Thoughts from this week: 2024/01/24
tl;dr: So Ozempic isn't a cure-all... Shocking.
‘Surprising’ New Study
My basic premise is that you shouldn't take any drug until a couple of generations of humans have tried it out.
“‘We realized that no one had comprehensively investigated the effectiveness and risks [of these drugs] across all possible health outcomes,’ said Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.”
Pharma companies don't do thorough safety analyses prior to release. To be fair, it's not possible.
For me, this rules out all of them on a day-to-day basis, although I am a big fan of antibiotics when required.
“The downside was finding that the drugs produced an increased risk of gastrointestinal disorders, low blood pressure, fainting, arthritic disorders, kidney stones, inflammation between the kidney tubules and drug-induced pancreatitis, the study noted.”
Don't forget suicidal ideation and depression; although this study didn’t find that, another did (Kornelius, 2024).
The treatment for obesity is obvious, and it's not these drugs.
“While these negative effects are not common, they can be very serious. Kidney problems may occur without symptoms until an advanced stage with limited treatment options, researchers said.”
News: “Massive Study Looks at Benefits, Risks of GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs” (Kreimer, 2025)
Paper: “Mapping the Effectiveness and Risks of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists” (Xie, 2025)
No, it’s not really surprising that these drugs have side effects that weren’t seen in the initial trials. It’s typical, hence the scare quotes around ‘surprising’.
Surprising New Study
Cats get diabetes, and with diabetes comes kidney disease.
“Apoptosis, an important pathological event associated with kidney disease progression, is expected to be a therapeutic target in chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, its role in naturally occurring CKD in aged cats remains unclear.”
So they tried to figure out what’s going on.
“In the azotemic group, TUNEL scores did not correlate with pCre or renal lesion severity. However, the scores showed a significant positive correlation with the scores of 8-OHdG and 4-HNE.”
8-OHdG is a type of DNA damage that has been shown to be caused by linoleic acid (LA) hydroperoxides, the first step of oxidative damage to LA, which can then proceed to producing 4-HNE. LA of course is the most common fat in seed oils, and 4-HNE is only produced from Ω-6 fats like LA.
“These findings suggest that apoptosis associated with oxidative damage in renal tissue is an initial pathological event that leads to CKD, rather than a change following CKD progression, in aged cats. Inhibiting apoptosis by antioxidant treatment may be a key strategy to prevent the development of CKD.”
So Ω-6 fats are thought to lead to chronic kidney disease. Not feeding your cats seed oils would be the first choice.
The paper does not mention linoleic acid.
“Apoptosis in Kidney Tissue of Senior and Geriatric Cats with Chronic Kidney Disease” (Kurahara, 2025)
News
The Mediterranean diet was meat-based.
Meat-based diets are practically a miracle drug.
Brooke Rollins’ confirmation hearing. She’ll be Kailee Tkacz Buller’s boss (see below).
“Trump's Agriculture Secretary pick Brooke Rollins faces Senators' questions”
Blog
Blast from the Past
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