Weight Loss

As a new age of weight-loss therapeutics dawns, scientists are one step closer to a drug that can coax muscles into behaving as if they’ve just been put through a workout. The benefits range from weight loss to treating diabetes and heart conditions.

Turmeric can stain an amateur chef’s kitchen benches, hands and clothes bright yellow and has been a staple in traditional medicine for 4,000 years. Now, for the first time, a clinical trial suggests it can treat acid reflux as well as common medications.

Chitin, which provides crucial exoskeletal structure and protection to soft-bodied arthropods such as crustaceans, spiders and insects, may have a surprising role in switching up human metabolism in the gut, helping to fight weight gain and obesity.

A group of US and Canadian anesthesiologists has sounded the alarm on the new class of weight-loss drugs, this time warning that they can increase the risk of serious complications for patients under sedation on the operating table.

While most people attempting to lose weight will know that there is an optimal ‘zone’ in which fat metabolizes best, based on heart rate and age. Researchers have now found that for many people this is actually an inaccurate formula to be using.

Researchers have discovered the fat-busting properties of a plant native to Hainan Island in China during studies with mice. The findings might shine light on a path to combating obesity and fatty liver disease in humans.

Obesity is a massive global crisis, with around 650 million adults and 124 million children and adolescents impacted. Researchers from Cambridge University have made new discoveries about sex- and age-specific genetic hiccups related to obesity.

While the ‘move more, eat less’ mantra is prevalent, more is being discovered about the complex brain-gut link in obesity and weight loss. Now, a new study suggests faulty ‘reward’ dopamine release may be fueling poor nutrition and chronic overeating.

Paleo or keto? Low-fat or vegetarian? The American Heart Association has simplified eating advice, rating 10 popular dietary lifestyles based on guidance to boost cardiovascular health, in an effort to also help doctors dish out advice.

While weight-loss surgery is effective, it can also be expensive and come with a host of unpleasant side effects. Scientists hope that by regulating a certain bile acid, the benefits of surgery can be replicated without a single invasive procedure.

Bariatric surgery has proven successful at treating obesity and reversing diabetes, but it's not without risks. Working with rodents, researchers have found a way to harness benefits similar to those from surgery, but in the form of an injection.

One of the biggest struggles of weight loss is maintaining it long term, but scientists have identified the neural pathway in the brain that changes during dieting, and inhibiting this connection could make it much easier to keep the pounds at bay.