Guest guest Posted August 14, 2003 Report Share Posted August 14, 2003 By any chance, did anyone see 60 Minutes last night? I know this has been in the news before, but they had a story on the tests they are running on the hormone Ghrelin. They showed a sampling of typical test patients...first a man who had gastric bypass, and pre-surgery, his Ghrelin levels were through the roof, after surgery, they were non-existant. Then, they showed a woman who weighed about 500 pounds, and went on a conventional diet. She lost about 5%-10% of her weight, and then Ghrelin levels skyrocketed, causing insatiable hunger, and then a thin woman who had almost no ghrelin. They have been studying mice who ate normally, and when injected with Grehlin, can't stop eating. The doctor said that normal MO or obese dieters can not, typically, lose more than 5%-10% of their excess weight before their Ghrelin levels rise, making it virtually impossible to lose more without drug intervention, which matches the commonly known fact (by us, anyway), that 95% of people can not generally lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off. All the drug companies are scrambling to invent the magic pill to fight Ghrelin, but they think it would take at least another 10 years before they come up with something. They have discovered the antithesis of Ghrelin, something called PPY (I think), but there are possible side effects, such as memory loss, soooo....no magic bullet yet. in NJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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