How lose weight fast

Bad news for dieters who just can’t seem to lose the weight on their own, the Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee has voted no to a new obesity drug, lorcaserin.

The drug got a thumbs down in a 9 to 5 vote because the FDA thought the side effects outweighed any potential benefits, according to Medicalnewstoday.com.

This is the third time in a year that an obesity drug didn’t get approval from the panel. Members of the panel were concerned about high rates of both memory loss and depression in patients who tried out the new pill, according to The Associated Press.

The pill, made by Arena Pharmaceuticals, is thought to work by stimulating a serotonin receptor in the brain; the receptor has been associated with changes in feelings of satiety and feeding behavior, according to Arena. Dr. Edward W. Gregg, a panel member, said the drug was "promising" although "not quite there yet," said WebMD.

Just this week, the same panel, the FDA Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee, voted 8 to 8 about whether Meridia, a weight loss drug made by Abbott, should stay on the market. It was banned earlier this year by European regulators.

In the U.S., where nearly 35% of the people are obese, there would be a potentially lucrative market for a weight-loss drug. But a magic pill isn’t about to come on the market. "There is no magic bullet, no ultimately successful weight loss pill," says Vanderbilt University endocrinologist Dr. Kevin Niswender, who specializes in the treatment of obesity. "And ultimately, I don’t think that there ever will be."

In order to be effective, he says, an oral medication would need to be used in conjunction with other treatments such as nutrition and fitness counseling and with therapy to treat depression. "Medications may have a role in jump-starting weight loss but obesity is a chronic disease and you can’t stay on medicine for your life," Niswender said.

Bariatric surgery is not an option for the majority of peop"le. There is currently no effective obesity drug on the market," said Dr. Walter Pories, professor of surgery at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. "And only 0.4% of the American public has access to bariatric surgery."

When and if a medication to lose weight hits the market, it’s still not going to be a panacea.

"Everything has side effects," Niswender says. "And when a person stops taking a drug, the weight goes up."

According to a new study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, many young American men exhibit attitudes toward contraception that could best be described as “magical.” The study [PDF] surveyed American singles ages 18–29 about their perceptions about and use of contraception. Twenty-eight percent of young men think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one. Twenty-five percent think that women can prevent pregnancy by douching after sex. Eighteen percent believe that they can reduce the chance of pregnancy by doing it standing up.

For the most part, men lagged behind women on the pregnancy prevention front. And when the study dipped into the realm of “female” forms of birth control, the gender divide intensified. In the study, 29 percent of men and 32 percent of women reported that they know “little or nothing about condoms.” When asked to rate their knowledge of birth control pills, 78 percent of men reported to be clueless, compared to 45 percent of women.




In addition to staging teach-ins, women are also responsible for shouldering the physical, emotional, and financial responsibilities for pregnancy prevention. Pap smears, STI tests, and gynecological sessions about their contraceptive options—that’s just the tip of it for the sexually active woman. In order to keep their birth control subscription fresh, they have to repeat that process every year. Their male sex partners are under no such requirements. As Salon noted last year, women have 11 methods of contraception from which to choose; men have two—condom and vasectomy. And even if men did have additional reliable birth control options, many women wouldn’t trust them to use them correctly. In a comment on the Salon article, one woman wrote, “I love my husband more than anything in the world but I would not place that responsibility on him because if the BC failed and he was responsible for it I would kill him then he would be dead and I would be having a child while in prison.” Perhaps it is no mystery why some men confine their responsibility to forms of birth control which relate directly to their own genitalia.

Gustav Seestedt, 23, says that birth control pills are the form of contraception he has “the most indirect experience with.” He has no idea how they work. “I thought it, uh, controlled, uh… I actually don’t know, now that I think about it,” he says. “Oh, man, I thought it had something to do with hormonal control, but that doesn’t seem right at all. That sounds pretty awful. I thought it, uh, somehow killed fertility with like chemicals and stuff,” he says. The ring, however, strikes Seestedt as a superior option. “I thought that was pretty fine, because, from what I understood, it was kind of a low-cost way of doing it, and it wasn’t really…I like it because chemical pills and stuff are kind of weird, [but the ring] was kind of placed inside, and…you know what I mean? It just kind of did its thing, you know?”

To some, the male indifference to birth control can be attributed to a juvenile disregard for all things related to the place in which the vaginal ring “does its thing.” We live in a country where heterosexual heartthrob Robert Pattinson feels comfortable announcing to Details magazine, “I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina.” Where tech nerds everywhere let out a collective titter over new Apple device the “iPad,” because it sounds kind of like a thing women use when they’re on their periods. Where Judd Apatow has built a film career out of turning extended vagina jokes into blockbusters.

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