The obesity medicine is more effective for gourmets than for emotional eaters

Then obesity drugs will probably work better for you than those that control eating by other things.

A new Japanese study examined the effectiveness of obesity drugs in people with different eating behaviors.

The researchers found that behavior predicted how well the obesity drugs worked.

In total 92 subjects were followed for one year. They all had type 2 diabetes and had been prescribed a Glp-1 drug used to treat diabetes and obesity, such as semaglutide or dulaglutide.

After one year, the drugs had clearly improved the subjects’ blood values ​​and reduced their weight. However, differences were found between the groups.

The researchers divided the subjects into three different types. Typing was possible, as the test subjects had answered a questionnaire mapping eating habits.

The types of behavior were emotional eating, restrictive eating, and stimulus-related eating.

Best the drug acted on stimulus-responsive eaters. It was typical for them that the appetite was not triggered by an internal experience of hunger. Instead, seeing delicious and tempting food ignited the desire to eat.

In them, Glp-1 drugs significantly reduced appetite. They also lost the most weight of the groups. In addition, their blood sugar levels improved the most.

According to the researchers, the result is proof that Glp-1 drugs work particularly well for those whose food supply in the environment causes problems with weight control.

The drugs worked worse for emotional eaters. Their eating is guided by different internal feelings, such as depression or stress.

Their eating decreased during the first three months, but after a year the level was the same as at the beginning of the experiment.

According to the researchers, Glp-1 drugs are therefore not necessarily the most effective treatment for emotional eaters.

“It may be that emotional eating is more influenced by psychological factors that Glp-1 treatment cannot directly influence,” says the other author of the article Takehiro Kato in the press release.

Restrictive eating, i.e. the effort to control eating, did not exactly predict the effectiveness of the medicine in one direction or the other.

During the first three months, the group members restricted their eating even more, but at the end of the experiment, their eating habits were the same as at the beginning.

According to the researchers, this may be due to a short-term motivation spike, which leveled off as the year progressed.

The effort to limit eating is to some extent linked to better weight control, as long as it remains reasonable. Excessive restriction can eventually lead to uncontrolled eating.

The researchers conclude that the effectiveness of Glp-1 drugs can be predicted based on the patient’s type of eating. Therefore, finding out eating behavior may be necessary before prescribing obesity drugs.

Research was published in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare.