Reports on the positive health impact of weight-loss drugs have been consistent. These professors say, ‘not so fast’

Much of the evidence accumulated on weight loss drugs and mental health so far suggests they make us feel better. And, in a sense, that’s exactly what we’d expect.

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University of Cambridge neuroendocrinologist Prof Giles Yeo thinks so. “Losing the weight already puts a positive spin on life,” he says, agreeing that much of the benefit probably does come from the weight loss.

But like others in the field, he’s inclined to believe there’s something else going on. Something tied up with the dopamine circuit – the brain’s reward system, which can get out of whack in addictive behaviours – that we don’t quite understand yet.

At the University of Oxford, psychiatrist Dr Riccardo De Giorgi and his team reckon they may be onto that something.

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They’ve just finished a small study in which 70 volunteers completed specially designed computer-based tasks one week after getting a jab of semaglutide. The tasks assessed, partly, … their motivation and willingness to put in the effort to ‘win’.

The results aren’t published yet, but De Giorgi says they may offer “quite convincing evidence” of how even a single shot of GLP-1s can affect the brain’s reward system.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here