Misguided scientists claim to have found the hormone to stop over-eating. - They are proposing more pharmaceutical junk drugs to mimic leptin.

Scientists find hormone to stop over-eating - Telegraph

Extract:

"A new class of drugs to treat obesity could be developed within a decade after a study of a hormone that stops us eating too much.

Those who lack the chemical, called leptin, find less appetising food such as broccoli as mouthwatering as chocolate cake. The result is that they over-eat even when they are not hungry.

Although the hormone is well known to influence appetite by signalling how much fat is in the body, a study today shows that it also controls emotional attachment to food.

The research suggests that it should be possible to design anti-obesity drugs which interfere with the brain's "pleasure" centres - the regions that respond to rewarding emotions and desires.

Leptin has been intensively studied since it was discovered in 1994. But several years ago it was found that injections of the hormone are ineffective as an anti-obesity treatment.

Today's work, published in the journal Science by Dr Sadaf Farooqi and Dr Paul Fletcher of Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, will boost research since it shows that drugs that can mimic leptin's effects in the part of the brain that governs our food cravings could offer a treatment for obesity.

Dr Farooqi said that such drugs are already being studied and, if effective, would over-ride brain signals that regulate hunger. The drugs would not turn people off food but make them more discriminating."

It's such a shame/scandal that researchers waste time and money on stuff like this. - The assumption behind all this twaddle is that obesity is caused by eating too much - eating too many calories. - This assumption is not supported by evidence and has never even been subjected to trial. - Pharmaceutical drugs that alter the brain in some way are clearly not a desirable route to take in tackling obesity. - It is the body that is functioning abnormally in obese people, not the brain. - And the fundamental abnormality in the body of an obese person is the state of the veins. - When the veins have been weakened by high salt intake in childhood, or when the veins have been weakened by a high salt intake during pregnancy or by salt intake when taking prescribed steroids/corticosteroids like prednisone (AKA Deltasone) or prednisolone (AKA Prelone, Pediapred), HRT, tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline (AKA elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl) or many other prescription drugs, then the bloodstream becomes suffused with excess salt/sodium and excess water that the salt attracts to itself. See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

This excess fluid in the bloodstream leads inevitably to weight gain. There are various names for the condition - salt sensitivity, sodium retention, fluid retention, hypervolemia, obesity, water retention. - Doctors and obesity 'experts' fail to understand the etiology of obesity because they consistently disregard the evidence their obese patients give them.

Obesity is caused by fluid retention, not by overeating.

Fortunately, it is extremely easy to reduce the fluid retention and therefore the obesity. - Sodium is the vector holding the excess water in the bloodstream, so reducing sodium intake releases some of the excess water and it is excreted in the urine.

Sometimes fat retention follows fluid retention, especially if people try to lose weight by dieting and therefore are eating insufficient food, leading (significantly) to insufficient calcium, magnesium and vitamin D. - If you increase your intake of these, you will excrete some of the excess fat in the faeces. - It is not necessary, or even desirable, to eat a low fat diet. See http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/search/label/calcium and BBC webpage about calcium from The Truth About Food series of programmes

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Many doctors are failing their patients when they prescribe drugs.

Many doctors are failing their patients when they prescribe drugs. - Here is a report I read the other day: Doctors 'failing patients' over prescriptions from Netdoctor.co.uk
and here are extracts from it:

"The study's authors, from the University of California, Los Angeles (Ucla), say that taking prescriptions as they are intended is "essential in ensuring their effectiveness".

If individual drug specifications are not followed then the patient in question could suffer from a worsening of the disease, a failure of treatment, a range of adverse side-effects and a potential overdose, the research team write.

...only one-third discussed potential side effects and about half explained how many doses should be taken and how often."

This, of course, is an American report. I live in England. I doubt that research such as this would be conducted in England, where the cover-up culture with regard to poor medical practice has a long and ignoble tradition. But I am confident that the medical negligence that fails to give, along with the prescription for a drug, necessary information about the drug and how it should be taken and what its possible side-effects are, is at least as prevalent in Britain as in the States. - And to the best of my knowledge - and that is informed knowledge, because I write as a steroid victim - doctors in Britain never warn their patients that when taking prescribed steroids like prednisone or HRT, or prescribed antidepressants like amitriptyline, or quite a lot of other drugs, they should not eat salt or food containing salt, because these drugs potentially cause severe sodium retention and consequent water retention, followed by massive obesity.

An example of a patient damaged in this way is Jerry Lewis, who became severely obese because of taking prednisone. - He clearly was not warned of the harm that eating salty food while taking the prednisone would cause him. I read today that he has lost a lot of the weight he gained because he has come off the prednisone. - He would not have gained the weight if he had avoided sodium while taking he drug. - If even famous, wealthy people like Jerry Lewis are not told of the dangers of combining prescribed steroids and salty food intake, then it is highly unlikely that 'ordinary' people ever get the necessary warning. - I regard this as criminal negligence on the part of medical practitioners. - If this failure to inform were to be punished with severe sanctions doctors would give the information. - Though goodness knows they should give it anyway! - What good does it do to turn patients into steroid victims, with a host of attendant morbidity and unhappiness and a shortened lifespan?

See helpful advice and information for steroid victims.