This is kind of a straw man, isn't it? I realize the article leads with "exercise in a pill," but it's really about a compound that might help treat obesity and type 2 diabetes. Effect on lifespan/healthspan is only implied (via treatment of disease).
Edit: you might also want to be a little more up-front about your apparent involvement with alternative avenues of research.
It leads with exercise in a pill because AMPK manipulation is broadly expected to be a path towards an exercise mimetic. Go do some background reading on AMPK and related proteins and pathways and their effects on longevity and health in lower animals.
What I find annoying about this reporting is that it is being spun as a success when by all measures it is a failure. It is a failure in exactly the same way sirtuin research was a failure, in that it only appears to produce benefits in metabolically abnormal individuals, and even then they are not high quality benefits. Meaning it isn't at all what was aimed for: the researchers have failed in even their original modest goals of slightly slowing aging by recapitulating the broad effects of exercise.
Of course you can still make a profit selling very marginal treatments for type 2 diabetes to people who have that condition because they are obese and thus metabolically abnormal. This is a condition that can actually be reversed right up until very late stages by dietary restriction ( http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/db11-1835, http://www.bbc.com/news/health-13887909 ), for all that few people appear to either know or be willing to act on that knowledge. The sort of therapies that might result from AMPK manipulation would be terrible in comparison to the outcome of just eating less. But that has nothing to do with making real progress in medicine.
Medical research in general is so very vulnerable to disruption: you have entrenched groups producing terrible products at massive cost under heavy regulation in the midst of a revolution in the underlying technologies and plummeting costs of creating new knowledge and therapies. Something has to give.
What does "treat obesity" even mean? Obesity is a self-inflicted issue. Consuming more calories than you burn is all it is. Nothing more. Obese people need to have their food intake restricted. There is nothing to treat.
Well, I wrote 'help treat obesity'. There are existing drugs used alongside diet, exercise, counseling, etc. to help treat obesity, and this compound could potentially be an alternative to those.
It's also not certain that obesity is self-inflicted 100% of the time. Google 'obesity microbiome' and you will find research showing particular gut flora which triggers obesity in mice. Consider that e.g. gut flora are often transferred from mother to child, and that in general the bacteria in your gut have to come from somewhere.
Regardless, there's no reason to deny an avenue of assistance to an obese person who wants to lose weight. Simply asserting that they need to stop eating so much is very similar to asserting that an an addict (which is what this actually is, IMO) should just consume less. It usually doesn't work, we know it usually doesn't work, and continuing to just assert that it's that simple is, at best, ignorant.
No, but "An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest" by Turnbaugh, et al. (which has been cited over 2,000 times) shows that it decreases energy going out in feces.
Although I don't agree with you, the way you put this is unnecessarily antagonistic.
I'm 6 foot tall, I used to weigh, at peak, 340 pounds. After exactly one year of diet modification alone (I chronically under-exercise), I weighed 214 pounds, and now weigh about 190.
I did not reduce my caloric intake, instead I removed all foods that are known to screw with human biology, and decided to follow the Paleo diet: no grains (pasta, bread, cereal, corn, etc), no legumes (peanuts, peas, beans, soy, etc), no seed oils (vegetable oil, corn, canola, soy), no refined sugars, no dairy (to reduce hormone and lactose intake; I limit myself to small amounts cheese and full fat greek yogurt only).
What I do eat? Meat, vegetables, fruits, the aforementioned limited fermented dairy, mushrooms, and if I weren't allergic to them, I could add nuts to that list as well. I use healthy fats like bacon fat, coconut oil, and olive oil instead of seed oils. I also limit myself to one cup of coffee a day, and sometimes even then I don't feel like one, I don't really need it anymore.
My caloric intake has not really changed (it has always been between 1500 and 2000 a day), yet the fat just melted right off. The whole obsession with caloric intake (unless you're clearing 3000 calories with low physical activity) doesn't fix obesity: chronically low caloric intake (below 1500 calories for an extended period) makes your body think it's starving to death, and it will refuse to release energy from your fat cells and start hoarding it instead.
In other words, unsafe caloric reduction for long periods may cause weight gain in some individuals already suffering from some form of metabolic disorder (including prediabetes and diabetes and just being morbidly obese).
Yes, I agree there is nothing to really treat: eat foods that promote the proper functioning of your body, drop the ones that are known to cause chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders, and with grains in particular, the fact they contain phytates and protease inhibitors in very unsafe amounts (both cause malabsorption of nutrients).
Did you rigorously log your caloric intake before and after your diet changed? If not, there's not enough data to conclusively state that your switch to Paleo was anything other than a simple calorie restriction.
This kind of post is something i usually read at Reddit when something related to fat people are being discussed. And of course, many of them appear to have "a metabolic disorder". A post with a whole bunch of undocumented claims is something i do not expect here at HN.
You lost weight, therefore you either reduced calorie intake, or you burned more calories. If you somehow broke the laws regarding energy, you have discovered some magic formula that will make you rich.I am going to assume that you did not discover the magic formula as there is none as per now.
No wonder people have issues figuring out how to loose weight when they find claims like:
- "foods that are known to screw with human biology"
- "My caloric intake has not really changed, yet the fat just melted right off."
-"... caloric intake doesn't fix obesity"
- "chronically low caloric intake .. makes your body think it's starving to death"
" unsafe caloric reduction for long periods may cause weight gain in some individuals ..."
" ...foods that promote the proper functioning of your body"
".. drop the ones that are known to cause chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders"
DiabloD3 almost certainly limited caloric intake at some point (at intake or somewhere in digestion). But your comment doesn't address some complexity in the way the body processes food, or in the food itself. For example, eating 200 calories of refined sugar is considerably worse in terms of your eventual absorption of energy than eating 200 calories of banana. This is at least partly because the banana consumes more energy in digestion, and partly because less of the energy in the banana will actually eventually be absorbed by your body.
Parenthetically, the banana will not generate a considerable spike in blood sugar, something that, as I understand it, is very unhealthy.
While it's not an awful rough guide, nutrition is not as simple as calories in vs. calories out. Better perhaps if you're counting the calories in your stool, but who's going to do that? (And besides, that still wouldn't be a complete solution).
Also, in case you're reading this DiabloD3, congratulations. A drastic and I'm sure extremely challenging lifestyle change. I'm happy to hear about such a success story.
See, there lies a small problem: I can't measure caloric burn usefully. I can measure what little exercise I do, I can measure a rough amount of what it costs to merely be alive, but I can't measure beyond simple observations like that (I imagine such things can be measured, it is just invasive and expensive).
Intake really hasn't changed, I ate 1500-2000 calories a day then, I eat 1500-2000 calories a day now. I didn't log it, but I did a lot of rough estimates based on things I regularly ate then, and regularly ate now. The only difference I've found is I feel like I'm eating more food now than I did then; but it's because carb-rich food is rather energy compact.
Also, thanks. I only tell my story when someone has gone off the rails quoting the FDA party line of "caloric intake is 100% why you're fat", when it's a massively complex issue; and even with my lengthy reply, I feel I did a disservice in how complex the issue is.
I tried reducing caloric intake, eating lots of "whole grains", limiting meat intake, all the stuff the FDA has recommended for decades: I only kept getting fatter. Caloric intake alone cannot explain why the world is getting fatter: what we're eating clearly does when my diet has worked for so many people, me included.
I broke the laws of energy. Ok, not really. I was gaining weight because I was starving my body of nutrients, so it was storing everything as fat. I stopped eating crap and started drinking health shakes several times a day and started taking multi-vitamins. I have increased my caloric intake and have been steadily losing weight for two years now. It is not a diet, but a permanent lifestyle change. I feel better and have more energy. I don't log things in a scientific manor, but I don't really need to. My reduction in weight and increase in energy is all I need.
Agreed. The ethical implications of this also need to be considered. As much as I hate the "think of the starving children in ___" trope, artificially increasing your matabolism is increasing the amount of calories humanity needs to produce, and if use becomes widespread, could add up to a significant amount.
I have never been obese. I am 45 years old in a couple of days and I can see my abs. Unfortunately, I have a genetic defect that affects my metabolism, giving me a intermittent and profound fatigue every now and then. After reading, thinking and talking to dozens of doctors about the whole metabolic process, I have come to the conclusion that obesity is indeed a disease.
In the same way, when fatigue kicks-in, I just cannot avoid being tired: I am not lazy, I exercise every day, I eat clean and sleep 7-8 hours every single night but I just cannot avoid being tired. For casual observers, they will think that I am a lazy, but the truth is quite different. This same analogy applies to obesity.
If the function of the pill is solely to mimic exercise, then it does not offer any new treatment. Obesity and diabetes can be treated just as well right now, and the treatment is exercise.
Edit: you might also want to be a little more up-front about your apparent involvement with alternative avenues of research.