New way to treat obesity heralded

[JPace]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4946574.stm
Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 April 2006, 14:01 GMT 15:01 UK

New way to treat obesity heralded
Topping up levels of a hormone found naturally in the stomach could be a new way to treat obesity.
Boosting oxyntomodulin limits appetite and raises activity levels at the same time - leading to speedy but healthy weight loss rates, a UK study suggests.

The hormone tells us we are full after a meal, but the obese have less of it.

The fact dieting tends to lead to reductions in activity often makes weight loss harder, the International Journal of Obesity study says.

It's not like one of those nasty drugs where you have to take some horrible chemical for years

Professor Steve Bloom
Research author

Professor Steve Bloom head of the Division of Investigative Science at Imperial College London said earlier studies had shown oxyntomodulin decreased appetite.

But this was the first time it had been shown to increase physical activity levels.

The fact that oxyntomodulin was naturally found in the body was also an advantage as it was unlikely to have unpleasant side-effects, he said.
More..........http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4946574.stm

[pitohui]

1. new?

decreases appetite and increases activity levels, wait, they already invented that one, we used to call it speed :-)

[Fridays Child]

2. I'll take a 55-gallon drum. And could you put a rush on it? Thanks.

Seriously, I hope it turns out to be a safe and effective means of weight loss.

[wake.up.america]

3. Strongly suggest you investigate this before you indulge....

Exercise and proper diet is what is needed. A change of lifestyle is imperative.

Fads, quick fixes, etc. are dubious at best.

[Fridays Child]

4. Actually, I was beiing a wee bit tongue-in-cheek but...

...your advice is sound. :)

[mduffy31]

5. Always someone has to be a buzzkill

[wake.up.america]

7. I realized your intentions. I just put up a list of diets on a web site.

[Fridays Child]

9. Where is that?

I'd like to have a look. :)

[wake.up.america]

10. Go to http://www.gesundefamilie.de and look left for diets..( German)

Let me know if you need help.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

6. WHEN? WHEN?

In my lifetime?

T-Grannie

[politicat]

8. That's what they said about leptin, cortisol and a dozen others.

Exercise helps as long as your body doesn't decide you're now on the Bhutan Death March and conserves every calorie it can. And diet works, as long as your body's not tricked into thinking that a famine has come and it stores every calorie.

There are people like me who can gain weight on 1000 calories a day, while exercising vigorously and doing our own housework and working at a physically strenuous job. (Being very active and on a couple of meds helps me control it, but it's not easy and I will never be Mary Kate Olsen.) My thyroid is okay; as far as my endo can figure out, it has something to do with my mother's weight and her dieting before she got pregnant with me.

And there are people like my brother in law who loses weight on 10,000 calories a day. The Marines made him drink their version of Ensure every day because he does not have enough body fat.

Genetics and evolution count more than any self-righteous "diet and exercise" spouter will ever accept. Because fat people are their n******, the only class they can make fun of and hate without getting into trouble.

[Celebration]

11. thyroid

The thyroid tests generally don't check the active part of the hormone. Try asking your doctor to get a "Free T3" blood test. Generally with the conservation mode, T4 to T3 conversion is affected. Some thyroid medications contain T3 (Armour). Remember that reference ranges are very wide. I would be suspicious of anything in the lower one third or so.......

The about.com website should have some information on such issues. For some reason doctors usually just check T4 levels and TSH levels. Neither are direct measures of the most active thyroid hormone.

[politicat]

12. Done it. Normal.

There's a reason I see an endo.

The current theory is that the levels of malnutrition that my great-grandmother and my mother experienced as children subtly changed their biochemical makeup, and they passed it to their daughters (assuming that it's NOT a mutation that started with my great-grandmother and has passed down), causing their daughters to require far higher than normal levels of T3 than the average person would. The same thing has been observed in lab rats, though it's hard to manage statistically (and if I do get my doctorate in Statistical analysis, this is going to be my research project, setting up something that will let me control for all the variables.)

We've done the experiments, and I thrive on a pretty high dose of Armour (synthroid does not work for me at all). However, every time I move, I have to change endos, and every endo says the same thing - it's not a diet drug. So we go through the tests AGAIN and I spend a couple months on a monitored diet, and they finally start agreeing with what my records said.

I'm a mutant. I know that. There's a part of me that says I'm never moving again, now that I have an endo who works with me instead of against me. (But I really want to move to Vancouver....:cry: )

The meds I'm on manage it for the most part, and the fuck-it diet does the rest. (It really does work. Obsessing about food isn't helpful.)