GLP-1 medications are doing more than just help people lose weight.

They're actually forcing us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about appetite,

willpower, and what really causes obesity.

Today, we're going to talk about some alternative explanations for how they actually work.

Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, where we take a closer look at nutrition

news, research, and trends so that you can make more informed decisions about what you eat.

I'm your host, Monica Reinagle, and over the past couple of episodes, we've been unpacking

some of the controversial issues raised by a new book, it's called Diet, Dr. Dr. Dopamine,

written by former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler.

So we started out with the notion of food addiction, and whether that's a valid or helpful

framework for understanding overeating or obesity. And then last week we talked about whether

increased regulation of these quote-unquote

addictive foods could be part of the solution. Well, this week, we're going to fit one more piece

into this puzzle, and that is how these newly popular GLP-1 medications affect our desire for these foods, in particular,

and our tendency to overeat in general. After 50 years of steadily increasing rates of

overweight and obesity, for the very first time we are starting to see a reversal of that trend.

And not a moment too soon. Almost three out of four American adults is now considered to have

overweight or obesity. But now that number is starting to level out and perhaps even decline.

And these new anti-obesity medications may have something or a lot to do with that.

One of the most interesting things to me about this class of medications

is how our understanding of how they work has evolved.

At first, it was thought that these medications worked kind of mechanistically. They caused food to move more slowly through the digestive system,

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