#33 - Rudy Leibel, M.D.: Finding the obesity gene and discovering leptin

The Peter Attia Drive

Peter Attia, MD

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Fitness

4.7 • 7.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2018

⏱️ 140 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Rudy Leibel, an expert in Clinical Molecular Genetics and Genomics at Columbia University, discusses his role in the remarkable scientific story of discovering leptin. He also gets into the genetics of obesity, as well as a broader discussion of the causes and effects of obesity, energy expenditure, and metabolism.

We discuss:

Rudy’s background, interest in obesity, and trying to understand the role and impact of adipose tissue [4:15];
Finding the first evidence of leptin by studying obese mice [23:30];
Zucker rats, and the push/pull theories of obesity [34:45];
A breakthrough in obesity research, and closing in on leptin [45:45];
Understanding leptin in humans [1:03:30];
What Prader–Willi syndrome teaches us about body weight regulation [1:09:45];
Leptin and the broad condition of obesity, metabolic consequences of weight reduction, and Peter’s self-experiments [1:18:00];
How is appetite being regulated? [1:29:45];
Are there epigenetic consequences of being obese? [1:37:00];
What makes low-carb diets so effective at obesity reduction? [1:46:15];
What did Rudy believe 10 years ago that he no longer believes to be true? [1:55:15];
Rudy’s dream study of the FTO gene [1:57:15];
What the hell does insulin resistance actually mean? [2:08:30]; and
More.

Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com

Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia.
0:10.0	The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking,
0:15.7	along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working
0:19.6	with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast
0:23.8	is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality
0:28.3	and more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's
0:32.5	episode and other topics at peteratiamd.com.
0:41.7	Hey, welcome to this episode of The Drive. On this episode, I interview an amazing scientist
0:47.2	and a very dear friend, Dr. Rudy Leibov. Rudy's a professor at Columbia University, where
0:55.2	his work has focused primarily on type 2 diabetes and obesity. I've known Rudy for quite a while,
1:01.6	probably about six years now, maybe a little longer. We worked together very closely back at the
1:08.0	Nutrition Science Initiative, where he was one of the very important collaborators in one of the
1:13.1	more theoretical experiments that we did. Rudy and I have always just had a ton of fun just hanging
1:18.2	out over great meals and great wine and great beer, talking about science. And so I thought
1:25.0	it might be fun to try to reproduce some of those discussions here. Couple things. First, we recorded
1:30.2	this on a Friday afternoon on the Upper East Side, and you'll probably notice a little more noise
1:36.1	than usual just on account of the street noise. So apologies for that. Second point is, we spend
1:43.4	quite a bit of time, probably about the first hour and 10 hour and 15 minutes just talking about
1:49.9	the discovery of leptin, for which Rudy played arguably the single most important role. Obviously,
1:55.9	many people played a role in the discovery of leptin, but in many ways, Rudy was sort of the chief
2:00.9	architect of that. And certainly inside of the scientific community, he is largely regarded as
2:07.0	that, though unfortunately, history may write that story a little bit differently. So for those of
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Peter Attia, MD, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Peter Attia, MD and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.