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Medicine

"Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer To Reality 153

Posted by samzenpus from the take-the-fat-pill dept.
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."
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"Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer To Reality More

"Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer To Reality

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  • brown fat cells (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11, 2014 @07:48PM (#48577693)

    why you gotta be racist?

  • ....it's just been discovered that the fat pill has unwanted side effects including: making you fat.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tnk1 ( 899206 )

      My favorite actual side effect is the pill that makes you more prone to gambling. I didn't know that was a thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Yaotzin ( 827566 )

        A lot of side-effects are reported by users and not subjected to scientific scrutiny to establish causality. The other day I found a reported side effect for pregabaline (used for neuropathic pain and some epilepsies) that was "inappropriate behaviour".

  • it's called "Diet and exercise"

    I'm a fat, lazy old f**K whose lost 25 pounds over the last 6 months and kept it off. I hate sweating so I get nifty free apps to monitor what I eat and match that with my activity (or lack thereof) and eat accordingly.

    Now I'm less fat, a little less lazy. Sadly, getting older. I need a miracle pill to fix *that*!

    • Re:I already found a miracle weight loss cure! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Thursday December 11, 2014 @11:12PM (#48578855)

      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.

    • Started a low-carb high-fat way of eating 13 months ago, with zero change in exercise; result: 50 pounds lost (20% of body weight).
      My GP is not pleased with the slightly high total cholesterol numbers, but IMO she needs more education about what is really going on.

      I would recommend watching "Fat Head" on the Intertubez to get a rather-comical explanation of how the body works at a chemical level,
      and how to hack that working system to your advantage.

      • Good! Now, get back to us in 47 months and let us know how you did keeping the weight off. If you're back up at your previous weight in another 20 months, you're really not accomplishing much.

  • Magic pill developers = REALLY rich people (Score:4, Insightful)

    by QuantumReality ( 3756741 ) on Thursday December 11, 2014 @08:39PM (#48578039)
    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.

  • Jeez, they couldn't have come up with this thing when I was in my teens?

  • Iron-rich midichlorians? Hell yeah, you can sign me up for a test run!

  • Brown fat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Thursday December 11, 2014 @10:23PM (#48578601)

    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.

  • May be appropriate for clinically obese (abnormally low metabolism.) For everyone else who just wants to scarf junk food with no consequences, you are asking for trouble.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      Is that what you think is going on? Everyone just wants to "scarf junk food with no consequences"?

      You think the obesity epidemic is a fucking character flaw?

      • I don't. And since everyone is just spouting opinions I'll add mine. We've been messing with the food supply too much. We're consuming vast quantities of starch and stuff sweetened with corn syrup and who knows what else. I think we might be engineering our way into bad health.

        Also, and this is not a character flaw, I don't think people are honest with themselves about how much sugary stuff they consume. I've been thin all my life (for various reasons, not the least of which is a physically active life

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Snufu ( 1049644 )

        You think the obesity epidemic is a fucking character flaw?

        Societal flaw. You prove my point by calling it an epidemic. Our biology hasn't changed, our eating habits have.

        I stopped eating processed foods and lost 20% of my weight in six months and am now at normal BMI. This wasn't an extreme or fad diet. I simply stopped eating junk and drinking calories, and started eating what evolution has prepared our bodies to eat for the last million years. My body did the rest.

        On the other hand if you insist on subjecting your body to something that evolution has not prepare

      • One-way implication:
        scarf junk food -> gain weight
        but gain weight !-> scarf junk food
        However, the fact remains that this "obesity epidemic" is only happening in societies where people
        do consume huge quantities of sugar, saturated fat etc. while getting little if any exercise.
  • Whenever something sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't. I'll put some cash on this being in the Ig-Nobles in a year or two.

    Back to 'Eat less and exercise', everyone. That's probably safer, anyhow.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by arielCo ( 995647 )

      Whenever something sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't. I'll put some cash on this being in the Ig-Nobles in a year or two.

      Since you like truisms, here's another: conventional wisdom is not at all.

      Back to 'Eat less and exercise', everyone. That's probably safer, anyhow.

      Depends. If you're so overweight that you risk joint damage or increased wear, or a heart attack from overexertion, a pill to give you a leg-up is a godsend.
      Plus, not everybody will lose weight just eating "less" and working out; I know because I'm insulin resistant with a bum thyroid to boot; diet and exercise are only part of the solution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
      Birth-control pills and many vaccines probably sounded too good to be true back in the day.
  • I think this is something that needs to be figured out. There are many people who simply cannot lose weight. The problem is that there are a lot more people who are simply too lazy to even try. I suppose it may end up being a better solution for them too. But damn have we become an impatient, instant gratification society.

    • Thing is, "try" in this context means significant lifestyle changes that can add a great deal of stress to life, towards something that happens slowly at best, and (if anybody bothers to research) is unlikely to do any long-term good. In some cases, the additional stress is worse than the extra weight.

  • Any scientific solutions which are based on the backwards assumptions of wishful thinkers and psychopaths is going to make you sicker.

    Statin drugs are a prime and relevant example. Drugs designed to lower cholesterol in your body. -Based on the insanely backwards assumption that fat kills.

    Fat doesn't kill. There is no 'good' and 'bad' cholesterol. (Well, I suppose the cholesterol which plaques up the arteries could be considered 'bad', but it's not there because you are eating eggs. It's there becau

  • Cue all the thin people claiming that healthy eating and willpower are the keys to being thin and the fat people responding that weight is dominated by genetics.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      Seriously, holy shit. I mean, lets science.

      Facts: Suddenly, everyone is fat.
      Conclusion: Everyone must be a lazy pussy suddenly.

      How on earth do otherwise reasonable people do this?

      • Everyone is not fat.

        I'm a little bit fat (BMI 27, but with lots of muscle) and most people I know are between a bit thin and a bit fat.
        On the other hand, there are millions of people (especially in the southern U.S.) who weigh more than double their ideal weight.

        Those people will never get down to a healthy weight, and keep it that way,
        unless they force themselves to eat fewer calories and expend more calories.

  • May not be a practical drug. (Score:5, Informative)

    by reverseengineer ( 580922 ) on Thursday December 11, 2014 @11:29PM (#48578907)

    The original paper [nature.com] for this was discussed yesterday on In The Pipeline [corante.com]. 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:

    The utility of JAK inhibition as a therapeutic strategy for obesity is complicated by the well-described role of this signalling pathway in the immune system. In fact, tofacitinib is approved in the United States to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Thus, if one were to imagine targeting adipose tissue by in vivo administration of an IFN–JAK–STAT inhibitor or similar compound it would almost certainly need to be delivered locally and prevented from spreading systemically or alternatively targeted selectively to white adipocytes. One could also conceive of a cell-based therapy wherein JAK inhibition of patient-derived adipocytes ex vivo is followed by transplantation to treat obesity, but this therapeutic modality would need to overcome numerous and significant obstacles before becoming a reality.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grcumb ( 781340 )

      This post, not least because of the sig, wins the internet today. It's why I persist in reading Slashdot. Even as this site declines, it still has moments like this when someone posts something intellectually challenging, scientifically insightful and sardonically clever as fuck.

  • What do you do if you have constant acid reflex from your stomach that burns so badly as to impinge even on your work and the most elementary daily activities?

    Seven years ago I went to the doctors with this complaint. After that check or another they said I had a bad bacteria and gave me antibiotics. Did not help. OK, says the doctor then we will stop the acid production in your stomach. Start daily intake of proton inhibitor. OK, I start and sure the acid is gone.

    It was a long-held believe, which turned ou

  • Obliglitory Dr. Who Reference (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The pills aren't from a company called Adipose are they?

  • Hopefully cardiac arrests don't start up again and people lose their life after the lose their weight.
  • Metabolism and lipid storage is such a fundamental part of cells and boday that it may be hard to change it without unintended side effects. For example that amino acid combo that destroyed heart valves a few years ago.

  • It's easy to make a fat burning pill. First, you make the pill large and of sufficiently heavy metal so that it weighs anywhere from 50 to 100 pounds. Then you hold the pill over your head and do squat thrusts. Alternatively, you can also hold the pill at your waist and repeatedly curl it up to your chin. Using such a pill in this manner every day or so will eventually cause your fat to burn away.

  • A treatment that chemically reduces body fat could help lower the "barriers to entry" of a healthier lifestyle. People who are obese face greater discomfort adjusting their eating and exercise habits than those who are not. Reducing their weight somewhat with moderate use of a medication like that described in the article could mitigate that discomfort and help them make the transition to healthier habits, after which the medication may not even be needed.
  • Who is going to bet that the company producing it is Adipose Industries. Your fat will just jump out of your body as Adipose, then run off to the Adipose Nursery Ship.

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