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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."
why you gotta be racist?
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?
That's fine for those who are already healthy. For someone who has made the mistake to allow themselves to become obese it's not so easy. The body resists change and making drastic changes in lifestyle is not a simple thing. If there could be a safe way to assist in reversing obesity, alongside lifestyle changes, it could be a good way to generate results and bolster motivation.
Simplistic and self-righteous comments are not helpful.
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.
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.
>there is no truer a saying than that of "you are what you eat"
Which is why we should all avoid fruits and nuts. Suckers too. Not to mention vegetables, nobody wants to be a vegetable.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Brown fat development is interesting. Not only it burns fat, but it also produces heat. I always thought it was really dumb to feel cold in winter while we had all that energy stored as fat on our bellies.
Right now the only trick I heard of to develop brown fat was body exposition to cold: it seems the more clothes you put on, the less heat you produce. Now we have some drug, but unfortunately TFA says it messes with inflamatory response, which is not a good news. I think most people will be better with fat rather than with a cancer.
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.
The original paper for this was discussed yesterday on In The Pipeline. The point was raised that the mechanism involved, the JAK-STAT signalling pathway is used quite broadly throughout the body in the control of cell growth and differentiation. There are several Janus Kinase (that's JAK) inhibitors already on the market or in development, and they are powerful immunosuppressants indicated for the treatment of things like rheumatoid arthritis or leukemia. They tend to be the sorts of drugs whose advertisements say stuff like, "Xeljanz may increase your risk of serious infection." Notably, Xeljanz (tofacitinib) popped up in the news a few months ago when it was used to grow hair in a patient with alopecia universalis (who was already taking the drug for an autoimmune disease) and the headlines exclaimed that a cure for baldness was on the horizon. Now, a single drug that burns fat, grows hair, and relieves psorasis sounds like a miracle, but the reality is that's a sign that these compounds act more broadly than is desirable.
As the paper's authors themselves put it:
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
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
I've been losing weight steadily for several months now, on a low-carb, high-fat, "paleo" lifestyle which includes light exercise and intermittent fasting. I do not pay any attention to calories whatsoever, I only avoid carbs and eat as much "real food" as I feel like, meaning single-ingredient, natural, fresh-cooked or raw products, as opposed to the processed "edible food-like substances" which occupy most of the shelf space in a modern supermarket.
In terms of caloric intake, my diet is about 75~80% fat, 15~20% protein, and 5~10% carbs.
I eat a lot of the following:
Raw veg: carrot sticks, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, salad.
Cooked veg: spinach, cabbage, sprouts, etc..
Fermented veg: dill pickles, sauerkraut
Dairy: butter, cream, cheese, cream-cheese, sour cream
- Do eggs count as dairy? I eat about two per day.
Nuts: almonds, walnuts, pistachios, etc..
Meat: the fattier the better, especially organ meats
Fish: the fattier the better.
I avoid all processed foods and carbs in particular: Sugar, soft drinks, fruit juice, bread, pasta, starchy veg (eg. potatoes)... and also "somewhat avoid" legumes in general and soy products in particular.
As for exercise, I don't have a regime or program, I just live in a walkable city with great public transpo, so I end up walking a couple miles per day on average. I also started using a stand-up desk last spring. I've been losing a steady 1lb per week for the last half year, and am well on the way to my target by next summer.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Careful though. After a few cases of spontaneous human combustion scientists admitted their fat burning pills may still need some adjustment.
Rodents aren't that heavy to start with.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."