Oona Zenda/KFF Health News Deborah Finley, 50, of Lodi, Calif., says her weight started to worry her during the early days of COVID. That’s when she noticed a lot of the people who were on ventilators or dying had something in common: obesity. “It was a scary time,” she says. As a single mom, she was afraid “that I wouldn’t be here for my daughter.” Finley had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, […]

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8. Eggs Whether you scramble, hard-boil or coddle them, eggs are a great way to start the day if you’re trying to take off extra pounds. They’re a low-calorie food and packed with protein, which takes longer to digest, leaving you feeling satisfied and less likely to overeat at your next meal. A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that overweight or obese men and women who ate a breakfast of […]

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(NewsNation) — Single women became significantly more likely to marry or move in with a partner after starting GLP-1 weight-loss medications, according to new research from a Harvard economist. The June 2026 study, authored by Rebecca Diamond, the Martin Feldstein Professor of Economics, found that single women’s likelihood of marrying or cohabitating with a partner rose by as much as 28.6 percentage points after a year and a half on the drugs. Unemployed women’s odds of landing […]

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Robert Kushner, MD, ‘82 GME, professor emeritus of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Molecular Medicine, was a co-author of the study. A new strategy for delivering GLP-1 drugs to patients with obesity or who were overweight resulted in up to a 12 percent reduction in body weight after 36 weeks, according to a randomized phase II clinical trial published in Nature Medicine. Robert Kushner, MD, ‘82 GME, professor emeritus of Medicine in the Division […]

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By now, unless you reside on Mars, you’re plenty familiar with the names Ozempic and Wegovy. Maybe your doctor has mentioned them, a friend or family member is taking one — or a growing list of related drugs. The dramatic before-and-after stories of weight loss are everywhere, but so are the news article warning of side effects and the unknowns of long-term use. Ozempic, or semaglutide, is just one drug in a growing class of medications known […]

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Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Phase 3 clinical trial results (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) published in The Lancet report that retatrutide, an investigational once-weekly injection for diabetes management, can significantly improve blood sugar levels and lead to substantial weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes. The study included adults with Type 2 diabetes who were not taking diabetes medicines and whose blood sugar was not adequately controlled with diet and exercise alone. After 40 weeks, the average drop in HbA1c […]

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Program rules could prove challenging To get medications covered under the new program, providers must submit a prior authorization request and a prescription for an eligible GLP-1 drug for an approved use. The pharmacist submits the request to the bridge program, which reviews it. CMS is shooting for a 72-hour turnaround for prior authorization decisions. If it’s approved, the pharmacy can then fill the prescription, so the first time, patients probably won’t be walking out of the […]

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Millions of Medicare enrollees will gain their first-ever coverage for drugs for weight loss under a temporary pilot program that launches July 1. Mary Abrahamson hopes to be one of them. The rural Washington resident was tired of carrying extra weight on her 5-foot-3-inch frame. It made it harder for the 71-year-old to do the things she enjoyed, including walking her dogs and gardening. Unable to afford the weight-loss drugs Wegovy or Zepbound, which were priced at […]

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Online marketplaces and social media platforms are heavily promoting a broad category of wellness products known as peptides. Marketed as breakthrough solutions for everything from rapid weight loss to anti-aging and general health optimization, these small chains of amino acids have rapidly transitioned from specialized clinical research into the mainstream consumer consciousness. However, U.S. regulators and pharmacy experts warn that the digital marketplace masks a complex landscape of varying product quality, shifting legal frameworks, and distinct safety […]

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Weight loss jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro have boomed in popularity, and so have reports of myriad side-effects. This week researchers have suggested GLP-1 medications could be associated with hair loss. It can be hard to keep tabs on which of these unintentional outcomes have been the subject of expert scrutiny and which remain little more than hearsay. We take a look at some of the most talked about side-effects and explore which have been studied […]

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