Fat Fighters

[kmguru]

The latest Fat Fighters

Fat Fighters
Drug companies are working on new medicines that tackle the growing problem of obesity

By Arlene Weintraub (BusinessWeek)

The pharmaceutical industry has struggled to come up with an obesity treatment that produces meaningful weight loss without scary side effects. Here's a look at what's available and what may be on the way.



Xenical
Company: Roche (RMMBY)

Status: On the market since 1999

How It Works: Prevents about a third of the fat a person eats from being digested Side Effects: Bowel distress

Alli
Company: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

Status: Sold over the counter since 2007

How It Works: Like Xenical, but at half the strength

Side Effects: Bowel distress

Meridia
Company: Abbott (ABT)

Status: On the market since 1997

How It Works: Affects the part of the brain that makes people feel full, sending a signal to the brain to stop eating

Side Effects: High blood pressure, constipation, insomnia

Acomplia
Company: Sanofi-Aventis (SNY)

Status: On sale in 20 countries but not yet in the U.S. An advisory panel to the FDA voted against the drug in 2007, sending Sanofi back to the drawing board to do more studies.

How It Works: Acomplia hits the "cannabinoid" receptors in the brain, so named because they create the euphoria people feel when they smoke pot, as well as the munchies that follow. The idea is that blocking those receptors will also halt the munchies.

Side Effects: Depression, dizziness, memory loss, and other psychiatric issues

Taranabant
Company: Merck (MRK)

Status: In the final phases of testing before submission to the FDA, expected later this year.

How It Works: Like Sanofi's drug, it affects the cannabinoid receptors in the brain.

Side Effects: Upset stomach, depression, insomnia

Qnexa
Company: Vivus (VVUS)

Status: In the final phases of testing before submission to the FDA

How It Works: A combination of phentermine and topiramate suppresses appetite from two different brain pathways

Side Effects: Phentermine is an upper, while topiramate causes the brain to slow down. The company hopes the side effects will cancel each other out.

Lorcaserin
Company: Arena (ARNA)

Status: In the final phases of testing before submission to the FDA

How It Works: Designed to hit the same appetite-suppressing receptors in the brain that the combo fen-phen did, but without causing the heart valve issues that caused fen-phen to be pulled from the market

Side Effects: Headache, nausea, dizziness, fatigue

CP-945598 (No official name yet)
Company: Pfizer (PFE)

Status: In the final phases of testing before submission to the FDA

How It Works: Like Sanofi's and Merck's drugs, it blocks the cannabinoid receptors in the brain.

Side Effects: Stomach upset, headache, fatigue, insomnia

Contrave
Company: Orexigen

Status: In the final phases of testing before submission to the FDA

How It Works: Combines an anti-addiction drug and an antidepressant, which work together to regulate appetite and energy balance

Side Effects: Nausea, headache, dizziness

Pramlintide/leptin
Company: Amylin (AMLN)

Status: In mid-stage testing, with late-stage tests starting in 2009 at the earliest

How It Works: A combination of two human hormones that tell the body it's full and doesn't need to pile on any more fat

Side Effects: Nausea

 

[Avatar]

Workout
Company: None.

Status: Tested throughout the ages.

How it Works: Workout is a process which directly burns fat.

Side effects: Pleasurable tiredness, improved physical condition.

 

[S.A.M.]

Workout
Company: None.

Status: Tested throughout the ages.

How it Works: Workout is a process which directly burns fat.

Side effects: Pleasurable tiredness, improved physical condition.

http://www.goodexperience.com/broken/i/04/02/america-fitness-s.jpg

 

[kmguru]

The office and computer environment causes laziness and spreads the butt....

 

[lucifers angel]

The office and computer environment causes laziness and spreads the butt....

agreed!

i have seen people who work in offices and they get larger and larger, and its easy to fall into that habit, they eat while they are working, and then they drive home! getting next to no excersise!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Workout, Company: None, Status: Tested throughout the ages, How it Works: Workout is a process which directly burns fat, Side effects: Pleasurable tiredness, improved physical condition.

But it doesn't burn very much fat. It's pretty easy to eat an extra thousand calories in a day without even trying. There's no way the average person can burn off even 500 calories by exercising. Exercise makes you feel better and that might cause you to not turn to food for solace. It also makes you stronger so you might take the stairs instead of the elevator or walk the four blocks to the supermarket instead of driving. But the first-order effect of exercise on the metabolization of fat is pretty minor on the scale of what most dieters need to lose.

[photo of people riding an escalator into a gym instead of climbing the stairs]

Climbing stairs is one of the worst things you can do to your knees. The older you get the less wise it is to do it for exercise. I've already got one knee so bad that I can't climb more than one flight of stairs per day without causing pain after a few days of it. I exercise diligently and I'm in good shape, but I never climb stairs. I'd rather save the wear and tear on that knee so I can go dancing on weekends.

The office and computer environment causes laziness and spreads the butt.

But that is exacerbated by our continuing to "go to work" every day even though we all have computers and telephones at home. Those extra three or four hours we spend every day getting ready for work, commuting, waiting in line for lunch, taking the kids to day care because nobody's home to look after them, etc., are three or four hours we could be spending on normal physical activities like gardening, playing with the dog, or for that matter playing with the children.

When the next generation takes over the workplace--people who have grown up in the virtual environment of the cellphone, chat room and MMPRPG--they will be working at home and the managers among them will know how to manage people who work at home. (Clue: measure accomplishments instead of counting hours.) Of course it's not clear that they'll use those extra hours for physical activity, or just down-click the company website at 5:00 and log into their favorite RPG.

 

[Avatar]

But it doesn't burn very much fat. It's pretty easy to eat an extra thousand calories in a day without even trying. There's no way the average person can burn off even 500 calories by exercising. Exercise makes you feel better and that might cause you to not turn to food for solace. It also makes you stronger so you might take the stairs instead of the elevator or walk the four blocks to the supermarket instead of driving. But the first-order effect of exercise on the metabolization of fat is pretty minor on the scale of what most dieters need to lose.

That's because you're thinking of a quick fix, not a healthy solution.
Sure, it can take a year or two, and some self determination, but in the end it's for the best.

I can lose 4kg in a day if I want to.

 

[Avatar]

But that is exacerbated by our continuing to "go to work" every day even though we all have computers and telephones at home. Those extra three or four hours we spend every day getting ready for work, commuting, waiting in line for lunch, taking the kids to day care because nobody's home to look after them, etc., are three or four hours we could be spending on normal physical activities like gardening, playing with the dog, or for that matter playing with the children.

I run to work and am there usually an hour after waking up.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

That's because you're thinking of a quick fix, not a healthy solution. Sure, it can take a year or two, and some self determination, but in the end it's for the best.

It only works if you also cut back on your calories. And that only works as long as you stick with it.

I can lose 4kg in a day if I want to.

That must be a typo. Nine pounds of fat is about thirty thousand calories. Unless you're just sweating off water, which is what a lot of women do so they can fit into their nice dress on Saturday.

I run to work and am there usually an hour after waking up.

That's great if you live that close to your office. When I lived in Hollywood and worked in downtown L.A. I used to bicycle to work two or three times a week. The round trip took two hours instead of one, but for the extra one hour of time I was getting two full hours of exercise, a pretty good multiplier effect.

 

[kmguru]

But that is exacerbated by our continuing to "go to work" every day even though we all have computers and telephones at home. Those extra three or four hours we spend every day getting ready for work, commuting, waiting in line for lunch, taking the kids to day care because nobody's home to look after them, etc., are three or four hours we could be spending on normal physical activities like gardening, playing with the dog, or for that matter playing with the children.

When the next generation takes over the workplace--people who have grown up in the virtual environment of the cellphone, chat room and MMPRPG--they will be working at home and the managers among them will know how to manage people who work at home. (Clue: measure accomplishments instead of counting hours.) Of course it's not clear that they'll use those extra hours for physical activity, or just down-click the company website at 5:00 and log into their favorite RPG.

I have heard that before...like Alvin Toffler wrote the book in early eighties. That never happened because there are powerful and greedy people that want to create skyscrappers spending billions so that thousands of people have to commute to go to the office that they could have done at home or a local community office.

You see, if you work from home:
1. auto companies can not sell a lot of cars
2. lunch time service at restaurants will close
3. massive freeway system do not have to be built thus saving environment and Billions of tax dollars
4. Office romance will be a thing of the past
5. The entire retail clothing stores will practically shutdown
6. There will be too many parks and recreational facilities
7. People will be too happy
8. There will be less sexual harrassment cases
9. We will improve our ecosystem
10. There will be a lot of smaller close knit communities
11. Daycare centers will shutdown
12. Winter time flu will almost be a thing of the past

We can not have that! Ask any social leaders...they strive on misery. Entire religions pop up because of human misery. You can not take away the peoples inate right to be miserable.

It will never happen....:bawl:

 

[Avatar]

That must be a typo. Nine pounds of fat is about thirty thousand calories. Unless you're just sweating off water, which is what a lot of women do so they can fit into their nice dress on Saturday.

Ya, mostly. We sometimes do that before martial arts tournaments in order to get into the wanted category.
Get into winter clothing and work out for a day.

It only works if you also cut back on your calories. And that only works as long as you stick with it.

Sure. That or sticking to pills. I prefer exercise.

That's great if you live that close to your office.

Granted.

 

[kmguru]

Best excercises are Walking (not power walking) and Yoga. While walking does not consume a lot of calories, it tones the entire body, same for yoga, specially "salutation to the sun" posture. When I taught Yoga in school and college - at the end of the class I tell my students that just do this one exercise if not all....

An active mind also increases metabolic rate.

 

[greenberg]

The latest Fat Fighters

Fat Fighters
Drug companies are working on new medicines that tackle the growing problem of obesity

I think people get fat primarily because of their lifestyle - one, in that they eat too much and unhealthy, and exercise too little; and two, because they eat because of emotional hunger, ie. they eat food in order to satisfy some other hunger.

Here's an interesting site on emotional eating: Shrink Yourself.

The medications listed in the OP all have some side effects which affect the mood of the person. Many people eat due to emotional hunger, in order to soothe and comfort themselves. So if these people, who already handle stress poorly, take those medications - what will they do? The medications will make them feel bad, they will want comfort, and since the main way they handle comfort is by eating, they'll eat. End result: these people will be even more worn out and stressed, their health even more compromised, and they'll probably even gain weight.

Those weightloss medications, as well as diets, take for granted that the person has an unwavering will and motivation and is prepared to handle the stress and hardship of weightloss. - Many people do not have that will, motivation and skills, this is why they are fat in the first place.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I think people get fat primarily because of their lifestyle - one, in that they eat too much and unhealthy, and exercise too little; and two, because they eat because of emotional hunger, ie. they eat food in order to satisfy some other hunger.

Rapid weight loss diets exacerbate the problem. Any attempt to lose more than about one pound per month has a high probability of signaling the Stone Age physiology inside each of us that Omigod There's A Famine! Our metabolism quickly adapts to a shortage of calories, both by digesting food more carefully and by interacting with the nervous system to stop wasting calories in isometric tension and unnecessary movements. Once a person has done this two or three times, the classic American "yo-yo diet" syndrome, the body takes no chances and stays in permanent famine mode. As a result people who complete a crash diet and return to their ideal weight often find--after the third iteration of the crash--that they cannot return to their "sensible" pre-weight gain eating habits, but have to diet forever.

After my wife had gone on and bailed out of diets for about six years, gaining and losing as much as forty pounds several times with increasing difficulty, we decided to be scientists and performed an experiment to test this hypothesis. We both counted every calorie we ate for two months. At the end of the experiment, we found that I had been eating a 3000-calorie diet and she had been eating a 1200-calorie diet. We also found that my weight had remained constant whereas she had gained a few pounds.

My body wastes energy. My teeth gnash, my toes tap, I have tension that keeps me awake and muscle spasms that make my spine ache (those back muscles that burn so much energy they could lift a piano), and if we walk down the street holding hands she says my grip is so tight it cuts off the circulation in her fingers. Her body conserves energy. She is completely relaxed at all times and can sleep for ten hours.

 

[kmguru]

I found the same, no matter what I eat, I maintain my weight. If my wife looks at food, she gains. Activity and type of food eaten has a lot to do with how body manages fat.

I have a theory but can not prove it without serious research. Since blood pH should be 7.3 (slightly alkaline), and body has to produce fat to buffer if the blood is acidic - is it possible that a lot of people eat acidic food and hence the problem? Soft drinks, Orange and lemon juice etc. are acidic....excess stomach acid...etc...just a thought....

 

[Exhumed]

I'm not sure what about producing fat would buffer the blood. Normally the blood uses CO2 for buffering. CO2 will act faster than producing fat could, and is always in high supply. So if fat did act as a buffer I would think in a limited way.

 

[greenberg]

I found the same, no matter what I eat, I maintain my weight. If my wife looks at food, she gains. Activity and type of food eaten has a lot to do with how body manages fat.

This seems obvious, common sense.

I have a theory but can not prove it without serious research. Since blood pH should be 7.3 (slightly alkaline), and body has to produce fat to buffer if the blood is acidic - is it possible that a lot of people eat acidic food and hence the problem? Soft drinks, Orange and lemon juice etc. are acidic....excess stomach acid...etc...just a thought....

To be noted that many soft drinks, orange juice, lemon juice drinks and many other contain a lot of sugar. Which, among other things, makes the blood sugar go into extremes, causing tiredness, so the person feels even more craving for food to "pick themselves up", and esp. sugary foods to even out the low.



I've read recently that stress and the growth of fat cells are connected:

Scientists reported yesterday that they have uncovered a biological switch by which stress can promote obesity, a discovery that could help explain the world's growing weight problem and lead to new ways to melt flab and manipulate fat for cosmetic purposes.

In a series of experiments on mice, researchers showed that the neurochemical pathway they identified promotes fat growth in chronically stressed animals that eat the equivalent of a junk-food diet.

...

To explore this, Zukowska and her colleagues subjected mice to chronic stress -- either standing in cold water an hour a day or being caged with a more aggressive alpha mouse for 10 minutes a day -- and then gave them standard feed or a high-fat, high-sugar diet similar to the junk-food fare many consume.

After two weeks, only the mice that were both stressed and fed the junk-food diet gained a significant amount of weight. They accumulated about twice as much fat in their bellies as non-stressed mice that consumed the same diet.

Way to Shrink, Grow Fat Is Found
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 2, 2007

Rapid weight loss diets exacerbate the problem. Any attempt to lose more than about one pound per month has a high probability of signaling the Stone Age physiology inside each of us that Omigod There's A Famine!

One pund per month?! Now, this is a conservative estimate if ever I have seen one!

But with an estimate like that, it seems almost hopeless to set on a course of weight-loss. According to that estimate, a person can hope to lose some 10 pounds per year. Someone who is, say, 60 pounds overweight, is thus looking at a 6 years course - if all else goes well. Making a commitment for 6 years is an awful lot of time!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

One pund per month?! Now, this is a conservative estimate if ever I have seen one!

To lose one pound per month is to reduce your caloric intake by 120 per day. A really large person could surely do more than that safely, but for the average person, that's about a seven percent cut in energy intake. How far do you think you can go before your body goes into famine alert? None of these numbers have exactly got a consensus. But I'd be surprised if you could cut your energy intake by, say 20% and not have your metabolism go into a panic! Of course it will burn the fat, that's what the fat is there for. But after burning fat for a week or so it's going to have to make some long-term plans for surviving this famine.

But with an estimate like that, it seems almost hopeless to set on a course of weight-loss. According to that estimate, a person can hope to lose some 10 pounds per year. Someone who is, say, 60 pounds overweight, is thus looking at a 6 years course - if all else goes well. Making a commitment for 6 years is an awful lot of time!

What's so hopeless about that? After all, you have to make a commitment for the rest of your life to keep that weight off! Once you've spent six years eating sensibly, you've established new behavior patterns. Probably dumped some friends who insist that pigging out is entertainment, doing more exercise, perhaps even making some tough decisions about taking a less stressful path through life even if it means making some sacrifices. Those habits will serve you well forever. And you've done it without ever having to endure that starvation feeling.

Sixty pounds is 210,000 calories. Anyone who loses sixty pounds in one year is depriving himself of 575 calories per day off of a maintenance diet, not off of the fat-building diet he was surely eating up until the midnight snack before the first morning of the diet. He's probably cutting his daily intake by 850 calories or more. Even if his metabolism miraculously avoids going into a panic, his emotions certainly will! The one-sentence analysis of overeating is that people overeat because it makes them feel good. How bad is this guy going to feel now? How easy is it going to be for him to feel that bad every day for a year? And then when that year is over, what's he going to do? Go on a maintenance diet? Yeah right!

This is where yo-yo diets come from. Waiting six years to lose 60 pounds is hard, but losing it in one year and then having the willpower to keep it off is MUCH harder for most people. Just look around, the evidence is everywhere. Most fat people, especially American women who take their weight so seriously, have gained and lost the same 50 or 100 pounds ten times. Until it becomes 120 pounds, then 150, as they get older and their bodies use fewer calories for maintenance because they don't do as good a job of maintenance.

 

[Syzygys]

Eating fruits only

Company: Dole

Status: Phenomenal

How it Works: You eat fruits only, but no nuts

Side effects: Frequent urination

 

[greenberg]

What's so hopeless about that?

I think that many people are willing to make only short-term commitments, it seems to be a general trend in "Western" society.
Consider, for example, that a marriage of 6 years is deemed as long, by many people. Consider how many marriages end in divorce after a year or two - many.

I suspect that one of the factors that could significantly help people manage their weight (and many other things) is to learn to view things more in long-term perspective.