Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
The drug shrinks the fat around the torso and makes the waist smaller, but doesn’t change the fat on the arms, legs, or just under the skin — meaning it targets only the dangerous internal fat.
Causal
The drug makes the body produce more IGF-1 — a hormone linked to growth and metabolism — which is exactly what you’d expect from a drug that stimulates growth hormone.
Mechanistic
People who took tesamorelin felt better about how their belly looked, and doctors also thought their belly looked better — even though their outer fat didn’t change, just the inside fat.
If HIV patients stop taking tesamorelin after six months, all the belly fat they lost comes right back — meaning they have to keep taking it to stay leaner.
If HIV patients keep taking tesamorelin for a full year, their dangerous belly fat drops by about 18% compared to when they started — but we don’t know how much better that is than just stopping the drug, because the placebo group didn’t stay on it for a year.
Quantitative
A daily injection called tesamorelin helps HIV patients with a big belly lose nearly 11% of their dangerous internal belly fat in six months, while those getting a fake shot don’t lose any.
Even though there was more adrenaline in the blood during insulin infusion, the body wasn’t clearing it out slower — meaning the increase was because the nerves were releasing more, not because the body was holding onto it.
Descriptive
When blood sugar was raised without insulin, the body’s stress system didn’t react — meaning high sugar by itself didn’t trigger the same nerve response as insulin did.
Even when blood sugar was kept normal, giving insulin made the body’s stress system more active than when nothing was given — suggesting insulin itself, not just the experiment, triggered the response.
Giving a higher dose of insulin to healthy young men made their stress response even stronger than a lower dose — their blood pressure and heart activity rose more, showing that more insulin leads to more nerve activity, even if blood sugar stays the same.
When healthy young men were given insulin without changing their blood sugar, their body’s stress response system kicked in more — their heart beat faster and blood pressure rose, likely because insulin triggered their nerves to release more adrenaline.
This study only tested healthy, normal-weight women for one day, so we can’t say if the same results would happen in men, people with obesity, or over months of eating yogurt snacks.
Other studies have found mixed results when testing protein snacks, meaning the effect isn’t always the same—it depends on what kind of snack and who’s eating it.
This study only looked at what happened after one snack, so we don’t know if eating yogurt every afternoon helps with weight loss over time.
Even though the yogurt had more protein, it didn’t make women feel significantly fuller than the crackers at the 90-minute mark.
The yogurt snack was much less dense in calories per gram than the chocolate or crackers, which might help explain why it kept people fuller longer.
Even though the yogurt snack wasn’t as tasty as the chocolate or crackers, it still made women less hungry and made them eat less later.
Women ate about 100 fewer calories at dinner after eating yogurt than after chocolate, but this difference was just shy of being statistically significant.
The yogurt snack made women wait about 20 minutes longer before eating dinner than the crackers did, but this difference was close to being statistically significant.
Chocolate and crackers, even though one is sugary and the other is salty, had almost the same effect on hunger and how much women ate later.
Even though the yogurt snack made women feel fuller at one point after eating, overall they didn’t feel significantly more full than after eating chocolate or crackers.
Even though a yogurt snack and a cracker snack had the same calories, women ate less at dinner after the yogurt—yet they didn’t feel less hungry than after the crackers.
After eating a protein-rich yogurt snack, women ate about 100 fewer calories at dinner than after eating a chocolate snack, meaning they didn’t overeat later to make up for the snack.
Women who eat a high-protein yogurt snack in the afternoon wait about half an hour longer before feeling hungry enough to eat dinner than those who eat a chocolate snack.