Metabolic Adaptation in Obesity

Awareness of Metabolic Adaptation

When patients lose weight, the body desires to regain it via metabolic adaptation that decreases energy use, enhances metabolic efficiency, and prompts increased energy intake. With metabolic adaptation, a person recognizes that as they try a particular therapy, whether lifestyle, medication, surgery, or an endoscopic therapy, it initially feels relatively easy to do and maybe their weight responds. However, over time on therapy, continued weight loss becomes more and more challenging due to the alteration in hormone levels such as ghrelin, leptin, and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). For example, increasing ghrelin levels stimulate a person to eat more, and falling GLP-1 levels cause a person to not feel as full.

Key Considerations for Maintaining a Healthy Weight to Reduce the Risk of Cardiometabolic Complications in Patients With Obesity Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, MBA — https://www.clinicaloptions.com/diabetes/programs/2021/obesityprimarycare2021

Because of my social media activities my name and email address have found their way into some interesting email marketing lists. This quote comes from an email I got a few days ago. I actually went to the website, was granted guest access and downloaded the slide deck. Most of the information in the presentation was WAY above my pay grade.

Author Disclosure – I am not a medical doctor. I’m an insurance guy.

Where Are The Starter Homes?

Pergens and his wife, Amanda, have a 6-year-old daughter and another child due this month. She stopped working as a pastry chef during the pandemic. They rent a small two-bedroom apartment. “We build all these fancy homes,” Pergens says. “Fancy, fancy houses … and low-income apartments. And there’s absolutely nothing in between.”

The Housing Shortage Is Significant. It’s Acute For Small, Entry-Level Homes — https://www.npr.org/2021/09/04/1033585422/the-housing-shortage-is-significant-its-acute-for-small-entry-level-homes?

Good article but the analysis is only partially correct. Affordable housing has been an issue for decades. It’s not merely an issue of current economic conditions. It’s a lack of political will and the continuing demise of the middle class. WAY BACK last century our starter home cost less than $100,000 and we had over 1600 square feet 3BR 2B.

It’s no wonder the newest hit show on HGTV is Cheap Old Houses. https://www.hgtv.com/shows/discovery-plus-home/articles/cheap-old-houses-hgtv-show

mRNA Vaccination Induces Durable Immune Memory to SARS-CoV-2 with Continued Evolution to Variants of Concern

Twitter thread above. Link to the preprint study here:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.23.457229v1

Is the race to reach herd immunity like chasing a mirage? — Science Chronicle

The emergence of highly contagious new variants, breakthrough infections even among the fully vaccinated and such people spreading the virus to others, and reinfections in the unvaccinated have made the race to reach the magical herd immunity threshold to successfully break the transmission chain and return to normal times looks like chasing a mirage. In […]

Is the race to reach herd immunity like chasing a mirage? — Science Chronicle

Four Oklahoma Health Systems Come Together To Provide a Situation Update on COVID-19 – 08.17.21

Full transcript of the presser can be found here https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-hospital-officials-to-give-situation-update-as-covid-19-cases-rise/37327568

The actual video is below:

A LARGER PROPORTION OF PEOPLE WITH COVID-19 ARE ENDING UP IN THE HOSPITAL.
THE MAJORITY IN OKLAHOMA AS OF LAST WEEK’S WEEKLY EPIDEMIOLOGICAL REPORT, 93% OF THE HOSPITALIZATIONS IN OKLAHOMA FOR COVID-19 ARE IN UN-VACCINATED INDIVIDUALS, AROUND 6% ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN AT LEAST PARTIALLY VACCINATED.

Sorry for the caps but I cut and pasted from the transcript.

I Just Had my WOW Moment of the Weekend

WOW!

Protective heterologous T cell immunity in COVID-19 induced by the trivalent Measles-Mumps-Rubella and Tetanus-Diptheria-Pertussis vaccine antigens — Published:August 13, 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medj.2021.08.004

There is a downloadable PDF of the study at the link above. Most of the terminology and research methodology is WAY above my pay grade but the conclusion is still a WOW.

New Blood Test Improves Prostate Cancer Screening – the Stockholm3 test

On July 9 2021, results from the STHLM3MRI study were presented in The New England Journal of Medicine, indicating that over-diagnosis could be reduced by substituting traditional prostate biopsies with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and targeted biopsies. The new results, now published in The Lancet Oncology, show that the addition of the Stockholm3 test, which was developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, can be an important complement. It is a blood test that uses an algorithm to analyze a combination of protein markers, genetic markers and clinical data.

Karolinska Institutet. “New blood test improves prostate cancer screening.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210813100313.htm (accessed August 14, 2021).