Day 16 – Of Mice and Overweight Men

I’m sure a lot of people are waiting for the day when you pop a pill and all your medical issues including excessive weight, are fixed. While many pharma companies have looked for the obesity cure, none have found it and recently a couple of them have abandoned research citing strange side effects and huge costs.



Today I read about a study done on lab mice using neurosurgical genetransfer which seemingly cured obesity. The paper by Lei Cao, published in a recent issue of Nature Medicine, describes the hypothalamic injection of an adenoviral vector containing brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) coupled to a physiological responsive regulatory element. This gene transfer resulted in a 20% weight loss within 3 weeks of injection with subsequent weight maintenance over 11 months (several decades in human years).

I really do appreciate this type of research since it gives hope and paves the way for people who are clinically obese due to factors they cannot control. Yet at the same time It frustrates me since it is extremely risky (stereotactic neurosurgery), will be very expensive and it goes against the evolutionary and biological course of humans.

While not a diet pill I also think this gives some false hope to those people who are not obese yet through their mostly North American Western Diet and low exercise are overweight. I wonder how many people are waiting for the perfect fix that may never come.

While here’s another shameless endorsement of the Peak Condition Project – This has to be the first thing people try, a systematic approach to weight loss that is strict and has a diet and exercise component. Try this out honestly, enthusiastically and committed for 90 days – if you don’t see the results you want and you can said you really gave it your best, then look for the magic bullet in a bottle.

I’ve got to change up my food in the next few days, I’m getting bored with the same thing all day so I need to modify things. I have been looking online for some suggestions and a few caught my eye – they are simple and use spices and herbs to get things interesting. I’ll let you know how they are.

Exercise is great and I’m still enjoying the ropejumps. I did 800 last night and it seemed to speed by. With the ropejumps my arms are actually getting tired before I’m out of breath so I expect Popeye-like arms by time we get to 1500 jumps/day.

See you tomorrow.