1 May

Another miraculous revolution happening in broad daylight, which almost nobody knows about. Sitting alongside the Gliptins (the magical ‘weight loss’ drugs that do so many more semi-miraculous things) is a new type of drug called an ActRIIB blocker. ActRIIB blockers reverse an evolutionary process humans inherited where our muscles waste if unused. Other animals don’t have that, they can remain muscular doing nothing. To cut a long story short, these drugs will allow us to build muscle, just by popping a pill. That has enormous therapeutic benefit, but will also mean if combined with a Gliptin you’ll have a combined diet/gym, in a pill. You’ll lose weight and build muscle, at the same time. And that’s where the idea of ‘natural’ health will rear its head. Because very many will say it’s ‘unnatural’ to lose weight and build muscle, in that way. But that’s because we’ve carried for years the completely wrong, moralistic and shaming idea that being fat is caused by eating too many calories (and so to lose weight we have to starve ourselves), and building muscle requires lots of exercise. Both of those ideas are just wrong. Our bodies evolved in conditions of scarcity, and now we have relative abundance the response of the body to that abundance is to get fat and lose muscle. Our environment changed but our bodies didn’t, so there’s a mismatch. These drugs are allowing a matching of body and environment again. The most ‘natural’ thing imaginable. The results promise to be miraculous for our health.