Thursday, August 27, 2026 Evidence-led medical research news
The First Cohort
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metabolic

20 stories tagged "metabolic"

Metabolic & Weight

Fluoride and Kids' Hearts: The Reassuring Study Tested Water Below What US Taps Are Told to Add

Researchers measured fluoride and heart risk in 161 Iranian children, and the main analysis found no significant link. But they drank water below the level US taps are told to add, and a different adjustment flipped the numbers.

Metabolic & Weight

The Exercise Paradox: Lousy for Losing Weight, Your Best Bet for Keeping It Off

A study of more than 1,100 people found activity did almost nothing for the pounds they shed, yet it was one of the strongest signals of whether that weight stayed gone.

Metabolic & Weight

The Hunger Neurons Ozempic Was Meant to Silence Are the Ones Burning Your Fat

Silence the hunger neurons and semaglutide keeps killing appetite, but in Yale's female mice the lost fat came back within 15 days.

Metabolic & Weight

This Weight-Loss Hormone Protected Mouse Livers Without a Pound Lost. Novo Nordisk Supplied It and Put Two Scientists on the Study.

The hormone works through the same brainstem switch that makes weight-loss drugs nauseating, and the company developing it supplied the compound, funded the mouse study, and put two of its scientists on the author list.

Metabolic & Weight

How 244 People Cut 357 Calories a Day Without Eating Less Food

The people on the low-fat vegan diet didn't count calories or shrink portions. They ate the same weight of food and took in hundreds fewer calories a day. The group that ran the trial also has a stake in what you conclude.

Brain & Aging

Any Amount of Midlife Movement Tracked With Slower Brain Decline, Most Clearly in Mexican American Adults

In a San Antonio cohort followed since 1979, any physical activity in midlife tracked with slower brain decline, and the link showed up most clearly in the Mexican American adults Alzheimer's research keeps leaving out.

Metabolic & Weight

A Brain Protein Made Female Mice Overeat Fat, and the $441,000 Obesity Drug Worked Weakest on Them

Dietary fat switches on an appetite-protecting brain protein in male mice but not females. Delete it and the females overeat fat, gain more weight, and setmelanotide, the $441,000-a-year MC4R obesity drug, loses much of its appetite-suppressing punch on them.

Nutrition & Food

The Study Telling You Not to Bother Cutting Sweet Foods Was Co-Funded by the Soda and Sweetener Industry

The Sweet Tooth Trial found no reason to reduce sweet-tasting foods. Its private funders include the soda industry's trade group and the International Sweeteners Association.

Metabolic & Weight

The Fat Rebound Pediatricians Watch For at Age Six: Measure the Waist, and It Turns Out to Be Muscle and Bone

Waist-to-height ratio tracks body fat with about 90 percent accuracy. In 2,410 American kids it kept falling straight through the age when BMI says the fat comes roaring back.

Nutrition & Food

A Microwave Can Fry a Potato That Soaks Up Less Oil: That Isn't the Same as a Healthier Fry

University of Illinois engineers made French fries that hold less oil by frying them from the inside. Nobody ran a taste test, nobody measured the acrylamide, and the pitch was aimed at food manufacturers.

Nutrition & Food

The NIH Weighed Every Meal to a Tenth of a Gram. Four AI Calorie Apps Undercounted by up to 345.

In a locked NIH metabolic kitchen where every ingredient was weighed to 0.1 grams, MyFitnessPal, Lose It!, CalAI, and Appediet each read a plate and undercounted it by a quarter to a third, missing the fat most of all.

Metabolic & Weight

The GLP-1s That Barely Move the Scale Don't Cause Hair Loss, and That's the Clue Everyone Missed

Women on semaglutide shed hair at about twice the rate of men, and the weakest GLP-1s show almost no signal, which points the cause away from the follicle and straight at how fast the weight comes off.

Metabolic & Weight

A Gut Microbe Was Feeding Ammonia to Sick Livers. A Michigan Peptide Cut Off the Supply in Monkeys.

The compound reversed severe fatty liver in monkeys by starving one ammonia-making gut bacterium. It also comes from a company its lead inventor founded, and no human has taken it for this.

Metabolic & Weight

The Mice Ate More and Got Leaner. The Switch Was One Amino Acid, Turned Down.

USC mice on a low-protein, methionine-tuned diet ate as many calories as the junk-food group and still lost fat, while their own bodies pumped out more GLP-1. The scientist behind it also owns the company selling longevity diets.

Metabolic & Weight

Both Groups Lost the Same Seven Kilos. Only the Calorie Counters Had to White-Knuckle It.

In an 18-month Adelaide trial, fasting and daily calorie-cutting stripped off the same seven kilos, but for the counters part of that loss ran on constant conscious restraint the fasters' scores never showed.

Metabolic & Weight

Same Calories, Different Wiring: Why Fructose Leaves Your Hunger Neurons Running

Glucose flips off the brain cells that drive hunger. Fructose barely nudges them, and the corn-syrup blend in your soda quiets them even better, which is exactly why it's so easy to keep drinking.

Metabolic & Weight

The Belly Fat You Gain After 40 Comes From a Cell That Barely Existed in Your Twenties

Transplant old fat stem cells into a young mouse and they keep churning out fat; young ones in an old mouse stay quiet. In mice, the fat-making program travels with the cell, not the body around it.

Metabolic & Weight

The Obesity 'Revolution' Everyone's Promising Comes From People Who'd Cash In On It

A new commentary says the GLP-1 era is just the prelude to a bigger obesity "revolution." The authors have direct financial stakes in what comes next, and the celebrated new pill loses less weight than the shot.

Metabolic & Weight

The Oral GLP-1 Race Just Got a Third Serious Contender, and Its Curve Was Still Climbing

Structure Therapeutics' once-daily oral GLP-1 aleniglipron hit 11.3 percent placebo-adjusted weight loss at 36 weeks and kept climbing in the open label. The catch: oral semaglutide and orforglipron already cleared the FDA.

Drugs & FDA

The FDA Approved a Better Penile Implant. For Most Men, ED Is the Heart Warning Them First.

The FDA approved Coloplast's Titan Prime inflatable penile prosthesis on June 3, 2026. For the men whose vasculature is past saving, it is a meaningful device upgrade. For most men with new ED, the more useful conversation is what the small arteries are failing to do years before the coronaries noti