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"Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer To Reality
Zothecula writes with news that a fat burning pill may be on the horizon. "Researchers at Harvard University say they have identified two chemical compounds that could replace "bad" fat cells in the human body with healthy fat-burning cells, in what may be the first step toward the development of an effective medical treatment – which could even take the form of a pill – to help control weight gain. Not all fat is created equal. While white fat cells store energy as lipids and contribute to obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, the less common brown fat cells pack energy in iron-rich mitochondria, have been shown to lower triglyceride levels and insulin resistance in mice, and appear to be correlated with lower body weight in humans. Brown fat makes up about five percent of the body mass of healthy newborns, helping them keep warm, and is still present in lower quantities in our neck and shoulders as adults, where it helps burn the white fat cells."
There's a certain subset of people for whom that is just never going to happen, or periods in lives where that's not going to happen. If we can make a magic pill, is that terrible? It's the future, let's take advantage.
Your suggestion is difficult to disagree with, as long as there is no pleasanter solution. However, if a safe and effective "thin pill" can be developed, I (for one) would use it in preference to starving myself and depriving myself of favorite foods.
What are your feelings on birth control? Similar?
No reasonable amount of discomfort and struggle are going to help a person with endocrine issues such as PCOS keeping them fat. Simple self discipline is not the answer for many individuals.
Fiddlesticks! Oh, just eat less, exercise more. But there are several things that are true that are being missed here: people who were obese as children have more fat cells than people who were starved as children. They put on weight more readily, and it comes off with more difficulty. The adult who was overweight as a child can exercise twice as much as an adult who was skinny as a child, and will have a harder time taking off weight. Next, there are people who have a difficult time getting exercise (wheelchair restrictions, COPD, physical injury, arthritis, etc.). Should these people be restricted to 20 calories per day (because they can't exercise), and suffer from nutrient restriction (and associated problems), or do they eat food that has all the nutrition they require, but get stuck with the associated fat (and thus put on weight). Your pat answer "Self discipline, eat less, exercise more" is a pile of hooey. There are people who would be better off exercising more and eating less, but its not a universal truth.
There is over 1 billion people that have problems with weight. Imagine you have 1 billion clients buying your product every month to the rest of their lives... As we want to be always fit and eat what we want.
Star trek: ;)
Shuttles: Check, at least for a while, before we gave up
USB Key-sized storage: Check
Tablet computers: Check
Sat phones: check
Medical tricorders: there's an X-prize for that, now, right?
Attractive women in uniform: check
Still working on that warp drive, but 3D printers and increasing automation make "post-scarcity" much less of a fantasy than it used to be.
Transporters were a budget-saving hack, but have become standard fare for discussions in Theory of Identity classes in philosophy.
ST:TOS was the closest thing to good SciFi we'll likely ever see.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Dude, if you lost weight over the LAST six months, then let me tell you, you haven't "kept it off". You're posting as AC so there's no way to check back on you in two years. "Kept it off" is five years. Six months is just willpower and starvation for most.
Unfortunately it's not that simple. For some maintaining a reasonable weight means always being hungry. I don't think you realize this (I personally lost 60lb and have to work hard to keep it off) but it can be very miserable always being hungry. Always having that pain in the back of your mind and stomach. For some people it's too much to handle and I personally don't blame those who eat too much if they face this; it's better to enjoy food and be fat if the alternative is being miserable and always in pain. It's like complaining why people with depression just aren't happy; the same applies to why some overweight people don't stop being hungry.
While I agree with most of what you said, the message has a callousness that will likely cause it to fall on deaf ears. Also, to imply that it's easy or simple just to eat less or control your appetite is a bit condescending to those who have a difficult time with this. Most people lack an awareness about their appetite and take a very reactive approach to satisfying their hunger. But the truth of the matter is that sugar and carbohydrates can rule us with the fierceness of a drug or alcohol addiction. I myself have never had a trouble knowing when to stop drinking, but others, due to genetics, can't have just one.
Once I finally started to treat sugar as a drug addiction, I finally started having the success at controlling my weight. I'm currently 60lbs lighter than my peak and have a six pack for the first time in my life at 39. Now that I know how to do it, it's easy, but figuring it out and changing my habits was not.
So while I do sympathize with overweight people who struggle with controlling their appetite, I do find the fatalistic attitude that many overweight people have adopted to be quite annoying, and potentially harmful to others around them.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley