Scientists discover a ‘skinny gene’ mutation that acts like Ozempic. Around one in 7,000 people carries a broken copy, which almost acts like a GLP-1 drug—the body burns fuel more efficiently, and the risk of disease lowers.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-a-skinny-gene-mutation-that-acts-like-ozempic/
24 Comments
The simplified narrative that weight is merely a matter of calorie intake has gone on too long, and has been abusive to so many people.
Yes, plenty of people have poor self control and simply overeat to the point of obesity.
But there are MANY people who are dealing with genetics, hormones, co-morbidities, unique body issues, and *things we dont yet understand about diet and nurtrition.*
I was skinny my *whole* life. Nearly 6 feet tall and about 140. Then in my 30s *something* happened. My diet didnt change. My activities didnt change. But I fell off a cliff. I gained nearly 100 pounds.
Doctors were so nasty to me. They’d shrug and say “your blood work is normal, stop eating cake.”
I could tell that not only did they not *beleive* me that something more complicated was going on, they had *zero* interest in going deeper than “oh you must secretly be eating mayo sandwiches and lying about it.”
I started to pay out of pocket for a glp-1, snd im not exaggerating to say it saved my life. 100 pounds gone. Everything is back to normal. My weight, by blood pressure, my cholesterol, all fixed. It was like turning back the clock to a point where my body worked right. You know what still hasn’t really changed much? My diet. I always ate pretty healthy. Still do. No one believed me, no one cared. These drugs are life savers.
They’ll probably find out it got broken by: microplastics, aspartame, or roundup…
so calories in calories out is not true?
Burning calories more efficiently should actually make you fatter if you eat the same amount
GLP doesn’t ’burn fuel more efficiently’, it regulates satiety. This isn’t a good start for an article ha
Everything about being a human is on a spectrum rather than a fixed attribute set for every single person equally and that makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
A species should have a variety of individuals ranging from those who store fat very easily that can survive scarcity more readily than an individual that is more efficient at burning those calories for immediate energy to give it the best chance of survival overall.
Great for an environment with an excess of available food. Maybe not so great for when the hard times come.
Does nobody follow rule 1 anymore?
It is true that weight loss is a matter of calories in vs. calories out, but most of the earlier weight loss interventions have been focused on the calories in part of the equation. However, GLP-1s are revolutionary because they target the calories out part of the equation, enhancing glucose metabolism. The appetite suppression is a side effect of the main function of the GLP-1s. GLP-1s, literally glucagon-like peptide 1, mimic glucagon, the molecule our bodies create to store excess glucose. Excess glucagon in the blood stream is a metabolic signal that enough backup calories have been stored in the body, the body can safely start burning the stores, and no need to bring in more calories. This is the pathway that GLP-1s are enhancing, albeit an oversimplified explanation.
It could very well explain how at age 57, being 6’2” I still weigh about 155#. All my life pediatric doctors would assure my mother, oh by *x* years old he’ll start putting on weight. It never happened. And I have full appetite most all the time. I even dream of food. Basically everything I accomplish during the day is filler for in between eating.
I have a friend who is hungry all the time, no matter how much she eats. I barely get hungry at all and can actually forget to eat if I am too engrossed in something and not careful. It was never a willpower issue or a moral issue – people’s bodies are just different.
Cool. Very excited to never hear of this again.
I think this mutation might run in my family. I don’t have it, but a lot of people on one side of my family are very thin naturally, especially as young adults. (Typical BMI in young adulthood for these people is around 16.5 for the women and 18.5 for the men.) Some of them get to a more normal weight as they age if they’re not super active.
I feel like I have this. No matter how much I eat or what I eat I never gain weight I’ve slowly gained a few stone over like 10 years
I mean the whole point is that GLP1 drugs came from understanding the GLP1 *gene*. Like PCSK9.
This is the wrong way around.
Sign me up for the gene therapy!
“Burning fuel more efficiently” would make you gain weight, no?
MUST BE NICE
But seriously that’s pretty neat. I’ve been pretty skeptical of GLP-1s but the research so far continues to be pretty positive.
And yet people will continue to insist, I’m sure, that there’s no way a gene could exist that makes you more likely to be fat
I would just like to point out that this article estimates that this gene only occurs in about **1 in 7,000 people.** Chances are, this does not apply to the vast majority of people you know. I only say this because I’m seeing some comments here that seem to be implying that this means that weight is based only or mostly on genetics, for everybody, when that is not what this discovery means.
My friend likely has this. He’s like 6’1 and he can not gain weight. He was eating like 3800-4000 calories a day and still couldn’t put on weight.
I probably have this, which I got from my father. We just feel full very quickly. To eat a full meal is actually deeply uncomfortable.
The bad side is that when we are under duress (like 2020) we can’t keep weight on.
Buddy of mine eats 5k calories a day. Skinny. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Please don’t hate me. I think I’m one of these people. AMA.
I’ve always eaten as much as like. Some days it’s a cup of orange juice and a hot pocket (like that’s all I ate that day), other days it’s a big breakfast, big lunch, a full pizza to myself and a dozen cookies. All of my ex’s hated me because they couldn’t maintain their physique eating like I do, despite them exercising all the time. And I never exercise. Mostly play video games all day. Food goes in, and in about 6-8 hours it goes out. Haven’t gained or lost a pound in 20 years. One time I got food poisoning, refused to throw up, and waited until I got it out of my system, which was pretty fast (just the one, other times I got food poisoning and did throw up).