamin D supplements may be affected by your weight and height, new research suggests. The study found that overweight and obese people taking these supplements experienced a smaller increase of vitamin levels and other related markers relative to those with a lower body mass index.
The study is a reanalysis of the VITAL trial, a large-scale project that tested whether proactively taking vitamin D or marine omega-3 supplements could reduce older people’s risk of developing cancer and cardiovascular disease. The randomized, placebo-controlled trial was led by researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, which is affiliated with Harvard University. It overall found no significant effect from either type of supplementation on these outcomes. But some data also indicated that vitamin D supplementation was associated with benefits in those with a BMI lower than 25 (BMI between 18.5 to 25 is considered “normal”), specifically a smaller risk of developing cancer and autoimmune disease, as well as a lower cancer mortality.
To better understand this link, some of the same researchers decided to study blood samples taken from over 16,000 volunteers over the age of 50 involved in the trial. These samples allowed them to look at people’s total vitamin D levels as well as other biomarkers of vitamin D, like metabolic byproducts and calcium, before the study began. About 2,700 of these volunteers also came back for follow-up blood tests two years later.
The team found that people’s levels of vitamin D and these biomarkers generally increased following supplementation, no matter their BMI. But this increase was significantly less pronounced in those with a BMI over 25, the threshold for overweight and obesity. This dampening effect was also seen in people who had low levels of vitamin D at baseline, meaning those who would experience the greatest benefit from supplementation. The team’s findings were published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open.
“We observed striking differences after two years, indicating a blunted response to vitamin D supplementation with higher BMI,” said study author Deirdre Tobias, an associate epidemiologist in Brigham’s Division of Preventive Medicine, in a statement from Harvard. “This may have implications clinically and potentially explain some of the observed differences in the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation by obesity status.”
G/O Media may get a commission
Up to $100 credit
Samsung Reserve
Reserve the next gen Samsung device
All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
As for why this may be happening, the researchers point to two possible theories. It’s possible, for instance, that higher levels of body fat may allow more vitamin D—a fat-soluble vitamin—to be pulled away from a person’s blood circulation and stored away. Obesity-related liver problems might also make it harder for people to metabolize vitamin D as effectively.
This is only one study, however, and more research will be needed to confirm the patterns seen here. But the authors say that their findings might eventually lead to a reevaluation of the positives and negatives of vitamin D supplementation and how to improve its use for people across the board. People with higher BMI, for example, may need higher doses of vitamin D to achieve the same benefits seen in those with lower body weight.
Experts Recommend Drugs, Surgery for Teen Obesity in New Guidelines
For the first time ever, experts with the American Academy of Pediatrics are recommending proactive medical intervention against childhood obesity. The organization’s new guidelines will no longer ask doctors to simply observe or delay treatment in children with obesity, defined as a body mass index over 30. They instead now emphasize a range of options, such as dietary and lifestyle counseling for younger children as well as medications and/or surgery for children 12 and over.
Past standards for treating childhood obesity have called for “watchful waiting,” the hope being that a child’s BMI (a measure of both weight and height) would naturally lower over time as they grew. In 2007, the AAP’s previous recommendations promoted a step-based approach, where doctors might slowly escalate from observation to treatment. But these new recommendations—released Monday—are the first clinical practice guidelines to put obesity treatments front and center.
“There is no evidence that ‘watchful waiting’ or delayed treatment is appropriate for children with obesity,” said Sandra Hassink, one of the authors behind the guidelines and vice chair of the AAP Clinical Practice Guideline Subcommittee on Obesity, in a statement released by the organization. “The goal is to help patients make changes in lifestyle, behaviors or environment in a way that is sustainable and involves families in decision-making at every step of the way.”
The lengthy guidelines outline a multitude of available treatments, depending on a child’s age and other circumstances (children under 2 are not considered eligible for obesity treatment).
For younger children, these options can include intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment, which can involve regular counseling sessions with the child and family over a 3- to 12-month period. For children 12 and over, doctors are now advised to consider medications as a front-line option. And teens 13 and over can also be evaluated for bariatric surgery as a potential treatment.
In crafting its recommendations, the AAP cites many studies suggesting that the benefits of these treatments outweigh any potential risks they can carry. Patients who have undergone bariatric surgery seem to have a lower risk of developing obesity-related complications such as type 2 diabetes and have a longer life expectancy when compared to non-surgical patients matched in age and baseline BMI, for instance. Long-term health benefits have been seen in teen bariatric patients specifically, too.
A new class of medication, called incretins, has also greatly changed the landscape of obesity treatment in recent years. These drugs, combined with diet and exercise, have led to far larger weight loss on average than most other treatments and are approaching the typical results seen with bariatric surgery.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration extended the approval of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, the first drug of this new generation, to children over 12, following clinical trial data showing that teens saw a similar improvement in BMI as adults. The shortages that have plagued Wegovy’s rollout since its approval in June 2021 may finally be over as well, with the company recently announcing that its supply should now be stable. Without insurance coverage, which is often limited, the drug can still cost over $1,000 a month, however.
The AAP’s guidelines arrive at a time when the rise in U.S. obesity rates, including among children, has only accelerated, likely in part due to the covid-19 pandemic. The new recommendations notably do not cover how best to prevent obesity in children, though the organization has promised to release separate recommendations for that in the near future.
“The medical costs of obesity on children, families and our society as a whole are well-documented and require urgent action,” said lead author Sarah Hampl in a statement. “This is a complex issue, but there are multiple ways we can take steps to intervene now and help children and teens build the foundation for a long, healthy life.”
Don’t Waste Your Time With These Terrible Diet Tips
It’s the new year and everybody’s on a diet—I mean, a wellness journey. Whether you want to lose weight or not is none of my business, but I do beg you to please, please let all the following silly weight loss “hacks” die. Many of them verge on disordered eating behaviors, while others are just ways to make yourself miserable for no reason.
(By the way, if you feel like your relationship with food is out of control, the National Eating Disorders Association has a screening tool, helpline, and more resources here.)
Smaller plates don’t make us eat less
This one is a classic: Serving yourself on a smaller plate is supposed to make a small amount of food look bigger. Therefore, you’ll eat less food overall, and eventually lose weight.
But our brains and bodies are too smart to actually be tricked by that. The idea that smaller plates promote smaller portions came from a lab that was later found to be engaging in sketchy research practices. Other labs ran their own plate size experiments and found that people usually don’t eat less when given smaller plates. What’s more, we get better at estimating portion sizes when we’re hungry. The small plate hack wasn’t fooling us after all.
Drinking a glass of water isn’t going to satisfy your hunger
There’s a common healthy eating tip that says if you’re hungry, you should have a big glass of water, because sometimes our bodies can’t tell hunger and thirst cues apart.
But there’s no evidence that this is true, or that drinking a glass of water will help. One of the oft-cited papers on hunger, thirst, eating, and drinking found that we actually get a little hungrier after drinking—so even if it were true that our bodies mix up the signals, the proposed solution isn’t likely to help.
Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with drinking a glass of water if you think you might like one, whether you’re hungry or not. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that hunger pangs are your body telling you that you’re thirsty. Your body knows the difference between food and water, okay? That’s why you haven’t starved or dehydrated to death yet.
It’s not necessarily a good idea to eat like a bodybuilder
There’s a stereotype about bodybuilders eating nothing but chicken breast, brown rice, and broccoli out of little plastic containers. They eat with discipline and end up shredded, so this must be a healthy meal choice, right?
While it can be a fine meal if you enjoy it, this combination is not the best or only way to meal prep—especially if you aren’t a fan of the individual components. Chicken breast and rice are both notoriously unforgiving when it comes to meal prep, anyway. They tend to dry out, especially if you prepare them without marinades or sauces.
So ditch your idea of what healthy food looks like, and make a plan that involves foods you actually enjoy. Upgrade to chicken thighs, learn to use a good marinade, throw that dry rice in a waffle maker, or just make an entirely different recipe. It’s okay for food to taste good.
Oh, and while we’re discussing bodybuilder habits: no, eating many small meals does not “boost” your metabolism.
It’s a diet, not a lifestyle change
This last one isn’t so much a hack as an oft-repeated platitude: “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.” If you’re trying to lose weight, please do not make this a lifelong process. Dieting is the act of deliberately undernourishing yourself. If you want or need to do it for a short time, then own that choice, and do it in the healthiest manner you’re able. But once you’ve lost some weight, get back to fully nourishing your body again.
After all, it would not be healthy or smart to lose weight forever. Since the way we lose weight is by eating fewer calories than we burn, the exact meals and habits that help us lose weight are not going to be the ones that help us maintain our ideal weight once we get there. At the very least, you’ll have to increase your portions.
So if you feel like your current diet or habits need to change, make sure to separate out what should change in general (example: cook at home more often) and what should change temporarily (example: smaller portions). Healthy eating and undereating are not at all the same thing.
An Effective Obesity Drug Has Now Been Approved for Teens
The Food and Drug Administration has recently expanded the eligibility of an effective obesity drug known as Wegovy to children as young as 12. In a clinical trial, children who took Wegovy lost far more weight than those who took a placebo. The label expansion is the latest success for this new generation of obesity treatments, though the drugs themselves continue to be in short supply and expensive without insurance coverage.
The FDA approved Wegovy in June 2021 for adults with a BMI over 30 (the definition of obesity) or with a BMI over 27 and at least one possibly weight-related condition, such as high blood pressure. It was the first new obesity treatment approved in seven years. However, the active ingredient of Wegovy, called semaglutide, had previously been approved in a lower dose formulation by the FDA for type 2 diabetes in 2017, sold under the brand name Ozempic. Both Wegovy and Ozempic are made by the Danish pharmaceutical Novo Nordisk.
In the major randomized and controlled clinical trials that led to Wegovy’s original approval, the once-weekly injectable drug was shown to help people lose an average of 12.4% of their initial body weight over a 68-week period compared to people who received placebo, or about a total 15% weight loss. And Wegovy appears to be just as effective in teens.
According to the results of the company’s STEP TEENS trial, published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, teens who took the drug lost an average 14.7% of their initial body weight over a year’s time, while those on placebo gained 2.7% on average. The treatment group also saw an average 16.1% loss in BMI, compared to a 0.6% increase in the placebo group. The safety profile of Wegovy seems to be similar in teens. The most common adverse events reported in these trials include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which often appeared early on in treatment as people gradually increased their dosage and waned over time. The rate of discontinuation, or people who decide to stop taking treatment, was low and similar across both groups (around 5%).
Obesity rates have continued to increase in the U.S. and many parts of the world over time, including among teens and young children. These trends only seem to have accelerated during the covid-19 pandemic. And though there remains much debate over the exact health effects of obesity, childhood obesity is thought to raise the risk of serious health problems later in life, such as type 2 diabetes.
G/O Media may get a commission
Keep those toes toasty
You lose heat through your feet and head—so warm up with these rechargeable heated socks with an impressive battery life.
“The prevalence of teen obesity in the U.S. continues to rise, affecting teens and their families. Now, more than ever, we need new options to support teens,” said Aaron S. Kelly, co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota and one of the STEP-TEENS study authors, in a statement released last week by Novo Nordisk following the FDA’s decision. “This FDA approval offers an additional tool to address this serious, chronic, progressive disease.”
Up until now, medications have been modestly effective at best in helping people lose weight, or have come with dangerous side-effects, such as stimulants that can cause an unhealthy dependence. And while a balanced diet and exercise is healthy for many reasons, people generally do not achieve and maintain significant weight loss through lifestyle changes alone. Many, but not necessarily all, experts agree that semaglutide represents the first in a class of drugs, known as incretins, that can lead to sustained and safe weight loss, along with many other possible health benefits.
At the same time, Wegovy has been in short supply since its debut, due to unexpected demand and production issues last year that caused the temporary shutdown of one of Novo Nordisk’s key manufacturing facilities. These shortages have likely led to an increase in off-label prescriptions of Ozempic, which is now also in limited supply. At least some patients have complained that they’ve been denied Ozempic for their previously existing diabetes as a result.
Novo Nordisk has claimed that these supply issues will be cleared up by early next year. But even if that happens, Wegovy and similar drugs expected to be approved soon will remain out of reach for many people, due to their hefty price tag. Obesity drugs in general aren’t eligible to be covered by Medicare currently, and many private insurers have been reluctant to cover Wegovy so far. Without insurance, Wegovy can cost upwards of $1,500 a month, and it’s likely that many patients will need to keep taking it in order to maintain their weight loss.
Ohio Measles Outbreak Hospitalizes More Than 32 Children
A measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio has sickened over 80 children and hospitalized dozens. The majority of these cases have involved unvaccinated children who were nonetheless eligible for vaccination. It is not yet clear how long the outbreak will continue, with the most recent case having been detected just last week.
Columbus Public Health officials first reported the outbreak in early November, though the first known cases are now believed to have begun in mid-October. According to the CPH’s publicly available data, updated Tuesday morning, there are now 82 confirmed cases of measles in the area, while 32 children have been hospitalized. None have died.
Measles is an incredibly contagious viral disease that usually causes flu-like illness and a distinctive rash. Though most cases are mild, the risk of severe, life-threatening complications is greater in very young children. Even a typical case can have far-reaching effects, since the measles virus can reset a person’s immunity to other infections. Luckily, there’s a safe and highly effective two-dose vaccine—the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine—that has helped drive measles out of local circulation in many countries, the U.S. included.
Unfortunately, many areas of the world remain poorly vaccinated against measles, and the virus continues to kill upwards of 100,000 people a year, mostly children under five. Occasionally, cases imported from other countries can cause outbreaks in the U.S. that largely spread among pockets of unvaccinated individuals and communities—and that seems to be what has happened here.
Of the 82 cases documented so far, at least 74 have been in unvaccinated children. Four other cases have been reported in partially vaccinated children, and four in children whose vaccination status is unknown. Some cases have involved children too young to get their shots, but 66% of cases have involved children between the ages of one to five, meaning that they were eligible for vaccination. So it’s likely that many or most of these children have parents who declined to get them vaccinated.
The first few years of the pandemic saw a drop-off in reported measles cases, both in the U.S. and worldwide. But the virus has likely made a fierce comeback this year, thanks in large part to disrupted childhood vaccination programs and growing anti-vaccination sentiment across the globe. According to the World Health Organization, measles should be considered an imminent public health threat to every region of the world.
Measles remains locally eliminated in the U.S., but there are worrying trends here as well. For instance, a recent survey by the Kaiser Foundation has shown an increase in adults who disagree with childhood vaccination mandates for entering public school, which covers the MMR vaccine and many others. This increase appears to be mostly concentrated among Republican-leaning adults, however. In total, 28% of people now say that parents should decide whether children get these routine vaccinations, even at the cost of endangering others, up from 16% who said the same in 2019. Public support for children needing to get the MMR vaccine specifically has dropped from 82% to 71% during this time as well.
Though newly reported cases in Ohio have declined in recent weeks, the outbreak may not be over. The latest case, defined as someone developing the telltale rash, occurred on December 19, according to CPH data. Measles is typically most contagious four days before and four days after the rash appears, and it can take up to two weeks for symptoms of a new case to emerge.
Study Links No COVID-19 Vaccination to Increased Car Crash Risk
Science has a way of presenting actual facts and connecting dots you likely didn’t see ever connecting. For instance, who would have thought to find a link between the people who decided to pass on getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and traffic accidents? A recent study published in The American Journal of Medicine shares the science behind such a link that actually exists.
In the study, Canadian researchers examined over 11 million COVID-19 vaccination records, of individuals over the age of 18, who would be licensed, from different social, economic and health backgrounds. Of those 11 million, 16 percent (1,760,000) were not vaccinated. Researchers then looked into records and identified unvaccinated individuals who might have diseases linked to traffic risks like dementia, diabetes, sleep apnea and alcohol abuse — and then looked into the traffic accident side of things. Those situations included incidents that sent patients to the emergency room, time and day, ambulance involvement and a “triage severity score.”
With all those parameters considered, researchers were able to identify that individuals who hadn’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccine were at a greater risk of traffic accidents. But it wasn’t because of the vaccine. The link actually comes down to risks associated with decision making—in relation to decisions concerning getting vaccinated, and also to obey (or not obey) traffic laws.
Of course, this isn’t saying that if you didn’t get a shot you’re going to get into or cause a traffic incident. The correlation doesn’t work that way. However, researchers concluded if an individual was hesitant or unwilling to “protect themselves” with the vaccine, these same people would be more likely to have no regard for traffic laws. And the data is there to back it up.
Of the unvaccinated, 72 percent were more likely to be involved in a severe car accident. These numbers look worse when the study pointed out that the percentage was “ similar to the relative risk associated with sleep apnea” but still not as bad as those who abused alcohol. But the risk is still there, so much so that the study said that the risk “exceeds the safety gains from modern automobile engineering advances and also imposes risks on other road users.”
One thing the study did admit was that “correlation does not mean causality.” The study didn’t try to touch on whether or not there was a link between not getting the vaccine and driving recklessly. But the authors of the study did speculate.
One possibility relates to a distrust of government or belief in freedom that contributes to both vaccination preferences and increased traffic risks. A different explanation might be misconceptions of everyday risks, faith in natural protection, antipathy toward regulation, chronic poverty, exposure to misinformation, insufficient resources, or other personal beliefs. Alternative factors could include political identity, negative past experiences, limited health literacy, or social networks that lead to misgivings around public health guidelines. These subjective unknowns remain topics for more research.”
If you want to know more you can read more about the study and its results here.