Name: Weight Loss Pills: Fact Or Fiction?
Uploaded: 2021-05-05T09:35:51.000Z
Duration: 8 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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I'm going to guess that you've been on the internet before, and thus you've seen

Adverbs of manner

plenty of ads for treatments that supposedly help you lose weight, “using one weird trick.”

Or you might have seen recent news about research claiming to have discovered what's been

If those things really worked, I'd be speaking for everybody when I said, SHUT UP AND TAKE

Unfortunately, there's very little scientific evidence that any drug will make you lose

weight in a significant amount, safely and healthily.

There really are some promising treatments in development right now that do at least

SOMETHING to help people lose weight, based on new insights into how your body absorbs

So sit down, enjoy your little bacon sandwich there, while we walk you through the facts

Let's start with what your doctor can do for real, today.

Because: You actually can get medications for weight loss, by prescription, and they

come in two basic categories: appetite suppressants and fat blockers.

Appetite suppressants work by blocking your body's ability re-absorb the chemical signals

that your brain uses, called neurotransmitters, to regulate hunger.

You've probably heard of a couple of these neurotransmitters -- serotonin and norepinephrine.

They're released by your hypothalamus to make you feel 'full.'

So, if a chemical can block your body's ability to reabsorb those chemicals, you would

When combined with diet and exercise, studies have shown that prescription appetite suppressants

can lead to losing around one and a half to maybe a little over 2 kilograms of extra weight.

But after six to eight weeks, the appetite control center in your brain adjusts to the

new levels of those neurotransmitters, and the weight loss benefits disappear.

When you eat food that has fat in it, those fat molecules need to be broken down into

their constituent parts - glycerol and fatty acids - before they can pass through the walls

That's because fat molecules are too big to pass through the membranes of your cells

Lipases are enzymes that break down those fat molecules.

And in order to do that, they need to bind with them.

Fat-blocking drugs work by bonding with lipases, which prevents them from bonding with fat.

And without lipases to break it down, fat passes through your intestines and out of

Studies have shown that they stop about 30% of the fat in your food from getting taken

And over the course of two years, people who took a fat blocking drug lost, on average,

about two and half kilograms more than people who didn't.

But there can be some serious...and kinda gross...side effects.

Because fat blockers keep the fat in your intestines, using the toilet can become a

So...those are your current prescription options.

Then you've got your over-the-counter weight loss supplements.

And I'm going to be honest with you here: nearly all of these are bogus.

There's very little good science that suggests that any of them will help you lose weight...at

According to the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health, the

only - yes, ONLY - one of these that has stood up to reputable trials AND is legal in the

Green tea contains both caffeine and an organic compound known as catechin.

Separately, these two things don't contribute to any statistically significant amount of

weight loss, but when you put them together, they appear to act synergistically.

Caffeine stimulates the nervous system, which has a thermogenic effect: basically, heating

up your body by getting your nervous system to tell everything to go a little faster.

And catechins inhibit the action of lipases, which gives them a minor fat blocking effect.

They also stimulate the production of norepenephrine, which helps with hunger control.

So together, these compounds have a mild appetite suppressant effect that works the same way

And there are apparently other mechanisms that seem to be affected by green tea as well,

Especially if you put a bunch of sugar in it like I do.

Even the most optimistic studies suggest that drinking green tea leads to losing a couple

And even so, lots of caffeine can be dangerous.

So, when it comes to what's on the market today, that's it.

But what about stuff that ISN'T on the market?

Most scientists involved in making the fat-busting drugs of the future believe that a commercially

viable option is at least ten years away.

But we do know a bit about how they might work.

One weight loss treatment currently in development aims to work by targeting your body's circadian

We've talked about this before: Your circadian clock regulates rhythms in many of your body's

processes: including food intake, as well as fat and sugar metabolism.

And when your circadian clock says it's time to burn fuel, it activates a protein

This protein works by boosting the number of mitochondria in your cells.

Mitochondria are like your cells' power plants: they take in fuel, and turn it into

And your body breaks down the fat molecules in your fat cells to fuel your mitochondria.

So, to figure out what role REV-ERB-α could play in weight loss, researchers injected

Like, I don't know what else to call them.

They had poor endurance, their muscles were 60% weaker than normal mice, and their muscle